Page 18 of Homebody (The Long Road Home #21)

Chapter Seventeen

H e’d asked. Amazingly, she’d said yes. And that was how just two days later Tessa was seated once again next to Dean in his mother’s car.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing?” Tessa asked.

Dean quirked up the corner of his mouth as she eyed him suspiciously from the passenger seat of the hybrid Tuesday afternoon.

“You’ll see.”

She lowered her brows at his answer. Lips pressed together tightly, she looked unhappy but didn’t comment.

Yes, he was keeping her in suspense on purpose. It was important to maintain a certain level of mystery to keep a woman’s interest, no?

That odd, completely out of the blue thought hit him hard, like a slap across the face. Actually, that might be exactly what he needed. A good hard slap to knock some sense into him because he shouldn’t be worrying about keeping Tessa interested.

This thing with Tessa was temporary. Temporary and fake. Although it felt less and less fake as the days went by.

Initially them hanging out together had been to keep his mother and his ex-girlfriend off his back was he was home. Now it seemed he was hanging out with Tessa simply because he wanted to. So not so fake then, but still temporary.

Temporary, he repeated to himself to ingrain that truth into his brain.

Yet here he was about to go out of his way to do something that some might call a grand gesture were they the romantic sort, which generally he was not. And damned if he wasn’t as excited about her surprise as he hoped she would be.

His pulse kicked up even now as he pulled the car into the parking lot of the church and around to the back entrance.

“Church?” She glanced through the windshield then turned to stare at him as he cut the car’s engine. “You’re taking me to church?”

He let out a short laugh at her reaction. “Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Shocking Tessa was too much fun. Seeing her surprise when he finally revealed why they were really there would be even better.

Unhooking the seatbelt, he reached for the door handle and said, “Come on.”

“I don’t think I’m dressed appropriately for church,” she said. Hesitating where she sat, she glanced down at the concert T-shirt beneath her leather jacket.

“God loves you anyway, Tessa” he said, trying to hold in a laugh as he teased her.

The cock of her brow at that had him chuckling.

“Don’t worry. I’m not bringing you here to get saved. Or for church service,” he assured.

“Then why are we here?” she asked, the curiosity evident now in her tone outweighed her confusion.

Motion in his peripheral vision caught Dean’s attention as, at the perfect moment, the back door of the church swung wide. He couldn’t have planned the timing better himself.

“That’s why.” He hooked a thumb toward the back door.

One woman and two children, arms laden with aluminum food containers and paper shopping bags appeared, exiting the church by the back door. Following closely behind the procession a tall dark-haired man was visible.

Liam Walsh.

They’d been friends for a decade, even if Liam was Army and Dean Navy.

Dean swung the car door open and stepped out to wave to Liam who, hands occupied carrying an overloaded cardboard box, tipped up his chin in reply.

“What’s happening?” Tessa called out from where she’d stubbornly remained seated inside the car.

Leaning low to peer through the open driver’s side door, Dean saw the frustration in her expression and decided to end her suspense.

Smiling, he said, “We’re feeding your homeless.”

Her dark brows rose high. “We’re what?”

He didn’t have time to reply as his friend stepped up to the car. He rested the box on the hood and extended his now free hand to shake Dean’s. “Sinclair, are you sure you’ve got room for all this stuff in this tiny excuse of a car of yours?”

He really missed the Bronco currently sitting unused back on base in Virginia, parked in the lot outside his barracks room.

“ Not my car, Walsh. It’s on loan.” Dean made that point very clear, especially since he’d recognized Liam’s bad-ass black Jeep parked a few spots over. “But yeah, we’ll make room. The back seats fold down and it’s got a decent trunk… considering.”

“If you say so.” Liam chuckled.

Dean moved to open the trunk and the back door to allow the three volunteers who’d accompanied Liam to stow what they were carrying.

“Thanks for helping me with this,” Dean said as he saw how much food there was.

All of it left over from the bake sale the day before and the community breakfast held earlier that morning at the church.

All food that might have gone to waste otherwise, rather than feeding those who needed it. The very scenario Tessa had lamented on their drive back from Cooperstown. Only this time Dean, with a lot of help, was able to do something about it.

Liam shook his head. “No thanks necessary. It was nothing. I just called my contact at Veterans’ Affairs. She set everything up. I’m actually pretty ashamed I didn’t think of doing something like this.”

“I can’t take credit for coming up with it myself. Someone gave me the idea to begin with.” Dean smiled. “And I’m pretty sure the local church isn’t on your radar, Walsh.”

“Are you calling me a heathen, Sinclair?” Liam asked.

“Well…” Dean laughed. “Nah, I’m just saying you probably don’t have a direct line to the schedule of food-related church events like I do through my mom. And I know you. Since you left the military your head is always buried in your work. I can’t even get you to return an email half the time.”

Liam cringed. “Guilty as charged. On all counts.”

By now Tessa was out of the car. She was silent as she watched the conversation, but that didn’t mean she went unnoticed. Liam’s focused turned toward her.

“Liam, this is my… friend Tessa.” Ignoring the raised brow and interested glance Liam shot him at the word friend , Dean continued. “Tessa, this is Doctor William Walsh. Although back when I met him he was just a plain old Army medic.”

“A plain old Army medic, huh?” Liam laughed before turning back to Tessa. “Pleasure to meet a friend of Dean’s.”

The smirk. The emphasis on the word friend . It was all evidence that Liam believed he and Tessa were not simply friends. That there was something more between them.

Liam was wrong. Dean and Tessa remained just friends because nothing had happened between them the other night in her apartment.

Dean had finished his beer and taken his leave without so much as even a friendly kiss on the cheek, proving that an invite inside did not equal an invite to bed.

It was good it hadn’t because he might not have been strong enough to say no had Tessa asked him to stay.

It was for the best. Less complicated and far less messy for both of them. But it was hard to deny there wasn’t something more, something deeper than friendship, brewing between them.

The evidence was there.

The uptick in his heart rate this morning as he’d driven to pick up Tessa and her house had come into view. That she was the first thing he thought of when he woke today. That he’d come up with this plan as much to please her as to feed the homeless.

It all added up to insurmountable evidence. He wanted there to be more between them. More than this attraction he’d been trying and failing to deny.

“You’re Doctor William Walsh?” Tessa gasped.

The awe evident in her slightly breathless voice had Dean’s complete attention whipping to her.

“The same William Walsh who won the grant to study CTE in veterans?” she asked.

As Dean’s brows drew low, Liam flashed Tessa a dimpled smile. “I am. You’ve heard of me?”

What the hell was this now?

Dean’s gaze bounced from Tessa’s obvious hero worship to Liam’s too damn handsome face.

Had Liam’s teeth always been so perfectly straight and white? And did he always have that damn dimple? And had he been working out? Dean didn’t remember his friend looking so buff. Or maybe it was just how damn tight the man wore his shirts.

“Of course I’ve heard of you. I’ve been following your research.

The work you’re doing to expose how specific military occupational specialties can cause blast brain damage that leads to an increase in troop suicide rates is critical.

And how the damage is actually interface astroglial scarring and not CTE.

And your study of psychedelics to rebuild neural pathways. Just amazing…”

Finally, Tessa ran out of words of praise for Liam. Lucky for him. Dean’s jaw was starting to ache from clenching his teeth as he listened to her gush over Liam’s research using terms and science-y words he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before.

So how did she know them? All from writing a paper for a lazy college kid who’d paid her to do it?

“You’ve read my work?” Liam asked, looking tickled by the discovery.

“You’ve read his work?” Dean repeated, frowning as jealousy reared its ugly head and made him far less happy to see his old friend than he had been before.

The question visibly yanked Tessa out of the fan-girl stupor meeting Liam had put her in. Her eyes flashed wider as her gaze shot to Dean and then quickly away. Slumping a bit, she lifted one shoulder in an incongruously casual move.

“Um, yeah. Just for research…” Her gaze shot to Dean again. “You know… for that paper I was writing.”

She no doubt assumed she could dismiss the whole subject with that single statement and a half-hearted shrug. But for Dean, forgetting this odd little interaction wasn’t going to be that easy.

“So,” Liam said, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group. His gaze pivoted between Dean and Tessa. “Guess I should get the rest of this food loaded, huh?”

“Yeah. That’d be great,” Dean agreed.

The sooner he could get Tessa back in the car and away from Liam’s charms the better.