Chapter 13
Thirteen
Paisley went from sleep to wakefulness in an instant, knowing even before she reached for the other side of the bed that the warm presence there was Duke instead of Ty.
He hadn’t come back after storming out last night.
Maybe she shouldn’t have expected him to, but she’d gotten a brief text from Harrison saying that he was safe, and she’d thought, once he had a chance to calm down, he’d work his way around to apologizing.
Or, at the very least, showing up for guard duty.
He was the one so determined that she needed a bodyguard.
But he hadn’t used those stealthy Ranger skills to sneak into her bed. She didn’t know what that meant. They’d rarely fought when they were young, and nothing so serious as this. There was no precedent to give her any clue what to think or do.
Except, maybe there was. Their biggest fight before was about him going into the Army, and that hadn’t even really been a fight so much as him making up his mind and telling her.
He was a stubborn bastard when he wanted to be.
If he’d truly convinced himself that he was no hero, that he wasn’t worthy, that he’d failed, nothing she could say was going to change his mind.
She hadn’t been able to convince him not to leave her then. Why should now be any different?
A wave of fresh grief had tears burning in her eyes as she wondered how long it would take him to just come right out and say they were through?
When her phone rang, she lunged for it. But it wasn’t Ty. Of course, it wasn’t Ty. He’d left his phone last night when he’d stormed out. It was Caleb.
“Hey. Sorry to call so early, but I thought you’d want to hear this sooner rather than later.
My brother, Mateo, is a former MMA fighter.
He owns a gym now and has an apartment he keeps for helping domestic violence victims escape their abusers.
It’s open at the moment, and he says it’s all yours, if you want it. ”
Paisley considered. Was she really going to leave?
In the heat of the moment last night, she’d been determined to.
Now… Could she really stay, knowing they were over and just waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Having to endure that awful, painful emotional distance from him, knowing he was only still in her life because she was a case?
She didn’t even know if she’d have that.
Ty had made it perfectly clear her situation was too much for him.
She’d never intended to involve him in the first place.
This would at least give her another option until she figured out what to do, and maybe it was a good idea to go to someone she had no connection to. She’d be harder to track that way.
“I’ll take it.”
“Great, I’ll text you the information. When do you think you’re coming?”
“As soon as I can get everything in my car.” There were still things of hers at Ty’s, but she’d get them sometime later. Right now, she needed distance from him.
She packed, quick and efficient. A part of her regretted the loss of a slow, relaxed morning that included breakfast from Athena Reynolds Maxwell, the award-winning chef sister who ran the kitchens of The Misfit Inn.
But she needed to act. Too much of the past weeks had been spent in limbo, waiting for someone else to make a move.
So, she hauled her things downstairs and out to her car, not even making a pass through the dining room for coffee. She’d pick some up on the road.
As she grabbed up the last of her stuff, she considered leaving a note of some kind for Ty. But what was she going to say? Leaving nothing, she shut the door. The room was in his name, so there wasn’t even a need to properly check out.
“C’mon, Duke.”
He trailed her downstairs and out the front door.
“You’re leaving?”
The question came from Ari Bohannon. Pru’s sixteen-year-old daughter was curled in one of the many chairs on the wrap-around porch.
They’d bonded over romance Paisley’s first night here.
The girl reminded her so much of herself at that age.
Full of cheerful, unwavering belief in love.
And why shouldn’t she be? She was surrounded on all sides by real-life examples in her parents and all of her aunts and their spouses.
It was inspiring, really. Paisley had made a joke herself about what was in the water and inadvertently birthed a plot bunny about a hidden spring that made people fall in love.
She and Ari had plotted half of it out the other day, which had proved a wonderful distraction.
Paisley really hoped nothing destroyed the girl’s romanticism.
Contrary to Ty’s opinion, the world needed more romantics.
“Yeah.”
“Did Ty and Xander find the bad guy?”
“Um, no. Not as far as I know.” And it said a lot about her headspace that she was less worried about the stalker and more worried about Ty at the moment.
“Are you going back home?”
Did the girl mean Nashville or Ty’s? Did it matter? “I’ve imposed on y’all long enough.” Which wasn’t really an answer, she knew.
“You’re not an imposition. You’re a guest! That’s what we’re all about.”
Her lips curved. “Spoken like a true innkeeper’s daughter. But I do have to go. Someone’s expecting me.” Opening the door to the backseat, she shoved in Duke’s dog bed and arranged it for the trip.
The girl was frowning when Paisley turned back around. “Are you and Ty okay?”
The question surprised her.
“I know it’s none of my business, I just..
.” Ari pressed her lips together, as if to bite back the words.
Paisley arched a brow and the girl burst out.
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I heard y’all’s fight last night, and then he left and hasn’t come back, and this totally feels like the point for a dark period intervention. ”
Torn between a desire to laugh and cry, Paisley worked up a smile.
“You’re so much like I used to be, it’s scary.
” She tossed her purse onto the front seat.
“Sadly, real life doesn’t adhere to scripted plot points.
Doesn’t mean that love’s not worth it, but sometimes the timing is off.
Or the other person might have a bigger wound than you know what to do with.
Sometimes they need a wakeup call.” And sometimes love isn’t enough.
Ari frowned. “I’m going on record saying that this is a mistake.”
“Noted.” Paisley wasn’t sure that it wasn’t. But she didn’t think there was a right move here. “It was cool to meet you Ari. I’ll come back sometime, and we can hang. Maybe do some more plotting.”
“I’d love that.”
Paisley whistled. “C’mon, Duke. Time to go!”
But the dog didn’t come immediately bounding over to the car at the magic word.
“Duke! Here boy.”
Still, no jangle of tags or scrabble of paws.
“What has he gotten into? I swear to God, if he found something dead to roll in…”
She marched around the house, calling his name. Ari fell in with her. But by the time they’d circled the perimeter, there was no Duke. No barking. No sign of her beloved dog. Alarm overtook annoyance. “Where is he?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him,” Ari assured her. “He probably just chased a bunny or something. I’ll round up some more people to help look.”
While she disappeared into the house, Paisley made another circuit in a wider circle, into the edge of the woods surrounding the property.
Why couldn’t it have rained or snowed recently so there were convenient paw prints leading her to her recalcitrant dog?
More to the point, why had he wandered off?
He hadn’t pulled the escape artist routine since she’d first gotten him.
Not since she’d stopped trying to put him in a crate.
Maybe he was too overwhelmed by the fun and interesting stuff to sniff that they didn’t have at home in the city.
A distant sound carried on the wind. Was that a bark?
“Duke!”
The sound came again. Definitely a bark.
Was he stuck somewhere? Taking off in the direction she thought she’d heard him, she shouted again, course correcting deeper into the woods.
The bark was closer this time. Relief surged through her.
He wasn’t gone, and he didn’t sound distressed.
He’d just wandered too far and gotten into something.
Abruptly the sound cut off.
“Duke?”
Nothing.
There were cliffs around here. Caves. Hell, even bears. Her city-born dog was not prepared for any of that. Anxiety mounting again, Paisley ran faster, frantically scanning for a flash of tawny fur.
Something caught her shins, and she tumbled headlong into the dead leaves and dirt. Breathless from the impact, for a moment, she could only lie there, hands stinging. On a wheeze, she started to roll over and caught a flash of movement to the left.
She didn’t even have time to draw breath for a scream before the figure in black was on her, wrenching her arms backward and pressing her into the ground.
Adrenaline surged, and she tried to buck him off, but the knee in her back kept her pinned, her limbs flailing uselessly.
Something sharp jabbed her in the hip. A needle?
What the hell was he injecting her with?
Even as she could feel darkness creeping in, Paisley struggled to turn her head, to see her attacker. But all she could take in was a smear of clay across the toe of his dark brown hiking boots in the incongruous shape of a cross. Then there was nothing at all.
“Get up.”
A snapping voice cut through the questionable oblivion of sleep. As the sound tunneled through to Ty’s brain, with it came awareness of pain. Instinctively, he fought to stay under, shrinking away from inevitable agony.
“Get up, damn it!”
“Honey, what are you—”
Something struck him. A solid but…soft? something. Not hard enough to really hurt but sufficient impact to drag him through another layer toward consciousness.
“If he’s not up in the next thirty seconds, I’m hitting him with my stun gun instead of a pillow.”