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“You have a place here in Steel Ridge?” he pressed.
“I’m staying at Short and Sweet, the tiny home community,” I explained. “Hanna, the owner, is allowing me an extended stay there, so she gave me one of the houses that sleeps five people. At least if we were there, we could both have a bed to sleep in at night.”
Long moments of silence filled the air.
I was certain Kane was going to turn me down and demand that I stay here, but he surprised me when he shrugged nonchalantly and declared, “Works for me.”
My brows shot up. “What?”
“I’ll stay with you,” he replied. “I don’t care where we are, Ellery. I just care that I am wherever you are so that I don’t have to worry about you being vulnerable. Let me pack a few things, make a quick call, and then we’ll head over there. But one quick question first.”
“What’s that?”
“How did you pay for your stay there?” he asked.
“My bank card,” I told him. When I saw the immediate change in his face, I added, “It’s attached to a bank account that Patrick knows nothing about. I might not know everything I need to know about keeping myself safe, but I’m not a complete fool.”
His hands gave mine a squeeze. “I never thought for one second that you were.”
With that, he let go of my hands and walked away, presumably to get some things packed. I couldn’t manage to do anything but stand there.
What was I doing?
Why had I offered to have him come stay with me?
I knew nothing about him other than where he worked. It would have been no different if I’d just invited some random stranger off the street to spend the night with me.
But then I took a minute to think about it, and I realized that I was lying to myself. Maybe I didn’t know many details about specifics of Kane’s life, but I did know something.
I knew how he made me feel.
I knew he was a gentleman.
I knew that he cared about people.
And I knew that he’d at least served some time in the armed forces serving his country.
Did any of that mean that he couldn’t have also been a serial killer? I guess not.
Then again, I was married to a man that seemed to have no problem actually killing a human being, so Kane was already light-years ahead of him.
If I was being completely honest with myself, none of my concerns about having him stay with me had anything to do with my personal safety. I trusted that he was a good man, because of what he’d shown me and the confidence I’d had in the research I’d done on the company he worked for. I could have been wrong, but I believed the risk was low.
So, it wasn’t my physical safety that I was worried about.
Nope.
Instead, I was worried that I might like playing pretend too much. Granted, that would all be happening in my head, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d have to acknowledge it.
Kane would be living with me temporarily.
How was I supposed to not get distracted and stop myself from dreaming it would be the real thing?
TWELVE
Kane
“What made you pick this place?”
