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Her jaw dropped. “Why not? Is he insane?”
Canaan chuckled. “I don’t think my brother has watched a movie since we were kids, let alone taken a break or holiday.”
“And they teaseyoufor being a recluse?” she asked.
Canaan laughed again. “I am going to usethatnext time I get razzed. Not that Wilder ever realizes when someone is teasing him.”
“He sounds very serious.”
“He is. I don’t really know if he was ever really a kid. There are only four years of difference between us, but with the twins born in the middle, I think I just grew up closer to them.”
“I bet Rylee was fun as a kid.”
“If you think she’s a menace now, you haven’t seen anything yet. My mother entirely blames Rylee for all her white hair.”
She chuckled. “My mother hasn’t got white hair yet. Sure, she had me when she was only eighteen, so she is still pretty young, but she wasn’t exactly a parent. I wonder what she’ll blame her white hair on.”
“I’m sorry, Queenie.”
She waved him off. “It’s fine. It wasn’t all bad. When I stayed with my grandparents on their farm, I had a bit of freedom. I’d roam the fields. There was always a good view of the moon and the stars. I camped out a lot.”
As nice as it was to sleep under the stars, it was lonely to do it all alone. Canaan almost asked Elizabeth if she wanted to sleep under the stars again, but this time with him. It was probably a little too presumptuous.
No. It’s not. I’m sure she would love it. You know she likes you.
Canaan pretended not to hear his wolf and took their dishes into the house, putting some distance between him and Elizabeth.
It was getting impossibly harder to keep his secrets.
THIRTEEN
ELIZABETH
The day had been long. The kind of long that made Elizabeth’s back hurt, and her fingers ache. She had made a serious dent in the tasks Rylee had given her, but Elizabeth still couldn’t see what her new lawyer’s strategy was.
She trusted Rylee, though. Part of that trust came from the woman’s familial connection to Canaan. Elizabeth couldn’t help but trust Canaan. The only doubts she had were silly … she was scared that shedidn’tdoubt him.
Either she hadn’t learned her lesson with Jordan, and this would all turn to shit, or she needed to trust her instincts. Perhaps that was something she hadn’t done with Jordan because she was too busy making sure she was nothing like her mother.
Elizabeth was interrupted from her spiraling thoughts by the ringing doorbell, soon followed by the loud shout of “Only me.”
Canaan lifted his head away from his computer with a grin. “That’s Mel. She has a key,” he explained. “But she rarely uses it because …”
“She doesn’t like Myrtle, the turtle,” Elizabeth guessed.
“Meet me in the kitchen, will ya?” the other woman shouted.
Elizabeth giggled when Canaan rolled his eyes. “Go on. I need to finish this.” His screen was black but covered in white writing … code. She didn’t know what he was doing, but it sure looked important enough. His brow was furrowed in concentration when she cast back one final look his way.
Mel was riffling through the pantry, and she turned to nudge her chin toward the kitchen counter. “The laptop was easy enough to find, but the memory stick wasn’t in its hiding spot.”
Elizabeth gripped the counter to keep from falling. “What?”
“I searched high and low in case you didn’t know where you had hidden it, but honestly, Elizabeth, he took it. I’m sure of it.”
“How can you be sure? Maybe I just … put it back in the wrong place.”
Mel sniffed loudly and shrugged. “Call it a hunch, but you’re not that kind of girl. It was there, and he took it or had someone else take it.”
