Weaver Grant.
The “electrician.”
His steely eyes scanned the room and stopped when they landed on me.
I know what he saw.
A tiny slip of a woman who was covered head to toe in winter gear.
I was always cold, and it didn’t help that I had zero percent body fat—something that I’d struggled with my entire life.
I wasn’t super tall, and definitely not athletic—hence not going into soccer professionally like my sister had. But I had a killer smile, skin like a doll, and the longest curly brown hair that never failed to look good.
The long hair thing was due to my parents’ absolute abhorrence at the idea.
My parents were devout Pentecostals, and from a very early age, I’d known that long hair was sacred to them. My sister, Nettie, also had very long hair. Though, she hardly ever wore hers down. Being a professional soccer player wasn’t necessarily conducive with long hair like ours.
Needless to say, I may have great hair and skin, but everything else about me was pretty darn average.
Average height for a female. Average beauty. Average eye color. Average personality.
There literally wasn’t a single great thing about me that really stuck out—unless you counted my extreme skinniness.
The much sexier version of Jonathan Taylor Thomas scanned the room, landed on me, and began heading my way.
He stopped at the table and offered me his hand. “Edith?”
“Eddy.” I took his hand nervously.
His fingers reached all the way to mid-wrist on me.
And his hand. My god, was it large. It swallowed up my willowy hand like it was never there in the first place.
“Eddy,” he said. “Wish I could say it’s nice to meet you, but under these circumstances…”
I scrubbed at my face once he released me, feeling my minimal makeup smudge.
I was both hot and cold, and I felt like I would throw up the small bite of scone I’d been able to choke down earlier before he’d come in the door.
My appetite, which was usually very low to begin with, had been downright nonexistent lately.
Today, especially, it’d been nil.
“Do you want to talk here or…”
I stood up and grabbed my large jacket off the back of the chair. “We can go talk outside.”
This wasn’t a conversation I ever wanted to have in a public place.
He followed me out, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans as we made it outside.
I didn’t feel the cold, which was probably a first for me, as I said, “There’s a park bench over there.”
He wound his way around a few parked cars before we crossed the street and headed to the park bench that overlooked the bubbling stream that ran through town.
Usually there were all kinds of ducks and geese down here, but today it was completely empty of all living life forms, as if the planet knew that we needed absolute privacy for what we were about to talk about.
“Sheriff Black talked about you and the fact that you were in the military,” I said quietly, not sure where to start.
