Page 64 of Carry on Wayward Son

Jace closed his laptop. “We need a break. We’ve been staring at property records for six hours and our brains have stopped working.”

I looked at my own screen, at the list of holding companies and LLCs that had been accumulating all afternoon, and recognized the truth of it. “What did you have in mind?”

“The Christmas market closes this weekend. It’s been running for a week. It’s an island tradition—local vendors, food, the whole thing. We could go for an hour.”

I looked out the window at the gray afternoon and thought about the sandwich board I’d photographed on my first morning walk, the one advertising the market for the first weekend of December. Somehow it was already the second weekend of December. Time had been doing something strange since I’d gotten off the ferry, somehow collapsing and stretching simultaneously, the days dense with work and the weeks moving faster than they should have.

I was still here.

I’d told Ashley a week at most. Then a few more days. Then Miles, and another week, and at some point I’d stopped calculating how soon I could leave and started just… being here. Working the case. Letting the island have me in a way I hadn’t intended to allow. Letting Jace have parts of me no one ever had. He’d gotten under my skin, and I’d stopped trying to talk myself out of it.

“Okay,” I agreed. “An hour.”

The community center sat a few blocks from the waterfront, a squat building with Christmas lights strung along the roofline and a parking lot full of cars. Inside, it smelled of hot cider and the unmistakable scent of freshly baked cookies. The noise level was cheerful and contained rather than the frenzied commerce of a mainland holiday market. Certainly purchases were being made, but the whole vibe was one of warmth rather than over-commercialized consumption. A small community celebrating together, as they’d been doing for decades.

Vendor tables lined the walls and ran down the center of the main room. Local honey and hot sauce, sea glass jewelry, handmade ornaments in driftwood and shell, baked goods from Panadería de la Isla with a line five people deep. A woman selling hand-dyed fabric in colors that looked like the ocean at different times of day. A man with leather goods who recognized Jace, shook his hand, said it was good to have him home and clearly meant it.

Koa attracted attention the way he always did in public spaces, the combination of size and dignity and the service harness making people ask and then back off respectfully when I explained. He moved through the crowd at my left, ears rotating, cataloguing everything. The leash was a lot more about the public being comfortable than any need for me to control my dog.

Jace moved through crowd differently. He knew basically everyone, and they knew him. Every ten feet there was a handshake, a comment about the Navy, or someone asking after Willa. He handled it with the unhurried ease of someone who’d accepted this as the texture of home. He didn’t perform it, and he didn’t resent it. He just moved through his own life with the comfortable confidence of a man who knew exactly where he stood.

Golden Boy, I thought again, suppressing a smile.

We bought cider from a woman who seemed delighted by Koa and gave him a dog biscuit from a basket on the table. We looked at the sea glass jewelry for longer than strictly necessary, because the woman selling it had been doing it for thirty years and had stories about every piece. We ate something with cinnamon that I didn’t catch the name of, and it was extraordinary.

At the far end of the room, someone had put up a kissing ball—a bundle of mistletoe and greenery hanging from one of the ceiling beams, the kind of thing that was either charming or deeply awkward depending on who was standing under it. Two teenagers were arguing about whether it counted if one of them hadn’t actually stopped under it on purpose.

Jace steered us in that direction with the absolute minimum of subtlety.

“You did that on purpose,” I said.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He stopped under it and looked down at me with an expression that had nothing innocent in it whatsoever. Instead, I saw wicked heat and hunger in those bright blue eyes, mixed with something that was unquestionably affection.

How was I supposed to resist that combination?

I didn’t want to. That was the absolute truth of the matter as I let him reel me in. So I didn’t fight, merely lifting my mouth for his. I heard more than one whistle as our lips met, and for a fleeting instant, I wondered what the locals would think of their hometown boy publicly claiming me. He had to be considered one of their most eligible bachelors.

Then I forgot to wonder as he angled his mouth and took the kiss deeper. On a little sigh, I melted into him, sliding my hands over his shoulders as he pulled me closer. If he kept this up, we wouldn’t be getting that hour, and we definitely wouldn’t be getting back to work.

Somewhere nearby, one of the teenagers said, “See, that’s how you do it,” and got shushed.

Eventually, Koa got tired of being ignored and head-butted both of us in the hips.

Jace broke the kiss and glared down at him. “Really?”

Koa pressed closer to me, puffing his chest out and narrowing his eyes in an unmistakable claim that declared, My Mama.

I tried really hard not to snicker and failed.

Jace turned a sheepish smile on me. The Christmas lights strung along the ceiling turned everything gold and warm, and for a moment I basked in the fantasy that this was just a market on a small island in December and a man who made me feel known in ways that terrified me looking at me like I was something worth keeping.

I was still here.

The realization landed differently than it had all the other times I’d thought it. Not as a deadline I was missing or a risk I was accumulating. Just as a fact. A true thing.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Jace asked.

The question pulled me back to earth. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”