Chapter 10
Sarah drove back to the station, trying not to think about the man sitting right beside her, and failing miserably.
“Thanks for the ride. The fishing cabin tomorrow?” Hudson paused with one hand on the door handle.
“Meet me at the stables. It’s not accessible by truck.”
His breath plumed in the early evening air. “Stables?”
“We ride in.”
He frowned. “Ride?”
“Yes.”
“On horses?”
Sarah folded her arms. “What other kind would we be riding?”
Hudson’s mouth twitched. “Fair point.” He smiled and closed the door.
He glanced back at her as Walter came out of the building. She gave him a small wave.
She gave herself thirty seconds.
Thirty seconds of silence alone with the dull throb at her temple that she was absolutely not going to mention to anyone, least of all the man currently standing twenty feet away talking to Walter.
No more. Then she had to be the sheriff again.
Her phone rang at twenty-eight. She checked the screen.
Mom.
Sarah closed her eyes briefly. Today just kept getting better.
She swiped to answer.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Sarah Elizabeth Meyer.” Sophie’s voice came down the line with the precision of a woman with highly honed instincts about when any of her children were keeping something from her. “Is it true that Hudson Kane is back in Aurora Cove?”
Sarah huffed a breath.
Ryder.
Hudson had turned slightly, angling his body toward the station as Walter pointed at something down the street.
He’d given back the jacket Walter loaned him, and the one he wore was still too light for the cold.
She’d noticed that twice. She didn’t know why and she sure as hell wasn’t going to examine it.
“He’s here on a case, Mom.”
“Mrs. Oldman’s granddaughter saw him at the gas station this morning.”
Of course. Aurora Cove had roughly six thousand residents and an information network that would make the CIA weep with envy, and at the center of it, quietly orchestrating everything with a wooden spoon in one hand and a casserole dish in the other, was her mom.
“He was probably filling up his rental,” Sarah said. “It’s not a presidential visit.”
“I’m making pot roast.”
Sarah recognized the non sequitur for what it was. “Mom.”
“There’s plenty.”
“He’s working. I can’t just?—”
“Friday. Seven o’clock.” Cheerful and immovable. “Tell him not to bring anything, I have everything I need. Although if he wants to pick up something from Benji’s for dessert, that’s completely his choice and not a requirement.”
Outside, Hudson laughed at something Walter said. A short sound. Real. It hit her somewhere she’d rather it hadn’t. She looked away from him and fixed her gaze very deliberately on the dashboard.
“Mom, it’s not appropriate. He’s a federal officer operating in my jurisdiction and I’m the sheriff and it’s a conflict of?—”
“Caleb brings Grace to dinner, and she’s a vet?—”
“That’s completely different.”
“Ryder brings?—”
“Also different.”
“Your father would love to see him.”
Sarah pressed two fingers against the bridge of her nose. Outside her window, the November sky sat low and indifferent. “Dad sees plenty of other people.”
“Hudson used to help him in the workshop.”
“I know he used to help him in the—” She stopped, breathed. Recalibrated. Okay, Sarah, you’ve got this. “Mom. He’s busy. He has a case. It’s not a good time.”
Silence hummed on the line.
Not an empty silence. Sophie Meyer’s silences were never empty. This one had an armchair in it and a cup of coffee and her mother sitting waiting with all the patience in the world.
“Sarah.” Just that. Her name. “Why don’t you want him to come?”
Her eyes went to Hudson. He was listening to Walter now, head slightly tilted, with the attention that made whoever he was talking to feel like the only person in the room.
She remembered that about him. It had persisted in some filing cabinet of her brain that she’d thought was locked and turned out only to be stuck.
The boy she’d known had disappeared somewhere along the way. The problem was she kept catching unexpected glimpses of him inside the man.
She looked away.
“I don’t not want him to come,” she said, and heard immediately how that sounded.
More silence. Fuller this time.
“Mom.”
“Mmm.”
That sound. Her mom had been deploying it since she was tiny, and it had never once failed to extract the truth from her. Today wasn’t going to be the exception.
“It’s not—” She stopped. Started again. “It’s complicated.”
Her mom’s smile was almost audible on the line. “Most things worth anything are.”
“That’s not—” Sarah pressed her lips together.
Outside, Hudson had put his hands in his jacket pockets and turned slightly, automatically taking up a position where he could see the road, the lot, and the station entrance.
The memory of how he caught her at the cannery arrived uninvited. Like most of her current problems.
She looked at the dashboard again.
“Fine.” The word came out more like a surrender than she intended. “Dinner. Friday. Seven o’clock.”
“Wonderful.” The warmth of her mom’s voice made it clear she’d never had any doubt about the outcome of the conversation. “Tell him I’m making the pot roast he used to like.”
“I don’t know what pot roast he used to?—”
“He’ll know. Bye, sweetheart.”
Her mom hung up.
Sarah sat with the phone in her hand and stared at nothing in particular for a moment.
She was the sheriff. She had a mountain of paperwork waiting for her, a federal marshal with too many secrets standing in her station lot, and a mother who played the long game with the skills of a global spymaster.
She got out of the truck.
Hudson turned at the slam of her door.
She crossed the yard toward him, stopped at a professional distance, meeting his eyes with the expression she usually wore before writing citations. “My mom wants you at dinner Friday.”
Surprise flickered across his face before the marshal returned. “Your mom?”
She gritted her teeth. “She’s making pot roast.”
“I’d like that.” For a second he looked less like a deputy marshal and more like the boy who used to eat Sunday dinner at the Meyer house. “The one with the carrots?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “The fact that you know there are multiple pot roasts is exactly the problem I’m talking about. Don’t make it a thing. You can bring dessert if you want. Don’t be late. She has opinions about punctuality.”
She spun on her heel before he said anything that might make it worse.
But behind her, Hudson Kane laughed quiet enough that she could almost pretend she hadn’t heard it.
She kept walking.
Her mother was a menace. And unless Hudson suddenly developed a pathological objection to pot roast, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.