When no one came to the door, hints of despair crept in. Sawyer couldn’t let another whole day go by—especially when that day was Christmas Eve—with Betzy believing such horrible things about him.
He pulled a hand from his pocket and knocked one more time.
Longingly, he stared at the handle, willing it to move. Another minute ticked on.
Nothing.
Perhaps he’d try her house once more.
Sawyer spun on one foot, took a step away from the door, and heard a small creak from inside the structure. His pulse spiked as he spun around in time to see that handle twist after all.
He thanked the heavens above asa wedge of light appeared in the open gap. And there, silhouetted against the brightness, was Lorraine.
“Sawyer,” she said. “I thought you might come.” She stepped aside and motioned for him to come in.
“Thank you,” he said, giving the shop a once over. “This is a beautiful place you have here.”
She grinned. “Thank you. I think so.”
He nodded, rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, and looked into the woman’s blue eyes. No use beating around the bush. “I need to find Betzy. Can you help me?”
“I might be able to,” she said. “It depends. Let me guess—you’ve got some way to magically make all of this go away?”
Sawyer shook his head. “No, I can’t do that.” For a moment, he thought he saw disappointment in her eyes, but her expression smoothed once more.
“So?”
“I can’t make allof it go away, but Icanclear up my side of things by proving that I wasnotwith Daisy that night. In fact, since I happen to have some connections of my own back in New York, I scored the actual video footage where that shot was taken from.”
The expression she pulled was one he’d seen on Betzy several times. The quick lift of one brow. “You do?”
He nodded. “Daisy came onto me at a bar when she flew out for the article. I’m the one who stopped it. Then she accused me of waiting around for Betzy, asking ifshewas the reason I’d remained single. I didn’t argue.”
More brow lifting. “Huh. You don’t say?”
This time Sawyer couldn’t read her expression so well. He tried to gulp back the dryness in his throat. “So can you help me find her?”
“Haveyou been waiting for Betzy all these years?” she asked.
There was no point in denying it now. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” Lorraine nodded, her face thoughtful. “Do you remember the year you flew your mom out for Christmas?”
Sawyer furrowed his brow. “Yes.”
“Betzy flew out to New York on New Years. She saw some woman kiss you in a glass elevator.”
The new piece of information was an explosion in his mind, sending questions in every direction. “She did? Why?”
“She didn’t think you were seeing anyone at the time, since you’d said you’d be spending the night alone.”
“Oh man,” Sawyer blurted as he recalled that night. It was just before she started dating Marcus. “Yes, that was a woman from my apartment building. Jane. Her name was Jane. A real man chaser. I told her I was going to bring in the New Year alone, and she leaned in, kissed me, and wished me a Happy New Year. That was it.”
The woman nodded some more, thoughtful. Sawyer was doing an awful lot of thinking himself. Betzy had come out to New York? That was just after the double funeral, when he had sensed their relationship shifting into something more. Perhaps she really had been on the same page.
But what now?
Lorraine dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “I liked what you said when you proposed to her,” she said. “You didn’t take my daughter’s advice.”
