Chapter 50
Two weeks later
Sarah opened the cupboard. Seven bags of coffee stared back at her.
Seven.
She stood barefoot on the kitchen tiles and counted them. Dark roast. Medium roast. A bag of whole beans he had no way of grinding because she didn’t own a grinder. Two bags of the cheaper stuff she actually drank shoved to the back like afterthoughts.
The man had a problem.
She reached for the cheap stuff, smiling, and filled the machine. While it brewed, she leaned against the counter.
The bruises were fading. Her ribs only complained when she twisted too fast. The cut across her palm from the wire had closed into a thin pink line that pulled when she made a fist. Two weeks of healing.
Two weeks of Hudson somehow becoming part of the landscape of her house—cooking meals she hadn’t asked for, filling the fridge, making himself useful wherever he found something that needed doing.
The evidence of him was everywhere.
His boots by the door beside hers. One of his hoodies draped over the back of the kitchen chair—the one she’d been stealing to sleep in and pretending she hadn’t. Two mugs drying on the rack beside the sink. His toothbrush in her bathroom, his book lying face-down on the arm of the couch.
Tiny things. The small, ordinary debris of a life being shared.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.
Walter.
She opened the message.
A photograph filled the screen. Walter’s desk at the station, buried beneath a mountain of paperwork.
This is all yours when you get back. No rush.
Walter
She chuckled to herself and slipped the phone back onto the counter.
Her coffee had finished brewing. She added three sugars, took a sip, and looked out through the kitchen window.
Hudson and Wyatt were splitting firewood outside.
The late afternoon light slanted low across the snow as Wyatt swung the axe. Hudson stacked the split logs, building them into a neat row against the side of the house.
His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows despite the cold.
Mmm. She approved.
He said something to Wyatt, inaudible through the glass. Wyatt’s head tipped back in laughter. Hudson grinned—the real one she’d been collecting since the hotel bar—and shoved Wyatt’s shoulder.
Wyatt shoved him back.
Hudson stumbled into the woodpile, sending a carefully stacked row tumbling across his boots. Wyatt laughed harder. Hudson answered by lobbing a chunk of split wood at Wyatt’s boots. Wyatt dodged it with a snort. They moved around each other the same as they had as boys—easy and physical.
Hudson straightened, stretching the stiffness from his back. He tipped his face toward the winter sky and let out a slow breath, easy and unmeasured. Something inside her eased at the sight.
The back door banged open, sending a rush of cold air through the kitchen.
“It’s official.” Wyatt stamped snow from his boots. “You have enough firewood to last three winters.” He peeled off his gloves and tossed them onto the counter. “I would’ve stopped sooner, but someone didn’t want to.” He lifted an eyebrow toward Hudson, coming in behind him.
Hudson was carrying an armful of split logs, which he deposited beside the wood-burning stove before returning to the kitchen.
He shook melting flakes from his hair and hung his jacket on the hook by the door.
The jacket was new. A proper Alaskan one.
The city coat he’d arrived in had disappeared somewhere over the last two weeks.
He crossed the kitchen and his hand slid to her hip. His other relieved her of the coffee mug and set it on the counter.
Then he drew her against him. His nose was cold against her cheek. He kissed her slowly, without the slightest trace of self-consciousness, right there in her kitchen, in front of her big brother.
Sawdust still clung to his hair.
She smiled into the kiss. Her hand rose to cup his face—cold skin, rough jaw, the muscle beneath her palm completely relaxed.
“Get a room,” Wyatt muttered.
Hudson didn’t let go of her waist. “We have one.” He glanced over Sarah’s shoulder. “You’re standing in it.”
Wyatt snorted. “I need a beer.”
He yanked open the fridge, stared for a second, then looked back at them. “You two stocking up for the apocalypse?”
Sarah smiled against Hudson’s mouth. “Something like that.”
An engine rumbled outside. Sarah glanced out the window.
Her mom.
Sophie let herself in without knocking, a lasagna in a large cream dish preceding her through the door. “I brought dinner.”
Wyatt cocked an eyebrow in the direction of the fridge. “Mom, they have?—”
“You have lasagna now, too.” Sophie set the dish on the counter with a smile.
She walked over and hugged Hudson. “Good to see you, Hudson.”
Hudson hugged her back. “Hey, Sophie.”
She pulled back and gave him a once-over. “You look better.” Her head tilted. “Still not enough meat on those bones.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“Not enough.” She patted his cheek. “We feed people properly in this family, Hudson. I’ll heat this up.”
“Sophie, I can?—”
Her mom switched on the oven and slid the dish inside. “How’s the case?”
Hudson’s arm curved around Sarah’s waist. She didn’t move away.
“Moving. Cord’s cooperating. If he’s lucky, he’ll receive a reduced sentence. Hale’s clearance has been revoked and the investigation’s widening.” Hudson’s thumb moved against her side. “Everyone who came after Sarah is in federal custody.”
Sophie’s mouth firmed. “Good. What about that poor marshal that got hurt?”
“Mercer? He’s recovering.” Hudson gave a wry grin. “Already complaining about being stuck behind a desk.”
“Owen says the weapons trail goes back years,” Wyatt said.
Hudson nodded. “We pulled a thread. Turns out it was attached to something bigger.”
The old flatness was gone. It was work now, not penance.
Her mom looked up. “How is Owen?”
“He’s still in town, tying up loose ends. Maybe more.”
“And Ben Taggart’s family?”
Hudson’s expression shifted into something private and tender. “The investigation’s been reopened. His death will be reclassified.” He cleared his throat. “I wrote to them to let them know.”
Sarah let the brief silence that followed belong to Ben.
“Wyatt, can you help me with the salad while Sarah and Hudson go sit down?”
Sarah caught her mom’s eye. Her mom looked entirely innocent.
Wyatt pushed off the counter. “Mom?—”
“Thank you, Wyatt.” She pulled a bag of baby greens from the fridge and thrust it at him. “Salad bowl’s in the cupboard.”
Wyatt put his beer down and accepted the salad while firing Sarah the sibling side-eye as she led Hudson through to the living room, trying not to smirk.
“Right, let’s get this fire lit.” Hudson crouched beside the stove, stacked the kindling, then coaxed the first flames to life beneath the logs.
She smiled. She’d never imagined life with Hudson would feel this ordinary. Or this right.
Woodsmoke scented the room as the fire crackled and built. From the kitchen came the clink of bowls and the low murmur of Sophie and Wyatt’s voices, softened by laughter.
Once the fire was lit, Hudson stood and took hold of her hands.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He smiled. “Just looking.” He gave her hands a squeeze. “I talked to my boss.”
“And?”
“There’s an option with the Anchorage office. A remote liaison position I can do from here.” His thumb brushed across the back of her hand. “Something we could make work.”
Sarah’s breath hitched.
He’d already spoken to his boss. Already started rearranging the pieces of his life to fit beside hers. He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Even now, that tiny touch left her breathless.
“So...” A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. “Guess you’re not leaving.”
His answer came without hesitation. “Not this time.”
She searched his face for the old distance. The part of him that had always seemed to be ready to leave. It wasn’t there anymore.
She kissed him, and Hudson gathered her close.
From the kitchen came Wyatt’s voice. “Mom, it’s just grated cheese.”
“Wyatt. You’ve already eaten half of it.”
“I was quality testing.”
Sarah laughed.
Hudson joined her, the sound warm and rough, his eyes creasing at the corners. She loved how often she heard it now.
He tilted his head toward the kitchen. “Do you think we should go rescue him?”
She threaded her fingers through his. “I think he’s beyond saving.”
Hudson smiled, his hand closing around hers as they went back to the noise and warmth of the kitchen.
Not ready to say goodbye to Hudson and Sarah?
I’ve got you.