Page 43 of Soft Flannel Hank

“I’ll never sleep.”

“Decaf,” he said softly.

“Oh. Sure. But only if you were already making it.”

“I was.”

This was the Hank she knew. Quiet. Not using any more words than were absolutely necessary. In her cabin and then in the car, she’d been taken aback by justhow muchhe’d talked. It was like he was another person.

And then it struck her. Hehadbeen another person. In her cabin and then in the truck, asking her questions, managing the situation,arresting her,Hank had been Officer Hank Dove. He’d worn that role like a jacket that didn’t quite fit comfortably, and now that he was home, he’d shrugged it off as soon as he crossed the threshold, as if he couldn’t be rid of it soon enough. So he could just be Hank Dove.

Although Esther was beginning to realize that Hank Dove wasn’tjustanything.

He gestured at the kitchen table, and she sat in a wooden chair with a wide seat and armrests. She slid to the backrest on the shiny, varnished wood, and propped her feet up on one of the rungs connecting the legs of the chair. From this vantage point, she watched Hank.

He moved efficiently and quietly around his kitchen in socked feet. He took the coffee pot from a drying rack and filled it with cold water from the tap. Poured it into an ancient-looking coffee maker. He opened a cabinet and removed a coffee filter from the stack just inside. Then he scooped careful scoops from a green can into the filter before pushing the machine’s orange button.

She was an intruder in his space, in this solitude he had cultivated for himself. Feeling bashful, Esther looked away. Through the doorway near her seat, she could see a sideboard with pictures on it. Some of them were older, several were of a young girl with dark hair and dark eyes, but an eight-by-ten frame in the back caught her eye. It was tucked behind all the rest, as if hiding in plain sight.

She stood and walked into that room, a dining room, and up to the table of pictures. She picked up the large frame and found herself staring at a very pretty blond woman wearing a pink sweater and a tight smile. She stood behind a man with a high-and-tight haircut and a thick mustache.

He sat in a chair just in front of the woman, whose hands were resting on his shoulders, but only just. The man was holding a young toddler, perhaps eighteen months old or so, with unruly dark hair that stuck out in a dozen odd directions. She was laughing. He wasn’t smiling with his mouth, but his whole face was alight with happiness as he looked directly at the camera.

Esther’s intuition nudged her to look at the woman more closely. She could see the smile that didn’t reach the blond woman’s eyes. Her hands only barely touched him, as if touching his shoulders and smiling in this picture, this permanent capturing of a fleeting moment in time was the very last thing she wanted to be doing. Then there was the trapped animal look behind her gaze.

And the man, holding a baby girl who looked exactly like him, was blissfully ignorant of all of that as he made direct eye contact with the camera, pride and happiness radiating from every pore. The cracks that had begun spreading in Esther’s heart grew a little wider, deeper, as she stared into those dark, shining eyes, her intuition telling her everything she needed to know. Like a map leading directly to the shipwreck she’d been seeking. The shipwrecked man she’d been looking for.

I’m not the one who leaves people, Esther.

She remembered him shouting that to her earlier that evening in her cabin, a line that had felt out of place in the moment but settled into her bones now.

He cleared his throat behind her, and she whirled around.

“Coffee’s ready,” he said, his voice low and soft. Cautious. “I don’t know how you take it. I’ve just got milk and sugar. No, uh, flavors.”

“That’s great. That’s all I need.”

He stared at her, his brow furrowed, like he was waiting for something. Bracing himself for it. For her to ask him about the picture, maybe. About the woman and the girl.

But he had that same trapped animal look in his eyes now that the woman had in the picture, and so Esther smiled, saying, “I almost didn’t recognize you all shined up like that.”

“Yeah, well, it was a long time ago,” he said, taking the picture from her hands and replacing it carefully in the back of all the rest.

“This,” she said, gesturing at his face, the thick beard and longer hair still pulled back in the little high ponytail, “this suits you.”

He huffed out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a grunt. He ran his hand over the top of his head before dropping it and stuffing his fingers in his back pocket. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, holding his gaze.

Without another word, he turned and walked back through the doorway into the kitchen. She followed him and saw that he’d placed two mugs next to the coffeepot, a box with packets of raw sugar, a half-gallon of milk, and a spooner full of teaspoons on the counter beside them. He gestured to the setup and leaned against the opposite counter, his arms crossed over his chest.

Esther tore open a packet of sugar and dumped it into the empty mug before pouring hot coffee over it, relishing the comforting smell, a smell that always made her feel at home no matter where she found it. She had stirred the milk into the coffee and popped the spoon in her mouth to lick it clean when the door in the mudroom flew open and slammed just as quickly. She jumped, and the spoon clattered to the counter as she whirled around in time to see a tall, lanky man filling the doorway.

He had skull-trimmed brown hair. His mouth was set in a thin line, and his eyebrows bunched tightly together. He looked furious, and Esther could feel his tightly reined-in power radiating off of him. She’d only ever felt that kind of leashed nuclear energy from vampires.

Hank had moved to stand between them, as if he, a mortal human, had a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping a vampire. It didn’t matter how big or strong, howsubstantialHank was, he was no match. But the fact that he thought he might try…

“This had better be good, Hank,” the newcomer said through clenched teeth.