A little shiver rolls through me, and she shudders at the same time, clutching him close.
“Thank you. Really.” She smiles, and the genuineness of it only flares that heat to a raging inferno. “And I am so sorry for accusing you of stealing him. I just don’t understand how he got away or why he was on the road.”
Neither do I.
“There isn’t really anything out there.” I watch her carefully as I press to figure out where they were before she lost him, to learn anything about this woman and why she’s here. “He must’ve traveled a long way from town on those tiny little legs…”
She must hear the disbelief in my voice that she was in town for the festival and the question there because she glances away again, toward the kitchen, where the smell of all the breakfast food being cooked emanates from.
And I know better than to push.
People have been pushing me for months, trying to get me to talk about what happened with my biological father and Willow and what I learned, but all they’ve managed to do is poke at me in a way that has left me feeling raw and exposed. Like I’m bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts and every question directed at me is like a knife being driven into a gaping wound.
So, I won’t force Lucky to reveal what she’s not ready to give me.
At least, not yet.
“Are you staying in town for a while?”
I do a shitty job of concealing the hope in my voice, but in twenty-four years in McBride Mountain, no woman has ever affected me the way this one has in less than five minutes.
She glances back toward me and shakes her head. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“So…heading home today?”
Real subtle, Liam…
Lucky offers another restless shift, averting her gaze again and focusing on the door as if my simple questions are an inquisition she has to escape at all costs. “Uhh…”
I know what that feels like.
For the past nine months, I’ve felt as if I were being raked across the coals by the inquisitor, with my very life in jeopardy depending on the answers I provided. And the questions came from all sides—Killian, Connor, Willow, Raven. Not to mention how just about every person in town has been giving me those looks of pity and concern and asking how I’m doing, most without directly flat-out asking how it feels to learn my father’s a murderer, a kidnapper and a rapist.
The small bit of my breakfast I ate before Lucky came in threatens to come up my throat, but I swallow it and watch the way she watches the room, always keeping her eyes on the door, never putting her back to it for very long.
She’s nervous about something, and her story about Gizmo walking all the way out there from town is virtually impossible. Either someone drove him out onto the road and dumped him far from anything or anyone, or she was out there, which makes even less sense.
And that mystery, as much as the strange way I’m drawn to this woman, makes me take a massive leap I shouldn’t.
“Would you…like to join me for breakfast?”
Her eyes dart back to me, then to my table, and she chews on her lip again.
I can see the debate in her eyes, the way she assesses me to see if I’m a threat or to determine what I might expect in return for the meal.
It’s easy to recognize that look.
It’s the same one Willow had after she returned, when she didn’t know who she could trust or what she should be doing.
Whoever Lucky is, whatever brought her here, it’s definitely not something she wants to discuss, and given how she’s acting, I don’t think she has the money to leave town or buy herself breakfast.
I motion toward the table. “My treat. You had a rough night worrying about Gizmo. You need a good meal.”
She continues to worry her lip, glancing around at the various tables and Elaine bustling around them, delivering plates and cups of coffee and chatting as McBride Mountain wakes up and people make their way in.
Those blue eyes don’t miss anything, and when they focus back on me, that inexplicable heat bubbling under my skin flares under her assessment.
This woman is sizing me up, and I’m going to let her.
