Chapter Twenty
Honor’s Edge Investigations Office
Court had been a killer the rest of the week. Perhaps made worse because they all knew with every passing day, Cal was getting closer and closer to having to get on the stand.
Not that Sam was eager to watch Nate on the stand either, but she thought he was just … in a better place to handle the stress of it. And so was Landon. Even Aly.
Sure, Vanderbilt wasn’t going to be hard on the brothers on the stand—or harder than recounting everything required. But the defense…
Sam really didn’t want to think about Cal being cross-examined. Not when so much of this rested on his memory having been faulty, and then not. Not when Vanderbilt was building this case that should be airtight—but every time the cross-examination went through, Sam felt less sure.
But Saturday dawned, giving them all a reprieve. Well, at least until dinner tonight. And maybe telling Bo about dinner this morning wasn’t exactly going to be reprieve.
But at least they weren’t in court.
Sam rolled over in bed, unsurprised to find it empty. Nate would be out in her little kitchenette making coffee or trying to find the perfect setting on her toaster, or if any more snow had fallen last night, outside shoveling the walk.
He’d slept here every night since that first one.
They’d even gone by his rental cabin and picked up a few things for him to keep here.
That might have freaked her out a little, but she knew what he was doing.
And maybe if court didn’t weigh on them all so heavy, she would have argued with him about it.
But if playing bodyguard all because someone had made one little break-in attempt made him happy while a trial dug up the worst moments of his childhood, she figured she’d let it slide.
For now. Maybe it was kind of nice to wake up to someone—especially someone who made coffee before she even fully woke up—but they were hardly jumping from zero to sixty for good. Once the trial was over, there was going to have to be some sensible, adult choices made on the … relationship front.
God, she hated that word. But there was no denying that was what they were doing.
And she was happy to procrastinate a what the fuck are we doing talk until after Benjamin Bennet was put behind bars for good.
She got out of bed, tossed on a sweatshirt and some socks against the chill. On a big yawn, she stepped out of her room and into the living room.
Nate was in the kitchen. He was just too big for this small space, but he moved around it like that didn’t bother him at all. His hair was getting longer, long enough it was sleep tousled. Or maybe tousled from her hands last night. Or both.
“Morning,” she offered.
He looked over his shoulder at her. Held up a piece of perfectly toasted bread. “I have fixed your toaster.”
“So handy.”
He grinned at her. Oh man, the crash when all this happy went away was going to be a killer, and yet she was having a hard time doing the sensible thing of hardening her heart against it.
Instead, she slid onto the stool at the counter, watched him move around her kitchenette and wait on her. It was the weirdest, best damn thing.
“Bo’s supposed to be here at ten.” Because if she piled on enough reality, maybe she wouldn’t feel so happy.
“I’m going to show him how to do the job I hired him for.
I’m going to look through the answers he brought me.
And then you’ll invite him to dinner at your family ranch due to your uncanny resemblance. ”
“I will?”
“Yep. Because it’s your family, and it’s going to mean more coming from you.”
Nate didn’t argue with her, and she couldn’t quite read what he felt about that, but he studied her. “Are you going to prewarn him about Glenda being there?”
Sam kept going back and forth about that in the privacy of her own head, but something about the careful way Nate asked that question made her decision for her. “I think you’ll trust him a lot more when he shows up and you realize he doesn’t know her.”
“And if he does?”
“Then you can say I told you so. And I’ll say, Oh my God, Nate, you were right! You win!”
“I would pay to hear that, Sam. About this or literally anything else.”
She rolled her eyes but chuckled in spite of herself as she finished up the little breakfast he’d put together.
“I’m going to shower.” She slid off the stool, considered him and his rumpled hair and the fact he was here, day after day, and as much as she knew she shouldn’t like it or get used to it, she did.
When it didn’t freak her out.
“You could join me.” Because he was still keeping that leg hidden, like at this point some scars were going to send her running. After everything they’d seen of each other over the past almost-year.
He considered it.
But it was going to take something more than the promise of shower sex to have him letting down that particular guard. She wondered what would do it. If there was anything in her that would do it for him.
“I’m going to go lay some salt down on the front walkway,” he said.
She nodded and tried not to internalize that particular refusal. She went through the shower and got ready for a day in the office. When she went downstairs, Nate was at his desk.
“I’ve got some emails to return about the stolen identity case,” he said. “Maybe a few calls. Then I’ll run out and get lunch. For the three of us.” He made a little finger wagging gesture. “Woo,” he said, deadpan.
It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t, but she couldn’t bite back a smile as she shook her head and moved over to her desk. Sam dealt with a few of her own emails, while Nate got to work on his.
At five minutes to ten, Bo came through the door. He had the notebook she’d given him clutched to his chest.
“Morning, Bo,” she greeted, maybe sounding over-welcoming to compensate for Nate and all that stoicism.
“Hi. Morning. I … I brought you that stuff. I wrote it all up. I tried to be real thorough.” He crossed the room and handed the notebook to her, and she noted a slight shake in his hands.
So she smiled at him as she took the notebook. “Fantastic.”
He sent a kind of nervous glance Nate’s way. “I’m ready to work. Really. I want to pay my way however I can.”
“That’s what we like to hear. Come on, I’ll show you.
” She showed him around the office, the list of duties, let him ask questions.
Cleaning the office wasn’t rocket science, but it would require some organization and focus.
They gave Nate a wide berth as he did his work, and Sam kept waiting for Bo to say something about him.
But he didn’t.
“We’ll break for lunch and then this afternoon we’ll go over the answers you brought me,” Sam said after Bo had replaced all the trash liners.
“Oh, but … I thought I’d work all day. If it’s only once a week, shouldn’t I work all day?”
“Next week. This week you’re still learning. And I’m still remembering all the things I want you to help with. Just like the investigation will take time, it’ll take time for us to figure out how this is going to work.”
Nate walked in from the back with a bag, no doubt the sandwiches.
“Pull up a seat at my desk and eat, Bo,” Sam instructed him.
It was awkward. Sam didn’t see any way around that. But she’d give Bo credit, he was powering through the awkward rather than bolting. Because he was determined to find his truth.
So she was going to help him.
“So, Bo…” Nate trailed off, then shrugged. “The fact of the matter is you look a lot like me and my brothers.” Blunt and to the point. Had Sam expected anything else?
Bo blinked, looked down at his sandwich. “I guess I do.”
“We’d like you to come up to the family ranch for dinner. Meet everyone. No pressure.”
Bo didn’t respond right away. He seemed to think it over, and then he looked at Sam. Like he was hoping for guidance. He was a grown man, but he just gave off the feeling of lost boy.
“I’ll be there,” she said reassuringly. “Look, maybe the resemblance is a weird coincidence, and you’re not related.
Crazier things have happened, but it doesn’t hurt to get to know people.
To have a home-cooked meal. And maybe if you all talk a little bit, we come across a reason you all look so much alike even without the DNA results. ”
Bo shot another nervous glance at Nate, but his gaze quickly returned to Sam. His eyes were sad. “Well, if you think so, Sam. I … I think the DNA test should be coming back soon. It said four to six weeks and it’s been four now. Hopefully it’s … soon.”
“Hopefully.”
“Okay, I guess … like you said, it couldn’t hurt.”
Sam didn’t know about that. Still, Nate gave him directions up to the ranch and they finished their lunch, then Sam got out the notebook and went over everything Bo had written out in a careful, neat print.
It gave a picture of his life. Or at least, his life starting at five. Not a bad life, but there was a sense of loneliness, of knowing he didn’t belong. A gulf widened by his father’s insistence that he not look into his past at all.
Was there something there? A reason. Had his father known something?
But his father was dead, there was no asking him. Sam could poke into his background though. She noted that down as a next step.
“He was a good man,” Bo said, grief there in every word. “I know he wanted to protect me. But it’s hard to accept this thing you’re being protected from when you don’t even know what it is.”
Sam thought of Glenda. There had to be a connection if Glenda knew about Bo’s existence, but she couldn’t find it in what Bo knew. Sam was beginning to think only Glenda could unwind this mystery.
Which left just as many questions going into tonight as there had been before.
As Nate had said, woo.