Free Home for Love (An Adult Contemporary Romance) by Aneesa Price Page B

and I told him not to worry. In this weather a soul needs a warm drink,
you know?”
    Grunting a polite reply, Bree took the
box and went a few doors down to Todd’s building. He was sitting in the same
spot he had been when she first returned to Devil’s Creek - again jotting down
clients’ telephonic requests.
    Great, Bree thought, the dread lifting.
She could drop the box on the desk, wave and dash back out. She’d go and grab a
cup of coffee in the diner and give Paula thirty minutes or so to get the order
ready. She’d just turned around when she heard the phone click and Todd greet
her.
    “Hi, Bree,” his deep voice hit her like
she’d never heard it before. “You were at Paula’s?”
    “Hi,” Bree turned around, subconsciously
smoothing her hair, she nodded, “and Paula asked me to drop that off, with you
both being short-staffed today.”
    Whatever Todd’s reply was about to be
was cut off by the ringing phone, “Excuse me he said and picked up the phone.”
He’d just finished taking that call when another came through. Sitting down
now, Bree noticed that he was looking strained, dark circles surrounding his
eyes. His hair was mussed from him running his hands through them. Guilt tugged
at her. He was after all supporting Amber in a style that was more than
adequate and while she was frolicking about town, he’d been stuck here running
himself out.
    When the call ended, Todd took the phone
off the hook. “Excuse me just another minute, Bree. I need to use the gents.”
    Eyebrows raised, she realized that the
poor man hadn’t even been able to do that. Check that, he hadn’t probably eaten
yet either. She needed no more encouragement; her baby would expect it of her
as she should because she’d been raised that way.
    Bree jotted a note down on the legal pad
and dashed out the door. Moments later, she was back in Todd’s building with
bags of steaming hot food. “You look like you needed it,” she said, breathless
from rushing outside in the cold.
    “You didn’t have to do that,” Todd said
solemnly, touched by her care.
    “You’re my baby’s daddy. Of course, I
had to. Amber would rake me over the coals or kill me with verbal diarrhea if I
didn’t.”
    Ah, yes. Amber. Of course, that’s why
she was being kind. Heck, he was starving and he wasn’t about to decline the
piping hot meal she handed to him.
    “Thank you,” he said, before putting the
takeout down to answer the ever-ringing phone.
    “You’re welcome,” Bree responded. “Now
scoot,” she waved him away and sat herself down at the phone.
    “What are you doing?” he asked. And why
did he seem to always ask her that these days. The Bree of the past he’d known
instinctively. This Bree was full of surprises.
    “You go eat,” she ordered, “and have a
human moment. I’ll take over the robot phone duty.” At his raised brow, she bit
out irritatingly, “I bore and raised a child by myself and got myself a
qualification at the same time. I can most definitely answer the phone, take
down orders, and not chase your customers away.”
    “Okay, okay,” Todd held up his hands,
“no arguments from me then. And, I didn’t think that you couldn’t do it. More
like I don’t think that you shouldn’t have to do it.”
    “Been through this,” Bree gave him an
eye roll, reminding him of Amber. “Now scoot. I’ve got phone calls to take.”
    A few hours later, after many phone
calls with the early Alaskan winter’s night already settled over the town, Bree
gladly accepted the steaming mug of coffee from Todd. She sat back and relished
the taste of a good brew slithering down her throat. “Mm… that’s good,” she
uttered in pure bliss. “I get now why you order it especially.”
    “Is it always this busy?” she inquired.
    “We have our good days and our crazy
days,” replied Todd. “Today was one of the crazy ones. Supplies have been
running a bit low with the storm and what Paula can’t get for folk; we get