“I’m going to talk to Kate again. And don’t worry—I’ll do a better job not pushing her buttons. I took the wrong approach with her yesterday.” She jammed her hands in the pockets of her blue-striped pajama bottoms. “We need to work as a team.”
“You slept with her husband.” Sam didn’t mean it as a jab or even as a judgment. Hell, who was he to look down on her when he’d had a one-night stand with a married woman himself? “What makes you think she’s going to talk to you?”
“I realize, Sheriff, that I allowed myself to become the town joke between sleeping with Jeremy and pushing so hard into town politics. But I didn’t head up multiple companies over the course of my career without some sense of interpersonal dynamics. I can do this.” She dug her room key card out of her pocket and used it to open the door of her cottage. “Besides, I told my daughter I’d make thisright, and I’ve failed Bailey too many times to screw this up too.”
He believed her. Understood the fierceness of her commitment to her kid, if nothing else.
“One last thing.” He hadn’t asked all the questions he’d wanted, but the case had taken a new direction, and he was eager to follow it after all the dead ends of the last week. He didn’t want to wait to speak to Faith Wilkerson and—he hoped—her sister, too.
“Shoot. I’m listening.” Tiffany leaned her hip into the doorjamb, her tiny cottage dark and lonely behind her with the TV set tuned to an infomercial.
What a sorry state for a woman who once seemed to have the perfect life and family.
“How did you find out about Patience and Jeremy?” Tiffany had been in lockup until two days ago. Had she heard the news while she was still in jail? Or had someone told her as soon as she was freed?
“She sent me photos of them together in the corn maze at Harvest Fest. There was no mistaking the time and date since I recognized the spot.” Her mouth twisted in distaste and maybe a hint of pain. “It was the same damn place he’d taken me, right near the banner for the sporting-goods store, in the back west corner.”
“And you’re sure it couldn’t have been more innocent than she made it seem?” He hadn’t met Patience, but he didn’t think she could be more than twenty-one or twenty-two years old. “There’s an odd breed of woman who fixates on a man behind bars.”
“The pics were stills pulled off a video she’d made. They had their hands down one another’s pants. So...” She shrugged, her lips still pursed. “Definitely not innocent.”
“Did you save the photos?” Linking Covington to new women could only help his case.
Even better? If he could shift the focus to what Covington had been doing recently instead of ten years ago, he could ease up on Amy.
“Hell yes, I saved them. Just in case that cheating bastard ever tried to deny it.” She gave a smile that was mostly a baring of her teeth. “They’re password protected in about ten different locations in my files.”
And just like that, he recognized shades of the Tiffany McCord he remembered. Ruthless, tenacious and arrogant.
Right now he was grateful for those qualities. Not just because they were going to help him nail Covington’s ass to the wall. More important, they could help him and Amy put the unhappiest parts of their past behind them by bringing a predator to justice.
That was a good thing. Assuming, of course, that Amy hadn’t already found other reasons to close the door on their relationship. They hadn’t had an opportunity to say much on the subject of Cynthia and what she meant in his life and Aiden’s, but the woman’s arrival had definitely complicated things.
He’d told Amy he wasn’t in a position to have a simple affair, and he meant it. He cared about her, and he wanted more than just one night. But something told him that pushing her on the issue right now would only send her running back to Atlanta, and he didn’t think he could handle that, either.
After ten years, he finally had her in his life again. And he would do whatever it took to keep her there long enough to find out if the connection he felt with her was as real as he’d always thought it might be.
“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want me to go with you?” Heather asked Amy as they stood on her small porch overlooking a neat lawn dotted with colorful chrysanthemums in garden beds.
Most of the Finleys lived within a mile of one another, their homes visible to each other across the converted land their dad had once farmed. Heather owned a converted bungalow closest to the original house, while Erin and Scott had built custom houses on their plots. Mack and Nina had converted an old barn on the property but also kept a residence in Nashville. Only Amy had ignored the land her father had given her, never building on the corner she’d been deeded as a teenager.
Now, standing with Heather in front of the bungalow that used to be their father’s office, Amy stared up at the home where she’d grown up. A home she hadn’t seen since the night she’d packed her bags and left following the argument with her mother.
Finally—thank heaven—finally, she was done hiding from her past. After revealing the truth of The Incident to Sam, Amy was ready to see her mother again and try to put their harsh words behind them.
Or so she hoped. She couldn’t deny she was a little bit tempted by Heather’s offer.
“I have to do this on my own.” Amy had come back to Heartache to make peace with the past, but her rift had never really been with her siblings. Not if she was totally honest with herself. True, she’d felt abandoned by them. But they’d never hurt her the way her mother had. “She’s the reason I stayed away. And she’s the main reason I needed to come back.”
Funny how revealing the details of The Incident had made that so clear to her. Being molested in the dark by a stranger had traumatized her—yes. But she’d dealt with it in therapy. And now she’d shared it with Sam, who’d played a role in that night without ever knowing.
She’d found closure there, but she’d still felt unsettled because she hadn’t confronted what had hurt her most of all. Her mother’s emotional abandonment when she’d needed her the most.
“She’s much more level than she used to be, more regimented in staying on her meds and working with her doctor.” Heather had a giant mug of tea on the table beside her small wooden porch swing. Everything about the bungalow remodel was as sweet and charming as Heather herself, and Amy found herself curious to see the inside. The fact that it was such a quaint home now was a testament to her sister’s creativity.
“It’s been a long time.” Amy knew how much she’d grown and changed in ten years. She could only hope her mother had, too. “I just wanted to tell you I was over there in case—” she wasn’t entirely sure what she thought might happen “—you hear arguing.”
That was one reason she hadn’t wanted Heather with her. No one except Amy and her mother knew what they’d fought about that day, and Amy would prefer to keep it that way.
