Page 28 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

She gritted her teeth. “She’s making pot roast.”

“I’d like that.” For a second he looked less like a deputy marshal and more like the boy who used to eat Sunday dinner at the Meyer house. “The one with the carrots?”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “The fact that you know there are multiple pot roasts is exactly the problem I’m talking about. Don’t make it a thing. You can bring dessert if you want. Don’t be late. She has opinions about punctuality.”

She spun on her heel before he said anything that might make it worse.

But behind her, Hudson Kane laughed quiet enough that she could almost pretend she hadn’t heard it.

She kept walking.

Her mother was a menace. And unless Hudson suddenly developed a pathological objection to pot roast, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

11

Hudson had been staring at the same beer for twenty minutes when the stool beside him scraped back.

He was back in the Rusty Anchor.

The jukebox in the corner was playing something dated that might have been Springsteen. Marty was behind the bar, drying a glass that had been dry for the last five minutes. He caught Hudson’s eye, and Hudson held it with a smile to let the man know he wasn’t here to cause trouble twice in one week. Marty went back to the glass.

“Rumor has it you put Dale Kincaid on the floor.”

He didn’t need to look up. There was only one person in Aurora Cove who moved like that—full weight, no apology for taking up the space.

Wyatt’s voice hadn’t changed at all. Still that low, calm register. “Without breaking a sweat. That true?”

“Marty exaggerates.”

“Marty exaggerates everything except that.” Wyatt signaled Marty, two fingers, and didn’t look away from Hudson while he waited. “I believe that part.”

Hudson stood because some things you didn’t do sitting down.

Wyatt’s arms closed around him, a hand flat against his back, and for a second neither of them said anything at all. Fifteen years compressed into a grip that didn’t need translating.

“You got old,” Wyatt said into his shoulder.

“I think I heard that already today.”

Wyatt grinned. “Ryder’s all charm.” Wyatt released him, looked him over once, head to boots. “You look like hell, Kane.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean it as a compliment. You used to look worse.” Wyatt sat back down, and Hudson sat with him, and Marty set two beers down.

They sat for a minute without talking. Hudson had forgotten how comfortable that could be—silence that didn’t need filling, sitting next to someone who’d once watched his back in places neither of them ever talked about.

“Heard about the rig,” Hudson said eventually. “The weapons one off the coast.”

Wyatt’s mouth did something almost like surprise. “You heard about that.”

“I keep tabs.”

“On me?”

“On the things that mattered.” Hudson worked his thumbnail at the edge of the bottle label. “Heard you pulled the chief engineer off it too. Jen.”

Something shifted across Wyatt’s face. “She pulled herself off it, mostly. I just helped with the last part.”