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Of all the people in the world he could have been stuck with, it had to be her.
Not that he had anything against Rhiannon, not really. She was just… unexpected. And in his line of work, unexpected could be dangerous.
Add in the fact that she had lingered on the edge of his consciousness ever since Rylan first mentioned her, and his discomfort about the whole situation grew. He’d never met her, but he’d heard enough about her resilience, her compassion, and her patience to know that she was exactly the kind of woman he liked. And the type of woman he steadfastly avoided. She would see right through his stoic facade and stealthily, unintentionally sneak past the guards around his corroded heart, and nobody needed to be anywhere near that sad, shriveled organ.
Especially not Rhiannon Cross.
She was everything that was good and light and kind, and he didn’t want to poison her with his darkness.
Even before he’d decided to leave Steam Valley, he’d planned to make himself scarce during her visit. With the way he’d clung to any scrap of information Rylan shared about her, he’d known that proximity would be dangerous.
Yet now, here they were.
Trapped together in this dusty hovel of a gift shop, surrounded by strangers who looked to them for comfort and direction– and he was unable to provide either.
His gaze drifted back to Rhiannon. She was still comforting the boy, Michael, making soothing noises as she rocked him in her arms. Her hair was dust-streaked, the normally rich color of her chocolate-brown locks dull under layers of dust, and dirt smeared her cheeks, but the gentle way she held the frightened boy, the calm reassurance in her eyes as she communicated with him... it was beautiful.
Jesus. She was just as perfect as Rylan had said.
The look in her green-gold eyes when she glanced his way caused something strange to twist in his gut—an uneasy mixture of dread and… longing?
Pierce quickly looked away and focused back on the crowd of frightened people.
“Are we going to suffocate?” The Japanese family’s teenage daughter asked, her faintly accented voice shaking. Next to her, her younger brother was crying.
“What if there’s another earthquake?” one of the younger gift shop workers asked, his face pale with fear.
Rhiannon held up a hand, pleading for calm. “We’re not going to suffocate,” she assured them but then looked at him again with a question in her gaze this time.
He nodded and signed,“The air is still circulating. We’re not going to suffocate.”
She exhaled in relief.
“Can we do anything to open the entrance? Dig out?” one of the trio of single men asked. He had wide shoulders, long hair slicked back into a low ponytail, and a chin covered in a thin layer of blond stubble.
Something about the guy set off Pierce’s internal alarms. There were people after him—dangerous people who would stop at nothing to find him. He knew too much, had seen too much, and they’d already tried to kill him once. He was too big of a liability for them to leave him alive. And he knew they were closing in. It was the whole reason he’d decided to leave Steam Valley—to protect his friends.
Could Ponytail, here, be one of them?
He regarded the man with a measured gaze, quietly cataloging this new potential threat.
No, he decided. Ponytail wasn’t the kind of man they’d send. He didn’t have the predatory edge, that lingering aura of menace that came with a lifetime spent in the shadows. He was just an asshole.
Still, Pierce’s internal alarm was blaring. Maybe Ponytail wasn’t the trouble, but there was trouble here, so he signed to Rhiannon,“Pretend I’m deaf.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and shifted Michael to her hip so she could sign.“Why?”
“People talk freely when they don’t think you can hear them.”
Now, a crease formed between those pretty, narrowed eyes.“You don’t trust him.”
“I don’t trust anyone. Find out his name. And tell him we can’t dig out without risking a total collapse.”
“What’s he saying?” Ponytail demanded.
After a beat of hesitation, she turned back to the man. “I asked him about digging out. He says it’s too unstable, and we could risk a cave-in. Then he asked your name.”
The man eyed Pierce with an unimpressed glare. He crossed his arms over his wide chest, his brows furrowing in suspicion. “Name’s Dean. What makes the deaf guy an expert in landslides?”
