To Have and to Hold by Serena Bell Page A

it didn’t matter, did it? Because she was leaving Saturday.
    “Granola?” she asked, to get her head on straight, pouring him a bowl.
    As she was about to add milk, he shook his head.
    “You like it,” she said. “The first time I tried to serve it to you, you called it rabbit food, but then I said that you were setting a bad example for the girls, not even trying it, so you did, and you couldn’t resist. It’s my own recipe: mostly oats, maple syrup, and a little bit of coconut.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Well, then, how can I say no? Bring it on. But wait a sec, and I’ll make some scrambled eggs, too.” Then a shadow crossed his face and he tilted his head quizzically.
    “I love your scrambled eggs,” she reassured him.
    He looked like he wanted to ask her something else.
    She shrugged, not because she was actually feeling nonchalant, but because she wished she were. “I stayed over a couple times.”
    Was it her imagination or did his gaze darken at that?
    He ducked before she could say for sure. He came up, forehead wrinkled, hands empty. “Did you move the skillet?”
    “In the cabinet next to the stove.”
    She didn’t say,
You put it there. Right before you left. You said it made way more sense for it to be next to the stove.
    He didn’t need to be reminded constantly that pieces were missing.
    He crossed to the fridge and pulled out the eggs. Broke them into a bowl, added some milk.
    He rustled in one of the cabinets and she saw his shoulders rise in tension and fall in defeat.
    “Salt and pepper’s on the other side,” she said quietly.
    He shot her a look of gratitude. She wasn’t sure if it was purely for the information or for something in the way she’d delivered it.
    She’d stayed over twice when the girls were at a sleepover party. And once or twice when they were in the house, because the four of them had been out late or up late here playing board games. And they’d always made sure she woke up in the guest room and he woke up in his room. Which had not always been easy. Once Hunter had snuck upstairs at six a.m. and almost bumped into Clara going to the bathroom.
    By that point, she hadn’t cared if the girls caught on. She might even have preferred it, because it would have put an end to the sneaking around. But she wouldn’t have said that. Maybe she’d sensed some lingering reticence in him.
    She wondered: If he hadn’t lost his memory, would he have come back 100 percent gung ho? Or had there always been a little part of him not completely sure of her, of them?
    The thought chilled her.
    “How would you feel about the four of us going to Lakeshore Park today?”
    She must have startled or made a small noise, because he said, “What?”
    “You asked me that.
Before
. We did that. The four of us. That was—it was the first time the four of us all did something together. You texted just like that. ‘How would you feel about the four of us going to Lakeshore Park today?’ ”
    “Huh,” he said. He cut a pat of butter and let it skate around the bottom of the skillet on the stove.
    “I just figured you were feeling nervous about Clara staying with me. At that point, we didn’t know each other very well. I mean, you knew Clara spent about half her life at my house, and that Dee and Linda both trusted me enough to have left Clara with me for a couple of days at a time. But I figured you were doubting yourself.”
    “I guess I might have been.”
    He hadn’t been, though. He’d told her after the fact that the outing was his first attempt to spend time with her, even though he wasn’t admitting it to himself yet. She didn’t want to tell him that, though. It would be too
leading
. She didn’t want him to think she was trying for a do-over.
    She wasn’t.
    She
really, really
wasn’t.
    Even if she was dying to touch him.
    She should say no. There was no way she could go to Lakeshore Park and not think of how it had been the last time around. Tension shimmering in