Travis (Pelion Lake 1)

Or in this case, the light streaming in through the hallway window.

“No, I’m working,” he said, sounding almost . . . disappointed? Did he not like his job? He seemed to do it with such gusto. A meow sounded again, the cat staggering in.

Travis’s brow dipped as he looked at the cat wobbling precariously over to where we stood. “Oh for Pete’s sake,” he muttered, scooping the animal up and holding it with one muscled arm. I pressed my lips together to hide my smile.

“What’s on the itinerary?” he asked, following as I moved from the hallway to the kitchen, walking over to the bay window where Betty had been generous enough to allow me to place various herbs and flowers.

“Well, I’m going down to the shore to soak up a little sun, and then I’m making a trip into town to see what’s been moved to the discount aisle at the nursery.” I turned suddenly and Travis’s eyes jolted up as though he’d been staring at something . . . below my eyes, and I’d surprised him. “Do you know that the nursery in Pelion is the only one for miles around?”

“It should make your rescue job easier,” he said with a wry smile. The cat butted at his chest and he raised his other hand, petting her head, and then her jaw when she tilted it upward.

“Ha. Well, true.” I went back to my watering. I’d never performed my morning ritual with someone in tow, but I found I liked it. Chatting idly while I went about my plant duties. It was . . . peaceful. Who would have guessed? “I spent last summer in a town in South Carolina that had four nurseries. I had my job cut out for me,” I said.

He laughed softly. “So you’ve been rescuing plants and making smoothies across the land.”

I shot him a smile. The cat was purring loudly in his arms as he scratched her jaw distractedly, carting her along with us as we walked through the lower floor of the house. “No to the smoothie part. I’ve done a little of everything as far as paid positions.” I grabbed the spray bottle hooked on the waistband of my shorts and misted a fiddle leaf that didn’t need more than that and moved on. “Here in your lovely town, I just happened to hit upon the perfect job that utilizes all my talents.”

“Lucky us.” He grinned, leaning against the wall. A smile tugged again as I watched this muscled, athletic-looking lawman in sweat-laden workout gear, holding a three-legged cat gently as it very obviously basked in his affection. “Did you like it? South Carolina?”

I thought back to South Carolina, pictured the massive oak trees draped in moss, and the flawless emerald-green lawn of the golf course where I’d worked at the gift shop. “Yes. It’s beautiful.” I didn’t mention the part where we had left early in July after a big, burly man wielding a baseball bat had shown up at our door at three a.m., because Easton had done things—Easton’s description—with his wife in their pool and been caught on the backdoor Ring video doorbell.

I pushed that particular memory of South Carolina aside. This pattern of his had to stop. Not only was it immoral—and weren’t there enough single women out there?—it became dangerous. This time it had been the chief of police’s flipping girlfriend. Who next?

I didn’t even want to know.

“How many places have you stopped?” Travis asked, scratching behind Clawdia’s ear as her eyes all but rolled back in her head.

I turned, walking to the next room, his soft footsteps behind me. “For more than a day or two? Seven. Arizona, Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and of course, Maine.”

“So if you’re staying on the same course along the coast, you’re pretty much at the end of the line. What will you do after this?”

“Head back, I suppose.” A tiny ball of fear bounced through me. “Maybe take a longer, more winding route.” Out the window, the sun crested higher. Upstairs, I heard the water begin to run in one of the bathrooms.

He watched me for a minute as if considering something. I turned, plucking some dry foliage, using my spray bottle to mist the top leaves, adding some water to the soil, and crooning a few words here and there.

“What’s been your favorite stop so far?”

I eyed him. “Haven’t you ever traveled, Travis Hale?”

He shrugged. “Not really. A few spring break trips. But I can’t recall too much of what happened on those. Every once in a while, I have a vague flash of a wet T-shirt contest and a long line of Cuervo shots, but that’s about it.” He’d hesitated in his petting as he’d spoken, and Clawdia headbutted him again until he resumed his scratching.