Page 68 of A Love Like Candle Light

“So, are you going to tell me what’s in that giant backpack of yours?” He stops right by it and eyes it curiously.

“Oh, you know. Change of clothes. Work for you.”

“Work for me?” He turns to me and arches an eyebrow. I buy some time by hiding my face behind the door of his fridge as I Tetris-pack the ice cream in there.

“Well, I mean maybe for us,” I clarify and close the door to his freezer. “You know, I was at Caleb’s and I ran into Harry, and he took me to Wayward Hollow’s archive, and guess what?”

His forehead wrinkles in a frown. “What?”

“O’Brien used to own the land where my house is.” He still seems confused. Am I seriously the only one making the connection?

“I know Bobby sold it as some kind of rumor, but hear me out. What if the bones we found in my yard are Elizabeth’s?”

“Why would they be? Isn’t she buried at the cemetery?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.” I point at the backpack. “Harry let me borrow a bunch of files. Land owner records, and...” I pick it up and rummage through it until I find it. “Here.” I hold up a notebook. “It’s some kind of diary from Nicholas O’Brien. I also got the cemetery records in here.” I pull out a file. “You know, the boring stuff. You can have a look at those.”

“So you want to find out if Elizabeth was buried on his property, which is now yours.” He walks closer, a teasing grin tugging at his lips. “You know this is kind of my area of expertise, right? You’re meddling in police work, babe.”

I pull my lip between my teeth. I like it when he calls me babe, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. It caught me off guard when he did it on the phone earlier, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

“Just helping where I can.” I wink and push the cemetery files against his chest.

“You know I would’ve gotten there eventually too, right? I’m only prioritizing identifying her.”

“Sure you would have, Erik,” I tease him and pat his solid chest. “But I’m way too curious to wait for you to come around. So I thought we could make an evening out of it.”

Boom.

I jump, as does Abby. “Holy fuck.” I clutch my shirt, heart beating faster than a kick drum at a rock show. “What was that? A gunshot?”

The hair on the back of my neck is standing up.

“A thunderstorm,” Erik mumbles and rubs my shoulders until they relax under his fingertips. “Didn’t you check the weather forecast?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Boom.

Another one. I don’t think I’ve ever heard thunder this loud.

“Okay. Let’s make an evening of it,” Erik states and starts carrying everything over to his couch.

“Great! Give me a minute, I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.”

“Are you staying over?”

“Yep,” I declare confidently. “The storm and all that.” I wave my hand towards the sky.

He breaks into a chuckle, eyes softening. “The one you didn’t know about?”

“Exactly that one.” I shoot him a cheeky grin and grab my pajamas out of my backpack.

He points me to his bedroom. Dangerous to let me in there alone and give me a prime snooping opportunity.

It might be the most boring room out of his house. There’s a queen-sized bed, a wardrobe, some books strewn about and a door leading to an en-suite bathroom. No pictures to snoop, no crime board or anything nefarious to satisfy my curiosity.

When I return to the living room, he’s sitting on the floor in front of his couch and papers scattered on the ground around him. Abby is on the couch, breathing into his neck, and he absentmindedly has his hand over his shoulder, scratching the side of Abby’s throat.