Hannah wished he’d go on about the broken nose. She had a feeling she’d much rather hear that story than the one he seemed intent on telling. It made her tense.
“Anyway,” he continued. “What happened next with Joe and Ashleigh…”
Why was he telling her all of this? Was he about to share something about a crime against a child? If so, she might have to jump into the lake and attempt to drown herself after all. Or at least push him in.
Having reeled in his line without a strike, Boone threw another cast. He reeled and pitched twice more before continuing, “It’s a long story worthy of an afternoon soap opera.” He frowned and cut Hannah a glance. “Are afternoon soap operas still on the air?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
He shrugged, then continued. “Without sharing the ugly details, I’ll say that one lesson I learned during this ordeal was that from the outside looking in, you can’t understand another couple’s marriage. You shouldn’t try. Joe did have a good heart, however, and in the middle of his personal crisis, he came to us with a private adoption opportunity. The teenage daughter of someone who worked for his parents was pregnant and looking for parents for her child. I knew it was risky, but Mary…” He shrugged. “We decided to try one more time and went all in. We met the mother. She liked us. She picked us. Mary decorated another nursery. Two weeks before the baby was due, the mother changed her mind.”
“Oh, Boone.”
“Yeah.” He reeled in his line, then made another cast. “I threw myself into another case, and I just didn’t see what was happening at home. Mary stalked the girl. The day the baby was born, my wife came home, sat down in the rocking chair in the nursery that I hadn’t made time to disassemble, and took a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I worked late, and she was gone by the time I came home.”
Hannah gave in to the desire to touch him. She placed her hand atop his and gave it a quick, comforting squeeze. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. Me too.” Boone continued to reel in the line. He filled his cheeks with air, then blew out a heavy breath. “There’s more to the story, but I’ve done all the bleeding I care to right now. The point I wanted to make is this: I understand, Hannah. I know what it’s like to lose someone. I know what a bitch anniversaries can be. March twenty-first will be seven years since Mary died. What year is today for you?”
Hannah hesitated. On the heels of his intimate confession, how could she keep quiet? “Three. This is the third anniversary.”
Boone nodded. “Three was a tough one. One and two, you know you’re going to be a basket case. Just when you think you’re progressing okay on the road toward recovery, boom, the third anniversary rolls around. The pain is fresh and new again.”
Now she looked at him appraisingly. “You have a point.”
“I know. That’s what I want you to know. Every anniversary is hard, but from my experience, four truly is a little easier than three.”
“Thank you. You are a nice guy, Boone McBride.”
“Not much of a fisherman, though,” he grumbled when his cast failed to attract a nibble once again. He secured the hook through the eye on his pole, set it aside, and rose. “I don’t know about you, but I’m so hungry that my navel is rubbing against my spine. I picked up a charcuterie board in town, and it’s on my kitchen table, calling to me. Do you need a little more solo time, or would you like to join me?”
Hannah smiled up at him. “I never turn down cheese.”
He grinned back at her and stretched out his hand to help her up.
Just like he’d been doing all day.
Chapter Five
As Boone flipped the steaks on the grill, curiosity was about to kill him. He wanted to know about the tragedy that she marked with such sorrow today. He needed to know just whom she mourned. Exactly why he wanted answers so bad, he couldn’t say. Ordinarily, he didn’t stick his nose in other people’s business.
Well, unless they were family. Family was fair game. That’s just the way the McBrides rolled. And maybe he’d been known to get nosy with good friends upon occasion.
Maybe he did lead with his nose reasonably often.
Of course, he’d learned at the feet of a queen. He loved his mother more than any woman on earth, but Marquetta McBride was the queen of mother hens. She was the empress of mother hens. Just how she managed to keep her thumb on the pulse of her adult children’s lives from her home base in West Texas, he had yet to discover.
This reminded him that he’d better give Celeste a heads-up about the need to keep his baby news quiet until after the wedding. He’d give her a call after dinner.
Hannah had asked for her steak medium-rare, a woman after his own heart. Judging the meat to be done, he moved the steaks from the grill to a platter and carried them inside. She’d volunteered to make the salad, so he’d invited her to make herself at home. She’d not only prepared a killer wedge complete with homemade blue cheese dressing, but also set the table.
“Hey, that looks really nice. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You have beautiful things, Boone. And fresh flowers in the house!”
“That’s because my mother is coming. She has a thing for fresh flowers. This will be her first visit to my new place, and I want to impress her.”
“Well, I think you have that in the bag.”
They made small talk over dinner, which Boone served in the sunroom where they could watch the sun go down. He continually searched for a way to slip a question or two for her into the mix. He discovered that she too liked flowers, had worked in a retail gift shop during high school and college, and liked to crochet. She’d shut down his attempts to delve any deeper into that subject, though he was able to ferret out the fact that she’d spent much of the past year in Florida.
He talked her into sharing a piece of the cake he’d picked up at Fresh Bakery on his trip to town. Watching her take her first bite of Sarah Murphy’s Midnight Magnificence chocolate cake made him want to growl. She went melty and soft, closed her eyes, purred, and licked her lips.
“That’s decadent,” she murmured.
“You should taste Fresh’s strawberry pinwheel cookies. I could eat myself into a sugar coma with those.”
“I’ll have to try them before I leave town.”
There. An opening. Finally. “Speaking of that, are you going to hang around our quaint little hamlet for a little while longer?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t thought beyond today. My time is my own to spend as I wish. This is my first visit to Colorado, so I’d like to do a little sightseeing before I move on.”
“A first-timer?” Boone rubbed his hands villainously together and waggled his eyebrows. “Oh, honey, do I have suggestions for you. Put yourself in my tour-guide hands.”
“Tour guide? I thought you were a lawyer.”
“I am a man of many talents. There exists a companion piece to the tourist map that lured you here. Let me get it.” He rose from his seat at the kitchen table and hurried to his home office, where he grabbed a United States atlas and the tourist map of Colorado that the local chamber had developed using Eternity Springs as a center for tourism in the state.