DEACON HAD POURED himself into work over the past three days. Fortunately, there was a lot of it to be done. New jobs were starting up, so he assigned one of the other project managers to the building next to Loretta’s, deliberately avoiding the possibility of running into her or Hazel. There was trim work and painting going on, and his project manager could handle the supervision of that while he began construction at Brady Conners’s place.

Loretta had asked for space, so he made sure he was going to give it to her.

He stopped before lunch at the construction of the new physicians’ building Reid was managing. Reid was upstairs on the second floor where walls were going up.

“This is looking good.”

Reid nodded. “Coming along. I saw on the staff-planning document that you have Leon over on the Harden building this week.”

“Yeah. I wanted to get a look at the startup of Brady Conners’s motorcycle shop, so I thought I’d supervise that for a few days.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.”

He could tell Reid wasn’t buying it, but he also knew his friend and partner wouldn’t question him on anything of a personal nature unless Deacon brought it up.

They dove in and helped with putting up walls for a while, then Reid turned to him.

“Lunch?”

“Sure.”

Since Deacon would head back to his own job site after lunch, they drove separately to Bert’s diner, parked, and went inside.

Reid waved to Anita, the waitress who’d been there as long as he could remember, then they took seats at one of the booths.

Anita came over and pulled a pencil from her hair. “Hey, guys. What’ll it be today?”

If you ate at Bert’s long enough, and he’d been eating there since he was a kid, you never had to look at a menu.

“I’ll have the chicken salad and an iced tea,” Deacon said.

“Cheeseburger for me, with fries and an iced tea,” Reid said.

Anita jotted it all down. “Be right back with those drinks.”

They talked about work for a while, and Reid mentioned a potential new job they might want to bid on. Anita brought their drinks, and Deacon took a sip of his.

“It’s a big job,” Reid said. “Eight-story structure, plus parking garage. Think we can handle it?”

“We might need to bring in additional people to help on it, but it sounds like a good job. I’ll need to see the specs before I make a decision.”

“I’ll e-mail those over to you. I just got a line on it today, so I haven’t really looked over it fully myself. Maybe we could meet at the office early tomorrow morning and go over the details?”

Meeting at the office meant meeting at the same building where Loretta’s bookstore was located. He supposed he couldn’t avoid going there forever. “Sure. Six thirty sound good to you?”

“That’ll work. And maybe you can avoid Loretta if you sneak in early enough.”

“I’m not avoiding her.”

“Sure you are. That Harden building project has been your baby since the day the bid came in. And just like that you turn it over to Leon?”

He toyed with the straw in his glass. “Okay, so maybe I am avoiding her a little. She asked for some space.”

“Uh-oh. That’s never a good thing. Did you two have a fight?”

“No. I think she’s just unsure of herself. She’s big on wanting independence.”

“Oh, and you’re a man. She’s probably had enough of male influence in her life, what with her dad, who’s an overbearing piece of work, then her ex, who was even worse.”

“Yeah. I love her, she loves me, and she’s afraid to make another mistake.”

“Understandable. She hurt you before. She probably doesn’t want to hurt you again.”

“Yeah.” He hated to admit how much not seeing her and Hazel hurt, though. But he had agreed to give her space, and that’s what he’d do. For however long it took her to figure out what she wanted.

“So give her some space. Loretta strikes me as the kind of woman who’ll come to the right conclusion on her own.”

“You think so?”

Reid grinned at him. “Yeah, I think so.”

Reid had no idea how much that pep talk had helped. Not that it would change how Loretta felt, but it was good for his own mind-set.

In the meantime, there was work. And he had plenty of that to keep himself occupied, so maybe he wouldn’t have to spend every waking moment of every day thinking about Loretta.

“MAMA, WHY HASN’T Deacon been around?”

Loretta froze as she finished unpacking the groceries. She knew Hazel was going to eventually ask the question, but she hadn’t yet figured out how she was going to answer it.

“Uh, I guess he’s been busy at work.”

“He hasn’t been over at the building next door. But they’re still working on it.”

She’d noticed that as well. “Oh, really? Well, maybe he has another project to work on.”

Hazel came up beside her. “But he hasn’t come over here. Is he mad at us?”

Loretta looked down at Hazel. “No, baby. He is not mad at us. We just had a talk and I told him I needed some time to think about a few things.”

Hazel frowned. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

“It’s hard to explain. Grown-up things.”

Hazel wrinkled her nose. “Oh. Like how you and Daddy used to fight. Those kinds of grown-up things.”

“No, Hazel. It’s not like that at all. Deacon and I did not fight, and my relationship with him is nothing like my relationship was with your dad.”

“If it’s different, then why isn’t he here? He’s not gonna leave like Daddy did, is he?”

Her heart twisted. “No. He wouldn’t do that. He loves you.”

“I love him, too, Mama. I was kind of hoping he could move in here and be here all the time. He said he’d help with my soccer. And school’s starting soon, and Deacon said he really liked social studies when he was in school and you know I’m not so good at it, and he said he’d help me.”

She heard the tremor in her daughter’s voice, and it ripped her already fractured heart to shreds.

“I’m sure you’ll see him again really soon.”

It was the only promise she could make to her daughter right now, because at the moment she had no idea what she was going to do about Deacon. She thought she’d made the right decision in giving herself some space, but all that had done was left her more confused than ever.

The things he had said to her had resonated, and had given her a lot to think about.

But she was still afraid of making the wrong choices. And she wasn’t in a hurry to make decisions—not when those decisions would affect her daughter.

Hazel and Otis went outside to play, so Loretta took that opportunity to go into Hazel’s room to strip her bed and wash her sheets.

A book fell out of her twisted pile of blankets, so Loretta picked it up to put it on her shelf.

She realized it was a journal. She’d had no idea Hazel was writing in a journal. She took a moment to flip through the pages, enjoying the messy doodles Hazel had drawn in there. Her thoughts were happy, and that made Loretta happy, too. When she landed on a page that was titled “Fun Things to Do with Daddy Someday,” her chest tightened.

Oh, God.

Tom had never done any of these things with Hazel.

But Deacon had.

She laid her hand on her heart, feeling a swell of emotion so strong it made her dizzy.

From the very beginning, Deacon had been the one to step up, to be there for Hazel and for her.

There was no loss of her independence in her relationship with Deacon. It had only added to her strength as a woman and a mother. He’d done nothing but encourage her to be the best person she could be. And what had she done? She’d asked him to leave her alone.

God, she was a terrible person.

And he still loved her. After all of this, everything in the past and even now, he loved her. She’d hurt him so badly all those years ago. The last thing she ever wanted to do was hurt him again. But she’d done it by pushing him away.

“You are such an idiot,” she whispered to herself. “Here you are, waiting for . . . what? Some sign from God or a shooting star telling you what the right move is?”

The only person who could make that decision for her was her. And it was high time she did that. That’s what independence was all about. Making her own choices.

And she finally had clarity, finally knew what that choice was.