Chapter 33
Rowan stepped back into the kitchen and froze when she saw Wes.
He sat at the table with Grace asleep against his chest, one large hand spread across the baby’s back, his expression as steady as it always was.
The image stopped her. This man who’d faced gunmen and criminals . . . he now sat at her family’s kitchen table with a sleeping baby on his chest.
Her heart jerked into her throat, and she could barely breathe.
The image made her fast-forward in time. Made her wonder what her life would have been like if she’d settled down. Started a family. Started a family with Wes.
One thing was for sure. She wouldn’t be in this mess right now.
Again, the weight of her choices pressed on her.
She looked away from Wes before the sight of him with Grace could do anything more to her.
Instead, she looked at her mother.
“Everything okay?” Her mom’s gaze appeared patient.
Rowan met her mother’s eyes. “It is.”
Her mom held her gaze for one long moment—long enough to say she’d heard both the answer and what was underneath it—and then she nodded, lifted her mug, and let it go.
For now.
An hour later, Wes found Caleb near the kennel.
The late-afternoon light had started turning gold across the back pasture, and long shadows stretched toward the fence line.
Caleb stood beside the kennel with his arms folded, watching Hamilton nose around in the grass.
“You look like someone ran over your dog,” Caleb said as Wes approached.
“Not mine.” Wes stopped beside him. “Yours.”
Caleb’s expression sharpened.
Wes showed him a picture of the surveillance photograph that had been left in his room. The one of Rowan in the woods looking at the site of the fire. Sheriff Sutherland had taken the hard copy, but Wes had wanted a copy for himself.
Caleb looked at the front first before shaking his head. “You’ve got to be kidding me . . .”
“Found it in my room at Hollow House.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened as he read the message. “That was taken near the site of the fire.”
“Yes, it was.”
Caleb stared at the woods beyond the pasture. “What do you think this is connected with?”
“It’s hard to say for sure if this trouble is centered around Rowan or Refuge Cove.”
“You think Rowan’s the target?” Caleb asked after a moment.
“I think Rowan walked into something dangerous in California.” He looked back at the house in the distance. “But I also think this property already had enemies before she came home.”
Caleb rubbed a hand across his jaw. “You’re right about that.”
“Either way, we have a problem,” Wes continued.
Caleb gave a short nod at the photograph. “You think whoever took this is still watching the property?”
“I do.”
“I don’t like what that means for the women staying here.”
“It is an issue,” Wes said. “No one can deny that.”
“The question is: What are we going to do about it?”