Page 32 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"Eli."

"It's a fair question."

"It's really not."

Rafe doesn't flinch. "I'd save your mom first, and then I'd go back for Biscuit, and I'd probably get yelled at by both of them for taking the risk twice instead of just once."

Eli studies him for a long moment, weighing that answer against some internal rubric only an eight-year-old has access to, and finally nods like Rafe's passed something significant.

"Last question," Eli says, consulting the paper one more time. "If you make my mom cry, what happens to you?"

"That's not actually a question. That's a threat with a question mark on it."

"It's both. Answer it."

Rafe crouches down so he's closer to eye level, and something about the gesture, unhurried and completely serious, makes my chest go tight in a way I wasn't prepared for on an ordinary evening on my own porch. "If I ever make your mom cry for a bad reason, you have my full permission to hold me accountable for it. Whatever that looks like to you."

"I'm eight. I don't have a lot of leverage."

"You've got more than you think. You've got a checklist and a dog the size of a small horse who already likes you better than he likes me most days."

Eli considers this, apparently satisfied by the honesty of it, and folds the paper back up. "That's an acceptable answer." He tucks it into his pocket like a badge of office. "You may proceed."

"Wait," Josie says, hopping down from the railing. "The shirt's wrong."

"What's wrong with the shirt?"

"It's the same one you wear at the brewery. You should wear the blue one. It makes your eyes do the thing." She says it with total confidence, the same tone she uses to diagnose a wobbly picnic table or a poorly hung banner, and I watch a grown man who once walked toward gunfire for a living actually go back inside to change his shirt because an eight-year-old told him to.

"Did you put them up to this?" he asks me quietly, once he's back, now correctly attired according to Josie's standards.

"I had nothing to do with the checklist. I take full credit for raising kids who ask good questions, though."

"They're better interrogators than half the people I served with."

I laugh, and the sound of it surprises me, easy and unguarded in a way I haven't managed on a doorstep in ages. Watching a man who survived actual combat get cross-examined by an eight-year-old with a printed checklist, and answer every question like his life depends on it, might be the most romantic thing I've seen in a decade. I don't even try to talk myself out of that on the drive over.

The restaurant's a small place outside town, wood-paneled and half empty, the kind of spot that doesn't advertise because it doesn't need to. Rafe picked it on purpose, I can tell, someplace quiet enough that we might actually get to finish a sentence without an emergency interrupting it. It's a nice theory. It survives about twenty minutes.

"Isn't that Dot Higgins by the window?" I ask, midway through the bread basket.

Rafe follows my glance and goes very still. "That's Dot Higgins."

Dot's already got her phone out, not even pretending to be subtle about it, snapping a picture across the room like she's documenting a crime scene. By the time our entrees arrive, Rafe's phone buzzes twice, then a third time, and he checks it with the resigned expression of a man who already knows what he's going to find.

"Gunny wants to know if this is a business dinner."

"Is it?"

"He knows it's not. He's just enjoying himself." He reads the next one and huffs out something close to a laugh. "Maggie wants to know your dress size. For reasons she refuses to specify."

"Tell her I'm not answering that on principle."

"Dot's already asking if we want the corner booth at the diner for our anniversary. We've been here twenty minutes."

"Pinewood Ridge doesn't do slow news days."

"Pinewood Ridge doesn't do privacy, is what it doesn't do." He sets the phone face down, a gesture that already feels familiar on him, except this time it doesn't feel like a retreat. "Small towns. I should've picked somewhere in another state."