The Girl in the Window Read Online Free

simply became a thing she did. One day he would take it. Or he wouldn’t. In the end, it hadn’t mattered anymore.
    As it hadn’t that morning.
    But he’d taken it…
    Stepping back, Beth eyed the walls of the kitchen.
    A whole day had passed while she worked and thought, but it was done.
    It was like looking at a different room.
    She smiled.
    The curtains, white, with cutwork and lacework, waited to be hung on the thin spring rods. She ran to get them, wanting the room – a room – to be done, finished.
    When they were all hung just so she looked around the room again.
    Something was missing.
    She ran outside, gathered some of the daisies and coneflowers and popped them into an old green ceramic and metal coffee pot she’d found tucked away in the back of a cabinet.
    They brightened the old Formica-topped table, reflected the yellow of the walls and the green of the glass insets in the white cabinets.
    Done.
    There was something in that, in having completed something, in having one room in this house that was truly hers.
    She had a place now, a place where she belonged.
    It was not yet home, but some small part of it was now hers.

Chapter Three
     
    Josh stood at the kitchen counter with his coffee in one hand and listened to the sounds coming from the yard of the house next door. He fought a losing battle with himself over whether to offer to help or not.
    From the window, he could see the girl as she struggled with the ancient lawnmower, trying to start it. At a guess, the spark plug was fouled or the gas wasn’t properly mixed. What she needed was a new lawnmower, but he suspected she wouldn’t take it if he offered to let her use his.
    The old man’s sedate sedan had disappeared shortly after she appeared, probably sold for the money. Did she need it?
    He chewed on his lip, watching her, desperately wanting to help.
    For once the thin dresses she favored and he liked so much were gone. Instead, she wore a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of shorts that showed off shapely legs. She had old, faded white sneakers on her feet. Not fancy running shoes, but plain sneakers from a dollar store.
    Clearly perplexed and exasperated, she stared at the machine with her hands on her hips.
    Josh couldn’t help but think she looked cute in her frustration.
    With a sigh, he accepted that she was likely to turn him away, that she might disappear as she always did, but he’d take a page out of her own book and persist.
    And her back was to him, her attention on the lawnmower.
    Without letting the screen door bang shut behind him as he usually did, Josh walked across the yards.
    She bent – sweeping a long swatch of hair out of her eyes impatiently – to unscrew the gas cap and peer inside, tipping the mower a little for the light.
    It was a great view until he got closer and saw the thin scars on the backs of her legs. He frowned a little. How the heck had she done that?
    He put it aside.
    “The spark plug might be fouled,” he said. “If you’d like, I can take a look at it for you.”
    She jumped about a mile in surprise and spun, putting a hand over her heart, her pretty lips parting on a gasp as her eyes widened.
    He’d been wrong about the eyes; they were as clear a blue as the summer sky. Josh’s heart did a long, slow flip.
    She was even prettier up close, he could see, with clean, clear features. The small flaws, like the scar through one eyebrow and the clear sign of an old break in her nose, were oddly endearing.
    “I didn’t hear you coming,” she said, clearly caught between staying and fleeing.
    “Sorry,” he said and decided it would be unwise to mention he’d done it deliberately. He nodded at the lawnmower. “You were concentrating pretty hard. I think I can help, if that would be okay?”
    For a moment, Beth stared at him.
    Her heart hammered in her chest, fright and apprehension at war inside her. She hadn’t heard him coming and his sudden appearance sent terror lancing through her, reminding her