Page 96 of The Lonely Road

“Your stomach lining will come off,” he tells me when he whines.

“But you’re okay with ours coming off?” Mav looks suspiciously at his cup.

“You’re a young strapping man,” Amos says casually and runs his hand over the cashmere blanket. “They’ve improved standards here.”

“I brought that,” Joy immediately announces. “Because Mac is special.”

Amos grins. “Darlin’, when I’m here half concussed, I hope you’ll do the same for me.”

Mac holds court from the bed.

He couldn’t sleep. He needed to check some files. The window. He went to look. He didn’t run fast enough. When he’s done, there’s a moment of silence because everyone is pissed as hell that this happened in Wildflower Canyon to one of us.

“He didn’t touch the beadwork,” he tells me because he knows it’s important to me.

“I know.”

“Would’ve protected it, Taya,” he adds.

I smile. “I know.”

Across the room, Mason disappears.

One moment he’s near the door, the next he’s not, and when I look into the corridor, I can see him at the far end near the stairwell, talking to Kaz Chase.

They’re standing close, not touching, both facing the same direction—the posture of two men having a conversation they don’t want to be overheard.

I watch them for a moment.

Kaz says something. Mason goes very still.

Then Mason nods once.

I leave them be, despite my curiosity. He’ll tell me if he wants to—or I’ll find out from Bree, who will find out from Kaz. She has her ways.

Hugh Dillon arrives around noon.

He talks to me, writes things down, and leaves again. He tells me before he goes that forensics will be done with the office by tomorrow morning.

“You can have it back on Thursday. There’ll be some cleaning needed.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I can send someone⁠—”

“I’ve got it.” Mason has reappeared in the doorway. Kaz isn’t with him.

Hugh looks at him. Then at me. He asks nothing.

“You can use my back office.” Joy puts a hand on my arm. “For client meetings. The space off the stockroom. It’s not fancy, but it’s private.”

“I have an office you’re welcome to,” Mav interjects, his eyes on his phone. “Main Street, two doors north of the steakhouse. I own the property. Nobody is in it right now.”

That’s prime property.

He looks up from the phone. “It’s empty. You’d be doing me a favor using it.” He says it with complete flatness, which is how Mav offers things—as if his generosity were actually a practical solution, and it would be inefficient to refuse.

“Your clients would have to walk through mannequins in lingerie to get to Joy’s back office,” Mac says from the bed. “I’d take Mav’s.”