Chapter 4 Noah
Noah
Igot the door open for Emma and let her walk in ahead of me. She paused on the threshold, her gaze taking in the dark interior.
I reached past her to flick the wall switch, and soft light filtered down from overhead.
This log cabin was small, the kitchen to the right and the living room to the left, with a big stone fireplace taking up the far wall.
Because of all the wood, the decor was simple, and on the lighter side, to balance it out.
I couldn’t take credit for that. My ex, Maisie, was the one with the eye for design, and she’d done a good job helping me pick furniture that struck a balance between style and durability.
My eyes swept the space, hoping I hadn’t left a pair of boxers hanging from the back of the couch or anything. Thankfully, it looked clean.
“This is nice,” Emma said.
I nudged her forward so I could shut the door behind us. “You sound surprised.”
“Oh! Sorry, no, I just meant . . .” She trailed off, eyes narrowing, mouth puckering. “Yeah, I’m surprised. I expected a lot more plaid and animal heads mounted on the walls. It doesn’t even smell bad in here. Very impressive.”
“Wow, the bar is in hell.”
She grimaced. “It really is. In my defense, all I hear from my unmarried friends are dating horror stories. You wouldn’t believe how many single men in this town put their mattresses right on the floor.”
I leaned down to unlace my boots. “Not even a box spring?”
“Nope.”
“Heathens.”
I kicked my shoes off, and she followed suit.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”
We headed upstairs, and I held the door open for her, thankful, again, that I’d recently scrubbed everything down and it was clean. “Want me to show you how the shower knobs work?”
“Yes, please,” she said in a small voice. She looked like she was starting to retreat into herself, like she was reliving bad memories, or was too overwhelmed by everything that had happened to be present in this moment.
I spoke slowly, my voice soft as I got the water going and showed her how to adjust the temperature before pointing out where the towels and extra toiletries were. Afterward, I headed toward the door.
“I’ll get dinner started while you’re—”
She grabbed my arm. “Wait.”
I turned back to see her staring up at me with wide, terrified eyes.
“Please . . . don’t leave me.”
Shit.
I pulled her into another hug, my arms banded around her shoulders, my heart breaking for her all over again. “I’m not leaving,” I told her. “I’ll just be downstairs. Hell, you’ll probably hear me banging around down there the whole time.”
Emma shook her head against my chest. “Can you just . . . stay in here?”
I stiffened, and she must have felt it because she scrambled to correct herself.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to. God, you must think I’m such a baby.”
“I don’t. And I’ll stay,” I told her. “It makes sense you wouldn’t want to be alone. I was just worried you’d end up feeling uncomfortable with a strange man loitering out here.”
She pulled back enough to look up at me. “You’re not a strange man.”
“I am, though. Like you said, we haven’t spoken since senior year of high school when you thanked me for handing you a pen.”
She blinked.
Whoops. Probably shouldn’t have gone into that much detail. It made me sound like a stalker.
“But . . . that doesn’t mean I don’t know you,” she said. “As much as this town talks? I’ve never heard a word spoken against you aside from you being labeled creepy because of your job. Even Maisie said good things after you broke up.”
A surprised exhale gusted out of me. Maisie and I hadn’t ended on the best of terms, even though the breakup had been mostly amicable.
She wanted out of our small town, wanted to start a family and move to the city where there was more work and better schools, while I was happy right where I was and didn’t know if I even wanted kids.
We’d decided the right thing to do was call it quits before we got in too deep and ended up really hurting each other, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Emma blew out a breath. “I promise I’m not trying to, like, hit on you. I just . . . I thought I was going to die alone down there, and now I’m worried that if I’m left alone again, I’ll feel like I’m right back in that coffin.”
I held her tighter. “I know I keep saying it, but I am just so fucking sorry, Emma.”
She sniffed. “Thank you.”
Carefully, I unwound my arms from her shoulders. “I’ll be right over here until you tell me it’s safe to turn around.” I strode toward the door, my back to her—as much privacy as this small room allowed.
A few seconds later, the sound of shifting cloth hit my ears, and I forced myself to tune it out, to not let myself imagine the sight of the most stunning woman I had ever seen stripping naked behind me.
No way in hell was I sexualizing this angel after what she’d been through.
Instead, I turned my thoughts toward Beau and how the fuck he’d gotten away with his crimes.
How much his privilege and power must have played into it.
Had no one besides the Millers questioned him?
Or had they tried and been silenced? A nurse at the hospital, or a mortuary assistant, maybe.
All I knew was that half the goddamn town found Beau’s behavior suspicious, and that was from the outside looking in.
It seemed impossible to me that someone closer to the events hadn’t thought so, too.
I shook my head. Laws existed to protect people, but Beau had found a way to weaponize them instead, using his authority as Emma’s power of attorney to do exactly what he wanted and fuck everyone else.
It made me furious. It made me sick to think he’d almost gotten away with it.
If Emma hadn’t woken up, if I hadn’t stayed so late . . .
Don’t think like that, I told myself. She was here, she was alive, right behind me, pulling the shower curtain open from the sound of it.
“You’re good,” she hollered a few seconds later.
I was just turning back around when she moaned. Low, needy, the sound a woman makes when she’s about to—
“Your water pressure is incredible,” she said.
“Oh, uh. Thanks.”
“What kind of showerhead is this?”
I told her the brand, and where I’d purchased it, then leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to force my thoughts away from the noise she’d made, the one I would absolutely be hearing in my dreams.
“Did you and Beau have life insurance policies for each other?” I asked.
“No. We had a joint one, and then Beau had a separate policy for himself. I’m not worth anything, so there was no need to get one for me.”
“Not worth anything,” I repeated.
“Yeah, that’s what Beau said.”
“Emma, darlin’, you’re worth ten of him.”
She fell quiet. I cursed myself for saying too much, for making it awkward. Steam started to fill the bathroom, and between the heat of it and my embarrassment, I felt like I was about to break into a sweat again.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, don’t be. I . . . I think I needed to hear that.”
I released the breath I’d been holding. “Did you see anything that looked like a life insurance policy when you were searching through his desk?”
“I didn’t, but I was looking for love letters or compromising photographs. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, and you start to notice patterns after a while. There’s a small percentage of men who both cheat and rack up debt that decide the best way out of their self-inflicted problems is to take out huge life insurance policies on their partners and then kill them.
These men are usually controlling, obsessed with appearances, and don’t believe in divorce. Sound familiar?”
Emma swore and yanked the curtain back just enough to peer at me around it, her furious expression only slightly undercut by the shampoo bubbles dripping from her hair. “I’m seriously going to kill him, Noah.”
I held my hands up. “Trust me, I understand the urge. But then you go to jail. Wouldn’t it be better to put him behind bars instead?”
“No,” she grumbled, disappearing back into the shower.
I could hear her muttering in there to herself, and despite the situation, I grinned. Heaven help Beau the next time they saw each other.
“Emma,” I said, my voice low and cajoling.
“Fine. I won’t murder him,” she fired back in the most insincere tone I had ever heard. “What’s the plan, then? We break into my house while Beau’s gone and see if we can find proof of life insurance fraud? Because I damn well never signed a policy.”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“If we tried to do it the right way and tell the cops, Ben would give his brother a heads-up, and then good luck finding any evidence.” She sounded like she was still trying to convince me.
“No, I agree with you. It’s a good plan.”
“Oh,” she said. “Sorry. I’m used to having to work harder to get . . .”
“To get Beau to listen to you?” I finished, my hands balling into fists.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not killing him. I am.”
“Noah,” she said, mimicking me.
“Fine. But someone should for the way he treated you.”
She was quiet for a beat, and when she spoke next, her voice was barely audible over the sound of the shower. “It wasn’t always so bad.”
“Oh, shit. No, Emma.” I took a staggering step forward before stopping myself. “You don’t need to defend yourself. I’m not blaming you for staying.”
“My mama did,” she said. “Every time we talked, she’d beg me to finally see reason and leave him.
‘Emma Miller,’ she’d say, ‘you are too smart to keep falling for that man’s lies.
I raised you to be a strong, modern woman, so start acting like it.
’ That’s why I didn’t want you to call her.
I’m worried she’ll tell me that if I’d taken her advice, this wouldn’t have happened to me. ”
“She’d be wrong for it,” I said, angry all over again. “Men like Beau? They’re more dangerous when they’re desperate. He might have snapped and run you off the road or something instead. And I’m sorry I tried to push you into calling someone. I won’t do it again.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
The shower cut off, and she reached out to snag her towel.
I quickly turned my back again.
I heard the shower curtain open, and then the sound of her stepping out. “Uh . . . do you have clothes I can wear?”
“Yeah, sorry. We probably should have grabbed those first.”
I led her out of the bathroom. It sat right at the top of the stairs, with my bedroom to the right, and the guest room to the left.
I’d done laundry the other day, so there were plenty of clothes to choose from.
Emma selected a pair of dark sweats, a T-shirt, and a big cable-knit sweater that would look like a dress on her.
She was on the taller side, but the men in my family ran bigger than most, and at six foot four, I stood head and shoulders above her.
“I can change into them while you shower,” she said, clutching her little pile to her chest, beads of water still clinging to her skin.
My stomach tightened. I’d been so fixated on making sure she got warm and clean that I hadn’t thought ahead to what might happen next. From the look on her face, it was clear she still didn’t want to be alone, so I guessed we were doing this.
I snagged some clothes for myself and returned to the bathroom with Emma right on my heels.
She closed the door behind us while I cranked the water back on.
My shirt stuck to my back, sticky and uncomfortable and starting to smell from how much I’d sweat in it.
I pulled it off overhead and dropped my hands to my belt, tugging it loose.
Emma, I was sure, had already turned her back like I had, but I tossed a glance over my shoulder just to check.
She was ogling me, her cheeks pink, eyes wide, mouth open as her gaze drank me in.
My dick twitched.
Don’t you fucking dare, I warned it.
Emma yanked her eyes up to mine, her face turning absolutely scarlet. “I like your tattoo,” she blurted, like that was what she’d been so distracted by—a tiny four-leaf clover on the back of my shoulder that I’d drunkenly gotten on St. Paddy’s Day my junior year of college.
In any other moment, I wouldn’t have let a woman get away with such a blatant lie. I would have turned, pressed her back to the door, and tormented her with my fingers and my mouth until she confessed the truth. But that wasn’t what this was between us. It couldn’t be. So I made an exception.
“Thanks,” I said.
She whipped around to face the wall, and I stripped off the rest of my clothes and climbed into the shower.
The water was still warm, and the feel of it pelting into me after a long day of work and then a short night of trauma made me understand why Emma had moaned.
This felt like a luxury. I wanted to linger, let the heat go to work on my sore muscles and the steam carry away all my dark thoughts, but Emma was out there waiting, and I didn’t know if not being able to see me was enough to trigger her panic, so I worked the soap over my body quickly, scrubbing off the dirt and sweat.
“Am I good to come out?” I asked when I was done.
“Yup!” she said.
I cut the water off and pushed the curtain back.
Emma stood facing me, and we both froze, staring at each other.