Page 123 of The Diamond in the Rough

I nodded, more enthusiastically than I should have, and I winced as my head throbbed.

“Are you okay?” He reached toward me, but pulled his hand back.

“Yes, I—I shouldn’t have nodded, that’s all,” I whispered. “Just—just a headache, when I move too much.”

“Do you want me to go?” he asked, softly.

I started to shake my head, stopped, and answered out loud. “No. Stay.” I swallowed. “Please,” I added.

He smiled, sitting, then opened the box in front of him to reveal his burger and a pile of chips. I did the same with my box, revealing my chicken sandwich and another heap of chips. I grabbed one and ate it, savoring the salty crunch.

“Oh,” Raj said suddenly. “Right.”

I watched him as he bent and pulled something wrapped in newspaper out of his bag, then passed it to me before taking two bottles of sparkling lemonade out of the messenger bag.

“Drinks,” he said, then nodded at the package in my hands. “And something to drink them out of.”

Curious, I unwrapped the newspaper sheets, then the paper towel underneath until I found my own mug—the handmade one I used at Beyond the Veil. I looked up at him, confused.

“I—thought you might feel more comfortable with yours,” he said softly, his cheeks a little darker than normal. “So I stopped over at Beyond the Veil to grab it. I—hope that’s okay.”

I felt my mouth pulling upwards into a smile. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it, savoring the feel of the ceramic under my fingers, safe and familiar.

He wantedto do something nice for Rayn. Wanted to do something that would make him smile.

Swallowing,I pushed away the thoughts, hoping that I was managing to keep a straight face. I didn’t want him to know—not because it bothered me if he knew I’d gotten an impression from something, but because he’d brought it to me so that I didn’t have to sense anybody else’s memories.

Fortunately, he’d been opening one of the bottles of lemonade and hadn’t noticed.

“Lemonade?” he asked, then filled the mug when I nodded.

I waited until after I’d had a couple bites of my sandwich and several fries before I asked the one thing Hart hadn’t been able to tell me.

“Howdidyou find me?”

Raj finished chewing, then swallowed. “You said they’d thrown you into a well,” he said softly. “And that it was Garraway’s house. No residence under that name had one, so I started searching other properties under the last name Garraway. Property that Martin Garraway inherited from his mother about three years ago, and whichshehad inherited from her parents thirty years before that showed an old well. There were no building permits, nothing to suggestthat anyone had actuallylivedthere, which made it ideal for…” He trailed off with a grimace.

“Kidnapping?” I suggested.

He nodded, lips pressed together. “It was a risk, but nothing else that Garraway owned or would have access to seemed likely, so I ran with it.”

“Thanks,” I said softly. “It was… really cold down there.”

“It was,” he agreed.

“How did you get down, anyway?” I asked, picking up my sandwich.

He let out a huffed laugh. “Badly,” came his reply.

I felt my eyebrows rise in question, although I didn’t say anything because I’d just taken a big bite.

He chuckled a little. “I shifted—obviously—and thought I’d get enough purchase from the walls to be able to climb down.” He grimaced. “Crumbling brick doesnot, for the record, work like tree bark.”

“You fell?” I asked, having swallowed.

“I skidded, ripped out a couple claws,”—he held up one hand, wiggling his fingers, and I saw that he had band-aids on his index and middle fingers—“and then proceeded to sprain the shit out of my ankle and calf trying to land.”

“You said you tweaked it,” I reminded him, the guilt building up in my stomach.