Page 16 of Shadow Burn

“I’m fine. Everything’s great.”

“You are not fine. They sent you to Montana to read an old guy’s memoirs.”

Katherine sighed. “I’m fine enough. I had a productive day.”

“Reading papers?”

Katherine took a breath, the memory of Jasper’s smile making her pulse kick. “Yes. I’ve hired a research assistant. A consultant, really. He’s helping me sort through the papers more efficiently.”

There was a small, suspicious silence on Emma’s end. “A consultant?”

“Yes. He’s good with computers, which, as you know, I’m not.”

“So he’s some computer geek who lives in his mom’s basement.”

“Definitely not. He’s…interesting.”

“You never mention the people you work with. You’re mentioning him—a guy with a computer. Not exactly your type.”

“I don’t have a type.”

“You certainly do.”

She did, and they both knew it. Unfortunately, her type was a rare creature.

Katherine fiddled with the hem of her shirt and huffed. “He’s less of a tech-bro and more of a, I don’t know, a thinker. He respects paper. His mother was a librarian. He’s going to be useful.”

Emma’s tone was amused. “Useful.”

“Yes.”

“Is he cute?”

Of course she would try to turn into romance. “Goodbye, Emma.”

“Oh, come on, Kat. Let me live a little through you. Tell me one thing about him.”

Katherine sighed again, more theatrically this time, the way she had sighed at her sister since they were both children. “I told you, he’s interesting. That is all I’m saying.”

Emma laughed, the laugh that always sounded a little like their mother’s. Katherine hadn’t heard that sound in nearly a month. “Get some sleep,” Emma said. “Love you, sis.”

“Love you back,” Katherine said, and ended the call, a silly smile on her face.

She went to the bathroom to wash up for bed and stopped at the sight of her reflection.

Her cheeks were flushed. Two warm patches across the cheekbones that had nothing to do with the temperature of the rental and everything to do with the fact that just talking about Jasper made her blush. She pressed a cold washcloth against her face for a count of ten and waited for the color to fade. It didn’t.

She got into bed and pulled the burgundy notebook into her lap to make a list of things to check tomorrow. She wrote Caldwell follow-up and Vance trips ’98-’00, and she’d just started a third line when Priss leaped onto the bed with too much enthusiasm, skidded across the comforter, and tumbled back off onto her own face on the other side. The cat’s outraged trill at her own miscalculation cracked the air.

Katherine laughed the same surprised laugh from the library.

The cat was okay and the sound made her remember the slow smile that had crossed Jasper’s face when she’d laughed at his joke this morning. As Priss made a second attempt at the bed and landed it this time, Katherine set down the notebook because she just wanted to remember Jasper’s smile.

Priss recovered her dignity by climbing into the crook of Katherine’s arm and beginning to clean her leg. A heartbeat later, she began purring.

“We are not doing this,” Katherine told her.

Priss purred louder.