Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
When he did, all the dogs came to both of us and bustled around.
But Harry was only about me. I knew this when he slid his arms around me, not losing contact with my gaze.
Yeah, there it was again.
I was grounded. I was safe. I was with a good man.
This was right.
“Wanna start dinner?” I asked.
“I have something to share first,” he told me.
Uh-oh.
“Is it something bad?” I asked hesitantly.
“No. It’s something we hope will be really good.”
Oh my God.
He said “we.”
Like police “we?”
“What?”
He let me go but again took my hand, and this time he led me to the couch. He sat us down, doing this close. The dogs continued to bustle around, and Harry gave some distracted head strokes, but again, his attention didn’t leave me.
Then he told me about suitcases and journals and a motel owner who remembered my parents.
He finished with, “I don’t want to get your hopes up. But when an ongoing crime crosses state lines, the FBI is automatically called in. This means you have the Fret County Sheriff’s Department, Coeur d’Alene Police and the FBI looking into it. We had very little to go on, Lilly. We now have something to follow. Your mom’s journals could be key. I was very worried how this investigation would go, honey. I’m feeling a fuck ton better about it now.”
“Mom journaled,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said.
“For as long as I knew. She told me she liked to ‘get it all down, even if it’s the bad stuff, doll baby, get it out, put it away, but mostly if it’s the good.’ That’s what she’d say.”
Harry took my hand in both of his, and I was so wound up in the knowledge there were suitcases, journals in my mom’s hand, journals sharing her thoughts, it took me a bit to realize he was saying nothing but playing with my fingers.
“Harry?” I called.
My breath caught when his brown eyes came to mine.
They were burning.
“I need to find these fucks for you,” he said, his deep voice abrasive, rubbing over my skin like sandpaper.
Even so, that strength of feeling soothed some rough spots.
I caught his hands in both of mine.
“You can only do what you can do,” I said quietly.
“I have to withdraw from actively being involved in this investigation. I’m with you. I’m not impartial. It could cause problems down the line.”
Oh, my good guy.
“It’s okay. I get it. You have to do what’s right,” I reminded him. “You’re you. That’s what you do.”
“We’ve got something now, Lilly, and we’re gonna follow it until it leads to answers for you.”
“Honestly, honey, you don’t have to try to make me feel better by making promises you’re worried you can’t keep.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “We’re gonna follow it until it leads to answers, Lillian.”
“Okay, baby,” I whispered.
He stared at me, the heat in his eyes warming my heart.
Then I watched as he wrestled the depth of his emotion under control, the heat turned to a warm glow, and he said, “Let’s make dinner.”
I smiled, leaned in for a kiss, pulled back and agreed, “Let’s make dinner.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The Deep Stuff
Lillian
“So, Stormy. Anyone else?” Harry asked.
We were lying in the dark in my bed, limbs entangled, dogs ignoring their new beds seeing as I knew Smokey lay on the rug beside me, and Lucy and Linus were on the other side by Harry.
Harry liked the salmon farro veggie bowls with spicy ginger, sesame and soy sauce we made (shocker: so did I). While we ate, and after we cleaned up, we watched some cooking shows.
But we went to bed early, even earlier than I would normally, and I was usually in bed with a book by nine.
I knew why now.
We were chatting in the dark about deeper stuff we needed to know, in a safe space for both of us (or at least I hoped Harry thought it was safe).
And Harry was affecting a maneuver to take my mind off other things before I fell asleep.
It wouldn’t work, but the thought was sweet.
“There was a lot of dating,” I told him. “I met someone really nice who I liked a lot once, but he was here on a fishing trip. He lives in Oregon. We did the long-distance thing for nearly a year. Then he met someone closer to home.”
“And he ended it?”
It was so lovely how his question sounded entirely disbelieving, like someone ending things with me was unfathomable to him.
Oh yes, that was very lovely.
“No, he gave me an ultimatum. Either I move there, or he moves on. I wasn’t going to move there…” I blew out a breath, “for obvious reasons.”
See?
No matter what he tried, my mind would circle back to my parents.
“He couldn’t move?” Harry pulled things back on target.
“He could. He was a systems engineer. He worked remote for a company based in San Francisco. He could live anywhere. But he liked where he lived, I liked where I lived, I wasn’t going to leave if my parents might come back, and he exposed the dick within by not getting that. Not to mention, every woman knows, you don’t shake up your entire life and move for a man. I mean, at least not one who hasn’t committed to you. And the whole ‘I found someone else, you better stake your claim or I’ll move on’ thing was totally uncool.” My eyes wandered to the strong column of his throat illuminated by moonlight, and I mumbled, “I think I dodged a bullet with that guy.”