Mitchell was smart enough to also stay quiet behind her.
Darius was finding that he was liking the man more and more.
After a moment, Eve let out a quick breath of defeat.
“Fine,” she gave in. “Until we can prove the White Knight of Small-town Living is the villain in disguise, I’m all yours, Detective Williams.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lunch was served by Theo, moving around the small kitchen with ease while bickering with the young woman named Winnie even more. They were talking about the best practices to train for a half-marathon one moment, and the next they were fussing about the proper way to make a sandwich worthy of a specialty shop.
Mitchell threw in his two cents worth from his spot at the kitchen counter about what he thought were the best trimmings for said perfect sandwich, and this, somehow, transitioned into a conversation about the local coffee shop. What constituted the perfect drink came next. Eve let her attention wander to the man sitting opposite her while their debate started.
Darius seemed uncomfortable.
And it wasn’t with the current company chattering in his kitchen.
Something in him was hurting or, at least, bothering him. Eve had already seen him adjust his shoulder twice, and his drawn brow hadn’t relaxed since he’d arrived home.
She couldn’t blame him.
Not only had he been shot and gone through surgery and recovery in the hospital, he had also spent those days studying the chaotic notes Eve and Mitchell had taken on a story that, if broken, would at the very least turn the town upside-down.
Then he had come home and gone right to work.
There was no rest for the wicked; there was no rest for detectives who knew Eve Myers.
A problem that Eve understood was tricky.
What if she hadn’t come back to Seven Roads, at least until they’d had concrete evidence of Scott’s wrongdoings?
Darius wouldn’t be sitting across from her, wounded and working in secret. Setting his rules, his procedures, aside for a case that wasn’t even technically a case.
Because keeping everything on the down-low was the other stipulation that everyone in the kitchen had agreed upon.
Their deep dive into Scott Keys, the fake relationship between Eve and Mitchell and the connection to Gary Whittaker and his murder were all pieces of information that they alone knew about.
It was another point of pressure that Eve had inadvertently applied to her former boy next door.
She hadn’t even asked him to keep such a complicated secret once he had taken her bullet. Yet the straight-as-an-arrow lawman had done so.
It made Eve’s stomach twist a little. The memory of his one condition being that she couldn’t leave his side—well, that made her stomach feel a different kind of way.
That feeling, and a sudden warmth crawling up her neck, made Darius’s gaze suddenly pulling up to meet hers only intensify.
Eve tried to play it off.
She tapped the table’s top beneath her finger.
“Out of all the furniture you got rid of from when we were kids, I’m glad this one didn’t make the cut,” she tried. “I’ve always liked this table.”
Darius snorted.
“You only like this table because of how much my mother loved it.”
Eve couldn’t deny that. She shrugged. The sandwiches might not have been finished, but Winnie had clearly decided it wastime to enter a more interesting conversation. She was smiling as she sat down to Eve’s right, her back against the wall so she could keep an eye on Theo’s progress, Eve assumed.
“Theo said you two were neighbors,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were close to Darius’s parents too.”
