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“He’s a private investigator, not a cop,” she told Larissa. That part was just fact. And easy. “He’d been helping me with my case even before Gram’s kidnapping. Which was why he was able to help find the discrepancy in evidence so quickly when the police asked him to look into my stuff.” The lie rolled off her tongue. For him. He was risking his life for her.
Yeah, it was his job. Yeah, if he wasn’t working on her case, he could be on another that put his life at risk, but she’d given him her word. And he was trusting his life to her keeping her word.
“So, what’s he think about the break-in?”
Larissa’s concern was so sweet. Real. Which made lying to her so hard. She shook her head. “The police are working the case still,” she said. “From what I’ve been told, they have no idea who’s behind it.” There. She’d found a way to be truthful. And felt better.
“Have you been back in the house?” Larissa asked.
She nodded. “As soon as the police were done with it. I couldn’t leave it a mess,” she said and grinned. “You know me. I need my space orderly.” They’d joked about the fact that Everleigh was one barmaid who’d always kept their shared station clean and tidy.
“Aren’t you nervous about staying there?”
She shrugged. Didn’t look at Clarke that time. She’d failed to factor in how difficult it would be to lie to a real friend when she’d walked into the plan with Clarke that evening. And didn’t know how much about her current living situation she could divulge.
“So, come stay with me,” Larissa said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Seriously, I’d love having you. I’ve got the spare room just sitting there empty...
“You can bring Forester,” her friend added.
For a second there, a long second, Everleigh was tempted. Most particularly because she was still stinging from Clarke’s need to tell her to give him space. Whether she’d been coming on too strong or not, his words had been a reminder to her. Because while she’d been hanging on him, she knew she hadn’t just been acting.
The realization scared her in a way far different from someone making attempts on her life. Her attraction to Clarke could carry a much longer-lasting danger.
And yet the immediate peril...it was also real. And deadly serious. She couldn’t expose Larissa to that.
“I’m fine where I am,” she said. “But you have no idea how much it means that you offered.” She looked her friend in the eye, appreciating Larissa’s support. “But I have to take back my life, one way or the other...”
Larissa nodded, seemed a bit teary-eyed as she leaned forward and brushed a light kiss against Everleigh’s cheek. “You know I’m always here for you,” she said softly before she pulled back.
Everleigh did know. Larissa had had her back since the first day Everleigh had walked into Howlin’ Eddie’s dressed in her skimpy barmaid’s outfit.
And she was grateful.
Chapter 12
Clarke had underestimated how many people would be at Everleigh’s party. And how eager they’d be to talk to him—her new boyfriend—about her deceased husband. Seemed, now that the man was gone, they all had things to say about him. Many of them hadn’t liked how he’d treated Everleigh, and he couldn’t help but wonder if any of them had really stepped forward at any point during the past eighteen years to see if she needed help.
He admired Everleigh while she worked the room as though she owned it. She’d moved on past her friend from the bar almost two hours before, and even though many people had left and the party was dying down, she was still calling up enough smiles to make her seem at ease and hap
py enough to be there. She might be quiet. Gentle. But she had an iron rod for a backbone and took everything that came at her standing up. And with grace.
He’d heard too many people tell him about Fritz being seen with other women. Had just received a third name to check out when he saw Everleigh pull her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and answer it.
Who’d be calling her at that hour? Most particularly, who’d be calling her at that hour if just about everyone she knew was in the house then?
Since he was there at the behest of the police department, any official calls could go through him...
When her brow tightened and her lips thinned, he went for their coats. Already had hers in hand, holding it out to her when she came toward him—and saw Amie and Andrew coming at them, too.
“That was my neighbor,” Everleigh said before her parents reached them, taking her jacket from him. He’d moved quietly enough that most people in the room remained engaged in their conversations, seemingly unaware of what was going on around them. He wanted them to stay that way. “The one who has Forester. She saw someone snooping around the back windows of my house.”
Her parents came up just as she said that last part, and Clarke, who already had on his coat, pulled out his phone. “I’ve got the police on speed dial,” he told them. “And I’ll keep her safe.”
He didn’t let them know he had a gun under his sweater.
With a hurried and obviously concerned request from the McPhersons to keep them posted of any possible developments, Clarke hurried Everleigh out to the car. He already had his sister on the line before he’d pulled away.
He stayed on the phone with Melissa until they were turning onto Everleigh’s street.
