“Of course we are.” She watched as relief crossed his face.
“And are you okay with that?” he asked, but he studiously kept looking down at the barbecue.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” she replied equally quietly.
He looked up, searched her face, and then a grin split his hugely handsome face in half. “You are, indeed, but that could be just because you live here and because you’re hungry.”
She walked over, wrapped her arms around him in a hug. “I’m sorry.” She mumbled against his chest. “I feel so socially awkward. I feel like a gauche teenager again, but I would not want to hurt you.”
“And I’m glad to hear that.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her up close against his broad chest. “I would not want to hurt you either,” he agreed quietly. “So, whether your grandmother or somebody else at the old folks’ home puts bets on our love life, you’ll ignore them because nobody gets to control who and what we feel about us—except us.”
She leaned back, looked up at him. “You’re so much wiser than I am.”
“No.” He shook his head at that. “Honestly, you say some things that make me realize that our experiences in life have just been so very different.” He shrugged. “You need a little more practice in some areas, and I need a lot more practice in others.”
And just then she sniffed the air, and he returned to the grill and snagged the steaks. He took one look. “Whew, okay, that was a close one. Now it’s time to eat.”
“Good, because that’s definitely one area I need more practice at.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” He laughed out loud. “I think you’re doing just fine on the eating part. Now the cooking part …?”
She beamed, as she sat down to a plate of barbecued veggies, a large salad, and a grilled steak.
“And shopping,” she added. “I still struggle. I don’t quite understand how anybody is supposed to live on this little bit of money that I make. I know that people have a lot more money than I do, but, wow, groceries are so expensive. By the time I pay for dog food, cat food, and bird food, it’s really hard to come up with enough money to feed myself for the rest of the week.”
He looked over at her. “And have you considered that maybe the dog food, cat food, and bird food should come after your groceries?”
She stared at him. “No.” Her tone was stiff. “My responsibility, my joy, is to look after them. I’m blessed to have them in my life. And, therefore, they get what they need.”
“Even if you don’t get what you need?” he asked, his lips twitching.
“I can go back to peanut butter and bread if I have to,” she replied calmly. “But I don’t want them to suffer.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
She stared at him suspiciously and then realized that, for him, the topic was already over. He had asked; she’d answered, and he was good with that. “So, how was your day?”
He looked over at her. “It was long but good, and, no, I’m not telling you about the case.”
She looked at him with an injured air. “That’s not very nice of you.”
“What? That I won’t tell you?”
“No, that you jumped to assuming that I would ask you.”
He burst out laughing. “It’s a given that you’ll ask. And it’s a given that I’ll say, I’m not telling you anything.”
“Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way”—she grinned—“how about a cold case for me to work on?”
“Don’t you have enough around here for you to fuss with?” He pointed at her backyard garden, which she had worked on in starts and fits, depending on what else was going on in her life.
“Sure, but they aren’t Poison in the Pansies.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Current case,” he stated sternly, “not for you.”
“What if I found another case that might have had poison in it?” she asked. “I could slide that into being connected.”
He glared at her. “I don’t think so. We don’t get very many poisonings in town.”
“Well, that’s good,” she replied, “because, honest to goodness, you know that Nan kept telling me about what a beautiful place this was to live, but, so far, I’m just seeing an awful lot of crime.”
He smiled. “Some of it’s crime, not always though. One of your cold cases involved flooding.”
“No, that’s true,” she agreed. “And, of course, in some cases, I’ve been really helpful too.”
“You were really helpful in closing out some of the cold cases. You’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people, and whether everybody is particularly happy about it isn’t the issue,” he murmured. “What’s the issue is that you went ahead and helped them anyway.”
She smiled. “I don’t think too many people think that what I was doing was actually helping.”
“No. But you know, once you start finding bodies buried for a long time, and you realize how long some of these people have been at their evil antics,” he noted, “well, you know it doesn’t matter if people like it or not. We’re finding justice for the victims.”
“And that’s the part that really bothers me,” she stated. “All these people who got away with murder for so long, and now I just want to make sure they all pay.”
“Making them pay is one thing,” he replied. “Finding justice is something completely different, so maybe don’t confuse the two.”
She frowned at that. “I guess I hadn’t looked at it from that point of view.”
“Well, you do have some reasons to want revenge on certain people,” he agreed. “And I’m thinking of your ex and of course Robin.”
“And yet …” she answered quietly, “Robin’s dead, hoisted by her own petard—or whatever that saying is.” She waved her fork at him. “So it’s hard to want revenge. I mean, she’s paid the ultimate price.”
“True,” he murmured. “And that’s one of the good things about you. You know when you can walk away. Now your ex? That’s a different story.”
“I know,” she agreed. “And I did send your brother another email.”
Mack nodded. “I connected with him today.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s getting ready to give you a call. So you can expect to hear from him in the next couple days.”
“Or he just told you that to get me to stop texting and emailing him.” She laughed.
“No, I think your ex is causing trouble.”
“Gee, what a surprise,” she muttered. “Is that why you had to connect with Nick?”
“No. Nick had asked me some questions earlier, and I had to get some answers for him.”
She nodded. “It’s nice that the two of you can work so well together.”
“It would also be nice if he moved back to Kelowna,” he noted quietly. “I know that’s something that he’s considering.”