“No. At least I don’t think so. I’m not sure if he suspects I’m working with the cops, but something’s got him seriously tweaked. He’s closing ranks. I’m still in the inner circle, but I’m not sure how much longer that’ll last. Think he’s feeling the noose tighten.”
I cut a look to Leo and gave my head an angry shake. “For Christ’s sake, Charlie, pull back. Let us get you out of there.”
“Not yet,” she demanded. “I can do this, Micah. I’m seeing this through to the end. That woman goes to sleep each night without her husband beside her,” she bit out, speaking of Darrin’s widow, Sidney Callo. “And his two babies probably won’t even remember their dad when they’re grown up. These asshole’s need to pay for that, if nothing else.”
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, with Leo at my side, scanning the crowd to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. Squeezing my eyes closed, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a beleaguered sigh. In the months we’d been working with Charlie, I’d developed a tight-knit relationship with the prickly woman. She wasn’t a typical CI. She’d become like a sister to me, and the more tangled up she’d got in this mess, the more I stressed. “They’re going down, Charlie. You have my word on that. But it’s not gonna help anyone if you get hurt or dead in the process. I get you have some demons of your own, but this isn’t how you work them out of your system, sweetheart.”
“This has nothing to do with me,” she clipped, that hardness I was so used to coming back into her voice, only now it was directed at me. “I’m not trying to rewrite my past or whatever bullshit you think this is. It’s about right and wrong, plain and simple. I’m in a position to help, so I’m going to help.”
“Goddamn it,” I gritted.
“Deal with it, Langford. And keep an eye on Cormack. I’ll call if I hear anything, and you do the same.”
Before I could get another word out, she disconnected, leaving me standing there pissed and worried out of my mind.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” I grunted, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. I started toward Muffin Top, careful to make my strides easy and calm despite the tempest swirling inside of me.
“What’ve you got?” Leo asked under his breath.
“A headache and a whole lot of nothin’ else, that’s what,” I seethed. “She says Cormack’s freaked, closing ranks, but not sure what’s got him that way.”
Leo’s brows sank into an unhappy V. “And let me guess. She’s not pullin’ back.”
“You know that woman as well as I do. What do you think?”
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath. He was close with her too, and the level of responsibility we felt for her welllbeing wasn’t something either of us took lightly.
“Exactly. So now we gotta watch him, see if he suspects anything’s happening, and keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get dead.”
“God deliver me from hardheaded women,” he sighed just as we reached his woman’s shop.
The smell of sugar and coffee filled the air but did little to touch the anxiety churning in my gut. “Don’t let Dani hear you say that. She’ll cut me off simply out of association with you, and if I lose out on her coffee or pastries there’s a good chance my head will explode.”
Trying my best to shake off the discomfort clinging to my shoulders, I pasted on my charming smile, like it was just any other day, and pulled the door open. I needed coffee now more than ever. Along with a shot of bourbon.
Chapter Four
Hayden
“So, baby girl, what do you think?” I asked, looking back at Ivy through my rearview mirror.
“It’s so pretty!” she squealed excitedly.
She wasn’t wrong about that. I hadn’t been here often—less than a handful in the past decade since my husband hadn’t been a big fan of my eccentric great-aunt Sylvia—but I was no stranger to this small town. Even then, I never got over how beautiful Hope Valley was. Each visit had been like seeing it for the first time, and as I drove through the main drag just then, it was no different.
After lecturing me for what felt like an eternity about loosening my grip on my husband so that he slipped through my fingers—their words—my parents had insisted Ivy and I move in with them when everything in my life had fallen to shit. That was completely out of the question. I loved them, but our relationship had been frayed for as long as I could remember. Though we’d lived in the same city, we didn’t see each other on a regular basis. In fact, I’d gone out of my way not to attend family dinners and the like. They were impossible to please. Nothing I did was ever good enough. Even my accomplishments were ridiculed. I’d get an entire list outlining how I could have done better.
They didn’t like the way I did my hair or makeup. They didn’t like my clothes. They didn’t like the name I’d picked for my daughter or the house we lived in or the car I drove. Everything I did or had could have been better, better, better.
The rest of my family was exactly the same, cut from the same cloth as my parents, and I couldn’t imagine ever leaning on any of them, let alone during such a hard time in my life. I understood that blood was thicker than water, but sometimes you had to cut out those people who made you feel bad about yourself . . . even if they were your family.
There was only one relative I’d ever felt a real connection to. Even though I hadn’t seen Aunt Sylvia in years, we were still close. We’d kept in contact with emails and phone calls. We’d bonded over being the two black sheep in our family, and that bond had stayed strong, keeping us connected no matter how long it had been since we were face-to-face.
When I called to tell her my world had basically imploded, she told me emphatically she’d been thinking of slowing down but didn’t have anyone she trusted to take over the reins of her flower shop. She went on about the timing being kismet and all but demanded I move to her “little slice of paradise.”
Hope Valley was a little less than an hour from Richmond, making it easily drivable, so Alex hadn’t given me grief when I told him I had a job opportunity there. I assumed it also helped ease things with his pregnant fiancée that the woman he’d thrown over and the kid they had together were no longer going to be living in the same city.
But I tried really hard not to dwell on that.
Another thing I’d worked hard not to think about was my night with a certain stranger I’d picked up in a bar. I had started to wonder if I made the whole thing up. He’d been too damn good to be true, it had to have been my imagination. But even days later, I’d move or shift in a certain way and feel a twinge that reminded me that night had been very, very real.
Those twinges were gone now, but the memories certainly weren’t, no matter how many times I told myself to stop thinking about it. I was never going to see Micah again, after all. I just prayed he hadn’t ruined me for all other men.
Ivy stared out the window in wonder as we passed through the town, pointing out everything that caught her eye, which was a lot. She was particularly taken with the clock tower in the center of the town square, and rattled on and on about it until the moment we pulled up in front of Sylvia’s house, an adorable bungalow overrun by so many shrubs and plants that her front yard looked like a jungle.