“If you want to be a Shellian, you have to do this, Mack.”
Raven straddled the picnic table bench, far enough away from the stage of the pavilion for him to hear her teasing voice over the music playing. The Tuesday night open mic event in Riverwalk Park was hosted by Mystical Pizza, the local gourmet joint located across the parking lot from Jethro’s.
Overhead, the sky had turned a deep, inviting dark blue, the stars starting to wink, and if he didn’t still feel and smell like ash, Mack might have thought this was a date.
Maybe it was a date. After all, Neil Diamond was in the lineup.
He’d nearly forgotten about his words to Raven, yesterday feeling like it might be years in the past after the night’s events and today’s work. Mack had spent the day cleaning and hauling away debris with what felt like half the town of Shelly—volunteers from local businesses and even Jethro’s church, the Shelly Community Church. By the end of the day, they had the building cleaned out, the salvageable pieces of furniture tucked away in storage, the copper tanks drained of beer, the unburned kegs removed to a nearby cellar, and pictures taken for insurance.
That’s how they got it done in a small town.
He’d never leave if he had the choice.
Mack looked at the open box of pizza. “Why is it called Firecracker?”
“Because along with Italian sausage and pepperoni, it has jalapenos, sriracha, peperoncini, red bell peppers, and garlic. Oh, and pineapple,” Raven said.
So, not a date then.
“I brought spearmint gum for dessert.”
Or, maybe?
She dug out a piece of pizza and handed it to him on a napkin.
He took a bite. “Oh, yeah, that’s hot.”
“Right?” She grinned at him, her gaze warm. She’d spent most of the day cleaning with him, the other parts of it on the phone with her father, who came straight from being discharged to supervise the transportation of the kegs. One of them went to the firehouse as a thank-you gift.
But somewhere in there, Raven had gone home and cleaned up so that when he arrived later with Jethro, she was sitting on a high top stool in the kitchen, smelling fresh and clean, wearing a cutoff jean skirt, a tank top, a flannel shirt tied at the waist, and cowboy boots.
She was tuning her guitar and looked up, a little hope in her eyes when she said, “Are you still going to come out and hear me sing tonight, Mack?”
What was he going to say? No? “Love to.”
He’d taken a shower and didn’t know what to say when he found a pile of clothing on the bed. Jeans, a couple T-shirts, some button-downs, tennis shoes, and a jacket.
Ace’s things.
Mack felt a little weird pulling on the jeans—surprisingly a good fit—and a white button-down. But at least he had something to wear. He’d picked up a few more essentials at the grocery store yesterday on the way back to Raven and Jethro’s place—underclothing, a toothbrush, deodorant, a razor. He shot a glance in the mirror— he hadn’t shaved in a month and had acquired a decent reddish-blond beard—and decided he liked it, so he put the razor away and returned to the kitchen.
Maybe he’d keep the beard to go with his new persona.
Jethro’s gaze hung on him only briefly, a double blink, as if seeing a ghost as Mack entered the room. Then he smiled. “Stay out of trouble.”
Raven had slid off the stool, shaking her head. “You can come too.”
“I need to sketch out some plans.”
Mack had stood by the man today as he’d walked through the debris, listening as Jethro talked through the changes he’d make.
Perhaps that’s how someone lived through trauma—by moving ahead, keeping their face forward to the future. Seeing a tomorrow in their mind’s eye that was better than what they left behind.
Raven had driven, and they’d picked up the pizza before bringing it to the park. Now, the night stirred around them with music. A crowd was assembled in front of a small amphitheater, sitting on chairs or other picnic tables.
“This looks good on you,” Raven said, tugging on the center of his shirt. “It was Ace’s church shirt. He only wore it when Mom made him.”
“I’ll try not to spill pizza on it.”
“Ace would be thrilled, believe me. Mom, not so much.”
“What happened to your mom, if I can ask?” He caught a piece of cheese before it dripped off his chin.
“She had cancer. It was quick—found out in August and she was gone by Christmas. Ace was a senior in high school. I was fifteen. Since then, it’s just been us.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks. How about you? Are your parents still around?”
He just stared at her. Took a breath.
“Oh, wow. Sorry. I’m sorry. That was a stupid question—”
“I don’t think so. I…it feels like they’ve been gone for a long time. But…” He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Is it weird, not to remember anything?”
He finished the pizza and wiped his fingers. Just one of those was enough. He looked around at the crowd, at the darkness beyond. “It is. I mean, I could know anyone out in that crowd and not know it, right? And I could have been anyone. A doctor, a fisherman, a park ranger.”
“A firefighter?”
He grinned. “Maybe.”
“My dad thinks you were in the military, the way you handled yourself with Teddy. And the way you got him out of the fire. You’re pretty coolheaded.”
“Or just too dumb to know when I’m in trouble.” He winked at her.
She laughed again, her hand going to press her hair behind her ear, and that’s when it hit him again.
A flash, a memory, something so familiar—
Then it vanished. But he drew in a quick breath.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
Shots cracked the air.
His body erupted, pure adrenaline, and he leaped toward Raven, pulling her down, his arms around her, his body arched over hers in the grass.
“What the—”
“Stay down,” he snapped.
More shots, crackles, and he looked for the source.
“Firecrackers, Mack. It’s just kids.” Raven pushed on his shoulders, scooting out from beneath him. “But thanks for the protection.”
Kids. Of course.
And now he realized what an idiot he looked like, tackling her.
Worse, eyes raked him as he got up, helped her up. “I got your skirt dirty.”
She dusted off her bum. “No, it’s just grass. But I gotta go onstage soon. You… going to be okay?” She said it like he was a real head case, softly, worried.
“I’m fine.”
Her mouth made a line as she smiled. She squeezed his shoulder and picked up her guitar.
Nothing to see here, folks. He tried to ignore the onlookers as he watched her pick her way through the crowd.
Maybe he had been in the military. He’d just reacted on instinct alone, and what kind of person did that?
A person used to being shot at.
Sheesh.
Raven took the stage to the cheers of a number of locals, maybe more, and as she warmed up her guitar, she leaned in to the mic. “I want to thank everyone who came out to help us clean up Jethro’s today—and especially our foreman, Mack Jones. Mack, I don’t know where we’d be today without you.”
He just nodded, hoping the darkness hid him.
“I’m going to do a cover tonight from one of my favorite bands, the Yankee Belles. This is their first hit. I hope you enjoy it.”
She stepped back, began to strum, and when she came back, it was armed with that smoky tone that added heat to the night.
She met him on a night like any other
Dressed in white, the cape of a soldier
He said you’re pretty, but I can’t stay
She said I know, but I could love you anyway…
It seemed—and maybe it was simply because he still felt eyes on him—that Raven stared straight out at him when she sang, her voice deep and husky and vibrant, and if he let it, it could touch him.
Find his bones.
Could he love Raven someday? Maybe. She was sweet and hardworking and determined—never mind beautiful—and seemed exactly like the kind of girl he could love.
So they started their own love song
Found the rhythm and tone
He said he’d never found anyone
Who made him want to come home
Mack looked beyond the stage to the boats, white upon the water. Why he’d decided to flee to here, and from what, he couldn’t know.
But here, yes, he was safe.
He was Mack Jones, local hero.
She belted out the chorus, her voice beautiful and strong.
She…don’t wanna cry,
But she ain’t gonna fall for another guy.
It’s too hard to be apart
Not after she’s waited for…one true heart…one true heart…
Yes, Jethro was right—she could make it big if she wanted. This town and, frankly, Mack were too small for her. She needed a bigger world with a guy who had a real future.
Not one who always felt eyes on him, watching him, whether they were or not.
He said I’m leaving, baby don’t cry.
No, Stay with me, please don’t die.
Always, forever, together, with me
She lay in his grass, clutching eternity.
Raven dropped out the guitar for the final chorus, her voice sweet, haunting, lingering.
She…don’t wanna try,
It’s too hard to fall for another guy.
But you don’t know if you don’t start
So wait…for one true heart…one true heart…
Then she stared out into the audience.
At him.
His heart just stopped. Because in the silence right before the thunderous applause, he heard it.
The voice he couldn’t place, the one on the train and in his dreams.
The only promise you have to make to me is to not let go of the guy who saved my life.
He closed his eyes, willing the face to come to him, a piece—please—of his past.
It faded, leaving only his heartbeat.
He opened his eyes. Raven was striding toward him, grinning, holding her guitar case. She set it on the picnic table as he got up.
“So, what did you think?” She took his hand, drew him toward herself.
Oh.
“It was amazing.”
Her mouth tugged up in a smile. And then, before he could stop her, she lifted herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Full on the mouth, her hand clenching his shirt.
He couldn’t move, his heart thundering. She smelled so good, her lips soft, her body close to his, and a wave of desire swept over him, something that had nothing to do with her touch and everything with being wanted and needed and…belonging.
His breath trembled out, and she leaned back even as he made to bring his arm around her.
“Too soon?” she whispered.
He swallowed, then nodded. Oh, he wanted to like her. Wanted to belong here. Wanted to…be the guy who deserved her song.
Only who was the guy in the dream? The one who’d saved a life?
To whom did he belong?
Maybe it didn’t matter. He touched her face with his fingertips, not sure what to do.
“It’s okay, Mack. I’m not going anywhere either.” Then she winked and picked up her guitar. “Besides, you need a breath mint.”
He laughed and took the guitar from her grip.
But again, the eyes followed him as he walked her to her car.
![](images/break-rule-gradient-screen.png)
RJ tried not to tremble as she stood on the porch of the Riverwalk B&B, an old house parked right next to the riverfront—the first lodging she could find when she hit town earlier today.
York was alive.
Very much alive by the looks of the kiss between him and the girl singer who’d crooned one of the Yankee Belle’s songs at him like he might be her long lost love.
No…that couldn’t be right.
It might not even be him. The man wore a beard and looked leaner than she remembered York being. Didn’t everyone have a doppelgänger?
But not everyone leaped from their perch to tackle an innocent bystander when a firecracker bit the air.
RJ, too, had jumped. Because it had sounded like gunshots. Clearly, she was still suffering from a little PTSD.
So, when she spotted the takedown, her instincts—and yes, hopes—reignited.
They had died earlier when she’d seen him get out of the car, trek over to the pizza joint, and emerge later with a large box. Such an ordinary activity for the superhero man in her mind, but she, too, had shared a pizza with him before. In Russia. Right after she was told she had to escape via the Trans-Siberian railroad.
Then, York had told her about his life, those dark blue eyes on her, and she’d felt safe and a little powerful, and it might have been the first time she realized she could love this mysterious, dangerous man.
So, no, she hadn’t been entirely sure it was York across the park eating a pizza, until the takedown confirmed it.
“Ma’am, can I get you anything?”
The voice of the waitress dragged her attention away from the white Ford Focus as it pulled away from the curb. She sat on the porch of the B and B at a tiny wicker table on a wicker chair, nursing a cup of coffee, still warm but overcooked in the pot in the kitchen.
RJ had arrived in town just as the sun dropped in the jagged horizon in her rearview mirror. Shelly was a beautiful little hamlet secreted away in the middle of Washington State, nestled along the shores of a deep blue lake.
Paradise.
She’d like to run away and hide here too. If that’s what York was doing.
What was he doing?
The Riverwalk B&B was a remodeled 1910 two-story house with four bedrooms, a wraparound porch with white wicker and green rocking chairs, and a living room decorated lodge style with a grand stone fireplace.
The kind of house that said old wealth and family legacy.
Safety.
Now, RJ looked over at the proprietress, a pretty, slender woman with long dark hair named Darcy, who ran the place with her husband, Micah.
“No. I’m…I’m done.” RJ handed the cup and saucer to the woman and drew in a breath to stop the shaking.
But inside, she might be coming apart.
Really. What was going on?
“Your room is ready anytime,” Darcy said, her gaze warm. “What brings you to Shelly?”
“The scenery,” RJ said, getting up.
“Yes. It’s gorgeous this time of year. Where are you from?”
RJ drew in a breath, not sure what to say. Finally, “Out east.”
In fact, it had taken her roughly sixteen hours since this morning’s news flash to find a flight, rent a car, and drive east from Seattle through the mountains. Sixteen hours and still it was only pushing 8:00 p.m.
She could sleep for a year.
Because, really, she hadn’t slept in a month already.
“Say,” RJ said, glancing out at the park, “did you hear that woman singing earlier?”
Darcy was wiping the table. “That was Raven Darnell. She’s a local. Her father owns Jethro’s, the place that burned last night. She’s good, right?”
She nodded, all truth. “And this Mack Jones guy she mentioned?”
Darcy lifted a shoulder. “Some guy they hired a month ago. Not sure where he’s from, but he seems like a good guy. Apparently, he saved Jethro’s life in the fire.”
Of course he did.
“I drove past a burned building on the way in, just a block away.”
“That’s the one. The town volunteered all day to help with cleanup. If I know Jethro, they’ll rebuild.”
RJ tucked that information away and headed upstairs as another crooner took the stage.
Her bedroom overlooked the park. But it wasn’t a terrible place to hide out as she spied on York—a queen bed with a soft white cotton cover, a table and two straight chairs, a white-painted fireplace, and a quaint bathroom with black-and-white checked tile and a clawfoot tub.
She debated running a bath and instead climbed onto the bed and pulled out her phone.
Her mother picked up on the second ring, and RJ wasn’t exactly sure why she’d dialed that number, but for some reason her mother was the only one in the family who didn’t hover.
She didn’t need her brothers to swoop in and—
“Hey, honey, how are you?”
And that’s all it took. “I found him, Ma. I found him.” She drew her legs up to herself and wrapped an arm around them.
A pause then, “Um—”
“York! He’s here, in a little town in Washington State—I just saw him.”
“Is he okay?”
Outside a female voice had taken over, was singing Diana Ross’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”
“I don’t know. I…yes. He looks fine. Not hurt at all.”
“Oh?” And her mother said it appropriately, with question in her tone. Because her mother had been there when York found them in the hotel room, a dead body on the bed. Had seen the way he’d grabbed up RJ, held her, so much panic, so much relief in his embrace that his feelings could have been written in headlines.
Her mother had probably even seen the way he’d kissed her in the fish market not long after, like he not only missed her but…well, maybe needed her.
Maybe loved her.
So then, “Yeah, but…he’s with this other woman.”
Silence. “I don’t understand, RJ. What—?”
“I know. I don’t know what’s going on!” RJ could imagine her mother, maybe in the apartment in Seattle that Wyatt had purchased, with its wide windows that overlooked the Sound, sitting in the darkness watching the lights play over the dark waters. Her hair would be up in a jumble of brown curls, and maybe she’d still be wearing her jeans and a T-shirt, or maybe already changed into her yoga pants and an oversized shirt, one of their father’s old flannels.
Gerri Marshall had become the foundation of the family, someone who knew how to weather the storms her children stirred up. “How did you find him?”
RJ didn’t know what she’d do without her mother’s wisdom. “I saw York on the news—he’d saved some guy from a fire, and it made a round-the-nation brief this morning.”
“So naturally you thought it was York and hopped on a plane—”
“Ma! It is York. He’s alive.”
“Honey.”
“Okay, it might not be him—he is wearing a beard and looks a little leaner than York, but Ma, you should have seen him. Some fireworks went off and he nearly shot out of his skin and tackled this girl next to him. I’ve seen him do that before.”
“I’m sure you have.”
She could almost see her mother’s smirk on the other end.
“Ma—”
“RJ. I know you loved York—it was clear from the moment you returned from Russia pining for him. But could your hope that he’s alive be clouding your vision here? Didn’t you say he was with a woman?”
RJ let go of her clench around her legs and got off the bed, walking to the window. Her light was still off and the sky arched a deep blue over the reflection of the lake, stars blinking down on it. “Yes. He was with a woman.”
“As in, with?”
She drew in a breath. “She kissed him.”
A pause, then, “York was in love with you, too, RJ. No one could miss that. If he was still alive, don’t you think he would have contacted you? And he certainly wouldn’t be kissing someone else.”
RJ pressed her hand on the window. “What if he couldn’t? What if he’s undercover? The woman called him Mack Jones. Doesn’t that feel like an undercover name?”
Another pause.
“Okay, don’t say it. I know I’ve been watching too many episodes of Alias. But still, Ma—maybe he had to come here, had to change his name, had to—I don’t know—fake his death?” The thought caught her up. “Maybe he’s faking the entire thing.”
“RJ—”
“Ma. I have to find out what’s going on—”
“What if…and I’m not saying this is him, but didn’t you say that York wanted to leave his life and start over?”
Her mother’s question came like a slap, something bright and hard and—
“Oh.”
True. He’d told her that more than once.
Fact was, the man in the park didn’t look at all like the man she’d known a month ago, the spy who had saved her life.
This man looked like a lumberjack. Or at least a mountain hipster.
Maybe he wasn’t York.
Or at least the man she knew.
Maybe he was trying to leave his world behind.
Leave her behind.
She closed her eyes.
“Honey, I’m not saying York wanted to leave you. I know he loved you. That’s why I don’t think this could possibly be him. But—”
“But I have to find out.” She walked back to the bed, sat on it.
A sigh. “How are you going to do that? If it is York and he’s undercover…”
“Right. Okay so…apparently there are volunteers helping with the cleanup of the building that burned. So maybe tomorrow I show up with a shovel.”
“That’s my girl.”
“That’s why I call you. You believe in me.”
“Of course I do.”
“Wyatt and Ford and Tate think I’m in over my head.”
“They’re your brothers.”
“Not my babysitters.”
Her mother laughed.
“Ma, it’s not funny. I don’t want them getting hurt—”
“I think they’d say the same about you.”
“It makes me feel incompetent.”
“You might consider letting it make you feel loved.”
Oh.
“Your father would be proud of you.”
She drew in a breath. “Would he? I don’t know. I think he probably wanted me to get married, stay on the ranch…”
“You father’s heart was for you to be exactly the woman God created you to be. He was protective, sure, but he saw your desire to keep up with your brothers. That’s why he taught you to ride and shoot and do all the things he knew you wanted to do.”
“I miss him.”
“I do too. No one will ever replace your father.”
A beat, then, “Even Hardwin?”
She hadn’t exactly been against her mother dating the rancher-slash-banker next door, but the thought still unsettled her. Felt weird to think of her mother in the arms of anyone but her father.
“I don’t know. Hardwin is a good man. And I might be falling for him. But he can’t replace thirty years of raising a family and building a life.”
“Maybe he can be a new season. Not a better one, but a different one.” RJ could hardly believe the words emerged from her mouth. Still, her father had been gone for over five years.
Her mother made a noise, not quite of agreement, but…
“Ma?”
“I think he wants to marry me. I’m just not sure if I want to bring more change to our family…or give my heart away again. It’s…well—”
“Terrifying. Because how do you know he’s a good man? A man you want to trust with your life?” Huh. Sounded a lot like the questions her mother might ask her.
But she’d trusted York with her life. More than once.
“You just know, I think,” her mother said. “Right?”
Yes. “I know this man is York, Ma. And tomorrow I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on.”
“You go get your man, honey.”
“Thanks, Ma.” RJ hung up and stared out the window at the moon waxing down onto the lake, a spotlight in the darkness.
Oh, please, let it be him.
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Tate was going to die before Glo could get him to the altar.
She knew it in her bones. And frankly, her nightmares.
“You should tell him.” Kelsey Jones sat cross legged in front of a fire table on a teak deck chair, holding a glass of cabernet sauvignon, the night behind her fractious, as the Pacific Ocean threw itself onto Cannon Beach.
Dixie, their bandmate, was walking out of the house, holding a bag of pita chips and a bowl of hummus. She wore her blonde hair back in a loose bun, a pair of yoga pants, and a Yankee Belles T-shirt. She set the food on the table. “No, she shouldn’t. Tate is already freaking out about the idea that she—we—could get killed onstage. Or at some political function. Or even at the coffee shop. Sheesh—I’m surprised he didn’t stay this week, just to hover.”
“He’s doing his job, Dixie,” Glo said. But yes, Tate had gone nuclear with his protection since the shooting in Seattle.
Maybe his heightened anxiety had rubbed off on her. She’d stopped sleeping and more than anything she wanted this political race to be over.
To marry Tate.
To stop living in fear.
Hence why Kelsey had suggested their songwriting getaway. That and a spa day complete with facials and pedicures and a massage. Distraction as a method of coping.
And they’d picked up wedding magazines, one of which sat open on Kelsey’s lap. She turned pages under the glow of twinkling Edison lights hanging from the portico.
The house was the private vacation home of a friend, and yes, they’d spent nearly a week of delicious privacy beachside. Glo had begun to hear her voice—the poetry inside—after spending months giving sound bites and speeches for her mother, then racing off on the weekends to fulfill her NBR-X commitment with the Yankee Belles.
Even her bones felt thready, shredded, fatigued down to the marrow. And probably that’s why her demons so easily found footing.
Namely, a man named Sloan Anderson. Or at least the specter of him rising in her nightmares.
Dixie sat down on another teak chair. “So, you had the dream again?”
“Second night in a row. But this time I was in a wedding dress—”
“You have wedding on the brain,” Kelsey said. “You should elope, like Knox and me. As soon as the season officially ends, we’re off to Hawaii.”
“And what about us? Or your brother?”
“I haven’t talked to Ham in ages.” Kelsey flipped a page in the magazine. “For all I know, he could be off saving the world in Europe. And you guys see us all the time… Sorry. Knox said we could have a pretty wedding at his ranch, but…I don’t know. I think I want it to be just me and him.”
“The ranch would be a pretty place to get married,” Glo said. “But my mother, I’m sure, would want to make a big thing out of it.”
“Why does your mother always get her way?” Dixie said.
“You’ve met her, right?” Kelsey said. She reached for a pita chip.
“She’s planning a huge to-do, but if it’s up to her, we won’t get married until she’s into her second term as VP. But then we’ll be gearing up for her presidential run, again, and…” Glo picked up one of the magazines, started to page through it. “In the dream, I’m in a wedding dress, and we’re standing at the altar, and when the preacher gets to the part asking for objections, Sloan stands up. And he has a gun, and he turns it on Tate, and then…then I wake up.”
She had the attention of Kelsey, who put down her chip, and Dixie, who had leaned forward in her chair. “You think Sloan is in love with you? And wants to stop the wedding?” Dixie said.
Glo looked at her. “No. I think Sloan tried to have Tate beaten to death in Vegas! And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. But he escaped before we could find out why, and I can’t help but feel like he still wants to hurt Tate.”
Silence. The flames flickered, no sparks, just orange and red flares against the darkness. The air carried the edge of autumn, not quite brisk, but cool and laden with the smells of loam and the salt of the sea. “I’m terrified that he’s going to finish what he started.”
“You can’t carry that fear around inside you, Glo,” Kelsey said. “It’s going to eat you up, paralyze you. Trust me, I know.” Kelsey did know—after being brutally beaten and left for dead as a teenager, fear ruled her life. It had taken her over a decade to crawl out of that trauma. To live in freedom.
“We promised to not keep secrets from each other, but telling him about my stupid dream is just going to freak him out more. And frankly, Tate already seems spooked.”
“About the assassin?”
“About marriage. Yes, he asked me to marry him, but every time I talk about setting a date, he sort of evades the subject. Do you think he…well, maybe he doesn’t want to get married?”
“Glo,” Kelsey said. “Tate has been crazy about you since the day you met in San Antonio. Trust me, he wants to marry you. It’s just…timing, right?”
She drew in breath. Nodded. “You’re right. It’s just…you know when you feel like something is too good to be true and you’re just waiting for the catch? Marrying Tate feels like I won big.”
“And now you’re waiting to fall hard,” Kelsey said. She set her magazine on the table. “Glo—”
“I know it isn’t true.”
“No, you don’t,” said Dixie. “But you’re hoping it isn’t true.” She picked up her glass of wine. “We all hope it isn’t true. That when something good happens, it’s because we deserve it. Or because fate likes us. But the fact is, the sun shines on the good and the bad. And so does the rain. You have to believe that no matter what happens, you’re going to be okay. That God’s grace is enough.”
Lights flickered on the horizon, probably boats at sea, almost pinpricks against the fabric of night.
But what if God’s grace wasn’t enough?
She didn’t voice her thought, just let it simmer in her brain as Kelsey and Dixie began to discuss their current song. Kelsey was humming a tune into her phone. Dixie had her eyes closed, as if imagining the harmonies on her fiddle.
Glo stared out into the darkness and tried not to let Sloan creep into her thoughts.
Her cell buzzed on the table. Tate’s picture appeared on the screen.
She picked it up and answered. “Hey, handsome.” Getting up, she walked off the deck, along the semi-lit pathway to the beach. In her periphery, she noticed Swamp moving too, a shadow of Tate-assigned protection.
“Hey. How’s the songwriting going?”
The ocean was still working out the last itches of the storm that had come through a day ago, froth edging the waves. The wind rushed through the tall seagrasses behind her.
“We hacked out a couple songs, but mostly we’re just…unwinding. How’s Seattle? Did you get any answers from Vicktor?”
She sat on the beach, digging her feet into the gravelly sand.
A pause, and something in it felt dark and pregnant. But, “No, nothing really.” His voice, however, sounded distant.
“Tate?”
“The FBI is stonewalling him about the shooting, too.”
Oh. Maybe it was just his frustration bleeding out. “So, no idea who the shooter was.”
“RJ still thinks it’s the Russian assassin, but why would the Russians want to kill your mother?”
“I don’t know. But if she is in league with the Russian mob—which is crazy talk—then why would they want to kill her?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to stay here and hunt around a few more days. And my sister just won’t give up the idea that York isn’t dead. She nearly got caught breaking into a townhouse last night, hunting down a lead.”
When you loved someone…
Glo took a breath. “I don’t blame her. I…I wouldn’t want to lose you.”
“You’re not going to lose me, Glo.”
“Yeah, well, Rambo, you’re not exactly Mr. Run-from-Danger.” She kept her voice easy, without the tremor that threatened to rattle out.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m fine. I’m sitting on the beach, staring at the stars.”
He made a humming sound. “Me too. I’m sitting on Wyatt’s balcony. He’s got this hip loft that overlooks the Sound. And right now, there are about a hundred million stars in the sky, although I’ll bet your view is better.”
“It would be with you in it.”
She could almost hear his grin. “Ditto.” He was probably dressed in his off-duty attire of jeans, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. Probably smelled good, too, a hint of the morning’s aftershave still on his skin, a dark five-o’clock shadow skimming his chin. In her mind, she slipped onto his lap and put her arms around his shoulders. Leaned in to his strength.
Yes, Tate would be just fine. He was a former Ranger. A survivor.
Not a guy Sloan could take down easily.
“I had this crazy dream that Sloan found you and killed you,” she said softly, surrendering to the need to tell him. “I know—crazy. Probably just residual PTSD. And of course the daily reminder in the news of Mom’s ‘near miss’ a month ago in Seattle.”
He sighed.
“And I might be a little bit jealous of Kelsey’s plans to elope next month.”
“Knox and Kelsey are planning to elope?”
“Maybe we should elope.” She meant it as a joke.
“Maybe we should,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t mind being able to keep watch over you all night long.”
Oh. Heat filled her to her bones.
“It was a lot easier when we slept in the same tour bus.”
“Along with the rest of the Yankee Belles and Elijah Blue.”
“Still. Knowing you were on a back bunk, knowing that anything that came through the bus would have to go past me to get to you…yeah, Vegas, here we come.”
She laughed. “You can’t go back to Vegas, and you know it.” Because last time he was in Vegas, he’d nearly been beaten to death by a Russian mob thug named Slava.
Apparently the Bratva had a playing card with his picture on it.
And there went the happy warmth. She blew out a breath.
“Okay, fine. Atlantic City. Or maybe we just get a license and fly out to the ranch. Make it easy.”
Make it easy.
“With my mother, nothing is easy, but…”
“Glo Jackson, I love you. And I’m going to marry you. You set the date. Sooner than later. I’ll be there.”
Silly tears edged her eyes. “Come back to me. I miss you.”
“Just a couple more days.”
“Please stay out of trouble, Rambo.”
“Glo.” His voice had turned low, almost a hum under her skin. “Nothing is going to happen to me. Or you. And I am going to marry you. I promise.”
She drew in his voice, let it settle inside her.
But yes, she was going to set the date.
Before her nightmares came true.