Page 125 of Sit, Stay, Love
Sera smiled at the young woman, wishing she felt the same way.
Toby delivered Buffy home late that afternoon. ‘Do you want to get pizza or something tonight?’ he asked as he flopped onto the couch in Sera’s office.
She nodded for him to shuffle over and dropped beside him. ‘Do you mind if I pass? I’m pretty tired after last night.’
He shrugged and said, ‘No worries,’ but his voice betrayed his disappointment.
‘Thanks for yesterday. Not just for taking care of me and Buffy. For helping here. That was above and beyond.’
‘You’d do the same for me.’
‘But you already do so much.’
His brow furrowed. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘I know you don’t.’
An awkward silence nestled between them.
Toby cleared his throat and pushed off the couch. ‘I guess I should let you get on with it.’
‘I’ll walk you out.’
‘I think I know the way.’
‘I’ll still walk you out.’
They lingered on the verandah, looking towards the garden, the awkward silence having followed them down the hall.
‘Hey,’ Sera said. ‘I never really asked you about your date.’
‘It was a coffee.’
‘Are you going to see her again?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’ll… um… wait and see what happens.’
A breeze blew Toby’s hair across his face, and Sera pushed a soft curl from his eyes. And there was that gaze again, the one that lasted a beat too long. The one that made her heart flutter in a way it had no right to.
The one she desperately didn’t want to think about.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Trucks had come and gone all morning, rumbling down her long driveway to deliver huge potted trees, tables, chairs and a marquee.
Sera leaned against a beam on her verandah, watching as a team started to construct something magical before her eyes, and wondering how her life had become the kind of life where a charity benefit was part of the picture. It didn’t seem real. Just as Ethan didn’t seem real. Or his kisses, and warm hands, and rock-hard abs and face so beautiful it was practically a work of art.
She took a slurp of coffee, her hand falling to scratch Buffy’s ear.
‘I’m just taking the pack out for a walk, then I’ll drop them up to Dr McManus’s place,’ Tia called as she wove the excited dogs around a young man carrying several racks of glasses.
Sera laughed as the dogs’ leashes tangled about Tia’s legs, and she hopped over them, twisting and turning, getting even more tangled.
‘Hang on,’ Sera called, jogging across the grass to help.
‘All this action has them excited!’ Tia said as the two of them got the dogs reorganised.
Sera shuffled everyone out of the way of a man lugging a plant. ‘It’s pretty exciting.’
