Jenny.
Jenny must be new at the diner. He’d never seen her there before.
Then he was just a few feet from Jenny.
Her hair was a deep, dark red. She’d braided it and the braid hung over her shoulder. He was so close to her. Close enough to touch.
Jenny looked up then, and she gasped when she saw him. A hand rose to her chest, and the shovel slipped from her fingers.
He smiled at her. “Morning, ma’am.”
She blinked, and some of the alarm faded from her gaze. That was good. That was real good. He didn’t want her scared. Not yet.
He drew even closer to her. Close enough to catch her scent. She smelled sweet. He liked that. His gaze slid toward the diner. The shades were still pulled. He couldn’t see in. That meant no one could see out.
“We’ll be open in about ten more minutes,” Jenny told him. “The cook’s getting things going now.”
The cook. That would be the big, ex-lumberjack named Henry. But if Henry was getting things going in the kitchen...
Then he can’t see us out here.
And Jenny was so perfect. She reminded him of what he’d lost.
His hand lifted and brushed over her cheek.
Her eyes widened as she sucked in a sharp breath. “Mister—”
“It will hurt, Jenny,” he warned her.
Too late, Jenny opened her mouth to scream.
She never had the chance to make a sound.
* * *
NOELLE WAS ABOUT to fall flat on her face. It took all of the energy she had to climb the steps leading up to their cabin.
This place wasn’t like the one-room shack they’d slept in before. This cabin was more like a luxury resort and as far from the place in her nightmares as possible.
The EOD was footing the bill for these digs, so Noelle was more than happy to escape to the fine lodgings.
She’d been up for over thirty-six hours, minus that one rough hour of sleep she’d gotten while she’d been in Thomas’s arms.
Her gaze slanted toward him. I want you, and unless I’m mistaken, you want me, too. His words kept echoing through her mind.
The problem was Noelle wasn’t used to taking what she wanted. She was used to closing herself off from others. Used to waking from dark dreams she could never fully remember—alone.
“We need to head back to the sheriff’s station at eighteen hundred hours,” Thomas said as he secured the front door behind them. He glanced around the cabin. A spiral staircase led upstairs. “That gives us a few hours to sleep.”
And sleep was certainly her priority because of the whole almost-falling-on-her-face bit, but...
She kept thinking about what it had been like to be held in his arms. To kiss him. To touch him.
His head cocked as his eye raked over her. “Something wrong?”
“I’m just...trying to figure out who could’ve killed the senator.” Well, she should be doing that, anyway.
He grunted as he headed toward her. “Mercer is arranging for new clothes to be delivered to us.”