Page 86 of Echoes of You

I couldn’t help but kiss her. “Yeah, oh.”

She stopped me when I tried to take the kiss deeper. “Oh, no, you don’t, Casanova. We need to get to work.”

I groaned but pulled back, studying her. “Is there anything besides the texts I need to know about?”

I saw a flicker of something in Maddie’s eyes. It wasn’t the look she got when she lied, but something was off. She shook her head. “I haven’t seen or heard from him other than the texts and possibly that flower.”

My gaze narrowed on her a fraction. “You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Come on. We need to get going.”

But I stayed put for another few seconds. Something told me Maddie was holding a piece of information back. And in a situation like this, that secrecy could be deadly.

* * *

I rappedon Lawson’s closed door.

A muffled “come in” sounded through the wood.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Lawson looked up from a stack of paperwork. He had a healthy dose of stubble covering his jaw, and the dark circles under his eyes were more pronounced.

Concern swept through me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a late night last night. Luke and I got into it, and then I had a mile of paperwork to get through.”

My brother’s eldest son had officially entered the surly teen years and was giving Lawson a workout in the parenting department.

“Everything okay with Luke?”

Lawson sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know what’s going on with him. It’s like the kid I raised just disappeared and was replaced by this angry teenager who only grunts and slams doors.”

“Maybe he’s been hanging around Roan too much.”

Typically, a joke like that would have at least made Lawson chuckle, but this time it barely got a flicker of his lips. The worry I felt dug in deeper.

“Why don’t you let me take him out on the four-wheelers once my shoulder’s fully healed? Get a little one-on-one time with him and see if I can figure out what’s going on.”

Luke and I had always had a good relationship, but he’d declined my offers of outings over the past six months or so, opting to hole up with his video games instead.

Lawson nodded. “If you can get him to go, that’d be great.”

I lowered myself into the chair opposite the desk. “I’ll bribe him if I have to.”

A soft chuckle left Lawson at that. “Always a sound plan.” He studied me for a moment. “You look…happy.”

“You sound perplexed by that. Isn’t happy a good thing?”

“Sure, but it’s not something I would’ve expected given how I left you yesterday…” Lawson’s words trailed off, and then a grin a mile wide spread across his face. “You and Maddie figured things out.”

I instantly tried to mask my smile. The last thing my brother needed was the knowledge that his interfering had actually helped things. “Not sure what you mean, but I don’t appreciate you meddling where Maddie’s concerned.”

Lawson’s grin only widened. “You two got together.”

“Law…”

He smacked his desk and let out a whistle. “It’s about damn time. You realize Mom is going to lose her mind when she finds out, right? She’ll be planning the wedding before you even bring Maddie over for dinner.”

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