The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

“Okay, honey, now I’m the expert in this, so you get to listen to me.”

He dropped his hands, turned his head and studied me…no, examined me, like he didn’t know what species I was.

Then again, he didn’t get this.

Sure, he had books written about his profiling prowess.

But he didn’t have TMZ sniffing around constantly.

“This will be a thing. A day. Two. That’s it,” I shared. “I’m not a public person anymore. Not really. No one knows I publish books. I’m known. I’m a fascination. I get it at the same time I don’t. It’s a nuisance. But whenever some interest in me crops up, it passes quickly. In other words, this, too, shall pass. We just live our lives like normal and in no time, it’ll go away.”

I scooted to him and put my hand on his chest.

“Honestly. I don’t even have a PR person anymore. I never engage, and if you don’t give them something to devour, it starves the insatiable beast and they can’t have that happen, so they go away to find something else to make a meal of, and it never gets to be a big deal. We won’t engage, and they’ll go away.”

“When you file for divorce, shit comes of that, Larue,” was his weird reply. “You can be combative and have mediation. You can go at each other and end up in court. But you file for divorce, and you get divorced. If you don’t get divorced, you sue for divorce.”

“I’ve been divorced twice, Bohannan,” I reminded him. “California law and Washington state law are probably very different, but still, I know the drill too well.”

“She refused mediation. She refused to even get an attorney. I sent papers, she didn’t sign them. I served her with papers, she didn’t sign those either. It was going to end up in court. I called her, she said she wouldn’t show. I can’t divorce her in absentia, I know where she is. She doesn’t have to agree to divorce me, but she has to agree to the legal and financial shit. I honestly didn’t know if it was going to get ugly or just take time and money. In the end, I got pissed and thought, fuck it. She likes male attention, that’s what our damage was all about. I wasn’t looking for anybody. But she was going to find someone to give it to her, and if that got serious, she’d get serious about divorcing me. Before that happened, I didn’t know Nance was gonna kick it and some hot chick with a stalker was gonna buy his house and lay claim to me.”

“Hot chick with a stalker?” I teased.

I knew in an instant he wasn’t feeling playful.

“Babe. I didn’t keep this from you. I just lived it so long, and so much other shit was going on, I honest to fuck forgot she still had legal ties to me, and I needed to do something about that to be free for you.”

“There are precisely zero people on the planet who could get away with that excuse, Bohannan, except you. No. There are five. You. Jace. Jess. And Special Agents McGill and Robertson. Maybe Harry, and not Jace and Jess. But since none of them have a teenage daughter with her first real boyfriend along with some murderer playing games, they also don’t count. So it’s just you.”

I got even closer to him.

And finished, “I get it. I know you’ve had a few things on your mind, honey.”

“You’re safe here.”

I wasn’t feeling playful anymore either after I heard the steel with which those three words were spoken.

He continued, “With the kids. In my home. In our lives.” A meaningful pause, “With me.”

“Bohannan,” I whispered.

“You belong here. It’s not about you cooking. It’s not about you looking after Celeste. It’s not about you making me happy. It’s about you being a part of us.”

I put my hand over his mouth. “Stop talking.”

He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled it away.

“This is important.”

I knew it was important.

I’d had to make my own families in order to belong somewhere, and two of those disintegrated along the way.

I’d never had the bedrock Bohannan offered in a partner.

Case in point, with my history—if he hadn’t built the trust by being who he was to his kids, to the town, to his work…to me—him understanding just how huge of a blow this might be to me.

But he’d built that trust.

And he understood how deeply I needed it.

So yes.

I knew it was important.

I knew it far better than him.

I told him I was falling in love with him.

He showed me he was falling in love with me.

It was my turn to show him.

And I wasn’t going to do it by making love.

I was going to fuck him.

In other words, I attacked.

Bohannan counterattacked.