Page 19 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

“Most Sundays.” He sipped his coffee.

“I don’t remember that.”

“We were kids. You weren’t always there.” He turned his mug on the table, watching steam curl off it. “Your mom used to make us split them so we’d stop.”

“That sounds like her.”

A silence opened up that wasn’t uncomfortable. The diner noise rolled on around them, griddle hissing, the bell over the door going off twice.

Hudson met her eyes for the first time since Louisa had walked away. “All that time. And she still remembered how I take a sandwich.”

“People remember things.” Sarah held her mug as if she needed somewhere to put her hands that wasn’t anywhere near him. “You always ordered that.” She said it so quietly he almost lost it beneath the diner noise. “The sandwich. I remember now. You’d order it and Wyatt would make some comment about you ruining good cheese and you’d just—” She stopped. Started again, smaller. “I just remember you ordering it.”

“You said you didn’t remember the cinnamon roll thing.”

“I don’t.” She finally looked up, her expression careful. “I remember the sandwich.”

Her words jolted through him. His thumb pressed into the ceramic mug hard enough to feel the heat through it.

Louisa set the plates between them and was gone again before either of them objected—the ham and cheddar sandwich, the soup steaming, cornbread with butter melting into a slick, golden pool across the top.

Sarah’s attention shifted to the window. The street outside. Anywhere that wasn’t him. Her soup sat untouched.

Hudson waited a few seconds. “Eat.”

Her eyes slid back to him. “Excuse me?”

“Louisa will take it personally.”

For a second, she looked like she might argue. She shook her head. “You haven’t changed.”

“Haven’t I?”

“No.”

She took a spoonful of soup. “Still think you can solve most problems by telling people to eat.”

His laugh caught him by surprise.

Sarah’s spoon paused halfway to her mouth. For a fraction of a second, she just looked at him, recalibrating something. She covered it quickly and returned to her soup.

He exhaled a slow breath. Only then did he take a bite of his sandwich.

Around them the diner carried on without them—plates clattering, coffee pouring, Louisa scolding somebody about pie.

Sarah remembered the sandwich.

Such a tiny thing.

Meaningless.

Right?

8

The cold hit differently after the warmth of the diner. Sarah pulled her collar up and told herself that was why her face felt warm.

She was the sheriff. She had a case, a jurisdiction, a badge that meant something, and a man beside her who was very possibly about to walk back out of her life the same way he’d walked out of it the first time. None of that was complicated. All of it should have been enough.