Page 57 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

He caught it, laughing, and tucked it into his collar like a bib. “See? Impossible.”

“I hate both of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Wyatt said.

She didn’t. That was the trouble with brothers.

The back door banged shut, and her dad came in with an armful of split logs. He stopped in the dining room doorway. “Everything all right?”

“Yep,” all three of them said at once.

Her dad studied them over the top of the logs.

Sarah knew that look. He’d raised four Meyer children. It was the expression he wore whenever one of them was lying badly enough that correcting them wasn’t worth the effort.

“Right,” he said at last.

Wyatt got up. “Let me help you with those, Dad.”

Interrogation unsuccessful.

But Caleb was still grinning into his beer as her mom came back downstairs with a squealing Josie.

Home was exactly what it had always been—warm, noisy, familiar.

Tires crunched over the stones outside.

Sarah looked toward the front door.

Hudson.

24

Three enormous trucks were parked in front of the house, along with a polished Volvo. Hudson’s rental looked faintly apologetic beside them.

He parked at the end of the row, cut the engine, and sat for a moment in the quiet while the heater ticked down. He’d driven over eighty miles of logging roads with Walter today. They’d found nothing. He exhaled a slow breath.

One of the trucks was Sarah’s department vehicle.

Sarah’s already here.

Twenty-four hours ago this had been dinner. Now he didn’t know what waited inside—or whether he had any right to hope for it.

The porch light was on, throwing a warm arc across the front steps. The wraparound porch, with its cushions and folded blankets, was as it had always been, as if the years between then and now had happened somewhere else entirely.

He got out of the car.

Sophie opened the door before he reached the porch steps. She was exactly as he remembered, radiating the kind of warmth that felt like stepping out of the cold into a lit room. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and gave him the widest smile as if no time had passed at all.

She hurried down the steps and took his face in both hands. “Still too thin.” She cupped his cheek. “I was so sorry to hear about your parents.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Meyer.”

“Oh, I think we’re past that now, Hudson.” Her eyes crinkled in a smile. “Sophie, please.”

He held out the white bakery box he’d brought from Benji’s, a little self-conscious about it now that he was standing here. “I brought dessert. Apple pie.”

“Oh, how lovely. Thank you, Hudson.” She glanced at the label, then toward the house. “Apple pie. Sarah’s favorite.”