Healing Autumn's Heart

“No apology necessary. I’m not exactly on the clock when I work. I quote a price for a window display, and then I work whatever hours it takes to complete the project.” She shrugged. “I usually try to take my time, because people like watching me work in the window.”

“I can understand why people want to watch you,” he said.

“Yeah, I think people find it enjoyable to get a bird’s-eye view of something being created. It’s kind of like watching through the window at the Sweet Spot and seeing how the doughnuts are made, the cookies are decorated and all of that. I think I could watch them all day.”

“You do like sweets, don’t you?”

She smiled. “Very much.”

He smirked. “I see, but I wasn’t talking about watching you work. The reason I can understand why people want to watch you is because I also find it enjoyable—” blue eyes lifted and found hers “—looking at you.”

Hannah noted the intensity of his tone and the fact that he now looked at her in a way that made her feel very feminine, very pretty. She felt herself blush, and glanced away.

“Didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “Just stating the facts. Kind of goes along with my profession, you know.”

“It shouldn’t make me uncomfortable,” she said, fiddling with the miniature flowers for the window boxes. “But I’m out of practice at hearing those kinds of compliments, I suppose.”

“You aren’t used to hearing compliments? Really? Why is that?”

She was thrown by the genuine surprise in his tone. However, instead of finding his question too personal and feeling awkward, for some reason, she found it easy to talk to him, even about things that she rarely admitted. Maybe it was because he’d been through similar circumstances, dealing with breast cancer and losing someone he cared about, but for whatever reason, Hannah didn’t hide the truth. She, like him, stated the facts.

“Because of my cancer. I didn’t want to get close to someone and then put them in the situation of going through those treatments, then all of that waiting and wondering and hoping. So I’ve kept to myself the past few years.” She shrugged. “The past three years, in fact, ever since I was diagnosed. No dating or anything like that. It’d have been too difficult with everything going on in my life.”

A look passed over his face, but Hannah couldn’t read it, and she didn’t know how to ask him what he was thinking. So she did what she often did when she found herself in an uncomfortable moment within a conversation; she changed the subject.