Page 175 of Only the Hunter

I keep my voice level. “I treated her with respect. She was Scott’s little sister, so I looked out for her.”

“You treated her like she was worth watching,” he says, with the precision of a man who has spent his career reading people. “That is not the same thing. And I am not complaining.” He pauses. “I liked you best, of all his friends. Even then. You were careful. You paid attention.” Another pause. “You paid attention to her.”

I don’t know what to do with that, so I don’t do anything. I let it sit.

He’s quiet for a moment. The Doberman shifts against my feet. In the distance, I can hear the caterer rattling something metallic and Evie asking a question in the focused, precise way she asks everything.

“Things are different now,” he says. “Young people live together first. My parents had an arranged marriage. I had a very bad marriage.” He says this without self-pity. “I cannot blame my daughter for doing things differently.”

He sounds resigned, but there’s more than that underneath it. This is not a man who needs to share any of this with me. He’s choosing to. That distinction matters.

“Mr. Thompson.” I lean forward. “I love your daughter. And I would like—” His eyes meet mine, sharp and immediate, and I feel the sentence reroute itself before I’ve consciously decided anything. “With your permission, I hope to one day marry her.”

He’s still for a moment.

I hadn’t planned it. But I understand in the space of a breath that this is what he needed—not the information, but the form of it. The acknowledgment that some things don’t have to change just because everything else has.

He leans forward and takes my hand in both of his and shakes it once, firmly.

“You will love her,” he says. “You will take care of her.”

She can take care of herself better than most people I’ve worked with, including people who carry firearms. But I nod. “Yes, sir.”

He sits back with the settled look of a man who has accomplished something.

“I see how she looks at you. Always has, you know. Even then.” He rests an ankle over his knee. “When will you propose?”

“I haven’t—” I stop. “I don’t have a timeline.”

He considers this. “When she says yes—and she will—you call me. First. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Evie steps out onto the deck. “Dad? We have questions about the seating.”

“Coming, my evening star.” He pushes to his feet without hurry, and the nickname lands on her the way it always seems to—like something she pretends to find embarrassing and actually finds endearing.

She glances at me as he moves past her into the house. It’s a quick look, a check-in, the particular question she asks with her eyes when she wants to know if I’m all right without making a thing of it.

I answer with a nod.

She holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary. Then she follows her father inside.

Scott comes down the steps with three beers, one for each of us, apparently unconcerned that his father doesn’t drink beer—or at least, not that I’ve ever observed.

“Does your dad drink beer?” I ask.

“No.” He shrugs. “Felt wrong to bring two.” He hands me a bottle and lowers himself into the chair his father vacated. “How’d it go?”

I take a pull from the bottle. “Fine.”

Scott looks at me the way he’s looked at me since we were twelve and discovered girls—like he’s reading something I didn’t say. “You asked him, didn’t you?”

I don’t answer.

He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “She’s going to give you such a hard time.”

“I know.”