Page 77 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

I held out my hand. “You don’t have to sort them tonight.”

Georgia took it and stepped closer until our joined hands rested between us. “I know.”

“What about you?” she asked. “You kept his file for seven years. That has to feel like something.”

I considered the question before answering.

“It feels good to know I wasn’t wrong that the disappearance didn’t fit. It feels better that he’s alive and that the case might finally be looked at with the whole timeline.” I rubbed my thumb over the side of her hand. “Mostly, I’m ready for it to stop being my problem.”

Georgia’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“I think that may be the healthiest thing I’ve heard you say since I met you.”

I opened her door. “You met me seven years ago.”

She paused with one hand on the doorframe and looked back at me. “I’m grading only the current version.”

The smile that followed was small but easier.

She climbed into the truck, and by the time I got behind the wheel, some of the strain had gone out of her shoulders.

The drive back to my property passed mostly in silence, but it was not empty silence. Georgia took off her coat and folded it across her lap. A few miles outside town, her hand settled on the center console between us. I covered it with mine when the road straightened.

She turned her palm upward and threaded our fingers together.

We stayed that way until I needed both hands for a wet curve in the road.

The Halloween lights thinned as we climbed away from downtown. Houses sat farther apart beneath the dark pines, their porch pumpkins and orange strings appearing briefly through the trees before falling behind us. The pavement still shone from the earlier rain, and leaves flashed in the headlights whenever the wind pushed them across the road.

Georgia rested her head against the seat.

By the time my driveway came into view, the Lantern House felt like another world.

The light above the field-office door cast a pale circle over the gravel. Her loft windows were dark.

Georgia looked toward the stairs, then at my house.

“Your place?”

“Yes.” I parked, and neither of us said anything about the loft.

Inside, I turned on the living-room lamp instead of the overhead lights. The warmer pool of light reached into the kitchen without making the house feel too bright after hours beneath restaurant lighting.

Georgia set the little crown beside my keys on the counter.

The sight of it stopped me.

Four days ago, the same counter had held takeout containers, mail, and almost nothing that suggested another person belonged anywhere in the house. Now Georgia’s groceries filled part of my refrigerator. A dish towel she preferred hung from the oven handle. One of her hair ties had been abandoned near the sink that morning.

The crown should have looked ridiculous, but instead it looked like one more thing of hers in my space.

I filled two glasses with water and handed one over.

Georgia drank deeply, then leaned her hip against the counter. Most of the deep red lipstick had disappeared during the night, and her eyeliner had smudged slightly beneath one eye. Her hair had escaped its earlier styling around her face, thick waves falling over the shoulders of the red-and-black costume.

She looked exhausted, but she also looked so good that the attraction I had been ignoring for hours returned with enough force to make my body tighten.

Georgia noticed. Her gaze moved down my black shirt before returning to my face.