Page 56 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

An entirely different fire blazed to life.

She opened her lips to him, and he dove in, pulling her closer.

In all her life, she’d never experienced anything like it. It was the kind of kiss they wrote about in romance novels. The kind of kiss that shifted hearts and changed lives.

He was the one to end it, wrapping her more tightly in his arms.

She pressed her face against his soft shirt, and he rested his cheek on her head.

“Wow.”

He’d said what she was thinking, so she added, “Yeah.”

He backed away to look at her. His expression was open but shifted as his eyebrows drew together. “I probably should’ve asked already. Is there a boyfriend? You haven’t said anything about?—”

“No boyfriend.”

“How can that be?” He looked equally pleased and confused. “Are the guys in Hawaii all idiots?”

Her laugh was short and loud in the quiet room. “I have some rules. I don’t date tourists, and I don’t date people I work with. Those two groups made up a large proportion of the men I met. There’ve been some casual dates, but nobody who…”Who made my heart sing.

That was what she’d always craved, but nobody’d ever come close.

Garrett definitely had her heart warming up its vocal cords.

“I still don’t get it,” Garrett said. “How does someone like you make it to thirty-one without finding a guy? I’m not complaining. I’m just saying?—”

“Wait.” She played back over what he’d said, then over all the conversations they’d had since they’d met. “How do you know how old I am?”

“Oh.” His face, that expressive face, showed guilt as plainly as if it were tattooed on his forehead.

She backed out of his arms and waited.

“I don’t know. You must’ve said it at some point.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, I mean… Somebody did.”

“You were talking about me to somebody?”

“It’s not like that. Your being in town is a topic of conversation, and?—”

“And you’ve been involved in those conversations?”

He ran a hand over his short hair, messing it up and somehow making it look better. “It’s not like that.”

“What is it like, exactly?” Maybe the frustration rising inside her was irrational, but he was her only true friend in town. She’d trusted him. Had he been talking about her behind her back?

She was a novelty, and he had the best vantage point. Had people been questioning him about her? What had he toldthem? She swallowed all those questions and went with, “Have you really had so many conversations about me with so many different people that you can’t remember who told you my age?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “It was my uncle, the day I asked for the furniture. He remembers your mother and when she disappeared.”

“All this time, I’ve been trying to figure out what happened back then, and we could have asked your uncle? Or…” Something else, something horrible, occurred to her. “You knew, didn’t you? About the bombing, and my?—”

“No.” He stepped toward her and took her hand. “I didn’t know about any of that. My uncle told me there was a story, an ugly story. I tried to get more information out of him, but he had some sort of… He was short of breath and shaky. My aunt says it’s been happening, these episodes. I didn’t want to press him when he was in that condition, and I haven’t seen him since.”

It made sense. Except there was something in Garrett’s face, something guarded, that made her nervous. Perhaps he felt guilty that he’d gossiped about her. Perhaps he felt guilty he hadn’t told her about his uncle’s connection to her mother already.

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