“You need me to stay and help with your mother?” he asked as he picked up the brown paper bag and folded it.
She looked at him in surprise. “Why would you do that?”
“To help you.”
“Stone, I…”
“We’re friends. Friends help friends,” he quickly reminded her.
“Like I said, you are a good man. A very good man, but you don’t have to do this.” She gestured to the food. “Not any of this.”
She was throwing up walls. He could almost visibly see them going up between them and he didn’t like it. “We’ve already had this conversation, Carly. I want to do this, to be with you.”
She looked torn, as if emotions were battling within her. “Thanks, but I got this. You want me to get you a drink?”
He regarded her a moment, wondered if she’d always felt the need to carry everything by herself. If pride or strength or conditioning made her feel she had to do this on her own.
Maybe she’d had to and it truly was that she was conditioned to do everything without help. At some point there had been grandparents, but Carly had told him they’d passed before her mother got ill. Other than Joyce, whom she paid, Carly didn’t have anyone to lean on.
Which was a sobering thought to someone who had a big family where someone was always sticking out a helping hand.
“I’ll take some ice water,” he told her, waiting until she’d left to get their drinks before glancing around the room, seeing dozens of things that needed to be done. Things he’d noted each night he’d visited. After how she’d reacted to his offer to tighten the screws on the kitchen cabinet, he’d not mentioned any of the other little things he’d like to do.
“Thanks for dinner, by the way,” she said, coming back into the room. “It smells wonderful.”
He sat down at the table. “Sure thing. Thank you for the company.”
Rather than give her usual response, she just shot him a “yeah, right” look, then asked, “What game am I going to beat you at tonight?”
“You do realize that tying with me doesn’t count as beating me?” he teased.
“We didn’t tie when we played Trouble, Connect Four, or when we played Old Maid,” she reminded him.
Seeing the sparkle he’d come to love in her eyes for the first time since he’d arrived, he grinned. “You won those? Funny, at no point have I felt like a loser.”
Carly’s smile lit up the small, dingy room that he’d come to feel quite at home in over the past week.
“Sugar-coat however you like,” she told him, handing him his water. “But we both know the truth. You just aren’t that good at games.”
“Or maybe I’ve been letting you win.”
Sitting down at the table perpendicular to him, she regarded him, then shook her head. “Nope. You aren’t the type to purposely lose.”
“Like I said, I’ve not felt like a loser.”
Except for when he acknowledged that, whether she wanted it or not, Carly needed him and, just like with Stephanie, he was failing her.
Something he intended to rectify.
* * *
Carly wasn’t going to like what Stone had planned the next evening, but he was determined to help.
Thus, the tool belt and supplies in the back of his SUV. Not that he was a master carpenter, but he’d done enough odd jobs around the house with his dad growing up that he could be handy when needed.
Carly needed handy.
Both her and her house.
After they ate their dinner, he planned to nail down the loose boards on her front porch and around the front porch window. After he got those fixed, he’d sand the peeling paint and freshen up with a new coat.
Grabbing the take-out food bags off his passenger seat, Stone forewent the tools. He’d come back for those when Carly was busy with her mother.
When she met him at the door to unlock it and let him inside, she looked a little frazzled and a whole lot exhausted, just as she had been the evening before.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” But she didn’t meet his eyes.
His hands were full of their dinner, so he couldn’t give in to his urge to pull her into his arms and demand she tell him about her day.
Not immediately. But within seconds, the food was on the dining table and Carly was in his arms.
She let him hold her without uttering a single word of protest. Instead, she rested her head against his chest and leaned on him as if she was too weary to stand.
Just as she’d done the evening before.
Hell.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered against his chest.
“Me, too,” he said and meant. “Me, too.”
He held her in silence for a few minutes, before she pulled away, put on a brave smile, and asked what was for dinner.