Smoky Mountain Setup. Paula Graves

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СКАЧАТЬ released another sigh as she hung the coat back on its hook. “Okay, fair enough. Let’s get the fire cranked up. I’m freezing.”

      He took off his coat and hung it on the hook beside hers. “How can I help? Need more wood?”

      “It’s in a bin by the back door. Straight down the hall.”

      He found the wood bin and grabbed a couple of pieces for the fire then returned to the front room. He found Olivia kneeling in front of the hearth, adding newspaper as kindling to the charred logs still glowing faintly red. He added the wood to the fire and looked around for matches.

      Olivia reached into a small steel canister on the mantel and withdrew a narrow fireplace lighter. “Here.”

      He touched the butane flame to the kindling. It ignited with a soft whoosh, and the logs soon caught fire, emitting a delicious wave of heat into the room.

      “Nice,” Olivia murmured, extending her hands toward the flames.

      He pulled the room’s two armchairs close to the fire. “Sit.”

      She did as he said, leaning toward the warmth. “Thanks.”

      He sat in the chair next to her, holding his icy fingers toward the fire until some of the numbness subsided. “No, thank you.”

      “For what?”

      “For extending a little Southern hospitality to a poor, weary traveler?” he suggested with a smile.

      Her lips curved in response. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”

      “Maybe not. But I am grateful to be here in front of this fire instead of out there in all that cold white stuff.”

      Olivia fell silent, her gaze directed at the flickering fire. Settling back in the chair, Landry allowed himself to study her profile, take in the lean lines of her body only partially hidden by her sweater and jeans. His earlier observation was correct; she was in excellent shape. She’d always been a curvy woman, and that hadn’t changed, but the curves were matched with toned muscles and an overall look of vibrant health.

      Leaving the FBI and going to work for The Gates seemed to have been good for her, at least physically.

      But what about her spirit? The Olivia Sharp he’d known and loved had been a firecracker, full of explosive energy and a fierce inquisitiveness that had taken her very far very fast in the FBI.

      But not this woman in front of him. She was quiet, contemplative and remarkably still.

      She stirred as he watched her, turning her gaze to him. “I could heat up some milk over the fire for hot chocolate. Or even water for coffee, if you’d prefer that—”

      “You’ve changed.” He hadn’t meant to blurt the words aloud, but he couldn’t take them back.

      Her eyelids flickered and she looked away. “So have you.”

      Now that he’d started down this conversational path, he decided, he might as well go all in. “Are you happy?”

      “I’m...content.”

      He felt an ache settle in his chest at the hint of melancholy in her tone. “Is contentment enough?”

      “For now.”

      “Do you anticipate finding more than contentment at some point in the future?”

      She slanted a look his way. “Why don’t you just come out and ask whatever it is you want to know?”

      “Do you miss me?” He clamped his mouth shut as soon as the words escaped his lips. He hadn’t intended to ask such a blunt, self-serving question.

      “Yes.” Her answer, equally blunt, caught him by surprise.

      They fell quiet, letting the crackle of the fire fill the lingering silence. Landry wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she spoke again, but the flames in the hearth had already begun to die down.

      “I loved you. Like I’d never loved anyone in my life.” Her gaze remained directed forward, toward the fireplace, the flickering light from the flames bathing her face in a warm glow. “When things fell apart, I had to keep going. Keep working the job, not let the loss derail me. But I just couldn’t keep going, day in and day out, working alone when I’d gotten so used to you being there.”

      The ache in his chest intensified. “I’m sorry.”

      “You’d been transferred by then. It’s not like we’d have been working together anyway.”

      “I was a mess,” he admitted. “It was hard to care about anything for a long time. I worked the job, but it just didn’t mean anything to me anymore.”

      “I heard you’d started going through the motions.”

      Guilt flooded him, hot and sour. “I did. Much to my shame. I don’t really have an excuse. I just knew I wasn’t ever going to get any further up the ladder than I already was, and any screwup would probably be the end of the line for me.”

      “Easier to keep your nose clean if you’re not rocking the boat.”

      “Yeah. I guess. I’m not sure I gave it that much thought. It’s just—nothing meant anything. Every time I cleared a case, three more would pop up to take their place. Bureaucratic crap kept creeping further and further down the line into the field offices. We were dealing with federal-level politics in the Johnson City RA, for Pete’s sake.”

      “Why didn’t you just leave the FBI, then?”

      “And do what? I spent over a decade solving crimes and protecting lives. It’s all I really know how to do at this point.”

      “You could have come to work for Quinn at The Gates, for one thing.” She picked up the fire poker and gave the logs a nudge.

      “I wasn’t ready.” He stopped short as she snapped her gaze up to meet his.

      “You weren’t ready to work with me again.”

      “That’s not it, exactly.”

      She turned back to the fire. “Then what is it?”

      “I know Ava Trent probably didn’t have anything good to say about me. Or McKenna Rigsby, either. But my job was to watch their backs, and I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch.”

      “So you stayed for your partners?” She arched an eyebrow but still didn’t look at him.

      “I wanted my job to mean something again. I thought if I stuck around, if I did what it took to get through the day, I’d feel that fire again.” He shook his head. “As if that fire came from outside of me.”

      She remained silent for a long time, her singular focus on the flickering fire beginning to make him squirm inside. The Olivia Sharp who’d been his partner, in his work life and his personal life, had been a vibrant force of nature. Quiet contemplation had never been her style.

      Maybe СКАЧАТЬ