“She needed somewhere to land for the night,” Regan said. “That’s it.”
“She could still be trouble.”
“She’s not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
Regan looked toward the fire. Sienna was wrapped in a blanket now, drink in hand, listening while Amber told some overblown version of Spain. Firelight moved over Sienna’s face, softening the exhaustion, catching the curve of her cheek. She looked different when she forgot to guard herself. Younger maybe. Not innocent. Never that. Just less braced for impact.
“Because I know strays,” Regan said.
I glanced at her.
She shrugged, but there was steel under it. “They don’t come in soft. They come in hungry, suspicious, scratched up, and ready to run the second anyone reaches too fast. She’s harmless, except for that feral little demon she calls a cat.”
I almost smiled. Almost.
Then I remembered the photo. Rylee’s polished smile. The diamond. That freckle.
I shoved my phone deeper into my pocket like it had burned me.
Regan noticed. Of course she did.
“Rylee?” she asked softly.
I looked at her. “Don’t.”
Her mouth closed.
Good.
I didn’t want Rylee in this night. Didn’t want her country club picture, her white teeth, her upgraded life pressed against Sienna’s dusty truck and that broke-down cat and the ugly little truth that one woman had left because I wasn’t polished enough, while another had just walked in covered in road dust and somehow made the air feel charged.
That was not a thought I planned to keep.
Gunner flicked ash into the dirt. “You gonna glare holes in the house all night?”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw. The beard there rasped under my palm. “You got somewhere better to be?”
“Not me. I enjoy watching you pretend not to care.”
“Careful.”
He smiled like careful was a language he had no interest in. “She’s pretty.”
I looked at him.
He held up one hand, cigarette between two fingers. “Scientifically speaking.”
“Don’t.”
“Smart too, from what I heard.”
“You eavesdropping on women now?”
