She let her hands move up to his broad shoulders. She was going to live with him. It made losing her house easier to take. She might have lost a house and gained a family. “I intend to say yes a lot.”

He lowered his head to hers and his lips were about to close in, when there was that chime again. And someone pounding on the glass doors.

“Doc! Doc! Stop kissing the sheriff and let me in.” Zep Guidry stood outside, his sister standing with him holding a small cooler.

“Lila, Zep is an idiot who thought he could trim the branches better than the local landscape guy,” Sera yelled through the door.

“I was trying to save Momma some money,” Zep argued.

“You were trying to charge her yourself, you ass.” Sera shook her head and held up the cooler. “He’s not so good at trimming branches, but he successfully trimmed off his pinkie finger. I’ve got it in here.”

Lila rushed toward the door because that was going to be a challenge. “Come on in. How clean was the cut?”

“Oh, he did a great job on it,” Sera said with a sigh, passing over the cooler. “It’s perfectly clean. Be careful, though. Momma freaked out and I think she and Miss Marcelle might show up to perform a ritual or something. You might have to work around that.”

“I can handle it.” She started to lead Zep back.

Armie sighed and sat down. “I’ll be waiting here.”

It was good to have someone waiting, and even better to know he would be waiting to take her home.

chapter fourteen

Armie came awake to the smell of coffee and the sense that all was right with his world. Damn, but he loved waking up and knowing Lila was somewhere in the house. She almost always woke up before him. He was going to have to set an alarm because he was missing precious time with her.

In the two weeks since she’d moved in, she’d had a definite impact on his household.

The best thing she’d done was get Noelle out more often. She’d gently pushed and prodded his daughter into going to church with her. Of course that had meant he’d had to go to church. That wasn’t a ton of fun, but Noelle had spent time with the youth group and had even gone out to the movies with some friends she’d made.

Lila had held his hand as he’d watched them drive off with his daughter. She’d been the one to convince him she had to go out on her own again, and he had to trust her enough to have some kind of a life.

Lila had also been the one who’d sat up with him waiting for her to come home, watching the little signal on his phone that showed him where she was.