All That Really Matters, Nicole Deese [best detective novels of all time .TXT] 📗

like Miles or my parents. I’m not compassionate like Clara, and as you saw today, I’m not level-headed like Glo. I wanted to believe I had something else to offer the house, the staff, you . . . but I don’t think I do. I only made the mess even messier.”

“You left because you were afraid I thought you were unfit to comfort a girl who so obviously adores you?”

Her silence thrummed through me.

“I promise you, my decision to have you stay back was based on efficiency and experience, nothing more. Clara has taken trips to the hospital on our behalf several times, so she knows the protocol and formalities involved. She’s filled out the insurance forms and filed the necessary reports. She’s clear-headed in a crisis, and that’s what this morning was. A crisis. You weren’t being punished. We needed you at the house. I needed you.” My hands slipped farther down her arms and I squeezed them lightly, hoping the gesture would solidify the truth in her mind. “This is one of the complications we’ll have to work through, together. I don’t always think about the personal or emotional impact of the decisions I make at the house, but that’s why I have the staff I have. You’re not a distraction, Molly. You’re an asset.”

Without hesitation, Molly encircled her arms around my waist, pressing her face to my chest as I rested my chin on her turban-style towel. I took a long breath to fill my lungs once again. “Have you eaten today?”

A tiny shake of her head.

“Me either, and I think I’m gonna need some food before I drag you back to the manor with me.”

She pulled away, the towel on her head tilting to the side and exposing a crown of familiar blond hair. “I’ll make us something, although I’m not sure what all I have on hand. I haven’t done much grocery shopping recently.”

“We could grab something on the way?”

“No, I’d like to cook.”

“Then I’d like to help.”

As she turned toward the kitchen, the towel began to slip even more and she stopped it abruptly with her hand, freezing in her tracks. But I saw something, something peeking out from the bottom of her towel. A short tuft of hair I couldn’t quite make sense of.

I came up behind her, her hand still supporting the leaning tower of terrycloth as I gingerly touched the isolated lock of blond at the nape of her neck.

“Silas, it’s . . . ” Her voice wavered.

I slid my hand up the length of her arm and gave a gentle tug at her tight grasp, a curious question more than a demand. For a full five seconds her hold on the towel remained firm, unyielding, as if she, too, were contemplating something she wasn’t quite sure of. Finally, she exhaled and loosened her grip enough for me to pull the towel free of her head completely.

And as I did, as I saw what had been hiding underneath, the towel dropped from my hand.

Slowly, she faced me, her eyes wide and braced for rejection. “Say something. Please.”

But there was too much emotion lodged in my throat to speak a single word. All her hair, all her gorgeous, creatively styled hair, had been chopped off. Not a few inches, but dozens of inches. To her jawbone.

Just like Wren’s.

I raked my hands through her damp, shorn locks, pulling the raw ends through my fingers. Then, with one finger, I tilted her chin to mine and stared into her eyes with a look that left little doubt how I felt about her in this moment. How I felt about her, period. The heated charge in my blood warred with my fight for control, with my convictions, with my need to make her understand.

I crushed my mouth to hers, the cool of her lips melding to the heat of mine and stoking an internal fire with each exploration of our kiss. She gripped the counter behind her back with one hand as I pressed in close, unable to pull away. Unable to stop touching her. As if everything in me needed everything in her to know the whole and unbiased truth.

That I wanted her in a way I wanted nothing else.

After seconds blurred to minutes, Molly placed a gentle hand to my chest, causing me to slow, to still, to be grateful for her sweet breath still fresh on my lips. I reached for another lock of her mostly dried hair and wound it around my finger. “Don’t you ever say you’re not good at loving people again.” I planted one more undoubtedly telling kiss on her inviting lips. “Because I think you’re outrageously good at it.”

31

Molly

Even though it had only been twelve hours since I left The Bridge, a lifetime of events had occurred since then. Not only had something significant taken place with Silas in my kitchen, but something even more significant had been taking place in my heart since the moment I emerged from my shower. Or perhaps, from the moment I snipped off my first lock of hair.

As I followed Silas back to Fir Crest Manor, past fir trees and through neighborhoods and then finally into the darkened parking lot, I spoke to the God I’d believed in as a young girl. Back before my family had gone our separate ways. And back before I’d felt disqualified by my lack of ministry vocation. My words were far from eloquent, and yet an unfamiliar peace seemed to quiet my anxieties as I pulled up to a house that had become a home in more ways than one.

I’d taken only a few minutes to dress before we left my house, adding a couple strokes of mascara to my lashes and slipping into some cropped leggings and flats. I still wore Silas’s hooded sweatshirt—which I warned him he was never getting back. The usual pressure to be perfectly presentable and polished . . . that was absent now. And I wasn’t sure if it would ever return.

Truthfully,