“Uh, a long time. I’m kind of married to my work.”
“How serious were you and your last boyfriend?”
“Decently serious.”
“Meaning?”
“We were engaged.” The words slipped out before I could soften them, and to my surprise, a flush of embarrassmentfollowed. I looked down, as if that might somehow hide it.
His stride broke as he looked over at me. He quickly recovered, though, and picked up his pace.
“We’d only dated a few months when he asked,” I added quickly. “I said yes, and our relationship ended a month later.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, eyes drifting away into the shadows. The last thing I wanted was to rehash the disaster of my engagement—not here, not with him, not like this.
“What’s his name?”
His voice was sharp now. Possessive. Too sharp.
A low current of warning pulsed through me, curling at the edge of something I didn’t know how to name. I was already walking a tightrope with Phoenix—this question felt like a gust of wind trying to knock me off.
“This isn’t really any of your business, okay?”
“Do you and him still talk?”
I looked over at him, barely able to make out his face in the dark—but I didn’t need light to know what was there. His eyes burned.Why?Andwhydid it feel like his questions had nothing to do with safety and everything to do withme?
Withus?
He was my patient.
This wasn’t okay. I had to get control of the conversation—of myself.
I arched a brow. “Do you have a girlfriend, Mister Twenty Questions?”
“Oh yeah,” he scoffed. “The girls are lined up for a mentally deficient unemployed former jarhead without a driver’s license.”
“You forgot concealed carry.”
“Thanks.”
“Can we drop this please? I don’t want to talk about my ex. And I don’t want to talk about your romantic past right now either, if I’m being honest.” Because everyone in town knew the Steele brothers’ reputation with women. Love them and leave them.
Lotsof them.
20
ROSE
We walked another few minutes in silence as he surveyed the edge of my property that faded into the woods. Him, soaked to the bone in nothing more than a T-shirt, and me, looking like a cartoon character with an oversized rain coat and his leather jacket draped over my shoulders.
A shiver caught me and I wrapped his jacket tighter.
“So, you’re looking for footprints?” I asked.
“Footprints, boot prints, broken twigs, breaks in the pathway, any sign that someone has passed by here recently. Would be a lot easier if your motion-activated flood lights weren’t out.”
