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She chuckled. “If you want to be coddled, I’m the wrong girl.”
He smiled at her. A real smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes and stopped her breath.
“Don’t ever change,” he said.
She never wanted to move from this spot.
God, did he know how devastating that smile was?
Samuel on any day was swoon-worthy. But that smile? It felt as though her heart stopped.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No, sorry.” She shook her head. “My brain’s just all over the place.”
“Yeah? I interrupt you doing something?”
“I plead the fifth.”
He sighed. “Something I wouldn’t approve of?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine. Fine. Keep your secrets.” He leaned back. “Don’t suppose you’d share the hot spot?”
“What? Center wireless not good enough for you?”
He blinked at her a few times. “You didn’t know the internet and phones went down this morning?”
“What? No.”
“Yeah.”
She groaned. And here the comedy special she’d been looking forward to was supposed to drop this afternoon.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered. “What happened?”
“Someone said a construction crew accidentally cut the lines or something.” Samuel tipped his head back as a cold gust of wind sliced through the trees. “And a storm’s coming.”
“Great,” she muttered and eyed the clouds that had seemingly rolled in out of nowhere.
“I think we should head in,” Samuel said.
“Yeah, I am inclined to agree with you.”
“We good?” he asked.
She turned and stared at him for a moment.
Samuel frustrated her for the same reasons she liked him. He was, as her gamer brother would say, lawful good. And when a person adhered to a strict moral code like Samuel did, there wasn’t room to budge or operate in a gray area.
Maybe she was the one with the moral failing here? Could she be the problem?
Her gut said there was no, one right answer, only options.
“We can’t let the law blind us from seeing the people we’re trying to help,” she said.
Fat raindrops splattered her cheeks.