A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) by Marilyn Pappano Page B

it herself?
    “How many?”
    She shifted again, the chair creaking again. Like Granny’s rocker, the wood worn silvery gray from decades on the front porch, its squeaks punctuating every conversation she’d ever had, every bedtime story she’d ever told, every gospel hymn she’d ever sung.
    “There are about twenty of us here in town. Seven of us never miss a Tuesday night or any of our adventures. The rest come and go as their schedules allow, or as their needs require.”
    Twenty dead soldiers. Twenty grieving widows, and at least two grieving children. War is hell, General Sherman had said.
    Damn straight.
    *  *  *
     
    With a reluctant sigh, Therese checked the watch on her left wrist. It was after five o’clock, making her an hour late in getting home. She’d told Jacob before he caught his bus this morning that she had an errand to run and had left a note on the refrigerator door to remind them. Still, it was time to go home.
    The rain hadn’t let up, falling steadily enough that it had finally overwhelmed the drains along the curbs and crept up over the sidewalk in places. The street outside was a blur of headlights and early dusk, and the people leaving work wore slickers or trench coats or huddled beneath mostly drab umbrellas.
    “I should go,” she said. Should. Didn’t want to. It had been so long since she’d sat in a quiet place and enjoyed coffee and conversation with a man, unless she counted her last visit home and her father. Though she loved her dad dearly, Keegan was a whole different kind of man.
    A handsome, charming, appealing man who could remind her she was a woman with nothing more than a look.
    She didn’t make a move to rise, and neither did he. She did pull her keys from her purse and noticed that he’d parked one space down from her. They could share her umbrella on the way out. Funny that the thought caused the sweet, unfamiliar, not-a-panic-attack fluttering. Hadn’t she just shared the umbrella with Carly a short while ago?
    Don’t play stupid. Carly’s your best friend. Keegan is not. Carly is a woman. Keegan is definitely not.
    “Are the kids old enough to stay alone for a few hours at night?”
    Her throat tightened, and so did her fingers, until the bite of the keys forced her to relax. Was he asking just for general conversational purposes, or did he have something in mind?
    Something in mind. It was hard to just say it: dinner. More time together. A date. She didn’t even think of herself as a dating sort of person. Dating was for people who didn’t have the obligations she did, or the past, or the uncertain future.
    “A few hours,” she said, wondering if her voice sounded as choked to him as it did to her. “As long as I’m in town. If I go out of town or it’s going to be longer than that, they go to their best friends’ house down the street. Their mom and I trade off sometimes so she and their dad can have date nights.”
    Apparently, she’d developed the habit of talking too much when she was nervous. Why hadn’t someone pointed that out to her before?
    Keegan was quiet, focused on gathering what little trash there was. When he’d done that, he looked up. “Could we have dinner? I’d be happy to get a pizza or take-out for the kids.”
    Therese’s nerves tingled as if an electric current hovered in the air, about to disperse its energy at any instant, setting her hair on end and her heart to pounding and maybe scorching her in the process. She should say yes. All the best friends in the world couldn’t disguise the fact that she missed having a man in her life. She wasn’t a nun. She was alive and breathing. And she liked Keegan.
    The kids didn’t get take-out that often. Jacob wouldn’t care, and Abby would be so busy acting out that she wouldn’t notice. They would appreciate that there’d be no table to set, no blessing to sit through, no cleanup. They wouldn’t miss her.
    She refused to acknowledge the tiny prick of disappointment