Page 59 of Carry on Wayward Son

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s find Shane Tatum.”

Her shoulders released a fraction—tension she’d been holding in case she had to fight me on it. She’d been ready for an argument, and I hadn’t given her one. That mattered to her in a way I was starting to understand.

She picked up the mug, drank the rest of the tea, and set it on the table. Then she reached for her laptop.

I went back out to the truck for mine.

Thirty

LAYLA

Somehow I had not expected Madden to have a Mastiff mix who made Koa look like a medium-sized dog. Moonpie was an absolute lover, with the slow, easy gait of a dog who believed everyone existed to adore him. Which Madden clearly did. She was his person, as evidenced by how he’d sprawled across her feet, going belly up for rubs with the absolute certainty they were coming. Her usually serious features relaxed into something soft as she obliged.

Roy was romping in the backyard with Bree’s dog, Keeley, and I’d regained enough control since yesterday that Koa had deigned to stretch out by the baseboard heater vent. My other de facto guardian hadn’t gone any further.

Jace had spent the past twenty-four hours seldom more than ten feet away from me. He’d understood I needed to work, to keep moving forward. I’d come to understand that he needed to protect me. Even as we’d retreated to our own corners of the cottage living room to work, he’d found subtle reasons to be near me, many of which had involved a constant supply of warm beverages. He delivered most of them without comment, just silently bringing a fresh cup to replace the empty one. It was so precise and patient, and so completely without demand that it had taken me until mid-afternoon to understand what he was doing.

He was checking on me the way Koa checked on me. Continual low-level monitoring. Presence without pressure.

The realization had almost made me smile. Almost. Except I knew what to do with Koa. I had no idea how to handle what was happening with Jace. It was one thing to work with him. It was another to take him to my bed. But letting him take care of me? That was something else entirely. Something a whole lot terrifying and, I suspected, that had the potential to be rather wonderful, if I were brave enough to let it happen.

All of it was too much for me to sort through while also trying to do my job. So right now I’d keep my focus on the case and my stomach.

It was takeout for our confab tonight at Madden and Rios’s place. An astonishing array of Indian curries, crisp pakoras, and mouthwatering garlic naan that were unexpected on an island of this size. The counter was covered in containers, but we hadn’t started yet because Rios hadn’t made it home from work.

“How long have you had this big softie?” I asked.

Madden scratched behind one enormous ear, and Moonpie’s back leg started kicking. “Since the end of the summer. Willa was fostering him.”

“And I was well on my way to being a foster fail, too,” Willa admitted. “But he decided Madden was his person.”

“Without my having any say in the matter,” Madden grinned.

“He sat on her feet for three hours the first time she came over,” Willa said. “She was done after about forty minutes, but she stayed because she didn’t want to disturb him.”

“He’s very heavy,” Madden said. “It seemed rude to move him.”

I looked at the dog spread across her feet like a small bear rug, completely blissful. “Did you have dogs growing up?”

“God, no. My mother considered them a hygiene issue.” She said it without bitterness, just the flat delivery of fact. “I’ve spent most of my adult life in apartments. A dog was never practical.”

“And now?”

“Now I live on an island, and apparently nothing I thought about myself is accurate.” She scratched Moonpie’s ear again. “He’s good for me. He makes me stop.”

I understood that. The way an animal could anchor you to the present in ways nothing else quite managed. “Koa does that for me. I trained him for it, technically, but he figured out the rest on his own.”

Madden glanced at my baby where he stretched out by the baseboard heater, eyes half-closed, monitoring me even in his apparent sleep. “What’s the French for?”

“He responds better to it. Cleaner commands, less ambient noise to confuse them.” That was all true and yet wasn’t the full truth.

She absorbed that without pressing on it, which I appreciated. “Where are you from originally? Before Orcas Island.”

After so many years, the deflection was natural and automatic. Always ask people about themselves and give as little away as possible. But I’d already admitted I’d been in this part of the country years ago when I was taken. “North Carolina. But I’ve been on Orcas since I was a teenager. It’s home. You?”

Madden’s quiet, penetrating look told me she hadn’t missed the evasion. Of course she hadn’t. She was a former prosecutor. But hopefully she believed it was just because my Before was traumatic and I didn’t have any desire to revisit it. Also true.

“Here. Left for college, then law school, then California. I was gone until this past summer.”