“Well, yeah. I hear there’s a whole401(k)in the deal, but I’ll still love you. Even if you’re stupid.”
Peace softens the unrest rioting within me, bringing a real smile to my face. “Promise?” I ask.
She grins and offers me her hand. “Yeah. I promise.”
Together, we enter our home, and I think I’ll be okay, so long as wherever I am isoursfor a little while longer.
Chapter 6
?
Well, frick.
Damion
Swears. Nothing but curses flit through my brain as I stare at my palm.
It’s been an entire sleepless night, but I can stillfeelher.
It was acussingaccident, because aswearing swearwas hiding in the bushes by the edge of my property with aswearingcamera. But.
Swears. Cusses.
I close my hand.
It was freakingperfect.
She is.
She isfreaking perfect.
Breath leaves me as I fix my attention out the window, on whereshe’sstanding in the September sunlight withJeffry, worrying her apron as he checks out her car.
I should, actually, kill myself. Or, maybe, I should kill that guy andthenmyself.
My fingers flex before I pull them back into a fist.
Beautiful. Soft. Intelligent. Adorable. Diligent. Kind. Attentive. Anxious. Sweet. Thorough. Considerate. Cautious. Small. Pretty.Perfect.
My Mirabelle Peters.
My soon-to-be MirabelleAnders.
More cursing rises in my skull, and I wet my lips before I swallow.
I cannot, for the life of me, concentrate while she’s out there with some guy she went to school with. The way she’s smiling at him makes me irrationally upset. But, worse, the way he looks at her makes murder seem like a plausible course of action. Easy, even. Right now, while I’m watching them interact so…comfortably, it is hard to remind myself that while I have enough money to make murder happen without consequence, I also have something like a moral code, which should stop it from happening, period.
Not to mention, it would probably make Mirabelle sad if someone she knows dies unexpectedly.
Amarella, Georgia gets enough tourist traffic to feel like a larger town than it is, but even I can tell that, at its core, it’s a close-knit community. Losing some young bozo here would cause a ripple, and that ripple would hurt her.
I refuse to hurt her.
My phone rings, and I grunt as I tear my eyes off Mirabelle’s light brown hair, cascading in flawless waves from the floral scarf holding it back from her face. I answer the stupid device. “What?”
“Good morning to you, too,” Forrest says.
I sigh. “Mornin’.”
