Page 71 of Montana Mystery

I glanced at Evelyn’s hand. A sparkly ring sat on her finger, and just visible under the cuff of her sleeve were scars. “When’s the wedding?”

“This spring.” Her smile told me everything I needed to know about how she felt. She was absolutely glowing.

Lena noticed me looking. “They’re absolutely sickeningly adorable. You’ll see tonight.”

“It was really nice of you to do this. You didn’t have to.”

“The girls have to stick together,” Cori said.

Finally settling with her own coffee, Lena turned her gaze on me. “Tell us everything.”

Everyone turned.

“What do you want to know?”

Grace rolled her eyes. “Don’t let her force you into anything you’re not comfortable with. Whatever you’d like to tell us, you can. If you don’t want to talk at all, that’s fine too. But I imagine she’s talking about you and Noah.”

I smiled. The sudden, high dose of female friendship was overwhelming in the best way. “Well, the first time I saw him, I basically accused him of putting my brother in the hospital. I was angry, and I found Noah’s number in my brother’s pocket- while he lay unconscious in a hospital bed.”

While we ate cookies—that had no freaking right to be as good as they were—and drank all the coffee, I gave them a rundown of what happened. None of the dangerous or more graphic details seemed to faze any of them. If Evelyn had scars like that, then she had seen some shit.

They all probably had.

“So now I’m... staying with Noah and enjoying having kittens around.”

Cori snorted into her coffee. “Yeah,” she coughed. “I’m sure it’s just the kittens.”

I’d skipped over the sex. I wasn’t quite ready to talk about that in the open yet. “What?” I asked innocently. “Is there something else I should be enjoying?”

We all dissolved into laughter at that.

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

Cori sighed dramatically. “I don’t know. But it will be good. Grant volunteered to cook.”

The rest of them laughed at something, and Cori glanced at me. “Before we were together, I teased Grant about not being able to cook. He very thoroughly proved me wrong.”

“He very thoroughly does a lot of things to you,” Lena said under her breath.

Cori blushed and busied herself with the rest of her cookie.

Grace stood. “We should probably go so we’re not late.”

“Who’s late?”

Noah walked in the door, and all the air rushed from my lungs. Thinking about him around them, I was able to step back and look at him the way I had when I’d first seen him. Jeans that were tight enough to show off what I now knew was a perfect ass. Broad shoulders that filled out the leather jacket he was wearing. Windswept dark hair and eyes that were on mine, showing me what he felt with the intensity of his gaze.

“No one’s late,” Grace said. “We’re just heading back to the ranch for dinner. You came all the way here to make sure she was okay?”

He laughed, still looking at me. “I came all the way here to make sure she hadn’t been thrown to the wolves.”

“As if we had anything but the best intentions,” Evelyn said, winking at me. “Want to ride with us or him?”

“Good luck with Bessie.”

The flurry of activity as they gathered their things again felt separate from the two of us. I hadn’t seen him since this morning, and the way he looked at me felt like we were the only two in the room.

Finally, I broke that connection as I stood. “Thank you again for this. It really means a lot.”

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