Page 125 of Now and Then

I step in close enough that she stops breathing for a beat. “Inside,” I say. “Before I forget I’m supposed to be patient.”

Her breath stutters. Just a little, but I see it. Feel it.

“Who says you have to be patient?” She walks quickly, heading for the front door with a quiet, flustered urgency that might undo me.

I watch her go, exhaling hard. This woman might be the death of me.

Sutton glances over her shoulder and catches me staring. She gives me a look that makes my heart beat faster.

I grab our bags from the truck, the folded list of addresses Logan gave me pressing against my back pocket. I tell myself everything will be fine. I know this town. I know how to do my job. I will solve this case even if it’s the last thing I do.

For a long time, it was easy to keep things in different boxes.

Work and everything else.

Now, there isn’t much space between them.

“You coming?” Sutton calls.

“Yeah,” I answer, stepping toward the house.

Always.

25

Sutton

The smell of fresh paint hits me before I even reach the door. I linger in the doorway, letting the hum of nail guns wash over me. The house is a hive of activity today, which feels like a godsend because it means the remodel is almost finished.

“Hey, girl,” Greer’s voice calls from the kitchen. She’s in the middle of pouring paint into a tray, her hair pulled back and tucked beneath a ball cap. “Hunter said it was okay to start without you.”

Aside from our nights wrapped in each other, Hunter and I have barely spent any time together. He’s been busy at work. I’ve been trying to salvage the open house and find someone to fix our roof.

After calling every company in town, I caved and placed an SOS call to Easton. Thankfully, a buddy of his owns a roofing company in the next town over and, by the grace of all things holy, had an opening.

I step into the kitchen. The soft gray-green color in the tray catches my eye immediately. “Where did this color come from?” Slight panic rises in my voice. I know there were a million cans of paint in the garage, but I definitely do not remember picking this color.

“It’s all good.” Greer holds her hands up in surrender. “Hunter gave it to me.”

“He did? But how?” I’d meant to get to the paint store over the weekend, but Hunter and I decided to stay in all weekend. And then the week got away from me.

“I’d take a guess that Jim at Paint Land helped him pick one out of the millions you’ve got samples of.” Navy slips past me and into the kitchen.

“Thank you for that,” I say sarcastically. “But seriously, I didn’t pick this color.”

“So what?” Navy tosses a to-go container of coffee and a pan of muffins onto the kitchen island. “It’s a great color.”

“Yeah, but it’s not in the right tonal family as the rest of the color palette.”

“I don’t even know what that means.” Greer rolls her eyes and slaps the roller against the wall. “And what does it matter? It looks fantastic against the wood tones in this room.”

I step further into the kitchen, spinning a slow circle, and take in the kitchen. Greer might be on to something. I’d not imagined a color so green, but against the wood of the newly stained floors and the cabinets it’s much more muted than in the tray. It even makes the brass hardware pop.

“Go with it, woman,” Navy says with a mouth full of muffin. “It’s just paint. Not the end of the world. Hunter has a pretty good eye.”

“You’re right. He does.” I sigh.

Let go.