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On the outside, anyway.

Somehow that line above all the rest jabbed at him.

His mother’s voice came from close beside him; she’d clearly been reading over his elbow. “What on earth does that girl think she did?”

Interesting that she put it that way. Not what did she do, but what did she think she’d done. He only vaguely registered this.

“Rylan?” his mother said, more insistently when he didn’t speak. “What was it that wasn’t in her mind?”

She told me to sleep with you. To try and find out some juicy secret she could use.

He had no doubt that was what she meant. That Jacobs’s order hadn’t been in her mind. The horror in her eyes when, prodded by his gut reaction, he’d asked if that’s what it had been proved that to him beyond a doubt.

Doubt.

Hadn’t that driven Kaitlyn for most of her life? At least since her father had died trying to save that life?

So now she was doubting…what? Him?

He won’t believe it, but it’s true.

Him. She was doubting him. Or at least, that he would believe her. As if he could believe she would do something like that, on the order of a woman she loathed. No matter what was at stake.

I’m too much of a coward to face him.

The woman who as a child had run into a burning building for the father she loved.

“Oh, yeah?” he murmured. No one who’d done what she’d done both in and with her life could possibly be any kind of a coward.

No, Kaitlyn Miller was Texas born and bred. Only the circumstances had made her so uncertain. He knew that as surely as he knew that the revelation he’d had when he’d hung up from tellingTexas Artworksthey either got rid of that Gila monster Jacobs or they could write off the article altogether was the bone-deep truth.

He loved her.

He loved her, and he wasn’t about to let her ride off into the sunset and leave what they’d found together behind out of some crazy idea she didn’t deserve it.

He shoved the coaster into his back pocket.

“Rylan Rafferty, what is going on?” his mother demanded, in that voice that usually brooked no denial. But for maybe the first time in his life there was something more important to do.

“I’ll explain later.”

“You’d better fix this, whatever it is,” his mother said. “That girl’s right for you.”

“I know.”

He turned on his heel. He was three long strides away before he heard his mother again. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going,” he said fiercely, “to bring her home.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Nick Vega eyedRy warily. The man actually looked considerably better, not just in looks but in the way he was moving, acting. That pacemaker seemed to have resolved a few of his physical issues.

“You look better,” he said.

“I feel better,” Nick admitted. “No more dizziness, more energy. Thinking about maybe leaving here.”

“The staff would miss you,” Ry said. Trying to lighten the mood he added teasingly, “Especially the ladies.”