way to Memphis, Tennessee, before they dipped down into Alabama and drove through Atlanta on their way to South Carolina.
“Halfway through New Mexico. I figured we’d stop in Amarillo, Texas, for the night. Also, Agent Shaw said he talked to this Agent Castle guy in Charleston and really liked him. With your approval, he’ll fill him in.”
“What do you think?” Skye asked as she looked around.
“I looked him up when I stopped for gas. He’s a hottie.”
Skye saw Karri wiggle her eyebrows and shook her head. This was why she loved her friend. She could make her laugh under any circumstances. “But was he a trustworthy hottie or a bad boy hottie that you give a fake name to and sneak out in the morning?”
“Definitely a trustworthy hottie. The kind you take home and introduce to your mama and use to piss off your snooty cousin.”
Skye might have snorted as they broke out into belly laughs. “That says a lot since you haven’t brought a man home since our junior year of college.”
“Don’t remind me. I should have known better than to bring a track athlete home. He could run away too fast.”
Skye shook her head as they remembered the day news got out that Karri brought home a boyfriend. Every person on the reservation within three miles had come to check him out. Which was really just a kind way of saying they’d tried to determine if he was good enough for Karri. They believed the right man wouldn’t run. This one had run—fast.
This was how the next four hours passed. They talked, told stories, and Skye listened to Karri lust after Agent Hottie.
It had been a couple of days since Skye’s photos leaked, so Trent thought it would be safe to go out this morning without hearing about them. He was wrong. Trent’s face was buried in his sketchbook as he listened to the knitting club at the table next to him at the Stomping Grounds Diner. He’d thought he’d slipped in late enough to miss the morning rush, but early enough to still grab breakfast. Apparently everyone in town had the same idea.
The knitting club was to his right. Gator and his crew were to his left. Behind him were Maggie and Gage Bell, having been run out of their house as it was fully occupied for some fall festival in Charleston. Their parents ran a bed and breakfast in their old family estate.
“Did you see those pictures of Skye Jessamine?” one of the knitters clucked with disapproval.
Edie Green Wecker, a childhood friend of the family who had moved back to Shadows Landing a couple of years ago after her Navy Seal husband had been killed, shook her head. “It’s horrible. Someone invaded that poor woman’s privacy and then probably sold the photos to every news source they could. How would you like it if someone took a picture of you in the shower and then spread it across the world?”
Edie cast him a quick glance, knowing Trent was so over this discussion. He couldn’t look on social media. He couldn’t turn on the television. He couldn’t go anywhere without talk of Skye, and each time his heart broke for her. He might be mad she’d had her lackey cast him off, but that didn’t mean she deserved this.
Skeeter leaned over to see around Trent and talk to the knitting club. “I swear I see her everywhere.”
The knitting club agreed and broke out into a debate with Skeeter, Turtle, and Gator about Skye and her relationship with Mason Hemming.
Edie stood up and quietly left the table to join Trent. “I assume you know everything?” Trent asked as he dropped his voice. People in town knew he’d built Skye’s table, but they didn’t know about her assistant flying out here and about the night they shared. Nondisclosure be damned, his family knew something personal had happened, he’d had to sign the NDA, and now Skye was texting him.
“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. Now mine was taken from me, but yours is right there—”
“Right there if I just reach out and talk to her,” Trent said with a sigh. How many times did he have to hear it? Maybe it was finally time to suck it up and talk to her.
Edie shot from her chair and pointed out the window. “No, right there!”
“I’m exhausted,” Karri groaned as she parked the car a block from Main Street in Shadows Landing. “There’s this great diner up