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“Of course. I really do have to catch up on a verifiable fuck ton of paperwork today.” He gestured to the pile he’d left on the edge of the counter. “But I could go to the store this afternoon.”
“Oh, no. My treat. I refuse to live here for free, so you’re going to have to let me do a lot more cooking.” She speared up another bite of egg. “But you’re in charge of the omelets. This is delicious.”
He grinned and plated his food, grabbing his toast out of the toaster when it popped up. “This was an easy one to master.”
“Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“I taught myself after my wife died.” He let the pang in his chest appear and subside before speaking again. “I lost myself for a few months after her accident, and her sister set me straight. You’ve met Reagan.”
Delaney tilted her head. “The redhead, right?”
James nodded. “She’s a very no-nonsense kind of person. Showed up at my house one day telling me to get my shit together because Maura would be embarrassed for me. She was right. So I did. Get my shit together, I mean.”
“And part of that was learning how to cook?”
“Yeah.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I was on a first-name basis with the pizza delivery guy. It was kind of a wake-up call.”
“I’m sorry about your wife. I…I read about her.”
He raised a brow. “Did you?”
She dipped her head and quickly took a bite of toast, chewing and swallowing before replying. “Before I started working at the Orchid. I, ah, googled you.”
“I figured as much.” She visibly relaxed. “You mentioned something about me being remarried when you met Reagan.”
“Right. Subtle like a hammer. That’s me.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You seem pretty mysterious.”
He paused to see her reaction and watched the shutters slowly come down. He had no right to poke at her when he could never reciprocate a level of honesty any deeper than what Declan allowed to be printed in the papers. She rose from the table and carried her empty plate into the kitchen, setting it and her silverware into the dishwasher.
“I’m going to get out of your hair for a few hours. Let you get to all of that paperwork. Do you mind if I get a real coffee pot? Something small I can keep on the edge of the counter. Or in my room so it’s not in the way.”
“Delaney. You don’t have to keep a coffee pot in your room. The only reason I don’t have one is because I hate hot coffee. Not because they’re forbidden.”
“Okay. Thank you.” She collected her purse from where she’d hung it by the door when she came downstairs and slipped into her jacket. “Is there anything you need from the store?”
“No, I’m good.”
She smiled before disappearing down the stairs to the pub, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. Carrying his dishes into the kitchen and slotting them in the dishwasher next to hers, he sighed. What in the fresh hell had he gotten himself into?
ChapterTwenty-One
He stared at the message on his laptop screen.No records match your search. He’d been moving in circles ever since arriving in Indianapolis. Amy Parker was too common a name, and having no other details besides her name and photo, he was forced to comb through every single records database he could access, trying to match what he found with the pictures he had.
When he wasn’t holed up in his hotel room tabbing through page after page of what felt like every Amy Parker this side of the Mississippi, he was flashing a brand new missing persons flyer at restaurants. Knowing she had a penchant for waiting tables, he started with the restaurants close to motels.
If she needed to get her car fixed, she probably wouldn’t work somewhere that required a lot of driving. But Indianapolis was a big fucking city with plenty of motels, and he’d still only been to a fraction of the places that fit his criteria. She was a needle in a haystack unless he could get his hands on a broader database to search.
He put a call into a contact who could access some kind of dark web database he didn’t really understand, but it would give him a direct line to search for all her information. If she wasn’t still in Indianapolis—and if he had to guess, she probably wasn’t—he’d need more than confirmation that she’d been here to find her somewhere else. A social security number or a photo of her driver’s license.
With that information, he could find her anywhere in the country, assuming she used the same details anywhere she got work. And why wouldn’t she? She’d been gone long enough to start feeling comfortable, so comfortable she ran her mouth to the people at the bar and led him here.
He should have tried to get more details out of the guy, but the man was already suspicious, and he didn’t want to shut him down completely. Which meant for now he was stuck sifting through these damn databases on his own while he waited to hear from his contact about that broader access.
At a knock on the door, he slid his gun off the edge of the desk and pushed out of the rickety office chair. Crossing to the peephole, he peered through it, then tucked his gun in the waistband of his jeans and pulled out his wallet.
“Got a pizza for—”
