Page 3 of Letter for Two (Sweet Treat Novellas #5)

I f Ethan could thaw out a frozen lasagna the night before and call it cooking dinner then Sophia felt confident she could order in Chinese and fulfill her obligation to feed him that night.

She could cook okay, but even simple cooking required time, and she didn’t have any.

She’d spent the day trying to get a server running again and had left work almost a full hour late, ordering dinner on her cellphone as she walked home.

Ethan was on the front porch when she got there.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Work was complete chaos.”

“Yeah, for me, too.” His smile was quick and weak. He looked tired. Yesterday he’d said that today would be his third twelve-hour day.

“Dinner’s on the way.” She held up her cell. “Maybe we can do some searching while we wait.”

“Sounds good.”

She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Ethan came in behind her. She was very glad she’d cleaned up that morning.

“Make yourself at home.” Somehow she managed to make the offer without sounding like a teenager with a desperate crush.

Sophia moved quickly to her bedroom and dropped her bag on the bed. She took a minute to smooth out her hair and check her makeup. Of course, Ethan had seen her in all her glory when she first got home. Fixing herself up wouldn’t help much now.

She pulled off the walking shoes she always wore home.

If only she’d had a chance to change them before running in to Ethan— walking shoes with a business skirt was not the most fashion-forward ensemble.

She slipped on a pair of ballet flats, a better pick than the walking shoes, though not as fabulous as a pair of heels.

But heels would make her look like she was trying too hard.

She wanted to look like she wasn’t trying at all.

Guys could smell desperation from three blocks away.

She pulled her laptop out of her bag and headed for the living room. Ethan was sitting on the sofa, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. Was he asleep already? That didn’t bode well for a fun, borderline romantic evening.

Sophia approached quietly and cautiously. Just as she reached the sofa, he opened a single eye.

“Hey.” It was all she could manage with him looking so mussed and casual and cute.

He sat up straighter, blinking a few times as if shaking off sleepiness. “Did I miss dinner?”

“It would have served you right if you had.” She dropped onto the couch by him. “You snooze, you lose.”

“‘You snooze, you lose?’” He chuckled low in his throat. “Man, I haven’t heard that since elementary school.”

Sophia laughed and set her laptop on the coffee table. “I spent elementary school desperately in love with One Direction. So ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ always takes me back.”

“One Direction?” Ethan shook his head. “I think I just lost all respect for you.”

"Oh, come on. One Direction was great."

He shrugged, but she could tell the show of dismissal was really just teasing.

“You weren’t into boy bands in your impressionable younger years?”

He made a noise that sounded very much like, “Puh-shaw.”

“You were too cool for that?” she guessed.

“Actually, probably too nerdy. I was one of those weird kids into retro before being into retro was a thing, you know? I was in middle school before I listened to anything more recent than Etta James or Frank Sinatra, and I stopped wearing a bow tie and fedora to school only after the gym teacher warned me I was probably going to get beat up for it.”

She could picture him walking around his elementary school playground in a zoot suit, snapping his fingers while singing “Come Fly with Me.”

“My sister refused to be seen with me in public,” Ethan said. “So I told her if she couldn’t be hip to my beat, she could just ice it. She hated when I used old-school slang.”

Sophia settled into the corner, warming to the topic. “I’m going to guess she was your older sister.”

“How did you know?”

“Because younger brothers are the worst.”

He grinned. “You have a younger brother, I'm assuming."

Sophia nodded dramatically. They talked about their families and childhoods.

Dinner arrived, and they kept talking all the way through their meal.

He got along with his family. He didn’t badmouth people.

Sophia liked that about him. He was the kind of person you felt comfortable with, safe.

He didn’t seem likely to rip into a person behind their back, and he was proving easy to get along with.

As they finished off the last of the moo goo gai pan, Ethan told her about the first time he administered an IV and how he thought he was going to pass out.

She loved hearing his laugh and seeing him smile.

Not only because he was ridiculously handsome, but also because she knew that he was enjoying their time together as much as she was.

Maybe she should quit pretending she saw him only as a friend.

Maybe she should try actually flirting, being more obvious that she was interested.

Ethan pushed his plate away and nodded toward her laptop. “Guess we better get to work finding Eleanor.”

And just like that, they were back to business. She hoped he was hanging around for more than the mystery they were solving. She almost asked him. Almost. But she wasn’t that brave.

Sophia threw herself into the search, trying not to think about how lopsided their interest in each other might very well be. The county assessor’s site was up, but no matter how they searched, they couldn’t find any historical information. Maybe it simply wasn’t available.

They ran at least a dozen Google searches, trying their address and the year, the street name and “Eleanor,” anything that came to mind. Nothing panned out.

Sophia set her feet up on the coffee table, the computer on her lap, trying everything she could think of to find the names of the people who lived in their house seventy years earlier. “This is going to be harder than we thought.”

Ethan didn’t answer. She looked over at him, and her heart fluttered just a bit.

He was asleep, curled a little bit into the corner of the couch.

He looked cute even sleeping. She pulled a light lap blanket out of the storage ottoman and spread it over him.

She’d wake him up eventually, but after hearing of the long, difficult hours he’d put in the past three days, she couldn’t bear to now.

Sophia sat in the armchair and continued searching for Eleanor, though her eyes wandered to Ethan more than once.

She liked him more than she should have, especially not knowing how he felt.

Maybe it was a good thing that finding Eleanor was proving difficult.

The longer it took, the more time they’d have together.

Perhaps she’d convince Ethan she was what he was looking for.