The Heart's Journey: Stitches in Time Series #2 by Barbara Cameron Page B

back,” Leah instructed, using her fingertips to squeeze excess water from several tea bags. “Naomi, he’s not John.”
    Naomi took a seat and let her head fall back onto the back of the chair. “I know. He’s the exact opposite,” she whispered, knowing she’d argued with him and generally not behaved like herself over it. “He’s going to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”
    “Nick’s not like that.” Her grandmother draped a tea bag across Naomi’s nose and applied several others to her cheeks and forehead. She stood back. “There, how does that feel?”
    “Better,” Naomi said, and her breath caused the tea bag tags to flutter and tickle her nose. “Oh my, if I looked silly before, I can’t imagine what I look like now.”
    Leah pulled open the bottom drawer of the stove and retrieved the lid to an aluminum pan. She held it in front of Naomi to use for a mirror. Naomi took one look and burst out laughing. The tea bags slid from her face, one of them slipping down the front of her chest to land inside the neckline of her nightgown.
    “Cold!” she cried, and quickly pulled it out. She leaned her head back again and reapplied the bags to her face.
    “This is gut ,” she said, nearly swooning with relief. “You should go back to bed now. No need for you to lose sleep over my foolishness.”
    “I don’t mind,” Leah said, taking a seat beside her. “You’ve sat up with me when my ankle was troubling me.”
    “It was no trouble at all. That’s what families do. By the way, I got us some postcards today. Nick stopped at a gas station he said had everything for vacations. I thought we could send some to Mary Katherine and Anna and my parents tomorrow.”
    She moved a tea bag from one eyelid and checked the kitchen clock. “Well, today. I didn’t realize it was so late. Now, you really should go back to bed. I’m going there in a minute.”
    “I think I will,” Leah said.
    Naomi heard the scrape of her chair on the kitchen tile, felt her grandmother’s lips on her cheek when she kissed hergood night, and heard her uncertain shuffle down the hall to her room.
    She knew from the one time she’d experienced sunburn that the next stage was little clear water-filled blisters, followed by peeling, and she wondered if she could avoid Nick for a few days.
    He was going to enjoy telling her “I told you so!” She just knew it. And she wouldn’t be able to blame him for it.
    She’d known he was right about the sunscreen. Something about the way he’d insisted that she use it had just gotten her back up. She’d never been that way before. But he’d just sounded like John for a moment and she’d felt compelled not to back down.
    Well, she’d just have to put up with him telling her that she’d been wrong and he’d been right. She wouldn’t even mind, if God would just take away the pain of the sunburn. Gathering the bags from her face, she dunked them in the ice water again, squeezed them, then reapplied them to her face.
    She felt something under her chin—something sticky. She rubbed at it and looked at it. Mayonnaise. She pulled a paper napkin from the holder on the table and wiped her chin clean.
    Her grandmother’s words when she’d walked into the kitchen came back to her. She got to her feet and looked into the refrigerator again.
    Suddenly she felt like a midnight snack.

    Nick regarded Naomi and shook his head. “Your nose looks like a strawberry.”
    Naomi rolled her eyes. “I know. Don’t rub it in.”
    “If only you’d done that.”
    “What?”
    “Rubbed in some sunscreen the other day.”
    She folded her arms across her chest. “Go ahead. Say, ‘I told you so.’”
    He sighed and leaned against the doorjamb. “Naomi, I would never do that.”
    She stared at him, searching his face for something—he didn’t know what. “ Grossmudder said that,” she admitted finally.
    “But you still thought I might.” He watched as a reluctant smile tugged at her lips.
    She