ate quietly, Anahera thought. Methodically. As if it was a task that had to be completed, as if the taste of the food meant nothing to him. Anahera might’ve been insulted except that she knew she was a good cook even when limited to packet sauce and the basic spices she’d picked up at the Lees’ supermarket.
However, she had the feeling she could’ve put a cordon bleu meal in front of the cop and he’d have eaten it the same way. This wasn’t a man who took time to enjoy the small pleasures of life.
Had he been born like that, or had life changed him, made him into this?
If she had to guess, she’d say the latter. No one was born without the capacity for joy in the soul. Life leached it out of them, drop by drop.
Lifting up her glass, she took a deliberate sip of the wine. The smell of alcohol used to make her throw up, but she’d refused to be held hostage to the past and to her father’s addictions. So she’d taught herself to enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed—in small doses.
Edward had helped; he’d introduced her to a whole new world of fine wines and decadent cocktails. Before that, all she’d known was the cheap plonk you could get down at the local supermarket. But no matter how good the wine, Anahera had never felt the desire to overindulge. To do so would be to spit on her mother’s ashes and that was the one thing Anahera would never do.
“This is really good.” Will’s voice was steady, his eyes watchful.
Anahera was near-certain he was trying to make the kind of conversation he thought he should make. “You eat like it’s fuel,” she said, her tolerance for bullshit at an all-time low. “Are you sure you even tasted it?”
The face that looked back at her wasn’t expressionless as much as opaque. Controlled. Probably a good skill to cultivate when you were in a line of work that involved interrogating suspects. “I tasted it,” he said evenly.
But Anahera was no longer thinking about the food. “Am I a suspect?” It wasn’t something she’d considered, given how recently she’d returned to Golden Cove, but by that same token, Will didn’t know her, had no reason to rule her out. “Is that why you asked me to watch people and report back? So you could compare my report with someone else’s and see if I lied?”
He held her gaze with the flinty, unforgiving gray of his. His eyes reminded her of the ocean on a perfectly still day before a storm—it might appear calm, but turbulent currents dragged underneath. “You have a good imagination,” he said mildly.
Anahera narrowed her eyes. “Don’t try that tone of voice on me.” It came out cold, flat. “I was married to a man who grew up in the British public-school system.” It had taken her time to get her head around that—that what the English called public schools were actually exclusive private schools. “If you want to play the unemotional-tone game, I can do it as well as you.” She demonstrated with her last sentence, saw his eyes wrinkle slightly at the corners in response.
He took his time answering. “Kyle Baker is of the opinion that you ran back to Golden Cove with your tail between your legs because you couldn’t hack life in the outside world.”
That, Anahera hadn’t been expecting. Eyebrows drawing together, she did what he’d done and took a drink before answering. “He was very respectful at the meeting this afternoon,” she said. “Even made a special effort to welcome me back to Golden Cove.” Anahera thought back, recalling his apparent discomfort with the situation, the way he’d shrugged and moved his feet.
“Kyle is a little psychopath.” This time the flatness of the words was hard, the edge of a blade. “It took me this long to see it and I’ve had experience with the personality type. He does a very good job of covering it up with charm, and with his perfect, shining golden boy act.”
Putting down her wine, Anahera leaned forward with her arms braced on the table her mother had found on the side of the road and polished back up by hand. “You sound sure.”
Chewing and swallowing a bite of bread he’d just torn off with his teeth, Will said, “He’s decided I’m not worth cultivating—I think it gives him a perverse thrill to expose himself to me. He knows no one