Page 8 of Anything for You (Veterans of Silver Ridge #7)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Dove

A thought occurred to me the other day, and I hadn’t been able to shake it.

It bounced around my head during days at work, accompanying me to my visits with Nan and even slipping into bed with me each night. It swirled around in my dreams and pressed against my temples when I woke the next day.

It whispered that my neighbor, Dorian Forrester, might be the sweetest man I’d ever met.

Trick was, once I’d had the thought, I couldn’t shake it. It latched on like a burr into a hank of hair and the only way to get rid of it would be to cut it out.

I didn’t want to cut it out, though. I wanted to obsess over it and gather more evidence.

I’d done exactly that thus far, expertly combing through every interaction I’d had with Dorian AKA Stone Forrester and finding proof to reinforce what I knew in my gut.

He’d been so gracious that first night I’d invaded his space.

He’d been kind about my oddities and awkwardness, good-natured about my panting after him that day in the sun, and completely amazing when I was breaking down over… everything.

The man was a downright sweetheart, and I was doomed.

Especially when I found a small white box sitting on my welcome mat when I got home from work. I opened it to find a tiny peach pie the size of my palm topped with a dollop of what I suspected was fresh whipped cream sitting inside.

How was my desperate little heart supposed to resist peach pie, people?

Did he know what he was doing to me? He couldn’t. He probably pitied me—that was it. He felt sorry for me after I’d snotted all over his shoulder while sobbing my guts out in front of him, a veritable stranger, and he’d peach-pied me.

Except not a second of our time together that day had felt pitying. The way he’d seemed to deeply understand and genuinely want to sit with me and remind me I wasn’t alone in a life raft in the middle of the ocean had been the very thing that solidified my opinion of him.

He’d offered me a shoulder. Offered me a hand.

He’d been a really, really good friend to me.

And now pie.

Had I vacillated between a wild, delighted cackle upon my first bite of said pie to an ecstatic groan that led right into a horrifying burst of tears?

Indeed. Indeed, I had.

Then I’d scarfed down the rest of the utterly transcendent miniature pie, stared out the kitchen window at the field of summer wildflowers swaying in the breeze while I chewed, and vowed I’d thank him for his gift.

And maybe ask him where he’d gotten it so I could buy myself a pie every few days.

I’d call it a balm for my exhaustion or spinsterhood or whatever, and I’d gobble them down thrice weekly with glee.

By the time I arrived at Romance Readers Book Club, I’d shifted from weepy and amazed to determined and… contemplative? Maybe.

Probably that.

“Earth to Dove. What’s going on in your head?” Jo asked, an amused smile on her face.

“Me? Oh, I’m just reminiscing on how I live next to a burly, reclusive neighbor and how he’s totally different than I thought he’d be.”

I slipped two appetizers onto my plate. Jo still refused to tell us who’d started supplying our book club food once a month, but whoever it was had my undying love.

“Stone? Everything okay?” Jess asked, shifting in her seat with a grimace.

She was eight and a half months pregnant and looked visibly uncomfortable.

She was bearing a man named Beast’s child so she’d brought this on herself, though I couldn’t really blame her.

Beast he may have been, but the man loved her fiercely and if someone looked at me like he did Jess, I wouldn’t be able to resist. I probably wouldn’t even have to have sex to get pregnant—I’d just start ovulating instantly and the animal magnetism would?—

“He’s a good guy. If he’s a bit gruff, it’s just his way,” Winnie explained.

Her comment brought me back from my very weird sidebar. Hormones were a’ ragin’ in me.

And this is what happens when someone gives us pie.

Liz nodded. “He is fairly resistant to conversation, so far as I’ve found. ”

Catherine likely had the least interaction with him, both because she wasn’t partnered off with a Saint man, and because as her business had gotten busier and expanded over the last year, she’d been less available for social functions—not that Stone showed at many of those.

“He’s been great. I mean, we obviously got off on an odd foot,” I said, laughing self-deprecatingly.

They joined me, all of us remembering my dramatic retelling of the event via text the very night I’d moved in, after I’d nabbed a few hours of sleep.

“It’s mostly that I hadn’t seen much of him, and then the other day, I was… ”

I swallowed down the truth. They were all in the throes of wedding planning and imminent baby-birthing bliss, and I didn’t want anyone worrying about me. They didn’t need to.

I waved a hand in the air like whatever I was going to say didn’t matter. “It was a weird day, and he was really kind.”

Jess blinked. Jo smiled. Winnie full-out grinned, and everyone else leaned in, waiting for more.

“It was unexpected, but I think I’m realizing he’s just a really sweet guy.” It sounded so… facile. But I didn’t think I’d ever interacted with anyone quite like him.

“Aw, he really is. He’s been through so much. I love that he’s starting to show up to stuff more, too.” Jo’s happiness beamed out of her, so genuine.

He’d been through a lot? I mean, duh, of course he had. He’d sat with me like he was no stranger to grief, to tears, to the desolation I’d been feeling right then. And he hadn’t looked at me with pity. He’d looked at me like he knew me—that part of me, at least.

So of course he’d been through something. But why was my heart twisting in my chest, trying to wriggle free from having to face that? The man who brought me that darling little peach pie shouldn’t have had to go through anything awful, ever.

“He’s a lot like the hero in Josie Wade’s fourth book,” Catherine offered.

Liz snapped and pointed at her. “Yes. Totally. I see that.”

Jo squinted. “Hmm. I can see that. I mean, I do.”

From there, the conversation shifted back to our latest club selection, and soon, the dream of sitting and chatting about books with my closest friends for the evening had come to an end.

We helped clean up, but eventually, Jo and Liz shooed the rest of us away, and Elise and I made up the caboose of the exiting train.

“So what really happened?” she asked, voice low enough Catherine, Nikki, and Winnie wouldn’t hear. Jude had already picked Jess up at the curb minutes ago, the doll. He doted on Jess to the point he drove her a little crazy, but she deserved someone completely wrapped up in her.

“I had a bit of a spiral.” She looked at me, waiting for more, and after avoiding it all evening, I let her in.

“I’ve been lonely lately. And even though I really like the cabin, I’m kind of out there on my own.

Other than occasionally seeing him and waving, I haven’t interacted with Dorian much at all.

We don’t talk. And you know I tend to be a talker.

And I’ve been so tired. Plus seeing Nan is stupidly bittersweet,” I admitted, wiping at a tear sneaking from my eye without permission.

“I’m sorry,” Elise said, and held out her arms. I walked into them, desperate for the contact and comfort. “It’s a lot right now. You’re handling it so well.”

She squeezed me tight, then released, and I pressed my face into the sleeve of my dress in a futile attempt to stay the tears. Sometimes, I wished I could be harder, less prone to tears. But this was just me, a little watering pot.

“What can I do?” she asked, sincerity in every word.

I sniffled and then laughed. “I don’t think there is anything. I’ve felt a little better since I had my total emotional breakdown in a stranger’s arms,” I said, another chagrined laugh slipping out.

“ In a stranger’s arms?! Okay, I think I need more information on that part of the event, please and thank you.”

I toed the pavement with my platform sandal. “So, yeah. He came home and I was already a wreck sitting on my steps, and he just came and sat by me, and then I literally ended up crying on his shoulder.” A buzz of warmth grew in my palms when I remembered. “He held my hand . ”

Elise blinked back at me, processing. “Luc loves him. I know he’s a good man. I just… I don’t even know what to say.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t either. It was absolutely disarming, and since then, we’ve not spoken.

Then today, I came home to a tiny, perfect peach pie on my doorstep that had to be from him because there’s no one else around.

And Elise, when I say this pie was perfect…

” I shook my head like I couldn’t find words because I couldn’t.

“Whoa. Dangerous man.”

I nodded, feeling that deeply. He’d come out of nowhere with his gentleness and rampant displays of decency and then polished it off with pie. What the heck was I supposed to do with all that?

“Do you like him? Is that what this is, or…?”

Did he make me all fluttery and empty-headed half the time? Yes. Did he weirdly make me feel safe? Yes. Did he support me like we’d been friends for years, not neighbors for months ?

I didn’t say any of that, though. “Great question. I don’t know him enough to say. But I like what I’ve seen. I’d like to see more. I think I’d like to be his friend. He’s already been a good friend to me.”

Not that my friends here weren’t checking in and keeping our group chat thread going day in and day out. And Elise knew the depths of things with Nan and our sale of the house, but they all understood this was a huge change and I’d had to work more to make ends meet the Silverton Springs bill.

But Dorian had been in the middle of it with me, emotionally. He easily could’ve seen me crying and gone inside. Instead, he’d chosen to sit down and be there.

In my experience, this was very much not what men did.

Growing up, I didn’t see any man in my life over the age of about twelve cry.

I was never consoled by my father, nor was my mother.

In retrospect, it was cultural. Vulnerability and especially crying were deeply taboo for the men in the camp.

I’d chalked it up to emotions being off-limits to them at one point, but in truth, it wasn’t all emotions.

Men could display happiness, joy, and especially anger.

That was the manly one where they funneled all their discomfort or sadness or angst.

Why cry or hold someone who’s grieving when you could fight someone or go boss someone around? Or worse.

None of the men I’d met here in Silverton were like that, thankfully, but Dorian’s behavior was so foreign to me, it’d made understanding him actively challenging.

“Friends sounds nice,” Elise mused aloud.

“It does. Especially since he’s my only neighbor.” We chuckled at the truth. “Question is, how? How do you repay someone for letting you literally cry on their shoulder?”

She tsked. “You don’t repay, for one. But two… maybe yo u come up with something to give him—a little token like the pie.”

I hummed in response, liking the idea. I could leave him something on his doorstep and that way, he wouldn’t have to see me if he didn’t want to. The last thing I wanted was to invade his space.

“I think you’re onto something there. Know where a gal can get a decent donut?”