Footsteps moved across the foyer.
Her mother again, closer this time.
“Eleanor? Your car’s out front. Are you home?”
Reid’s eyes went very wide. “Do they know I exist?”
“They know the District Attorney exists,” she muttered. “That is not the same thing.”
He looked down at himself. At his rumpled shirt. At her camisole, askew from his hands.
“I’m assuming sprinting out the back door isn’t an option,” he said.
“There is no back door,” she said. “There is only the hall, and my very opinionated parents, and my complete and total humiliation.”
Her father’s deeper voice joined her mother’s now, a low murmur she couldn’t quite make out.
She scrubbed a hand over her face, then stepped back from Reid, tugging at her camisole and trying to smooth her hair into something lessjust-been-kissed-with-intent.
“Stay here,” she ordered in a low hiss. “Do not move. Do not make a sound.”
“I’m the District Attorney,” he whispered back. “I’ve faced murder suspects with fewer warnings.”
“You haven’t met my mother,” she replied.
Eleanor steadied herself, squared her shoulders, and strode down the hall.
Her parents were already standing in the foyer when she reached them.
“Mom? Dad?” she said. “What are y’all doing here?”
Her mother’s brows lifted.
“Well,” she said, sweeping a glance past Eleanor’s shoulder, taking in the jazz, the wineglasses on the table, the second pair of shoes by the door.
Behind them, the front door still stood open to the evening, cool air drifting in from the hill and carrying the faint scent of fresh-cut grass.
Behind Eleanor, down the hall, the District Attorney of Jackson County stood in the doorway of her bedroom, absolutely frozen.
Eleanor swallowed.
This, she thought, was somehow worse than court.
And like that, the evening went from progress to sheer, unadulterated chaos.
Lawrence Harper stepped forward first—tall, composed, silver threaded neatly through blond hair that had once been the same pale gold shade as Eleanor’s.
“Ellie.”
Before she could manage an explanation, he pulled her into a quick, solid hug. Eleanor melted into it despite herself, the familiar scent of his cologne grounding her for one fleeting second.
“Hi, Dad,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
“Missed you, kid,” he said warmly.
Then, over her head, his gaze shifted down the hall.
Eleanor followed it and nearly died.
