Perfect Night (Mason Creek #4) - Terri E. Laine Page 0,4

ask my mother.”

She touched her finger to my lips. “Ye of little faith. I won’t tell a soul if you won’t.”

We shook on it. “Tomorrow?”

“I still need to unpack and don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Friday, then. That will give you the week.”

As much as I knew this was a very bad idea, I agreed. “Friday.”

Darcy was long gone when I sat on my porch enjoying a beer at sunset when a car pulled up in front of the house. I knew the car and the woman who drove it.

She got out looking as pretty as a picture, leaving me swallowing my tongue as she walked up to the porch. Now wasn’t the time to tell her all the things I’d waited years to say when her beautiful gray eyes were shadowed after burying her father.

I had to wonder what she was doing here and not with her fiancé whom I’d spotted holding her hand as she left the church.

What could she possibly want from me?

Chapter 3

Emma

Damn the man for looking so good. Tall, dark, and handsome as cliché as that sounded described him to a tee. Ruggedly sexy with a chiseled jaw and a mouth that curled into a sexy smirk. Get it together, Emma, I warned myself as his piercing hazel eyes held on me.

“Aiden Faulkner,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the steps that led up to the wide porch.

“Emma Hawkins.” His voice held the kind of bass that led women to make all kinds of bad decisions. “I’m sorry to hear about your dad. If I’d known, I would have been there.”

“I know.”

“I respected him a lot.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it. It was hard enough for me to be there and have everyone apologizing when all I really want is him back.” I hadn’t meant to cry, but I choked on the last few words. I’d looked down so he wouldn’t see my tears, but then he was there.

Wrapped in his arms, he spoke words I needed. “I’m sorry, darling, that I can’t give you that.”

“I know,” I said for the thousandth time. “I miss him.” His shirt would be stained from my tears, but he held on. “I have no one left.”

“You have me.”

There was sincerity there, something that had been missing from my fiancé. He’d said all the right things today, but I didn’t feel it the way I did with Aiden.

When I was calm enough to speak again, I pulled out of his embrace because it was too easy to find comfort there. “I need your help,” I admitted.

“Anything,” he said.

“You don’t know yet what I’m going to ask,” I said on a chuckle.

“There’s nothing you could ask me, I wouldn’t do.”

I searched his eyes for calculation and found none. “You might want to take that back after you hear what I have to say.” I held my gaze on his earnest hazel eyes. “You look so grown up in that cowboy hat. When did you stop wearing baseball caps?” Somehow, I managed a small smile wanting to lighten the conversation before I dropped the bomb on him.

“You like me in baseball caps?” he teased, taking off the hat and running a hand through sexily dark tousled hair before putting it back in place.

I laughed a little more because his smile was infectious. “You just look more official in the Stetson. I heard you’re taking over as Chief Deputy Sheriff and you bought this place.”

“I did.” There was a moment of silence. “I heard you’re engaged.”

My mouth hung open for a second. “I guess Alana told you.”

“She wasn’t the only one. You know how things work in small towns.”

“True. I don’t see your parents often in town.”

“Yeah, they keep to themselves.”

As the conversation dwindled, he didn’t press me to tell him why I was there, and I appreciated it. “I guess I should tell you why I’m here.”

“I’m happy just to enjoy your company.”

My mind was muddled with everything going on, but I thought he might have just flirted with me. I pushed the ridiculous idea away. I’d crushed on Aiden half my life, but we never got closer than being friends.

“My dad,” I began. “The sheriff, the doc, they believe he had a heart attack and died.” I met his gaze squarely. “I don’t think that’s true.”

I expected him to give me the it’s just grief talking speech everyone else had. However, he surprised me.

“Why do you think that?”

Shocked, I said, “You believe me?” Though I hadn’t actually given him