Roommating (Preston's Mill #1)

by Noelle Adams

  “I guess that was a big project I asked for.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her or apologetic. Either way, at least he acknowledged the ridiculous amount of work he’d given her. “Uh, yeah. I can’t wait for the weekend. I’m going to lay around and not move for hours at a time.”

  “Good plan. Unless you have another date, of course.”

  She’d been petting Lucy, who looked like she might jump over to dote on Chris at any moment, but she glanced over at Chris’s face at his words. “Nothing definite.”

  Randy had mentioned something about the weekend, but she wasn’t sure she was going to say yes. She liked him well enough, but she didn’t want to go out with him two weekends in a row because that would start to feel serious.

  She definitely didn’t want to be serious about Randy any time soon.

  At the moment, she was still having trouble keeping her eyes off of Chris’s chest and legs.

  “Did you date a lot in Charlottesville?” he asked.

  She managed to tear her eyes from his chest and move them up to his face. He looked casually interested, like he was just making conversation and didn’t really care about the answer.

  There was no reason not to reply. “Eh. I went out casually pretty often.”

  “Nothing serious?”

  “I dated one guy for three months and another guy for five. That was as serious as it got.”

  “Why is that?”

  She widened her eyes. “What kind of question is that? It just never worked out to be any more serious.”

  “I figured you were the one who didn’t want to get serious, and I was wondering why.” He looked completely genuine—not like he was teasing her or trying to bait her.

  She realized it was a real compliment he’d given her—that he assumed any guy she dated would want to be serious with her. “I don’t know. They just weren’t the right guys, I guess. When it got to the point of deciding whether it was going to be serious or not, I just couldn’t…see myself with them long-term.” She sighed, realizing she’d never really acknowledged this to herself before. “I guess it has something to do with my mom walking out. It’s hard for me to trust that…that a relationship is going to last, that he’s not going to just leave me eventually.”

  “Yeah,” Chris murmured, leaning back in his recliner. He wasn’t looking at her now. “I get that.”

  “What about you?” she asked, feeling vulnerable and not wanting it to be one-sided.

  “What about me?”

  “Have you been serious about anyone?” She knew he’d never been serious about any girls when he’d lived in Preston, but the three intervening years were a blank.

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, and she thought he wasn’t going to reply at all. But then he finally said into the silence. “I guess I’m kind of the opposite.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m the one who leaves.”

  She’d known that about him. He’d done it to her father three years ago. “Why do you think you do that?”

  He turned his head suddenly to meet her eyes. “Who’s going to trust me to stick around?”

  Her chest clenched at the dry words, and she understood something about him she hadn’t known before.

  They weren’t really as different as she’d always assumed. Both of them lived with these self-fulfilling prophecies. What they expected to happen always did—and it might be partly because they didn’t know to hope for anything else.

  ***

  The next morning, Heather was staring at her computer screen again, trying to input numbers into her spreadsheet.

  Chris was in the inner office, talking to her father. She really wished she knew what they were talking about.

  It was silly to feel that way, but she always got a little nervous when Chris and her father talked privately. It made her wonder if they were keeping secrets from her.

  Of course, there were no secrets. She knew that rationally. But she always felt that little prickle of anxiety anyway.

  Her father’s office door was partly opened, but she was too far away to hear what they were talking about. She told herself not to be stupid and tried to focus on her work instead.

  She wasn’t going to work over the weekend—that would be going well beyond the call of duty, since Chris didn’t need this information for a real deadline—but she wanted to get as much as possible done today, so it all wouldn’t be waiting for her next week.

  She looked up when she heard Jenny greet someone who had just walked into the office.

  It was a man delivering two big boxes.

  Jenny handled ordering supplies, so Heather didn’t know what was in the boxes, but she figured they were probably office supplies. With this determined, she turned back to her spreadsheet.

  “Heather?” The male voice caused her to turn back toward the front of the office, where the delivery man was approaching her. “I’d heard you were back in town.”

  Heather smiled and stood up as her eyes focused on the man’s face, and she recognized Billy Watson, who had been in her class at school from kindergarten on. “Billy! How great to see you!”

  They hugged briefly, and Heather was glad of the distraction from her tedious work. Billy had been one of those guys who were always around. Nice enough, but nothing special. But he’d grown into a decent looking man, and Heather was always happy to see a familiar face.

  They chatted for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s lives. Then Billy said, “Hey, we should get together some time.”

  “Yes, of course. That would be great.”

  “What about this weekend? Are you busy?”

  “I was planning to do as little as possible this weekend, but I could probably manage dinner.”

  “Tomorrow then?” Billy looked excited, as if he hadn’t expected her to say yes to a date.

  Heather wasn’t sure why she wouldn’t say yes. She liked him, and she needed to rekindle her social life, especially since she was spending far too much time thinking about her emotionally unavailable roommate. “Sure. I’m in Preston’s Mill. Unit F.”

  “Great. I’ll pick you up around six-thirty, if that sounds good. We’ll just do something casual.”

  Heather agreed to this plan and watched him as he left the office. When she turned around, she was startled to see Chris standing silently outside her father’s door.

  He must have heard at least part of the conversation.

  “So much for your lazy weekend,” he said, his expression unreadable.

  Heather had no idea why she felt flustered. There was absolutely nothing wrong with going out on a date, no matter what she’d said to Chris the day before. “I’ll still have plenty of time to be lazy.”

  “At this rate, you’ll have dated every single guy in town before the month is out.”

  Heather narrowed her eyes at him, trying to figure out why he was being so snide. He was almost acting jealous.

  It was probably just a male territorial thing. It was silly, and she wasn’t going to let it bother her. She gave him a very sweet smile. “When I run out of eligible men in Preston, I’ll have to start scouring the surrounding towns too.”

  Chris made a wordless sound as his only reply.

  Six

  Two weeks later, Chris walked into the office and smiled. There sat Jenny and a girl from the temp agency that they’d hired to help transfer all of those old files onto the computer, and that was it. Heather was now the proud occupant of her own office in the far back corner of the building.

  Where eager-beaver delivery guys couldn’t see her and ask her out on dates.

  Damn Billy.

  Not that it had helped much. Oh no. Not only had she gone out to dinner with Billy, but she’d done lunch a couple of times with Randy and, just two nights ago, Heather had gone to some food truck rodeo with Dave, the landscaper over at their condo.

  Unbelievable.

&
nbsp; Freakin’ Dave.

  Although, if he was being fair, he could admit that she had been putting in long hours and he could see that she was pulling her weight. They were never going to be equals here in terms of the physical stuff, but she was dealing with more of the mental aspect with all of the office and paperwork stuff.

  And there was no way he wanted to deal with the paperwork end of the business. No thank you.

  With a little spring in his step at the new office layout, he stopped by his own office, did a quick job of entering in his receipts for the day and followed up with some emails to a potential new sub-contractor and supplier he had met earlier in the day. Feeling good about the way things were going, Chris got up and went to find Tom. He enjoyed the time they spent together daily, talking about the progress on the jobs and the things Chris was lining up for future prospects.

  He waved to Tom as he walked into his office when he saw the older man was on the phone. He was going to turn and leave, but Tom held up his hand and motioned for Chris to sit, and that he’d be done in a minute. Not a big deal.

  Chris took a seat and looked at his friend. Something was off. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something. He looked worn out, and his voice was a little strained. Maybe he was just tired or was talking to someone that he didn’t like, but in all the years Chris had known Tom, this was something he had never witnessed before.

  Tom hung up the phone and looked at Chris with a weary smile. “How did things go today? Did the drywall show up on time?”

  This was what they normally did—they talked shop. But right now, it was the last thing on Chris’s mind. “You feeling all right, Tom?”

  Rather than answer right away, Tom leaned back in his big leather chair and sighed. “Just tired,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing. “It’s nothing.”

  “Tom—”

  “Did we ever hear back from Connor on that lumber for the Madison job? If he can deliver at the cost he pitched to us, we should jump on it.”

  “Tom,” Chris said a little more sternly. “Come on. Don’t worry about drywall and lumber. You look like hell, and to be honest, you’re freaking me out a little. Let me go and get Heather—”

  “No!” Tom interrupted a little too quickly, and then sighed again. “Okay. I’m just…I’ve got a pain that just…well, it won’t go away.”

  “Okay…where? Abdominal? Head? Chest? Did you fall? Get hurt on one of the sites?”

  Tom shook his head. “Chest pain. It’s been on and off for a couple of hours now. I took some antacids, but it’s not helping. I was going to call my doctor, but I got stuck on that call with my damn financial advisor and just kept hoping the pain would go away.”

  Chris stood and looked down at the older man. “You need to go to the emergency room. Now. When did this start?”

  “After lunch,” Tom said, his voice weak. “That’s why I thought it was just something I ate, but now…”

  “Tom, I’m not joking here. You can either let me drive you, or I’m calling an ambulance.”

  The two men stared at each other for several moments, and Chris knew there was no way in hell that he wasn’t getting Tom to the hospital. He was just about to play his ace in the hole and get Heather in here when Tom stood up.

  “Okay,” he said with relief. “Come on. I’ll drive you.”

  “Thank you,” Tom replied. “Let me just—”

  It was the last thing he said before he collapsed.

  It was chaos after that. Chris screamed out for Heather while he was already calling 911 on his cell phone. Everyone in the office came running, and Chris thrust his phone at Jenny while he began to try to get Tom to come around. Heather was beside him, frantically crying out to her father to wake up, and all the while Chris silently prayed that they hadn’t waited too long to do something.

  He started to try CPR, but Tom was breathing so that didn’t seem to be what was needed. Tom just wouldn’t wake up. Finally, the rescue squad came through the door. Stepping aside immediately, he gently helped Heather to her feet and held her as they both watched helplessly as Tom was placed on oxygen, put on a stretcher and wheeled out.

  They worked together to get Heather’s belongings so they could follow the ambulance to the hospital. Chris called out over his shoulder to Jenny to make calls and let people know where he was going to be and they could reach him—and him only—on his cell. He didn’t want anyone bothering Heather right now.

  It didn’t take long to get to the hospital, and Chris instinctively took control of the situation—although he held Heather’s hand the entire time. The ER receptionist noted that they were there and promised to call them as soon as they had any information on Tom. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but he also knew it would be pointless to argue right now.

  He led Heather to a quiet corner of the waiting room and they both sat down. “Do you want something to drink?”

  She shook her head.

  “Something to eat? Maybe a snack? Did you eat lunch today?”

  She shook her head, but her hand never left his.

  He was pretty sure she wasn’t aware of just how strong her grip was, but he might have some serious bone fractures if he didn’t do something.

  Soon.

  Casually, he pulled his hand away and put his arm around her, tucking her head on his shoulder. It felt…nice. Kind of perfect, actually. It was beyond inappropriate to be thinking like that right now, but he couldn’t help it. He rested his head against hers and struggled with what to say. If anything.

  And that’s when he felt it.

  A tear. Then another. And another. All landing on him. Her slight frame trembled against him, and it almost gutted him.

  “He’s going to be all right,” he said softly, gruffly. “He’s strong and healthy, and we got him here in record time.”

  “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” she whispered. “He looked so pale and so helpless. It’s…he’s never…I’ve never…”

  “Shh…” he said, not wanting her to get herself worked up. “I’m just glad we were all there and that he wasn’t alone.”

  She sat up and straightened, looking at him. “Was he all right before he collapsed or…”

  Chris immediately told her about his conversation with her father. “He tried to downplay it, but we were getting ready to go.” Guilt washed over him at how much time he might have cost Tom. Had he only insisted sooner, then maybe…

  “You know how stubborn he is,” she said, and then resumed her position against him, her head resting on his shoulder again. “I know he doesn’t take as good of care of himself as he should. I get on him for it all the time. But I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to him, Chris. I can’t lose him. He’s all I have.”

  He shook his head, emotion clogging his throat. “You have me,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m right here with you.”

  “It’s not the same,” she said, but there was no bitterness in her tone. “Ever since my mom left, my dad has been everything to me. He’s been both my mother and my father. He’s been my friend, my confidant, my champion. That’s the only life I’ve ever known.”

  “That’s a good life to have,” he responded, hugging her a little closer. “You’re very lucky that you have that relationship. I don’t know a lot of people that do. And knowing your dad, I think he would have been that way even if your mom had stayed. He’s just that kind of guy.”

  “Maybe. I know it just about killed him when she left, and he was struggling with his own emotions the whole time, but he always put me first. He would sit there and listen to me cry and try to understand how my mom could leave me. Me!” She gave a snort of disgust. “It didn’t even occur to me back then that she had left him too.”

  “You were a kid, Heather. It’s completely natural at that age to only see what immediately pertains to you.”

  She shrugged. “I know. And we talked about it when I was older but…still. He’s just such a huge p
resence, and to see him like that…on the floor…and…”

  “Miss Carver? Mr. Dole?”

  They both looked up at the doctor approaching them and immediately stood. “Yes?” Chris said and automatically gripped Heather’s small hand in his.

  “Please, let’s sit down.” He motioned back to the seats. “I’m Dr. Mallins, and I’m assigned to your father’s care.”

  Heather squeezed Chris’s hand. “How is he? Is he awake? Was it a heart attack?”

  The doctor looked at her and gave her a small smile. He was an older man—in his sixties with gray hair and kind blue eyes. “He is awake, and we’re running some tests now. From the initial EKG, we don’t believe it’s a heart attack. There’s a blood test we can do to verify that as well. Now that he’s awake and was able to tell us where the pain was exactly, I’m leaning toward a gallbladder attack. That’s what we’re looking at now with an ultrasound.”

  “When will you know for certain?” Chris asked, concern lacing his tone.

  “We’ll need a couple of hours, and we’ll be observing him overnight as well.”

  “Can we see him?” Heather asked anxiously.

  “Not right now. He’s heading down to radiology for the ultrasound. Why don’t the two of you go and grab something to eat, and maybe in two hours we’ll have a room for him. I’ll make sure you get to see him.”

  “But—” Heather began to protest.

  “Thank you, Dr. Mallins,” Chris quickly interrupted. “We’ll do that.”

  With a curt nod, Dr. Mallins turned and walked away.

  Heather pulled her hand from his and faced him. “Why did you do that? Maybe we could have gone back to see him sooner? Maybe I could have gone to radiology with him? He’s all alone! Someone should be with him!”

  Her voice was nearing hysteria, and Chris knew if he didn’t put a stop to it now, she’d lose it in a matter of minutes. “That’s enough,” he said firmly and almost smiled when her mouth snapped shut and her eyes went wide. “The doctors need to do their jobs, and they don’t need us back there getting in the way. Now, he asked us to give him a couple of hours, and we need to respect that.”