His gaze dropped once?—
to the emerald silk,
the line of her shoulder?—
then returned to her eyes.
Her pulse skipped.
Behind her, a deeper voice.
“Well now.”
Deck O’Rourke stepped into view.
Retirement hadn’t softened him. It had sharpened him.
Silver at his temples. Weather in his eyes. The posture of a man who’d spent thirty years reading danger before it spoke.
Reid met his gaze.
Deck didn’t speak right away. He’d spent thirty years letting men break under the weight of their own silence. Calloway didn’t fidget. Didn’t look away. He stood on the porch like he’d been invited, not like he was trespassing.
“You clean up respectable,” Deck said at last.
“I try,” Reid answered.
Deck stepped forward enough to own the doorway.
“She’s not a headline.”
Reid didn’t look away.
“No,” he said evenly. “I know.”
Deck studied him another beat.
“Aye,” he said softly. “See that ye remember it.”
A pause.
Then the Irish deepened.
“And if ye forget… I’ll be remindin’ ye.”
Reid nodded once. “You won’t have to.”
Deck held him there a second longer.
Then stepped aside.
“Go on then.”
As Eleanor passed, he murmured low enough only she heard:
“Mind yourself, lass.”
She glanced at him.
