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Sooner rather than later, if he had to guess. That was who he was. Women—and freaking dogs—needed consistency. A man who stuck around and gave them what they wanted.
That had never been and was never going to be Blue. He hadn’t gone home since he was seventeen. He wasn’t a man who stuck.
Trouble was, at the moment he couldn’t seem to care about all the ways he’d inevitably disappoint her. Not when she was still looking at him like she expected him to jump up from the table, climb on up into the sky, and do the sun’s job for a while.
Hell, he wanted to. That was the craziest part.
She walked over to stand at the end of their table, glanced at Blue and then away in a dark-lightning sort of way he couldn’t read, and aimed a polite smile at Isaac.
“I think I met you yesterday,” she said, and maybe only Blue heard that leftover hint of sleep and a few tears in her voice. Or possibly only Blue had such an intense reaction to it.Settle down,he growled at himself. She was here for his skills, not his personal entertainment. “But I’m afraid everything was a bit of a blur.”
“Isaac Gentry,” Isaac said, grinning back at her, looking amiable and charming the way he always did when he turned it on.
He extended his hand. Blue watched as Everly took it,shook it, and then dropped it. And that tiny bit of contact still wasn’t over fast enough for Blue’s peace of mind, given the way women usually got silly at the very sight of Isaac and that smile of his.
Everly nodded toward the plate Jonas had cleared and the coffee he’d barely touched. “Is someone sitting with you?”
“Oh, that’s just Jonas,” Isaac said, still grinning like he was made of nothing more frightening than local honey. “He’s like our own personal ghost. He comes. He goes. You never can tell what he’ll do or where he’ll turn up.”
“So more of a friendly ghost, then,” Everly said, and her smile warmed a bit, getting less polite and a little more real. “You know what I mean. More charming antics, less blood and fear.”
“I wouldn’t try to conduct a séance with him,” Isaac advised her with a hint of a drawl for good measure. Blue wanted to kick him. And didn’t much like himself for the urge. “He probably wouldn’t take that well. Also, he’s heavily armed.”
When she laughed at that, Blue figured he was getting a glimpse of the real Everly. The Everly she’d been before that night in her apartment. The one she’d be again when he did what he did and cleaned up the mess that had dimmed that smile of hers. Made her cry. Made her shake the way she had out on the porch at the cabin when she’d thought he didn’t see, and made her come all this way to seek him out in the first place.
Not, of course, that he planned to stick around to see her bloom again. He wasn’t that guy. He fixed things,handled the trouble, and then left. That was what he was good at. That was what he knew.
It’s all you’ve ever done,a strange voice deep inside him chimed in. He shoved it aside before he was tempted to imagine it sounded far too much like his stepfather, Ron.
Because like hell was he wasting any brain cells remembering that guy.
Everly sat down at the table, gingerly. She didn’t take Jonas’s abandoned chair, opting instead for the one next to Blue. He pushed back and told himself it was so he could look at her directly. Not because he could smell the soap she’d used in her morning shower, making her skin smell almost unbearably fresh.
“Are you sore?” he asked her.
When she shot him an odd look, he realized that had come out a little abrupt. And more than a little weird.
“You’re holding yourself like you’re stiff,” he muttered darkly.
He did not look across the table at Isaac.
“I am stiff, actually,” Everly said, as if the fact he’d noticed something so obvious surprised her. She tried that smile again, but it didn’t look as easy as before. “I guess that happens when you drive for days on end.”
“There are hot springs here in town,” Blue told her. He contemplated stabbing himself with his own fork to... Just. Stop. Talking. But didn’t. “A nice bathhouse with women’s hours, if you want a soak. It might help.”
Everly was much too close to him. She smelled like soap and shampoo, and her eyes were the green of all the pine trees that stood proud on the mountainside and helped him breathe, most days.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. As if something washappening between them and she could sense it as well as he could. “Maybe I will.”
“What do you think of Grizzly Harbor so far?” Isaac asked Everly then, dispelling whatever weird hush had taken over the table. Thank God. Blue was sometimes tempted to forget how good Isaac was at this. Exactly this. Putting on this assumed identity he cloaked himself in so well when he moved among regular people.
Affable. Charming. As if he were nothing more than an easygoing, friendly, approachable local tour guide who was lazy and relaxed and usually funny, and who just happened to be among the deadliest men on earth.
“Isaac grew up here,” Blue told her.
“So be very careful what you say next,” Isaac said with another easy laugh. “I might take it personally. My family’s been here since the eighteen hundreds.”
“I’ve never been to Alaska before,” Everly said, smiling again. “Is it all like Grizzly Harbor? So...” She broke off, as if she couldn’t find the right word. “I’ll admit I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”