Tangled Web: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 6) by Giulia Lagomarsino (an ebook reader txt) 📕

I nodded my head jerkily as he left the room, coming and going with more firewood. He stacked it next to the fireplace and then went back for more. Then he was gone for a while and I had no idea what he was doing, but my eyes started to drift shut as the warmth of the fire started to lull me to sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, Andrew had created a makeshift cooking station over the fire. There was a cast iron pot sitting on some kind of wire rack. He also had some bottled water that I kept in the kitchen. When he turned and saw me awake, he frowned.

“Are you feeling better?”

I nodded, trying to sit up, but I was just too tired. He dragged the couch over and positioned it in front of the fire. Picking me up, he nestled me between his legs, tucking me into him. I sighed in contentment as his fingers brushed through my hair.

“I should have thought of this earlier,” he chuckled. I felt him shift, and then he handed me a bottle of water. “You need to drink.”

He unscrewed the cap for me and handed it to me, but then stopped me when I started drinking too fast. After about half the bottle was gone, he took it from me and set it down on the ground.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he sighed.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, not having anything else to say. I wasn’t really sorry. If he hadn’t been here, I would have done the exact same thing because it’s what needed to be done.

“No, you’re not.”

“I know,” I whispered, chuckling lightly.

“You know, I’m fine. You could have woken me up.”

Sighing, I snuggled in deeper and pretended he wasn’t talking. It didn’t matter now anyway. I stared into the fire, my eyes drifting shut every so often. Andrew kept playing with my hair, but neither of us spoke, just enjoying the silence. I had never felt so content in all my life. Even those years with Matthew, it never felt like this. And it made me feel guilty that I could so easily replace the man that saved my life. But I couldn’t live in the past. I could only live in the present, and like it or not, Andrew was my present.

I took a bite of the stew that Andrew put together and groaned. It was so good. I shoved another spoonful into my mouth and then another.

“Hey, slow down.”

I glared at him. I couldn’t slow down. I felt depleted and this was just what I needed. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“My ma, but don’t tell my family that. They all think I can’t cook.”

“Why would they care?”

“Well, it’s easier to go to someone else’s house and have them cook for you.”

I shook my head slightly. “You can come cook for me anytime. This is fantastic.”

His eyes caught mine and held. I couldn’t read his expression. It was somewhere between curiosity and a hard no.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” he answered, shoving a spoonful in his mouth.

“Why are you helping me so much?”

His eyes dropped and he slid his spoon around in his bowl, not answering my question. Finally, he shrugged. “Isn’t it enough that I like you?”

It was, but I wasn’t used to that. Every good relationship I had was born out of some need to survive. I’d never had anyone want to spend time with me and help me just because they wanted to.

“So, I have a question for you too…” His gaze latched onto mine and I could tell I wasn’t going to like what he asked. “I really like you, and…” He huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “I have this idea of who you are, and then I have this other idea…So, I’m asking for you to just be honest with me.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly, not liking where this was going.

“Did you really love your husband?”

I jerked back, surprised by his question. “Why would you ask that?”

“Because none of this makes sense. Your husband just died and you moved across the country. You’re doing your own thing and you don’t seem to really care about your old life at all.”

“I told you, grief is different for everyone.”

He nodded. “I get that, and I get needing to leave everything behind. But what I don’t get is if you loved him as much as you claim to, why do I feel like there’s this really powerful connection between us?”

Andrew

I stared at her, waiting for her answer. What happened between us last night had really fucked with my head, but what happened this morning had completely changed things between us, at least in my eyes. If she didn’t care about me, she wouldn’t have gone out in the cold, practically killing herself to get us firewood. She could have woken me up, but she was worried about me. I could tell. Which meant that whatever happened yesterday really had been an accident. She wasn’t lying to me, and she wasn’t trying to kill me.

In fact, if I looked at things rationally, everything that had happened so far could be explained perfectly. She didn’t know I was there when she threw a wrench at my head. The house really was rotting and the floor needed to be replaced. She couldn’t have known that the tub would fall through the floor at that moment. So, however I ended up hitting my head yesterday really was an accident. It had to be, because the way I was starting to feel about Lorelei didn’t allow for me to be wrong about her.

So, I watched as she fidgeted, trying to figure out what she wanted to say. I knew that whatever was going on, she was having trouble trusting me with that information. I took the bowl from her hands and took her hand in mine, giving it a squeeze.

“Lorelei, I’m not trying to trick you or anything. But I