Page 57 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

He ducked his head until she was looking in his eyes. “My uncle’s going to the doctor tomorrow. Later today, I guess. I’m telling you the truth. It just threw me off guard when you asked me about it, and it took me a minute to remember where I’d heard your age.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you Dean and I talked about you. I know you want to find out what happened to your mother, but my uncle means the world to me. I can’t… I’m worried about his health.” Garrett backed away to meet her eyes again. “I’m on your side, Aspen. You can trust me.”

She wanted to, more than anything. Because if she didn’t have Garrett, she wouldn’t have his friends either. She wouldn’t have anybody.

More than that, she wanted to trust him because…because he was more than a friend. As crazy and impossible as it seemed, she could see herself falling for this man.

She stepped into his arms, choosing to believe him. After all, what did he have to gain by lying to her?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The sun was barely brightening the winter sky when Garrett parked, but a light was shining through the bottom floor window of his uncle’s house. As long as Garrett could remember, Uncle Dean had gotten up between five and five thirty and started work. Today, it seemed, was no exception.

Rather than ring the bell and wake Deborah, Garrett used his key to let himself in, went down the half flight of stairs, and knocked on the wall leading to the shop.

Dean was leaning over his workbench sanding a table leg. He looked up, his eyes widening when he saw Garrett. “What are you doing here so early?”

Garrett stepped inside. The space looked just as it always had. The pieces off to the side had changed over the years—tables, chairs, cabinets, rocking horses, chests. His uncle was a talented carpenter, well-known all over the state for his workmanship. But though the pieces were always changing, the shop looked just as it had when Garrett was a teen. A couple of workbenches, shelves holding the tools of his trade. Though it was quiet now, often the sound of one of his power tools would carry up through the floorboards, weirdly comforting. A finelayer of sawdust covered everything and filled the air with the scents of cedar and pine and oak.

His uncle gave him an appraising look, and his eyebrows lifted. “Did something happen? You look like you just rolled out of bed.”

Garrett stepped closer, thankful for the gum he’d found in his truck. He winced at the thought that he’d kissed Aspen with morning breath.

She hadn’t seemed to mind.

“Coffee?” Dean nodded to the one-cup maker on the small counter beside the sink, and Garrett started it brewing.

Dean went back to his task.

It’d always been this way with them. How many hours had Garrett sat in this workshop, watching his uncle work? It made it easier, somehow, to open up when Dean wasn’t watching, just listening silently, bent over some project.

This man meant everything to him. Everything.

Which made this so much harder.

“Somebody was watching Aspen’s house the other night.”

Dean’s hand stilled, but only for a moment before he resumed the tedious task of rubbing sandpaper against the wood, the sound rhythmic and familiar.

“It freaked her out enough that she bought an alarm system. I installed it for her last weekend.”

“Good idea,” Dean said.

“It went off last night.”

Dean looked up at that. Waiting. The room, usually so peaceful, suddenly filled with tension. There was nothing Garrett could do about that.

“She wasn’t home,” he said. “Somebody broke in. Went through her stuff. Stole her laptop. I’m guessing it’s somebody who wants to know what she knows about her mother.”

Dean’s eyebrows lowered.

“Do you know anything about that?”

Carefully, Dean set the sandpaper on his table and straightened. “Are you asking me if I broke into her house?”

“I’m asking you?—”

“Are you really standing in my workshop at the crack of dawn to accuse me of going through that girl’s things and stealing her laptop?”

Suddenly, Garrett was a fourteen-year-old kid again, desperate to stay on his uncle’s good side, knowing that if Uncle Dean didn’t want him, nobody would. Garrett’s father would send him off to a faraway boarding school. He’d be all alone in the world.

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