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“Why don’t I grab some garlic bread and a salad while we’re out picking up Pop’s prescription?” he suggested. “Seems only fair, if we’re invading your dinner.”

“Sure. That works. See you then.”

She drove away, her mind whirling so loudly with recriminations that she barely registered the dark pickup backing out of its space a few seconds after she pulled away, falling in behind them as they left the Shelter Inn parking lot.

Chapter 11

“It’s so nice of that sweet Hannah Goodwin to invite us for dinner. You should have picked up a bottle of wine to take along,” Stanley said as Wes pulled into Hannah’s neighborhood.

“I’m sure the garlic bread and salad will suffice,” Wes answered as he neared her house.

“You can’t go wrong with a good bottle of wine, especially with homemade lasagna.” Stanley closed his eyes and inhaled, as if he could already smell it. “Women love a man who knows how to pick a good wine.”

Wes bit back a smile. Was his eighty-year-old grandfather trying to be his wingman? The idea was so absurd he almost laughed out loud.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind next time,” he said instead, turning onto their street.

Next time. As if there would be a next time, at least when it came to Hannah. One dinner did not mean anything. They were neighbors for the moment. That was all.

“We should have dressed up,” Stanley said, tugging at his scarf.

Wes glanced over. His grandfather wore slacks, a button-down shirt and a blue cardigan beneath his wool overcoat and scarf. Sharp and tidy, like always. Stanley probably wore nicer clothes to watch television than most people did to go to work.

“You look great,” Wes said. “It was a casual invitation to a weekday dinner, Pop. Nothing fancy. The kids who are staying with her will be there.”

And you, he thought. My octogenarian grandfather.

Not exactly the stuff of cozy candlelight and smoldering eye contact. Not that he wanted an intimate romantic dinner with Hannah.

He repeated that part firmly in his head. He and Hannah had been over for a very long time. Whatever weird flutter he still felt around her was a leftover reflex, nothing more.

As they drove past his grandfather’s old house, Stanley sighed, his gaze catching on the familiar front porch and the big birch tree in the yard.

“Is it tough for you to go by the old house?” Wes asked quietly.

“Not tough exactly.” Stanley watched the house in the side mirror. “I knew moving to the Shelter Inn was the right choice for me. After your grandma died, that place just felt too empty. I grew to hate coming home, knowing I wouldn’t hear her laugh or smell something tasty coming from the kitchen ever again. I was just too damn lonely and I started to hate it.”

Wes shifted. He knew what it was to come home to quiet, to four walls and his own thoughts.

“Are you happy at the Shelter Inn?” he asked.

“For the most part,” Stanley replied. “There’s always something to do and people to talk to. That’s important when a guy gets to be my age. According to your sister, studies show men who stay connected and don’t rattle around alone in big empty houses live longer and do better.”

Wes couldn’t help feeling called out, since he spent most of his life either on the job or alone in his Portland apartment with only Kodiak’s snore for company.

He had always told himself he liked it that way. No complications, no one to worry about when he walked out the door.

Lately, he wasn’t so sure.

“Not to say I don’t miss it,” Stanley went on. “Your grandmother and I spent sixty years in that house. We raised our kids there, tended you grandkids, buried our pets in the backyard. It’s hard to say farewell to all that history. I know we need to sell it, but I can’t deny that it will be tough to see somebody else living there.”

“I know,” Wes said.

He slowed for a stop sign and his attention caught on a dark pickup parked farther down the street, engine idling, exhaust curling in the cold air.

There it was again.

Odd. He had seen that same truck a few times in the past week, always in roughly the same spot, engine running. His cop instincts sharpened. Everything in him wanted to walk up, tap on the glass and ask the driver exactly what they thought they were doing.