Chapter 10
TEN
The Hunter Valley’s romantic charm was starting to feel like mockery. The wine was excellent, the fireplace was warm, and Dakota had spent the entire day searching rooms and finding nothing.
Riley’s suitcase had been gray, rolling, and completely wrong—different brand, different wear pattern, a luggage tag from a cruise line Jayden had never mentioned.
The Novaks’ bags were travel backpacks. Vic’s bag was stuffed with IT equipment and what looked like an entire pharmacy’s worth of anxiety medication.
Gerald’s contained nothing but birding guides and binoculars.
Howard’s bag was filled with vitamins, compression socks, and three identical pairs of khaki shorts.
No sign of rifle components. No sign of the gray nondescript bag that had started all of this.
So yeah, that was just fantastic. Their assassin could be on the way to Sydney right now.
Dakota swirled his wine and watched the firelight play through the glass. Across from him, Jayden was studying the dessert menu with more attention than it probably deserved.
“You’ve been quiet all evening,” she said without looking up.
He set the wine down. Found a smile. “I just wish we’d found your bag.”
“Me too. I miss my favorite toothbrush.” She smiled and winked. “Maybe it never made it to Cairns. Maybe it’s sitting in some airport lost-and-found in Fiji. Maybe—”
“How are we doing tonight?”
Bonnie appeared at their table, clipboard in one hand, wineglass in the other—the tour director slightly softened by end-of-day relaxation. Her smile was warm, professional, relentlessly cheerful as always.
“Everything’s wonderful,” Jayden said, summoning her own smile. “The wine-country experience has been lovely.”
“So glad to hear it! Aren’t you glad we had those couple of cancellations? Otherwise we wouldn’t have had room for you two.” Bonnie beamed.
“Cancellations?”
“Yes—they cancelled in Fiji. The Martins went straight on to Sydney to meet their children.”
Dakota’s attention sharpened. “The Martins?”
“Lovely couple. Quiet. Kept to themselves mostly.” Bonnie shrugged.
“We were sorry to see them go, but these things happen. Family first, you know? Anyway, luggage outside your door by tomorrow before breakfast. We’ll catch the train at 8:30 a.m. back to the airport and be in Melbourne by the afternoon. ”
“Got it,” he said.
Bonnie wished them a lovely evening and drifted toward another table, and Dakota felt something loosen in his chest. A lead. A direction. Something to follow.
“You think they have my bag?” Jayden asked quietly. “The Martins?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She nodded slowly, processing. Then: “Wait. Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere? A business meeting in Sydney? The security check you mentioned?”
Dakota hesitated. The lies were getting harder to maintain, the cover story fraying at the edges.
“I have a team there,” he said. “They know what they’re doing. I can coordinate remotely for a few more days.”
Jayden frowned—not suspicious exactly, but something. Curious, maybe. “That’s a lot to postpone for a missing suitcase.”
“That’s what I was going to say to you.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What if we don’t find it? What if the bag is just . . . gone? This is a lot of hassle, a lot of chasing. Maybe you just buy new stuff and move on.”
Something shifted in her expression. The guard that was always partially up, partially down—it dropped entirely.
“It’s not about the stuff,” she said quietly.
“Then what is it about?”
She was quiet for a long moment, looking at her wineglass instead of at him. The restaurant hummed around them—other diners, clinking glasses, the crackle of the fireplace. Normal sounds for a normal evening.
“It’s about my sister,” she said finally. “Skylar.”
He frowned, folded his arms.
“She was the smart one.” Jayden’s voice turned soft, almost distant. “Full ride to Stanford. Pre-med. She was going to be a doctor, save lives, change the world.”
Dakota stayed quiet.
“She got cancer when she was twenty. Diagnosed just before finals.” A pause. “She fought it for two years. Chemo, radiation, experimental treatments. She never stopped believing she’d beat it. Never stopped praying.”
The firelight flickered across her face. She still wasn’t looking at him.
“She died when she was twenty-two. Three months before she would have graduated.”
Oh wow. “Jayden—”
“She had this Bible.” Her voice softened. “Little leather-bound thing she’d had since confirmation. All marked up with her notes, her prayers, her questions. She read it every day, even at the end. Even when she was too weak to hold it and I had to hold it for her.”
She finally looked at him, and her eyes were bright with tears she was fighting not to let fall.
“When she died, I got it. The Bible. It’s the last piece of her I have.” A bitter half smile. “I don’t really believe anymore. Not like she did. But I keep it with me everywhere I go. Hold it sometimes. Read her notes.”
His chest ached. “And it’s in the bag.”
“I keep it in my carry-on. Always.” She shook her head. “I never thought I’d have to gate check it and it would get lost somewhere over the Pacific. Stupid. It was so stupid.”
“I get it.”
“It was the one thing I should have kept with me.” Her voice cracked slightly.
“It’s all I have of her. My parents—they never recovered.
All their hopes, their dreams, everything they’d invested in the future—it all went with her.
And I was just the other daughter. The one who was still there. ” That bitter smile again. “Lucky me.”
Aw. Dakota couldn’t stop himself from reaching across the table. He took her hand. She let him.
And just like that, the memory of kissing her last night swept over him. Her sweet surrender to his touch, the way she’d seemed just as willing, just as hopeful . . .
Yeah, he was in. All in. “You’re not ‘just’ anything,” he said quietly.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.”
She looked at their joined hands. Swallowed.
“You said you lost your faith,” Dakota said. “I get that. I did too.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I had faith when I was young,” he said. “When my family was whole, before Dad died.”
“How did he die?”
“Car accident. Was driving home late at night from Aberdeen. A semi drifted into his lane. Head-on crash. Gone, just like that.”
“Oh, Dakota.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Yeah. It was . . . well, it destroyed us. We moved in with my Mom’s dad. My older sister got lost. Drugs, bad choices, wrong people. She disappeared into that life. My mom and younger sister disappeared into church.”
Jayden’s hand tightened on his.
“It all felt so . . . chaotic. Mom was grieving hard, and Grandpa was trying to hold us all together. I needed to control something, you know? So I started rodeoing. Got very good at roping, and even bronc riding. Felt like something chaotic that I could wrestle into control.” He shook his head.
“Faith was too . . . I dunno. I guess I felt betrayed. I believed in God, but I didn’t trust Him to do things my way, you know?
” He gave her a wry smile. “That’s probably the problem, right? God never does it our way.”
She sighed. “Skylar always said that faith means trusting what you don’t know,” Jayden said softly. “And believing that it’ll work out anyway.”
“Yeah.” He met her eyes. “And I’m not good at not knowing. Or believing in the happy ending.” He looked away. “Mom got remarried a couple years ago. Good guy, local cowboy. My kid sister thinks he’s fantastic.”
“And your older sister?”
“Still lost. I haven’t heard from her in years.”
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed and looked at their clasped hands.
“Maybe that’s why we found each other,” she said quietly. “Two people trying to figure out how to have a little faith, right?”
Dakota looked at her—the firelight in her hair, the vulnerability in her eyes, the hand that fit so perfectly in his—and made a decision.
“We’ll find it,” he said. “The Bible. I promise.”
She looked at him. “And maybe that happy ending.”
He didn’t let go of her hand.
They walked back to the cottage through the quiet grounds, the pool reflecting stars, the eucalyptus trees dark silhouettes against the sky. The covered verandah glowed with warm light. The air held a cool breath, carrying the scent of distant vineyards and woodsmoke.
The warmth of her body seeped into his, close enough that every brush of their shoulders felt intentional.
They reached the cottage. Dakota unlocked the door, held it open for her. The big bed with its white linens dominated the space.
Yeah, he’d need the sofa tonight, after the conversation at dinner.
Jayden stepped inside, then turned to face him.
“Did you kiss me last night?”
The question hung in the air. Direct. Unflinching. Those whiskey eyes searching his face for the truth.
“Yes. You don’t remember?”
“Sorta felt like a dream.” She smiled.
“A dream.”
She lifted a shoulder, but her eyes twinkled.
“We should fix that,” he said softly.
She met his gaze, her tongue going to her lips. And nodded.
Dakota closed the distance between them.
This kiss was different from last night’s. That one had been impulse—the sudden need to prove something, to himself or to her, he wasn’t sure which. This one was choice. Deliberate. His hands came up to cup her face, cradling her jaw, thumbs brushing across her cheekbones.
Then he dove in.
She tasted sweet, like wine and something else, something that was just her, and stepped up to him, her arms around his waist, pulling him closer. He cupped the back of her head, his fingers sliding into her hair, and angled her up to him.
And the sense of her simply overtook him, swept over him.
This woman. She made the whirring in his brain still, made the world around him stop, made him breathe, hear his heartbeat, listen to his dreams.
She made him wonder, and want, and hope.
She made him believe that, yes, there could be happy endings.