“Get it together, Calloway,” he muttered.
Didn’t help.
His mind kept skipping back over the last couple of days.
Eleanor Harper on his porch Friday night, hair mussed from the wind, eyes still bright with anger and adrenaline.
Eleanor in his kitchen Saturday morning, bare legs and his shirt and coffee she’d somehow made better than his own.
She had left at noon.
He’d texted her later that evening—once.
Made it home?
Her reply had come back a minute later.
Yes. No microphones on the porch. You?
Still alive, he’d typed. No camera crews. Mildly disappointed.
She’d sent back a single eye-roll emoji and a small, quiet:
Good night, Reid.
He’d stared at that for longer than any three words warranted, thumb hovering over her name, every instinct wanting to call. To hear her voice. To ask if she was okay with all of this. With him.
In the end, he’d set the phone face down on the nightstand and left it there.
She didn’t need him crowding her.
Didn’t mean he hadn’t lain awake for a while, replaying the way she’d looked at him right before she’d said,That’s why I came.
He slid his tie into place now and stepped back from the mirror.
He’d dated. People thought of him as a ladies’ man—he’d let that reputation do some work for him in the courtroom when it suited the narrative. Charming. Unflappable. Not inclined to stick.
The truth was less interesting.
He was a one-woman man by nature.
He hadn’t met the woman he wanted to risk that on.
Not until Eleanor Harper had walked into Jackson County with her sharp mind, her stubborn spine, and the kind of laugh that made him forget there was a line he probably shouldn’t cross.
He shrugged into his suit jacket, grabbed his briefcase, and headed for the front door.
The morning was clear and bright when he stepped outside, sun barely high enough to punch through the canopy of trees lining his street.
His car sat in the circular drive, English green gleaming in the early light. VERDICT winked from the plate, a private joke he’d never minded owning.
He hit the fob, dropped the briefcase in the passenger seat, and lowered the top.
Might as well lean into the stereotype.
The engine purred to life, smooth and familiar, and he pulled out onto the street feeling ten years younger than he was.
He told himself it was the weather.
