When the god-awful day finally ended and he went home to his dog, Zach sought solace with his fishing pole and the soothing, familiar rhythm of casting his line into Hummingbird Lake. Ordinarily, fishing soothed his soul, but tonight visions of the day haunted him, with peace remaining elusive and his heart as heavy as Murphy Mountain. When he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel road leading to his house, he glanced over his shoulder, glad for the interruption.
He almost dropped his rod. Savannah Moore?
She climbed out of her old beater of a Taurus wearing a belted white shirt over an ankle-length yellow print skirt, a scowl on her face. Ace rose and loped down the drive toward his visitor. After a moment of silent self-debate, Zach returned his attention to the lake. If she’d come here looking for the sheriff rather than the man, his on-duty deputy would have given him a heads-up. But Gabi hadn’t radioed him, and Zach couldn’t imagine what had brought Savannah out here. He admitted that he liked her spit and vinegar and that any other night he likely would have enjoyed watching her sashay toward him. Tonight, though, he just wasn’t in the mood.
When she approached close enough to speak without raising her voice, she said, “Okay, Sheriff. I surrender.”
“Is there a warrant out on you?”
“You tell me.”
He glanced over his shoulder. She walked down the point with her shoulders squared, her hands clasped in front of her. Add a length of rope around her wrists and she could be a pirate’s prisoner about to walk the plank.
For the first time in hours, his heart lightened.
“You haven’t told them. Why haven’t you told them? I’ve tried to do it myself, knowing it’s bound to happen at any moment, but I just can’t make myself say the words. Every day for more than a week I’ve waited for it. Who will it be? Which one of them will shift their eyes away from mine? Whose smile will go from genuine to plastic? Will Nic Callahan warn me away from her children? Will Sage Rafferty ask me to move my shop? Celeste says you’re trustworthy, but what does she know? You’re a cop. Why are you doing this to me, Zach?”
Zach. She’d used his name. Finally. He liked that.
“Do you like to fish?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Here.” He handed her his fishing rod. “I have another in the shed. You apparently want to talk, and I want to fish. No reason we can’t both be happy.”
Savannah sputtered as Zach strode back up the point to the storage shed behind his house. When he returned with his second-favorite fishing rod and a quilt—the temperature dropped quickly once the sun went down, and if this conversation turned into a long, drawn-out drama, she’d get cold in that sleeveless outfit of hers—she was casting his lure into the lake.
He tossed the blanket near his tackle box. “Why did you pick tonight to come out here?”
“It was either this or make brownies, and I’m already past my dessert limit for the week. I ate dinner at the Yellow Kitchen last night, and I couldn’t resist the tiramisu Ali had made. I don’t want to put on my bathing suit and look at my hips and think of you.”
A mental image of his hand on Savannah Moore’s string-bikini-clad hip flashed through his mind midway through his cast. Zach inadvertently jerked his hand, sending his line flowing off target. The hook caught on a half-submerged log, and Zach scowled. “Why would you … oh, never mind. I’ve had a helluva day, Peach. Let’s see if we can’t cut to the chase. If I’m reading this situation correctly, you want to know why I haven’t shared with our mutual friends the fact that you have a prison record. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been waiting for the hammer to drop.”
“Yes.”
“It makes you a little crazy.”
“Yes!”
“Crazy enough to challenge your personal Darth Vader at his Death Star.”
She threw out her arms. “A movie villain? You think this is all a big joke?”
“Better a movie villain than a two-bit TV sitcom costar,” he snapped, then sighed. “What I think, Savannah, is that either you are enormously insensitive or else you didn’t hear about what happened up at Mirror Lake today.”
She drew back, her expression growing wary. “What happened at Mirror Lake?”
Zach didn’t have the first clue why, but he felt compelled to share the events of his day with the felon from Georgia. As he