him, collecting and dragging her clothes with her to the back of the cottage. A few minutes later she had a pot of hot water going, and they were both dressed and it was, for a moment, as if nothing had happened. Her cheeks and chest were flushed as she sat down next to him. She looked out from behind sleepy eyes and he wanted her again, right there. But he behaved himself, containing himself to the tea and a few minutes of delicious silence that they shared with the fading gurgle of the cooling tea kettle.
“Tell me this was a social call,” she said.
He felt a painful spike in his chest. The uncommon urge to lie. A matter of days, and he was already corrupted, prepared to compromise his ethics for this woman. The danger sign flashed for the second time in a matter of hours: she was getting to him. If he went forward unguarded, unchecked, he needed to accept that some of this was irreversible, that the flip side of such happiness and heart-pounding excitement was the abyss.
“Not entirely,” he said, prepared for her to distance herself, glad when she didn’t. “Brandon noticed on the map that this place, and the Berkholders’, to a lesser degree, are in fairly close proximity to the body site.” He added, “As the crow flies, which bodies do not.” He’d thought he might win a smile out of her, but she’d gone cold and he thought back to their work on the body and again regretted keeping her on the scene for so long. He was about to apologize for that when she spoke.
“So what does that involve?”
“Asking you and Kira if you’d seen anyone matching Gale’s description, which I think you just might happen to have pointed out when we found the body. I’ll talk to Kira briefly—”
“She’s not around.”
“—or not, and then look around the place and call it good. Same at the Berkholders’. Really it was just an excuse to see you.”
“You saw a lot of me,” she said, cupping the mug of tea and offering him a vexing look of encouragement.
“This is getting complicated,” he said.
“It is.”
“More so for you than me.”
“Certainly not true. You have the girls to think of. I understand that. It can’t be easy. It’s the beast in the room we’re not discussing. Why is that?”
“Some of this can wait.”
“For . . . ?”
He grimaced.
“You think this isn’t serious? It’s been two years in the making. It’s very serious. To me, that is. If it isn’t serious to you, that’s important for me to hear. I’m a big girl. I get it.”
“It’s serious.”
“Yes, it is. So the girls are a big part of it, and I want you to know that I defer to you on how we—if there is a ‘we’—handle it. They don’t need to know, shouldn’t know until we’re awfully sure where this is going. Once I become part of their lives, if I become part of their lives, it’s not fair to them to retreat, so we’d better be awfully sure we know what we’re doing. Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m looking forward, not back. I’m trying to keep my pulse down because every time I look at you it runs out of control. I’m seeing a future instead of fearing one and I’m hungry for the first time in what seems likes years.” He considered this. “You want to get something to eat?”
“I thought you have to canvass.”
“When will Kira be back?”
“I don’t keep her calendar.”
“I’ll walk around the premises. No sign of the bear-man, right?”
“Kira will tell you she hears things, but that’s Kira.”
“And you? Do you hear things?”
She turned away, and he thought maybe he’d embarrassed her and he wondered how he’d managed. Gail had been out of his life long enough, and the girls had dominated his attention, that he’d forgotten about how dealing with a woman was so incredibly different.
“It may take me a while to get good at this,” he said. “I’ve lived in a bubble for too long. It may take me a while to remember that all women are not eleven-year-olds.”
He got the smile he’d been hoping for earlier.
“Some of us are seventeen,” she said.
“Point taken.”
“Have a look around. I’ll clean up and we’ll grab some dinner. That is, if you want?”
“It was my idea.”
“Take your time. Give me fifteen minutes.”
A woman who could clean up in fifteen minutes? He’d hit the mother lode.