Free A Promise Of Home (A Lake Howling Novel Book 1) by Wendy Vella

like dust. His eyes followed her along the path in long angry strides until she disappeared from his sight.
    When had he become an asshole?
    “That went well.” Buster sat in the seat Branna had just left.
    “Not one of my finest moments,” Jake said. “She used to annoy me in school, and it looks like not much has changed, especially as I’ve lost my ability to sugar coat things.”
    “The thing is, Jake, I like her. She’s sure not a talker, and when she comes in here we’ve not passed more than a few words, but she’s a comfortable person and I don’t want to see her hurt, especially as it’s my belief that girl has suffered a whole world of hurt already.”
    “Jesus, did you just string an entire sentence together unprovoked?”
    Buster’s look told Jake he knew that he was deflecting the conversation away from himself.
    “You’re going through shit, Jake, but you have the support of your friends and family to help you through the hell you’re battling; that little girl has no one and never did have.” Buster’s eyes were somber as he looked at Jake. “Her daddy, according to my Aunt Vi, was a cold unfeeling asshole and if memory serves, Branna O’Donnell only had Annabelle and Georgie as friends, while you pretty much claimed everyone else in Howling.”
    Jake ran a hand over his face as shame washed over him. Not many people could pull emotion out of him these days, but Buster was one of them. He didn’t push or smother him and usually when he spoke Buster made a lot of sense, like now.
    “I’m just not real good company anymore; maybe I should stay home?” Jake looked into the sympathetic eyes of his friend.
    “Maybe, but then I can’t imagine you’re all that happy with your own company either.”
    “Also true,” Jake agreed. “She come in here much? Branna?”
    Buster ran with the change in conversation. “Most days, until she can start running again, then she said it will be less often.”
    “She runs?”
    “Yeah, seems she’s one of those sicko healthy types like you.”
    “Says the man who pumps weights and sits on that rowing machine for hours.”
    “True, but I don’t run,” Buster added with a smug look.
    “Wonder what she does for a living?”
    Buster settled back in his chair. “Annabelle said she was a teacher and is now a writer of some kind.”
    “No kidding, just like her daddy. What else you got?” Jake knew the grapevine would be working overtime with a new person in town, especially with Branna having lived here before.
    “Annabelle wouldn’t say; she reckons Branna is a private person and didn’t want everyone knowing her stuff.”
    Jake snorted. “Someone will get it out of her, or dig up the information; that’s how this town works.”
    “Yeah, not much for gossip myself.”
    Jake pointed his cup at Buster. “You’re the biggest gossip of the lot, but just hide it behind that piss off face of yours,” he teased.
    “I don’t have a piss off face; I just don’t understand the need to be yammering on constantly like some.”
    “I hope you’re not accusing me of yammering.” Jake climbed to his feet to take the dishes and put them in the sink. “Because I’ve never yammered a day in my life.”
    “Whatever.”
    “See you at seven.” Lifting a hand, Jake made for the door.
    “She’s planting stuff and digging holes. I told her to call me if she needs help,” Buster said, as he headed back into the kitchen.
    “And you’re telling me this why?” Jake turned to look at his friend.
    “Just on the chance you wanted to apologize for being a bastard.”
    “I am a bastard, Griffin, when are you and the rest of this town going to realize that?”
    Buster said something that Jake missed as he walked out of The Hoot.
    “Hey there, Jake.”
    “Macy,” Jake dug around in his pocket for his keys in the hopes that the woman who’d just walked up to him would take the hint and let him leave.
    “The committee thinks you’d be a good man to take