Love to Hate You (Hope Valley #9) - Jessica Prince Page 0,93

the straps so tight her knuckles were white. “I just . . . I don’t mean to interrupt—”

“No interruption at all, ma’am,” Leo insisted, pointing to the chair beside his desk. “Would you like to have a seat.”

“No, I won’t be here long. I just wanted to come in and tell you . . . well, thank you. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for pushing until you got to the truth.” She stopped to sniffle as her eyes grew glassy. “It won’t bring him back,” she rasped, “and my girls and I will still miss him, but . . . this helps. You got justice for Darrin, and that really helps. So . . . thank you.”

She moved before either of us could speak, surprising me by leaning down and giving me a quick hug. She did the same to Leo, then stood tall and gave us a watery smile. “I’m grateful for you both. Now, I’ll let you get back to your job.”

With that, she turned and started toward the exit, and as I watched her disappear down the stairs, I felt as if a weight had just been lifted from my chest. Because I knew, with the people of this town at their back, she and her girls were going to be all right.

Hayden

Four months later

My body no longer experienced the same aches and pains it had when I first started taking pole lessons with McKenna, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still stiff as I climbed out of my car and started up the front walk.

After weeks of poking and prodding, I’d finally convinced Charlie to come with me today—or more to the point, I threatened to drag her out of her house by her hair if she didn’t agree, and I had to say, it rankled a bit that she turned out to be a complete natural while I was still flopping around like a toddler who was trying to walk and eat an ice cream cone at the same time.

It had been months since she nearly died trying to save me, and with every day that passed, we grew closer. She’d been hesitant at first, attempting to push me away, but I’d been persistent. She was a woman who meant something to Micah, but what was more, she’d become a woman who meant something to me, then to my family.

Charlie was good to her very core, it didn’t take much to see that, and I wanted to do everything I could to give her as much good as possible, so I gave her me, Micah, Ivy, and Sylvia. Once she accepted that—not that she had much of a choice since my baby girl was as persistent as me, and she’d taken an instant shine to Charlie—I gave her my friends. They’d accepted her with open arms, and she was officially part of our crew.

What I couldn’t give her, no matter how hard I tried—and I’d tried really freaking hard—was Dalton. The man was crazy about her, but the woman had put a wall around herself that rivaled the ones of a maximum security prison, and she wasn’t having any of it. Micah liked to call me stubborn, but I was nothing compared to her.

My man told me over and over to leave it alone, but I’d seen the way she watched him when she didn’t think any of us were looking. There was something there, and for Charlie’s sake, the rest of the girls were determined to see this through.

No matter how much she fought us on it.

“I’m home,” I said as I closed the front door behind me. I hung my purse on the hook by the door and pulled off my coat and scarf, doing the same with them.

“Hello?” I called when I didn’t get any kind of reply.

It was Micah’s day off, which meant he’d kept Ivy home from daycare because he liked having those days, just the two of them. It had become their thing ever since he’d moved in with us three months earlier.

“Where is everybody?” I asked the silence as I moved down the hall. The kitchen was empty, but a glow from outside the window caught my attention, and when I turned to look, I lost my breath.

Moving to the back door, I pulled it open and stepped onto the porch, lifting a hand to my lips as I took in all the beauty around me.

There were fairy lights strung up everywhere, from the garden