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It had been a long, long time since he appreciated this place. He’d moved away at eighteen and vowed to never look back to the town where he’d spent his childhood. Those years of pain had hardened him to life, and he wondered, looking out at the trees, if the damage was irreparable.
“Is there enough coffee for me?”
Leo turned to see Amelia sliding open the pocket doors that led to the bedroom. She wore tiny sleep shorts that exposed most of her shapely legs. On top, she had a matching button-down pajama shirt, navy blue piped in white. Her nipples were visible through the thin fabric.
Leo cleared his throat and tore his gaze away. “Morning,” he said. “There’s enough for a couple more cups.”
“You’re my hero,” Amelia breathed. She stumbled across to the breakfast bar and fixed herself a mug (two creams and four sugars, to Leo’s combined disgust and amazement). Amelia stirred her coffee and joined him at the window. “What are you looking at? Anyone skulking around out there?”
He grinned. They’d spent dinner studying everyone around the table but had come no closer to finding any clues about the missing ring. Truthfully, Leo’s thoughts had been dominated by the memory of Amelia’s body splayed over his. It had been hard to care about his billionaire boss’s eye-wateringly expensive engagement ring when the woman of his dreams was seated just beside him. They hadn’t stolen it; why did they care who had?
“I was just thinking how little I appreciated this town growing up,” Leo admitted.
“When did you leave?”
“As soon as I graduated high school. Went to college in Boston and never looked back.”
“I only moved here for work when I was in my early twenties,” Amelia told him. “Maggie and my parents came later, when I kept telling them how great Stirling was. What was it like growing up here?”
Leo couldn’t hide his grimace. “It’s a nice place for a kid,” he said noncommittally.
Amelia could read him like a book. “But…?” she prompted.
He slurped his coffee to buy himself time. “But my parents weren’t exactly loving.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I survived.” He gave her his best, brightest smile—the one that usually turned aggressively flirtatious and had landed him in bed with whoever he aimed it at—but Amelia only frowned at him.
Leo sighed. Of course that look didn’t work on Amelia. It never had. To his surprise, he heard himself say, “I mostly lived with my grandparents. Dad was out of the picture. Mom was off getting high and finding new boyfriends every couple of weeks. She died when I was eleven, and we moved in with my grandparents full-time. They died within six months of each other when I was sixteen, and Marlon and I were on our own. He ended up buying me out of my half of the house they left us so I could afford to go to college.”
His voice sounded oddly flat, like he was describing what he’d eaten for breakfast. He took another sip of coffee and let his eyes drift to the distant mist curling around the treetops that would soon be burned away by the sun.
Amelia nodded but stayed silent.
Maybe it was her silence—comforting, steady—that prompted him to go on. “I was nervous about coming back here for the wedding and the retreat.”
“Is it the first time you’ve been back in Stirling since you left?”
Leo nodded. “Marlon never left, and Archer and Cormac came straight back after college. But I stayed away. We’d meet up in Boston every couple of months, and they always came down. I told Fred I’d grown up here in my interview with the company years ago, and I think it helped me get the job. Home court advantage. But I hadn’t been back since I left at eighteen.”
After a pause, Amelia asked, “What do you think about the town now?”
The town, he could take or leave. He didn’t care. The woman leaning on the opposite side of the window was another story. “It’s been good,” he finally replied, and he was surprised to realize it was the truth.
Amelia beamed at him, and a thunderbolt pierced his chest. She was charming when she frowned, but she was utterly breathtaking when she smiled.
“I’m going to shower first,” she told him, gulping down the rest of her coffee. “We have to go over what we’ve found out about the ring and figure out what we’re going to do. Fred keeps looking at me and asking pointed questions about my band. It’s getting uncomfortable.”
“He knows you didn’t steal the ring, Amelia.”
She tilted her head from side to side. “I don’t know. He’s suspicious about something. Last night, when you went to the bathroom after dinner, he asked me about my last tour and the way he worded the questions sounded like he was trying to catch me in a lie.”
Guilt squirmed in Leo’s stomach. “I’m sorry.”
She pursed her lips, flicking her gaze up to his. “It’s worth it.”
As she walked away, Leo wondered what, exactly, was worth it. Did she mean Fred’s suspicion was worth it because she got to spend time with Leo?
