Page 109 of The Best Shot

“All right.” His voice gentled, but his eyes didn’t. “Come here. Come back to me.”

I stepped into him again, and this time he gathered me in carefully, one arm high around my shoulders, the other low at my waist, nowhere near the hurt place.

“I was going to make you dinner,” I said into his shirt, like that mattered now. “I got dressed up.”

“I see that.” He held me a little closer. “You look beautiful, darlin’.”

It wasn’t how I’d wanted to hear it. But I took it anyway.

I buried my face against his chest and let the tears come.

He asked for nothing else. He only held me.

The steaks went cold on the counter. The wine sat untouched.

The candle burned all the way down.

31

“DOLORES IS GOING TO LOVE IT.”

HALE

She was pissed at me. I didn’t know why.

I’d spent the past week trying to take care of her after I found her quiet and shaking in her living room. I hadn’t known what the hell else to do that night except pull her against me and keep my mouth shut.

Yasmine cried easy. I knew that about her. She cried at sad songs, the wrong kind of movie ending, old couples holding hands. Little things that caught her soft and left her laughing at herself a minute later. She never made a production of it.

That night was different.

That night she held on like the ground had given out beneath her.

I’d put the food away, ordered takeout instead and spent the night with her tucked against me in sheets that smelled like birchwood. She didn’t tell me what happened. What he’d said to break her down like that. What finally slipped past the shield she’d built around herself. But I could guess.

Shaun and I were going to have words.

A man could be angry. A man could be scared. A man could be stupid enough to burn his whole life down and still swear he was the injured party.

What he could not do was put his hands on a woman in her own home.

He was still a child in too many of the ways that counted, and I’d been inclined to give him grace. Not anymore.

In the morning her mother called and I took the phone out of her hand before she could answer.

“She’ll just show up here if I don’t pick up,” she said.

“Then pack a bag. Come stay with me for a while.”

She hesitated.

“Dolores misses you,” I coaxed.

“Dolores hates me.”

“Then it’s time you worked on that relationship.” I smiled and touched a finger to her chin. “Come away with me.”

She nodded. “I’ll get a few things.”