24

Unsurprisingly, the inside of the detective’s car was meticulously clean. Rachel leaned against the headrest and watched him out of the corner of her eye. They hadn’t spoken since leaving the hospital. He seemed wholly focused on driving, which is why Rachel jumped when he said, “I find it curious that someone surrounded by friends would find herself in need of a ride from a relative stranger.”

“You’ve been present at some of the most traumatic and embarrassing moments of my life,” she said. “At least, the most recent ones. So we’re hardly strangers.”

“Still.” He bumped up the A/C.

“I’m not the one who called you,” she reminded him.

“I’m well aware you didn’t call. You didn’t call me last summer before you left for your trip. You didn’t call me when you came back. You didn’t call me when I showed up at your church, and you haven’t called me since. So don’t worry—I get it.”

“I called you,” Rachel protested. “When I needed help with the kids—”

“You know what I meant. I’m only here today because your protégé Lee called me.”

“Lee called you?” Ann had tasked Lee with picking her up? And he’d called Ian? Rachel positively reeled.

“Yes,” he said. “Lee called me.”

“Just like you called him yesterday.”

He slanted a look at her. “Did I do the wrong thing in calling him last night? None of this is any of my business, obviously—you’ve made your indifference to me perfectly clear—but I thought you’d want Lee there.” He turned a corner smoothly, accelerating into the turn.

“I’m not indifferent to you.” It seemed important to say this out loud. He kept his eyes on the road, but she saw his hands flex against the steering wheel. “I’m not indifferent,” she repeated. “You’re right that Lee and I are close, but it’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I think.” There was no heat behind his words. It was a mere statement of fact.

“I know what everyone else thinks.”

“I’m not everyone else.”

“I’ve noticed.” The words were out before she’d thought them through.

He turned to smile at her. Not just an eye-crinkle smile, either. A warm, full tilt of the lips.

Rachel’s insides liquefied.

“You are the rarest soul I ever knew,” she told him, borrowing from Teasdale.

He turned to face the road, lips still upturned. “Right back at you.”

~*~

Ian walked Rachel up the sidewalk to her door. She’d lost her cane somewhere along the way and leaned on his arm instead.

He studied her housing complex. “The department gets a lot of calls to this place. I’m not sure I like you living here.”

And he didn’t even know about the spiders. “I’m not sure I like it either.”

“Have you thought of moving?”

If it had been any other day, Rachel would have laughed. As it was, she could only manage a wobbly smile. “That’s kind of a long story.”

“I’ve got time.” He glanced at his watch. “Not much, but some.”

“Not now.”

“You could call me some time.” He said this lightly, but Rachel felt the statement burn through her body, settling in her core and radiating warmth.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You may not have noticed, but I have a lot of problems.”

“I’ve noticed. But it seems to me that most of your ‘problems,’ as you call them, are due to the fact that the people around you have problems, and somehow you make their problems your own.”

“Whoever’s problems they are, I’m sorry that you keep getting sucked into them.”

His eyes crinkled. “I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m getting sucked in. I want to be in. That’s how relationships work.”

He must have felt the jolt go through her at the word relationships, because he lifted a hand to where she clutched his arm and patted her twice. Calm down, the pats seemed to say.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said easily. “That’s a discussion for another day.”