Love to Hate You (Hope Valley #9) - Jessica Prince Page 0,11
Christ’s sake, Charlie, pull back. Let us get you out of there.”
“Not yet,” she demanded. “I can do this, Micah. I’m seeing this through to the end. That woman goes to sleep each night without her husband beside her,” she bit out, speaking of Darrin’s widow, Sidney Callo. “And his two babies probably won’t even remember their dad when they’re grown up. These asshole’s need to pay for that, if nothing else.”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, with Leo at my side, scanning the crowd to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. Squeezing my eyes closed, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a beleaguered sigh. In the months we’d been working with Charlie, I’d developed a tight-knit relationship with the prickly woman. She wasn’t a typical CI. She’d become like a sister to me, and the more tangled up she’d got in this mess, the more I stressed. “They’re going down, Charlie. You have my word on that. But it’s not gonna help anyone if you get hurt or dead in the process. I get you have some demons of your own, but this isn’t how you work them out of your system, sweetheart.”
“This has nothing to do with me,” she clipped, that hardness I was so used to coming back into her voice, only now it was directed at me. “I’m not trying to rewrite my past or whatever bullshit you think this is. It’s about right and wrong, plain and simple. I’m in a position to help, so I’m going to help.”
“Goddamn it,” I gritted.
“Deal with it, Langford. And keep an eye on Cormack. I’ll call if I hear anything, and you do the same.”
Before I could get another word out, she disconnected, leaving me standing there pissed and worried out of my mind.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” I grunted, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. I started toward Muffin Top, careful to make my strides easy and calm despite the tempest swirling inside of me.
“What’ve you got?” Leo asked under his breath.
“A headache and a whole lot of nothin’ else, that’s what,” I seethed. “She says Cormack’s freaked, closing ranks, but not sure what’s got him that way.”
Leo’s brows sank into an unhappy V. “And let me guess. She’s not pullin’ back.”
“You know that woman as well as I do. What do you think?”
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. He was close with her too, and the level of responsibility we felt for her welllbeing wasn’t something either of us took lightly.
“Exactly. So now we gotta watch him, see if he suspects anything’s happening, and keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get dead.”
“God deliver me from hardheaded women,” he sighed just as we reached his woman’s shop.
The smell of sugar and coffee filled the air but did little to touch the anxiety churning in my gut. “Don’t let Dani hear you say that. She’ll cut me off simply out of association with you, and if I lose out on her coffee or pastries there’s a good chance my head will explode.”
Trying my best to shake off the discomfort clinging to my shoulders, I pasted on my charming smile, like it was just any other day, and pulled the door open. I needed coffee now more than ever. Along with a shot of bourbon.
Chapter Four
Hayden
“So, baby girl, what do you think?” I asked, looking back at Ivy through my rearview mirror.
“It’s so pretty!” she squealed excitedly.
She wasn’t wrong about that. I hadn’t been here often—less than a handful in the past decade since my husband hadn’t been a big fan of my eccentric great-aunt Sylvia—but I was no stranger to this small town. Even then, I never got over how beautiful Hope Valley was. Each visit had been like seeing it for the first time, and as I drove through the main drag just then, it was no different.
After lecturing me for what felt like an eternity about loosening my grip on my husband so that he slipped through my fingers—their words—my parents had insisted Ivy and I move in with them when everything in my life had fallen to shit. That was completely out of the question. I loved them, but our relationship had been frayed for as long as I could remember. Though we’d lived in the same city, we didn’t see each other on a regular basis. In fact, I’d gone out of my way not to attend family dinners and the like. They were impossible to