Page 23 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

Case’s expression had lost its usual theatrical brightness. He knew enough to understand why my hands had gone cold around the phone, but not enough for me to drag him into questions we couldn’t answer yet.

“She said she’ll talk?” he asked.

“After six. Somewhere private.”

Case nodded. “Then go. I’m officially releasing you from restaurant-rescue duty before somebody discovers another emergency.”

I glanced toward the dining room. “Are you sure?”

“The appetizer station is no longer trying to murder the servers, the bar menu makes sense, and I have successfully prevented anyone from moving furniture for almost twenty minutes.” His mouth curved. “We’re thriving.”

The laugh he wanted from me came, although my nerves were still wound too tightly for it to last.

Rex took my coat from the back of the chair and held it while I slipped my arms into it. His hand settled briefly at the middle of my back afterward, warm and steady through the fabric.

“We’ve got time,” he said. “We’ll go through what we know before you call her.”

I looked up at him. He hadn’t said what we suspected or what we wanted Meredith to say. He’d said what we knew.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Cold rain had started while we were inside, fine enough to look almost silver beneath the Lantern House awning but sharp against my cheeks once we stepped beyond it. The downtown storefronts had begun turning on their evening lights even though it was only midafternoon. Orange bulbs wound around the bakery window across the street, and the carved pumpkins outside the hardware store glowed from inside, their faces reflected in the rain-dark sidewalk.

Rex opened the truck for me before circling to the driver’s side. By the time he got in, I had Meredith’s message open again.

He started the engine and gave me enough time to read it for what had to be the tenth time before he pulled away from the curb.

“I’m going to wear out the words if I keep staring at them,” I said.

“You’d have better luck wearing out the phone.”

I turned it facedown on my thigh. “I know she only agreed to a conversation. I’m trying very hard not to turn that into a confession, a map to Gavin, and seven years of answers before we even get home.”

Rex checked the crosswalk before turning onto the road out of downtown. “You know more now than you knew an hour ago. That’s enough reason to be wound up without deciding what comes next.”

His answer did what I was beginning to notice Rex did exceptionally well. It gave me something solid without telling me how I was supposed to feel about it.

We left the denser part of town behind, climbing into the quieter roads where houses sat farther apart beneath the trees. The rain blurred the mountain slopes into layered shades of gray, and water gathered in the shallow roadside ditches. Inside the truck, the heater pushed warm air across my boots while the windshield wipers kept a steady rhythm.

I watched Rex drive and remembered how differently I had seen him seven years ago.

Back then he had been the man looking for Gavin. I had known his name, his size, the sound of his voice on our porch, and almost nothing else that mattered. He had occupied the same mental space as court dates, overdue notices, and every adult who wanted an answer I couldn’t give.

Now I knew he bought groceries as though a refrigerator could be stocked through optimism and noticed when I skipped meals. I knew he would move a banquet table without assuming that made him qualified to run a restaurant. I knew how his hand felt at my waist and how much I wanted it there again.

That was an alarming amount of revised information for less than two days.

Rex glanced toward me at a stop sign. “What?”

“Nothing.”

His eyebrows lifted.

“I was thinking you’ve become considerably more complicated since I was twenty-one.”

“That sounds inconvenient.”

I smiled at the quiet humor in his voice. “It is.”