Free True Devotion by Dee Henderson

stay.”
    “Tough.”
    She was exhausted, but that was no reason to keep her here another day. She wanted her own bed. It was appalling to realize she wanted to pout. “When you stopped by my house and got Bo-Bo, did you think to get my toothbrush?”
    Joe reached for a small suitcase against the wall. “Toothbrush, hairbrush, and anything else I thought you might need in the next few days.” He set the case on the bed beside her, opened it, and turned it for her to look through.
    He picked up a pair of socks and got up. “Let’s have those cold feet.”
    “What?”
    “You’ve been trying to tug the covers tighter around them for the last several minutes, and that’s not going to get them warm. Thick socks might.” He tapped a blanket-covered foot.
    “I can do it.”
    “Kelly.”
    Her bare feet were ticklish. She tried not to laugh as Joe slipped on the first sock, but when his hand brushed over her instep, it was simply beyond her control. Her toes curled and she giggled.
    He looked up at her sharply, then paused, still holding her now covered foot. He grinned. “I’ll have to remember this.” He squeezed her foot before tucking it back under the covers.
    “Joe—”
    He slipped on the other sock and wiggled her toes. “Where else are you ticklish?”
    She felt her face flame. “None of your business.”
    “I have to use my imagination?” he asked when he sat back down, his speculative gaze frank and unrepentant. Kelly wanted to hit him for making her blush.
    She turned her attention back to the suitcase. He had done a neat job of packing for her. She remembered the state of her bedroom, her house, and winced. He had not seen her in her best light.
    She had become an insomniac in the last few years, and she had a pretty good idea what he had found in her bedroom. There was an empty half-gallon carton of ice cream with a long spoon in it sitting on the floor by the unmade bed. Two magazines were open on the spare pillow; books were in a haphazard pile on the floor where they had been tossed rather than put back on the shelves. She had been working on a Sunday school craft project in bed, and not all the colorful construction paper punch holes and trimmed edges had hit the wastebasket. Neat the room was not. At least the laundry had been done, if not yet put away.
    She pulled out the long sweater he had packed. “I’m cold down to my bones.”
    Her shoulders and upper arms ached with her careful movements. Joe reached over and freed her hair from the sweater collar. Kelly was grateful she didn’t have to try to reach back to do it. She felt like an old lady.
    Joe had thought to pack the novel that had been on her bedside table and also her Bible. She closed her hand around the cool leather cover of her Bible and wondered with some guilt where in the house he had found it. She didn’t remember seeing it since she came home from church Sunday. Daily devotions, such a regular part of her life before Nick’s death, had become sporadic over the last few years.
    He knew. She could see it in his eyes. He didn’t say anything as she placed her Bible on the nightstand. She couldn’t change the last three years, but she could still change today and tomorrow.
    “Liz said she would be here about nine.”
    “I thought she and Tom were in San Jose until Monday.”
    “Kelly, the best I could do was talk her out of catching a flight back last night.”
    Knowing her friend, that in itself would have been a challenge. “If I’m about to have more company, then I’m going to brave looking in that mirror.” She eased herself to the edge of the bed.
    “Take your hairbrush.”
    “I didn’t see any makeup.”
    “You don’t need it.”
    She sent him an amused, knowing look. “Right. You didn’t want to figure out what to bring.”
    “Guilty. You’ll have to borrow from Liz.”
    “Since I can’t put on lipstick, I probably shouldn’t care.”
    She turned on the light in the bathroom and froze. “Joe! Why