Page 58 of The Bodyguard's Fall

Joe nodded, scratching his white beard. “That’s good. And the man in the hospital? What’s going to happen to him?”

“If he survives, he’ll go to jail and face trial.”

Tate seemed to be floundering slightly, unsteady in a way I’d never seen him before. And it was enough for me.

“Well, we’ve got to go,” I said, smiling at the man who looked like he would have been happy to stay and shoot the breeze all day long. “Good to see you, Joe.”

Once inside his truck, we were both quiet. Pensive. Tate backed the truck out of our parking spot and drove us back toward the farm.

I couldn’t help myself.

“Your partner’s been in rehab?”

He nodded. Once and quick.

“And is he going to be okay?”

He sucked in a breath and looked at me. “Yeah.”

He didn’t want to talk. Maybe he couldn’t talk, with the investigation still ongoing. And I’d respect that for now. But there was one other thing I needed to clear up.

“That’s who you’ve been sneaking out to see sometimes?”

“We have a standing poker night once a week.” Tate smiled softly at me.

“And here I thought you were stepping out on me,” I said the words softly. I even smiled a bit so he wouldn’t know how the idea had been weighing on me. I didn’t want him to see how much my dad’s actions could still mess with my head, even now, but here we were.

We were stopped at a red light—the last stoplight before we hit country roads. I could feel Tate’s eyes on me.

“Rawlins,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, looking out the window.

“Olivia,” he tried again, this time in a voice soft enough to make me turn around to look at him.

“There isn’t a world that exists where I would ever cheat on you. Fake girlfriend or otherwise.”

And then he drove us home. We rolled our windows down, preferring the sound of the road and the crisp smell of autumn. He seemed glad not to be fielding more questions he clearly wasn’t ready to answer, while I sat there with butterflies in my stomach, wondering how a man had the power to heal so much angst in one well-placed sentence.

There was no way I would ever watch one of my movies with him, so later that night, I fired up an old classic, Romance on Purrfect Lane. It was almost as fun watching him attempt to keep the absolute horror from showing on his face as the movie unfolded, letting him think that I was the author of the screenplay.

“Well, what did you think?” I asked, looking over at him from my spot curled up in the corner of the couch.

His gaze narrowed as he studied me. “You didn’t write that,” he finally said. “I was waiting for the entire movie for a murder that didn’t happen. Nope. Just cats.”

“I love cats.”

“You don’t,” he said dryly.

“Didn’t you just love the way those cute kittens came in at the end and helped save the⁠—”

He threw a throw pillow at my face, shutting me up while also dissolving me into giggles.

“I do have a question for you.”

“What?”

“Where’s heck?”