Page 91 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

He’d come to Aurora Cove hunting one ghost. Instead, he’d found the woman he’d spent fifteen years convinced he’d lost. He couldn’t even say when it had happened, but Sarah Meyer was the reason he wanted to stay.

She was the future he’d stopped believing he could have.

37

Sarah closed the front door behind her and leaned against it, eyes closed.

No radio. No dispatch. No Walter asking whether she’d signed the transfer paperwork for Cord.

Cord was in federal custody now, being held at the station until two deputy marshals arrived from Anchorage to collect him tomorrow. Nora was stable at the hospital, wrapped in warming blankets with warmed IV fluids running. A doctor had told Sarah another few hours in that cellar would have been a different conversation entirely.

Now she was home. The house was quiet. She unlaced her boots, toed them off and padded into the kitchen.

The flowers Hudson had bought were fully open, catching the last of the afternoon light on the kitchen table, petals wider than they’d been this morning.

The fridge was still absurdly full—enough food for a week, maybe two, bought by a man who apparently believed the correct response to an empty refrigerator was to declare war on it.

She closed the refrigerator but didn’t move away immediately. Yesterday this house had felt like somewhere she slept between shifts. Today it felt like somewhere she wanted someone to come home to.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. She reached for it, expecting Walter. Or dispatch. Or her mother, who had called three times today already.

Hudson.

Dinner?

Hotel bar.

Seven?

If you’re up to it.

She stared at the screen. Four lines. No pressure or assumptions. The question mark after seven made her smile. Even now, he was leaving her room to say no.

Her stomach flipped. It hadn’t done that since she was eighteen.

Seven.

She hit send.

Oh God. I just agreed to a date.

She put the phone face down on the counter and walked toward her bedroom before she changed her mind. She showered quickly, then stood in front of her closet with nearly two hours to figure out who the hell she was supposed to be when she got there.

Mostly she owned practical things. Work shirts. Thermal layers. Jeans in varying shades of sensible. Clothes bought to do a job in, not to be noticed in. Her uniform hung at the far left. Sheriff Sarah. The version of herself she put on without thinking because the job decided for her. Tonight it didn’t.

She touched the sleeve of her work shirt and moved on.

She reached for her good jeans. Practical. She held them up, then put them back.

A blue and white summer dress. Except it was November and below freezing. Absolutely not.

Her hand stopped on something she’d forgotten she owned—a navy wool dress, fitted and soft. She’d bought it for an anniversary party two years ago and worn it exactly once before it disappeared into the back of the closet behind her work jackets.

She pulled it out. It was just a dress. Warm enough for November, simple enough that she wouldn’t spend the whole evening wondering if she’d overdressed.

She took it off the hanger and pulled it on. When she stretched behind her for the zipper, the bruises across her ribs objected immediately. It fit differently than denim ever did, soft against curves her usual clothes mostly ignored. She smoothed a hand down the wool almost self-consciously before sitting on the bed to zip her knee-high boots.

She pulled the elastic from her ponytail. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, and she ran her fingers through it, shaking it out. She opened her jewelry box and added tiny silver hoops to her ears, then applied mascara and a slick of lip gloss.