Chapter 9
Bodie
Seven o’clock had come and gone. Eight was closing in.
Rubble had cleaned her bowl with her usual methodical precision, then stretched out like a living rug for a half-doze on the kitchen floor, only occasionally cracking one dark eye as I paced from one end of the house to the other like a man possessed.
Beyond my front windows, the hollow had entered that pre-twilight hush that always preceded actual sunset this time of year, when the sun dropped behind the western ridge, casting everything in those long, muted blue-gray shadows that made the whole world seem like it was holding its breath.
Despite multiple trips to stare into my freezer, letting the cold air escape like some kind of fool, I still hadn’t eaten a damn thing.
I couldn’t settle on any of the single-serve meals Grandma Elsie periodically stuffed in there with stern warnings about taking better care of myself, and even making a sandwich felt beyond my focus just now.
My hands were too restless, my mind too scattered.
My head was too full of Emmaline—the way she’d looked this afternoon when I’d made my ridiculous proposal, standing there in her grandmother’s bakery surrounded by the ghosts of everything she was about to lose.
How she’d put on that brave face like she always did, chin lifted just so, shoulders squared against whatever blow was coming next.
How I could still see right through it after all these years, could read the fear and exhaustion in the tight corners of her eyes, the way her fingers twisted together when she thought I wasn’t looking.
How she was going to lose everything that mattered to her, because she clearly wasn’t coming to take me up on my offer.
The clock on the mantel had been mocking me for the past hour, each tick another nail in the coffin of hope I hadn’t even realized I’d been building.
She’d said it herself before I’d even walked out of the bakery, hadn’t she?
I’d lost my mind even suggesting this lunatic scheme.
What sane woman would agree to tie herself, even temporarily, to the man her family blamed for half their misfortunes?
What woman would want to marry the cop who’d put her brother behind bars?
Admittedly, I hadn’t given the whole thing a lot of thought before the words had tumbled out of my mouth.
I saw a problem with a clear and easy solution.
Fixing things was what I did. This compulsion to set things right when they’d gone sideways was wired into my DNA.
And if some buried, pathetic part of me had hoped that somehow this marriage of convenience would make up for what I’d inadvertently put her through simply by doing my job all those years ago?
That I might finally get my friend back?
Well, I was only human. And damn it, I missed her.
Missed her more than I’d let myself admit in years.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and stepped out onto the front porch.
The screen door creaked shut behind me. The air was thick with the in-between stillness that settled over the mountain like a blanket, heavy with humidity and the green smell of summer growth.
The evening symphony of crickets and cicadas was tuning up for its nightly concert in the trees.
I usually loved this time of day, when the heat finally broke and the world started to breathe again.
Sometimes I’d sit out here with a cold beer and my guitar, just letting the day slide off my shoulders note by note.
There hadn’t been much of that since the flood, and I definitely didn’t think music would help settle the restless energy crawling under my skin now.
I missed my mother and that way she’d had of making the world right again, no matter how wrong everything seemed.
It had been almost sixteen years since she’d died, but the loss never lessened.
It had just gotten easier to bear. A lot of that had been because of Alia.
Because she’d stepped up when the rest of us had been falling apart.
I should have seen it. And I had, in the beginning.
But somewhere along the way, I’d just… stopped.
And she’d nearly drowned under the weight of all of it before Ramsey came along.
I was happy he had. Happy they’d found each other. But that didn’t make it any easier to stop blaming myself for failing her. She was my twin. The person who knew me better than anyone. The person I’d have once said I knew better than anyone.
When had that stopped being true?
I leaned against the porch railing, gripping the weathered wood until my knuckles went white, jaw tight enough to crack teeth.
It was probably for the best that Emmaline hadn’t shown up.
She deserved better than desperation dressed up like practicality, no matter how well-intentioned my offer had been.
She deserved someone who could give her a real marriage, real love, not some half-baked rescue mission born out of guilt and old longing.
Movement at the treeline had me tensing.
Em stepped out of the trees, glossy brown hair catching what little light was left.
For half a second, I thought I’d conjured her out of memory—the way we used to sneak out as kids, meeting in the woods halfway between her house and mine.
But no, this wasn’t ten-year-old Emmaline with scuffed knees and a borrowed flashlight.
This was the woman she’d grown into, carrying the weight of a family feud and a will that had gutted her, walking all the way from her grandmother’s place to mine.
For a second, I stayed rooted where I was, the rail digging into my palms, like if I moved she might vanish—turn back into a ghost of childhood and half-buried what-ifs. But the crunch of leaves under her boots kept coming closer until Rubble stirred inside and gave a questioning woof.
Emmaline stopped just shy of the porch steps, and even in the lengthening shadows, I could see the faint smudges of exhaustion beneath her eyes. It made me want to bundle her up and take all those burdens off her shoulders.
“I didn’t think you were coming.”
She brushed a strand of hair off her damp forehead. “I nearly didn’t.”
Did that mean she’d made up her mind, or was she still on the fence?
I pulled open the door, and Rubble barreled out immediately, tail whipping like a banner. She leaned into Emmaline with unrestrained joy, and damned if that didn’t earn the first flicker of softness I’d seen in her all week.
She reached down to stroke Rubble’s ears. “Hey sweet girl.”
I jerked my head toward the door. “You wanna come inside to talk about this?”
Emmaline sucked in a long breath, as if bracing herself, then climbed the steps and swept past me into my house.
She’d never been here before, and I suddenly found myself wondering how she saw it.
Bachelor neat but bare. No flowers in jars, no bright curtains.
Just a house meant to be functional. The few softening touches I had, like the throw pillows on the utilitarian beige sofa and the glazed pottery bowl holding apples on the island, had been sneaked in over time by Uncle Dee.
Because I thought she’d be most comfortable in the kitchen, I gestured her toward the table by the picture window that looked out back, up the slope of the mountain. She dropped into a chair, shoulders tight, hands knotted together on the scarred tabletop.
“You want anything? Water? Tea? Beer?” I realized I didn’t even know if she drank alcohol.
“I’m okay.”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sank into it, moving slowly, as if any sudden movements might make her bolt. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator and the scrape of Rubble’s paws as she dropped into a sploot on the floor between us.
Eventually, Emmaline raised those dove gray eyes to mine. “Okay, if we were to do this, what would it look like?”
So she was still deciding. I could work with that. I couldn’t blame her for needing more information.
“Well, first and foremost, I want to reassure you that I don’t have any… expectations.” Feeling awkward as hell, I rubbed the back of my neck. “This is effectively a business arrangement to save the bakery. We both know that.”
Her shoulders relaxed a fraction, but her face still held traces of suspicion. “What do you get out of this?”
A part of me wanted to be insulted. But I knew perfectly well that much of her family operated as if everything was a transaction, with invisible balance sheets to juggle and angles to calculate.
That had been her world for most of her life.
So I left my hands loose instead of fisting them on the table.
“The chance to help a friend. That’s it.”
“We haven’t been friends in a very long time.” But the statement was soft rather than accusatory. More recitation of fact.
“That wasn’t my choice.” The words fell between us with more weight than I’d intended.
“Look, Em, I know you probably don’t believe me, but I still care about you.
I know this doesn’t make up for the role I had in what happened to your brother, but it’s something I can, and am, more than willing to do for you.
That bakery is yours. It was never meant to be anybody else’s.
And I can’t say what was in your grandmother’s mind when she wrote in the stipulation that you be married, but I can’t fathom that she truly believed her legacy would be better off in Marla’s or Karen’s hands. ”
I must’ve said something right, because the tangle of her fingers loosened, and she exhaled a slow breath. “Okay.”
“Okay? Is that a yes?” I didn’t want to just plow straight ahead without confirming that.
“It’s a probably.”
“Fair enough. I’ve been giving some thought to logistics. We can go over some of those and see how you feel about them.” When she inclined her head, I continued. “I understand you’re losing the house either way.”