I Want to Hold Your Hand Read Online Free

also have other things, too, such as a wonderful, sexy guy who looks at you like you’re the cat’s meow.”
    “He does not.”
    “Um, yes, he does. Ask anyone.”
    Every time someone said that to her, Hannah felt twitchy and off balance. She’d known Nolan forever—even longer than she’d known Caleb. He had been one of her husband’s closest friends and had served as a groomsman at their wedding. “Do you ever think that maybe Nolan is too close?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “He and Caleb were the best of friends. I’ve known him my whole life. He’s always been there, you know? How does that suddenly turn romantic?”
    “The same way it did for you and Caleb, remember?”
    As if she’d ever forget the night Caleb kissed her at the quarry and changed everything between them forever. She had to admit Becky made a good point.
    “I want you to do something for me,” Becky said.
    “What’s that?”
    “I want you to have dinner with Nolan and not blow it up into a big freaking deal in your mind before it actually is. It’s dinner. Nothing more, nothing less.”
    “If I’m to believe what you and everyone else says, it’s already way more than that to him.”
    “So what? That’s his deal, not yours. Don’t take it on. Go to dinner. Eat a meal. Enjoy his company and relax. Can you do that?”
    “I guess so. I can probably relax easier with him than I would with someone I just met.”
    “I know you can do it. Go have a wonderful time. You’ve so earned the right to some fun and happiness, Hannah.”
    Hannah hugged her longtime friend. “Thanks for the pep talk and for letting me off the hook on the sleepover.”
    “Once you told me about Nolan asking you out, I was prepared to kick you out of here if I had to.”
    Hannah smiled at Becky’s emphatic words. Sometimes she felt like the people in her life needed her to move on more than she needed it for herself. Up until the last couple of months, she’d been perfectly fine to rattle around in her big old house alone and to spend more time living in the past than she did in the present.
    At some point over the recent winter though, she’d begun to feel anxious and lonely and perhaps ready to step foot out of her self-imposed cocoon to take a peek at what had been going on in the world while she was holed up with her grief.
    After two hours of laughter and pedicures she was on the road home, her mind spinning with thoughts about the evening she’d agreed to spend with Nolan. Would it be awkward or easy? Would he try to kiss her again or would he keep his distance? Which did she prefer? She couldn’t say for certain.
    By the time she pulled into the driveway twenty minutes before Nolan was due to arrive, her nerves were stretched thin. An accident on the main road into town had added half an hour to the ride. Inside the house, she used the phone in the hallway to leave a message for Hunter on his office voicemail to let him know she’d decided to come home and he was off Homer duty.
    “Hey, Home Boy,” she said, using the nickname Caleb had given his dog as a puppy after the multicolored mutt had decided he belonged with Caleb. No one was really certain of his breed, but speculation ran the gamut from German shepherd to Lab to beagle. “Where are you, buddy?” Hannah checked the sitting room, where she and Homer spent most of their time, as well as the studio, where she worked and he kept a bed on the floor, but saw no sign of Homer.
    At sixteen, he didn’t do the stairs on his own anymore, so he had to be somewhere on the first floor. She went into the kitchen and stopped short when she found him sprawled on the floor, his eyes open and trained on her, his distress apparent.
    Hannah dropped to the floor next to him. “Hey, buddy. What’re you doing in here?” She stroked his face and back and noted the choppy cadence of his breathing and his seeming inability to raise his head off the floor. He tried to stretch his paw out to her the way he