Yours to Keep by Shannon Stacey Read Free Book Online

patient as they very, very slowly made their way up and down the aisles.
    “What the hell is this?” Sean picked up a box from the shelf and showed it to her. “It looks like a cheese grater for your feet.”
    “Women like having smooth heels.”
    “Do you have one of these?”
    “Hell, no. It looks like a cheese grater.”
    They laughed as he put it back and moved on to the next thing that caught his fancy. Between the department store and the grocery store, they managed to almost fill the bed of his truck but, an hour later when it was all put away, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.
    “It still doesn’t look like you’ve lived here for a year.”
    Sean shrugged and sat backward on a kitchen chair, folding his arms across the back of it. “She won’t think much of it. Single, former army guys aren’t really known for dragging around domestic clutter.”
    “It just seems like you should have more…stuff. Pictures and sports trophies and stuff like that.”
    “It’s all in boxes in the attic back home. If she says something, which she won’t, I’ll just tell her I haven’t gotten around to getting them yet.”
    She grabbed a couple of sodas out of the fridge and set one in front of him. “Lisa told me a little bit about your family. She said you’re all really close to Leo and Mary, even though you were all in Maine.”
    “My mom died when I was nine. It was an aneurism, so we didn’t even see it coming and everything would have gone to shit, including my dad, if not for Aunt Mary and Rosie. Rosie’s the housekeeper at the lodge, but really she’s more than that. She stepped up and raised her own daughter, plus helped my dad raise the five of us. He died nine years ago, but Rosie’s still there, helping Josh run the lodge. But without Aunt Mary backing her up, I don’t know how we would have turned out.”
    She loved the way his face softened when he talked about his family. And the way the muscles in his arm flexed as he lifted the soda to his mouth. And the way his throat worked as he swallowed. And…
    And nothing, she told herself. She needed to think of him as an employee…kind of. Except for the whole sharing-a-bedroom thing.
    “So tomorrow’s the big day,” he said, and she wondered if he was just trying to change the subject away from his family. “Are you ready?”
    “As ready as I can be, I guess. I can’t wait to see her, of course. I’ve missed her so much, but a month is a long time.”
    “It’ll fly by once we settle in and you two start catching up on lost time.”
    She twisted the ring on her finger, watching the stone catch the last rays of the late-day sun. “For something I’ve obsessed about right down to the last detail, I can’t help but think I should have thought it through a little more.”
    “You can still change your mind.”
    She shook her head. “No, we’re committed.”
    “Or we should be,” he said, and they both laughed.
    Then he drained the last of his soda and stood. “I’m going to hit the road. Gonna relax and get a good night’s sleep before the big show starts.”
    “Okay. If you bring your stuff over by ten, you’ll have time to put it away before I have to leave for the airport.”
    “I’ll be here.”
    After he was gone, Emma collapsed on the couch in a bundle of raw nerves. Starting tomorrow, she was going to have to start convincing her grandmother she was in love with Sean Kowalski. And tomorrow Sean would be moving into her house. Into her bedroom. Into her life.
    A good night’s sleep was out of the question.
     
    After a few hours of hard deliberation, Sean decided to call his oldest brother, Mitch. He was a rolling stone, too, never staying in one place too long or spending too much time in one woman’s bed. He, of all the siblings, was the least likely to think Sean had left his marbles overseas and needed an intervention.
    “Hey, little brother,” Mitch said after the third ring. “How’s it