Page 35 of Hank

He’d have to ask.

Tearing his gaze away from the garage wasn’t easy, and neither was quashing the disappointment he still felt after she’d panicked and fled into the house. Frankly, the idea they’d hadanotherkind of car sex—maybe one day they’d make it to a bed—where Collin had almost caught them should’ve freaked him out too. But Collinhadn’tcaught them, so it wasn’t something he’d felt the need to worry about.

But she obviously had what he’d heard calledmom guiltover it, so, yeah, he understood. Sort of.

It didn’t mean he was happy about it.

"She wants to talk," he murmured, while getting out of his truck. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. Since she was inviting him to the house, he wanted to believe the former. If it were bad, he’d probably have received some kind of Dear John text instead.

He made his way to the front door and knocked. Seconds later, it opened. But it wasn’t Jo.

"Hey, Collin."

"Oh, hi, Dr. Lawton. Can I help you?"

"Well…" What was he supposed to tell the kid? "Your mom wanted to talk to me about basketball concessions." They might discuss that. And if he brought it up in their conversation, then it would kind of be the truth.

"Oh…" A strange kind of smile started to bloom on Collin’s mouth that he quickly pulled in. "Well, she’s in the basement."

"The basement?" Maybe she wanted alotof privacy for their talk.

"Yeah, I accidentally left the water running in the utility sink." He scrubbed his sneaker toe on the floor. "I kinda flooded the basement."

"I bet that didn’t make her happy." Hank frowned when another of his students walked into the room. "Hello, Willow."

"Hi, Dr. Lawton." Her smile was just as cagey as the one Collin was trying to hide.

"How bad is it?" Hank asked, instead of grilling them on what else might be going on. With teenagers and hormones, there was no telling.

"Pretty bad. Mom made me leave so she could cuss."

Hank wanted to laugh at that, because, yeah, he could see her having quite a colorful conversation with herself while she cleaned up the mess.

"I’ll see if I can help her," he said, moving further into the comfortable living room. It was nice, with an open floor plan that led through a dining room, and then beyond that the kitchen.

"That’d be great. The basement door is this way," Collin said, leading him through the house. "Oh," he said stopping in front of a door leading from the kitchen. "Can I borrow your phone for a minute?"

"Sure. I guess," he said, pulling it from his jacket pocket. "But why?"

"I lost mine in the house somewhere, and Willow didn’t bring hers." There went that same, strange, cagey look again. "And I think mom has hers with her. I just want to call it so I can find it."

"Sure," he said, handing it to him. "I’ll get it when I come back up."

"Okay," he said, opening the door to a set of steps leading down, where somewhere below, colorful curse words flowed to the top.

"Jo," he yelled, going down the steps. "Do you need help?" Above him, the sound of the door closing wasn’t a surprise. Collin would know Jo wouldn’t want him to hear her on a rant.

"Hank?" she called out just as he hit the bottom steps. Jo stood in the middle of the damp floor with a few puddles hereand there, kind of disheveled, wiping her brow. "What’re you doing here?"

"Well, for one, I’m going to try to give you a hand." However much water had covered the floor before, most of it seemed to be gone. But he could help with the rest. "And second, you asked me here."

"When?" She frowned and set the mop inside a nearby bucket.

"About fifteen minutes ago."

"I didn’t call you to come over." She came toward him. "Fifteen minutes ago, I was down here sopping up Noah’s flood."

Those cagey looks from Collin and Willow were starting to concern him.

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