I blinked, jerking my head back. “Starlight?” I whispered.
He ignored me, cleared his throat, and flipped his baseball cap around. “Let me inside so I can get started. I don’t know how long this is going to take, and you need your rest.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked, guilt twisting in my gut.
“Just an hour.”
“Oh.”
“Figured it would be rude to break in and fix it while you were gone, so I started cleaning up your backyard a bit.”
I nodded and looked at the tree limb. “Yes, there was a bad storm last fall, and it knocked that down—wait!” I shook my head. “Did you just say break in? How on earth were you going to do that?”
A slow, wide smile stretched across his handsome face, and at the moment, the sun decided to stretch its rays through the trees above us, highlighting his excruciating beauty. “Yeah, it’s best if you lay down. Clearly, you’ve forgotten what I do for a living.”
Chapter Nine
Ash
After meddling my way through the shit show of a breaker panel, which involved two calls to Jake, I managed to get everything organized and relabeled so she wouldn’t have to do any guess work the next time a breaker tripped. I also replaced ablown breaker and got everything ready to install the generator sitting in the back of my truck. I still needed to run to the hardware store to grab a few things, but before I left, I needed to confirm the age of the home and when the electricity had been installed. I also need to figure out where the broken breaker went. When I discovered it, there was no label beside it. If this home was considered historic, there was a good chance Astoria still possessed the original blueprints and the electrical plans.
“How old did you say this house was?” I called as I came into the living room, holding the old breaker in my hand. When I looked up, I stopped short, my heart damn close to jumping out of my chest.
Angel was curled up on the couch, nestled under a pile of white and cream blankets, asleep. With a blanket tucked under her chin, her dark lashes fanned out across her face, her cheeks still pink from crying, she looked like everything I needed her to be. At peace. Safe. Warm. Protected.
My eyes lingered on her tear tracks, and I mentally kicked myself, hoping to God they weren’t because of me. The last thing I wanted was to be the source of her pain. Even though every cell in my body was commanding me to, I hadn’t demanded the reason for her tears for two reasons.
One, as much as it pained me, it was none of my business.
Two, she’d tried her damn hardest to hide the fact that she was crying from me for over thirty minutes.
The overwhelming urge to scoop her into my arms and let her soak my shirt with her tears was nearly too much. And something that would’ve taken me ten minutes ended up taking over an hour because I wanted her to have her privacy. I could hear her soft sobs on the other side of the quiet house, and a handful of times, I had to stop working altogether, bend my head, and try not to lose my shit over it. I was used to people crying around me. Hell, at this point, it was an occupationalhazard. But the sound of Angel’s sobs threatened to drag me back into a pit of hell I’d spent years climbing out of. It put a spotlight on my nightmares, and I was dreading going back to my empty apartment tonight.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I let out a hushed curse, fishing for it. I took the call on her front porch, quietly shutting the screen door behind me.
“Doss,” I answered.
“Took you long enough!”
Her voice, loud and shaking with worry, hit me like a stray bullet.
“Abbie?”
“Of course it’s Abbie! Who else would it be?” she snapped, huffing.
I pulled the phone away from my face, checking the number. “This isn’t your number, Abs,” I told her.
Abbie Marks, formally known as Abbie Spears, was a good friend of mine and everyone else at Red Snake. A few years ago, she had called me about her stalker, and even though we could’ve handled it ourselves, Abbie was Beau’s girl. Beau worked at Hallow Ranch with Mags, Grayson’s long-time best friend. Word about her being in danger spread like wildfire, thanks to me, and by the time I got to her place the next morning, she had been taken back to Hallow Ranch at the hands of her cowboy. Abbie was an investigative journalist at the Denver Tribune and an amazing painter. A few of her pieces were hung in our offices.
“Beau’s horse stepped on my phone,” she said.
I chuckled. “I see.”
“It’s not fucking funny, Ash!”
My feet carried me to the edge of the porch, where the sunlight streamed through the trees above, hitting my skin, and sea salt moved with the breeze. “It is,” I told her, smiling.
She grew quiet for a moment. “I called to cuss you out.”
