“For me, sure. But as long as I keep those feelings to myself, they’re my problem and not hers. And maybe I should put a little more distance between us.” He wasn’t sure how he’d manage that, but just the fact he was having this conversation with his brother was a sign he was already in too deep.
Brian scoffed, pushing back his chair and picking up his plate. “Why are you so sure she’d see you catching feelings as a problem?”
“She’s got plans that don’t include New Hampshire and my plans sure as hell don’t include California, so catching feelings? A problem.”
“Hannah strikes me as the kind of person who’d like to work the problem together.” He tossed Stella a toast crust and shrugged. “But what the hell do I know? I thought I was happily married and then—bam—Kelly doesn’t actually love me, there’s somebody else and she’s divorcing me. Maybe I’m not great at reading people.”
“That was aherproblem, not ayouproblem,” Rob said firmly. It wasn’t the first time Brian had been told that, but it didn’t always stick. He’d been blindsided and spent a lot of time wondering what he’d missed and what he’d done wrong. To say Rob wasn’t a fan of his former sister-in-law would be an understatement.
Once they’d cleaned up and gone to the store to do some paperwork—Wednesday had become the best day for it because there was little activity in the campground to distract them—Rob’s thoughts kept wandering back to Hannah. They always did, but waking up that morning in her bed had taken it to a new level.
She still hadn’t found that foundation, and he’d promised he’d take her out there. He saved the spreadsheet he was ignoring and pulled up the group calendar that tracked the four brothers and their campground reservations as well as deliveries and accounts payable. It was hectic, visually, but necessary.
When he muttered under his breath, it caught Brian’s attention. “What are you looking for?”
Rob scrolled to a likely day and then pulled up the weather forecast on his phone. “A good day for me to be gone for a good chunk of it. Hannah still wants to look for that foundation and even with the rain we’ve had, it should be drying up out there.”
“So you’re going to put distance between you by spending the day walking around the woods with her?”
“I told her I would. And putting distance between us is one of those things that sounds like the right thing to do in theory, but might not be so easy to actually do.”
“I could go out there with her.”
Rob scowled, not liking the idea of his brother spending the day with Hannah. Not that he was worried about Brian trying to make a move—he would never be disloyal like that and Rob knew that—but because that would be time he didn’t get to spend with her himself.
“I’m going to help her find the thing she’s looking for,” he insisted, and it wasn’t until he noticed Brian staring at him that he realized that could be taken so many ways. “If that foundation is out there, we’ll find it.”
“Bobby, do you remember when we were kids and Dad took us sledding and he said to stay on the packed-down sled tracks or we’d hit a tree and get hurt? And you took your sled off to the fresh snow and you hit a tree and broke your arm?” When Brian paused, Rob nodded. “This feels like that.”
“You’re wearing bug spray, right?”
Hannah snorted at the obvious question, even though she was thoroughly charmed by his concern. “I put on so much bug spray, I think it’s soaked into my DNA. It might be my superpower now.”
“The bug spray that smells pretty and is good for your skin? Or the bug spray that repels bugs?” She leaned closer and he inhaled deeply. Then he coughed and took a step back. “Yep, you’re good.”
“So I looked over the maps and I have a rough idea of the area I covered the first time.”
“We probably don’t want to go that way.”
“There’s a chance I missed it, but it makes more sense to head a little more east and cover new ground.”
“I’m just following you.”
“Unless I fall in a well.”
He chuckled. “It would suck if you fell in a well and you were totally fine until I fell in on top of you.”
“Maybe we’ll walk side by side,” she suggested.
And they did, which made it a lot easier to hold hands. She had a moment when his fingers first threaded through hers to wonder if she was getting in over her head, but it was a very brief moment. He squeezed her hand and gave her a smile that erased everything but the pleasure being with him brought.
“I have to ask,” he said when they’d gone maybe an eighth of a mile into the woods. “Do you really think you’re going to find something out there that’ll solve the mystery?”
She laughed. “Hey, it’s only been a century and a half. It’s possible I’ll just stumble over a skeleton with the murder weapon still embedded in a bone. Maybe a confession in an old glass bottle sealed with wax?”
When he gave her a look—complete with hesitant smile—that made it clear he wasn’t quite sure if she was joking or not, she laughed hard, so hard they had to stop for a minute. He held a branch out of her way when they resumed, which was good since she was wiping tears out of her eyes and might not have seen it.
“Tell me about her.”
