Page 46 of Crowe
Jackson looked at his watch and nodded. “Okay, tell them we’ll start in twenty.”
“You got it.” Bobby smiled at me and then headed out the front door.
“So you know, there’s an assortment of teas in the drawer under the coffee pot. I don’t have a tea kettle out here, so you would have to heat the water in the microwave.”
“Thanks. You don’t have to stay in here with me. I’ll be fine.” I pulled out an edge piece of the puzzle and set it aside.
“I know, but I’m just getting all my notes from yesterday finished.”
“You take notes?”
“Sure. Most of the time, their departments pay for this training, so if they want a report, I want to be able to provide that. Besides, we have some groups that come each year, and we like to track the progress.”
“That makes sense.”
I went back to my puzzle, and he went back to work on his reports. It felt so peaceful and normal I could almost forget therewas a narcissistic rich asshole out there thinking he owned me.Almost.
I’d been sorting edge pieces for about ten minutes when Jackson’s phone buzzed on the counter. He looked at it, and something moved across his face. Not alarm, something warmer than that and more surprised.
“What?” I said.
He turned the phone so I could see the screen. A gate camera notification—a truck I didn’t recognize—and below it a text from Bobby that said:your brother’s here.
Jackson stared at it for a moment. Then he set the phone down and looked at the door with an expression I’d never seen on him before. It was pure happiness, and it was there for exactly two seconds before he remembered himself and schooled his features.
The front door opened.
The man in the doorway was taller than Jackson by maybe half an inch, lighter in build, with brown hair and hazel eyes. He was looking at Jackson with a grin that was entirely unguarded.
“Surprise,” Wyatt said.
“You couldn’t call?” Jackson said.
“I could have. Where’s the fun in that?” He dropped his bag by the door and crossed to his brother, and they did the thing brothers did—a brief, solid embrace, a hand on the back of the neck, and then apart again, both of them pretending it had been casual.
“What are you doing here?” Jackson asked.
“You needed an expert in hostage negotiation, so here I am.”
“I hired Bryson Tanner for that job.”
Wyatt made a what can you do gesture. “Wolfe called me last week and said you were on vacation and your expert fell through, so he offered to fly me in.”
“I talked to you on the phone from the cabin, you could have told me then.”
“I could have, but again… where’s the fun in that?”
I was just sitting there watching them, grinning at the way they were together, when Wyatt looked past Jackson at me, and his expression shifted into something that was undisguised interest.
“Well,” he said. “You must be Noah.”
I set down the puzzle piece I was holding. “And you must be Wyatt.”
He grinned. “Jackson talked about me.”
“Jackson mentioned you existed,” I teased.
He laughed, surprised and genuine, and headed straight for the coffee maker with the ease of someone who’d been in this kitchen before. “That tracks.”
