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Not only was it poised right there on the lakeshore; it was stately and pretty and even featured houses that Everly recognized from the old eighties movies she’d watched as a kid. When she’d been younger and dreaming of a glorious life in and around Chicago, she’d always imagined that someday she’d find herself in an ivy-covered house in Winnetka, with Lake Michigan lapping at the edge of her rolling yard.
Her dreams might have changed, particularly lately, but she still loved the town.
Even if Blue was taking the shine off it with his talk of Annabeth Lambert, Rebecca’s mother, and what he called hisgut feelingabout her.
“Maybe she’s overwhelmed with emotion and can’t return calls,” she said, her gaze out the window. It was a pretty summer day, gold and blue filtering through the trees that lined the road and shaded the graceful houses. “Or maybe she’s sedated somewhere and hasn’t heard the message yet.”
“Possible,” he said in that very military way of his that she suspected meant he didn’t think it was at allprobable. “Did Rebecca talk a lot about her mother?”
“Never.” Everly considered it as they drove through the charming downtown area and kept heading east, toward the lake. “She didn’t really talk about her personal life at all.”
“Then what did you talk about?”
“We were roommates, Blue. Not buddies. Though we were friendly, sure. We talked about TV shows. Gossipy things, like which pop star was in a feud with which actress. That kind of stuff. Silly things, mostly.”
“But not family.”
“I probably talked about my family. In the way people do. Holidays and so on, or a lunch date with my mother. That kind of thing. But I don’t remember her ever saying anything about hers. Not anything that stuck with me.”
“Interesting.”
He muttered it in that low, intense way of his, which told her he was thinking it all through, turning the facts around and around to try to get a sense of all the angles.All while he drove them through Winnetka, right on the edge of too fast. Which only a damaged person would find sexy under the current circumstances, she thought. Which meant she’d sustained some pretty serious blows.
But Everly felt perfectly safe, damaged or not. She had no doubt that Blue could handle the vehicle—and whatever they were driving into—in the same way he’d handled her.
Then she felt shuddery, thinking abouthandling. At a time like this. She shifted in her seat, flushing a bit at the fact that she was so unable to keep her attention where it belonged.
And very, very grateful that Blue had to stop and scowl at some pedestrians, so he missed it.
She’d e-mailed her resignation letter to her boss, right from Blue’s tablet. Charles clearly hadn’t been expecting it, and Everly had had the strangest revelation that most of her work life—her whole adult life, in fact—had been arranged around threats. That she could be evicted. Or fired. Or simply that people wouldn’t like her. Whatever the situation, there was always a looming threat.
Charles had threatened her, never thinking she would call his bluff. Or so his surprised return e-mail had told her. It had also told her that she was an integral part of his team and he’d love to explore options to keep her on board.
All because she’d faced the threat and countered it.
Talk about life lessons in the strangest of circumstances.
She’d received a notification from her landlord to everyone in the building, filled with lots of intense legal language about insurance and police investigations andrequests that the tenants wait for the fire department’s inquiry to conclude before they tried to get back inside to see what was left.
Everly assumed she’d lost everything. Or if she hadn’t, what remained was likely to be a sodden, charred mess. Meanwhile, she hadn’t had time to mourn her possessions because she was on the run, and the people who wanted to kill her were still at large.
And yet somehow, she didn’t feel as if she had nothing. She didn’t feel alone or lost.
On the contrary. Everly felt free.
As if this had all been a dramatic rescue of herself, from a life she hadn’t realized wasn’t making her happy. She’d been happier in between two attacks last night then she’d ever been. She didn’t want to say that out loud because she was sure it would make her sound crazy, but that didn’t make it any less true.
Everly had fallen head over heels in love with the man beside her, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t tell him that. She knew better than to tell him, because if his reaction to her losing her job was negative, she really didn’t want to think about how he’d respond to any declarations aboutfeelings. He’d probably spontaneously combust where he sat.
But that was okay. She could keep it to herself.
For now.
“What about you?” she asked.
He threw a dark look her way, then took a turn too quickly. “What about me?”
“What do you want to do with your life?”