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“Your—wife?” He was married? Embarrassment washed over her. She hadn’t considered that he was in a relationship, let alone something as serious as marriage. Snow chastised herself for the things she’d said to Lily and for the thoughts she’d been having of him lately. She should have known he was married. She suddenly wanted to sink through her seat and melt.
Hunter seemed to find her reaction amusing. “Ex-wife,” he said.
The agony building within her expelled in a single breath. Snow stared straight ahead, refusing to look at him until she was certain the evidence of her embarrassment had washed from her cheeks. She cleared her throat.
“Where is your wife now?” Did her voice sound normal? She hoped she sounded normal.
Hunter pulled off to the side of a quiet road and took a few bites of his ice cream. “She and I separated when Kassie was a baby,” he said.
“But you have custody?” Snow couldn’t help her surprise.
“I know, usually the mother gets custody. But Haven didn’t want it. She left Kassie with me so she could pursue a new life.”
Snow was astounded. Kassie’s mother hadn’t wanted to be a mother. She pitied the poor little girl. “Does she have any contact with her mother?”
“No,” Hunter said. “Trust me, it’s better that way.” He finished his ice cream, set the cup in the center cupholder area and pulled back onto the street.
Snow continued eating her popsicle. “So because you got custody of your daughter, you couldn’t be on active duty anymore?”
“I didn’t want to be,” he said, slowing at a yield sign with trees lining the darkened street. “It was time, though. I’d been on active duty for eight years and was ready for a change too. I was special ops and had training with firearms and combat, so becoming a bodyguard seemed like a good fit.”
He pulled off again, this time on another less crowded residential street. “Here it is. I think we’ve driven around enough to throw anyone off. And I’ve pulled over in several other places. If anyone is tailing us, they may just think I’m taking an ice cream pit stop.”
“Except you finished all of yours.”
He held her gaze only moments before gripping the steering wheel and bending for a better look at the house.
“Which one is it?” Snow asked, working to cast aside the stymying effect he was having over her.
“This one,” he said, indicating the dual-level house with brown siding and an unkempt lawn in need of mowing. The statue of a goose on the porch wore a straw hat.
“That’s Tys’s house?”
“Yes.”
“So now we…” She glanced toward him. Hunter’s eyes glimmered in the darkness, latching onto her, hooking her somewhere behind her sternum, making the air thinner and harder to breathe.
“Now we wait and see if he comes in or out. We watch for any indication that he had anything to do with your attack.”
“How can we see that from here?”
“The police can’t search his house unless they have a warrant. They can’t get a warrant unless there is reasonable evidence that it was him. We’re going to see if we can glean anything like that tonight.”
Snow licked her popsicle. Hunter shifted in his seat. “There’s another reason I wanted you to come with me tonight,” he said. His tone shifted and sounded more cautious and unsure, of all things.
What could he possibly be unsure about?
“What’s that?” Snow asked.
He stared straight ahead, and she sensed the struggle taking place inside of him. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel a few times. “Eloise told me about her conversation with you after your interview with Amira.”
“Oh,” Snow said. She was glad the darkness concealed the pink in her cheeks because they caught fire. She’d gone out on limbs with guys before, confessing the reality of her budding feelings for them, only to be shot down. Was Hunter about to do something like that now?
“I’m guessing you saw the interview,” Snow said.
He faced her. “I can’t believe you confessed what you did.”
“You don’t like that, do you?”
