Page 125 of Dead Girl Running

“He…told you?”

“It was a surprise.”

“Does everybody know?”

“Pretty much. Kind of.” Birdie verbally squirmed. “Yes. But he didn’t blab anything! Things just…got around.”

Kellen’s return got more complicated all the time. “When I knew Max before,” she said again, “he lived on the East Coast. I did a little more research on him—” very little, looking him up online made her feel like a Peeping Tom “—and now he lives in Oregon full-time.”

“That’s not too far. That’ll make things easier.”

That was odd. “What things?”

Birdie tried to say something. Tried again.

“What’s happening?” Kellen persisted.

In a voice vibrant with worry and encouragement, Birdie said, “Sweetheart. Your life is about to change.”

47

Nothing about this was making sense. “Birdie, you’re scaring me.”

“Don’t be scared. Be excited.” Birdie pulled the town car under the portico.

Russell opened the front door, and Carson Lennex and Max stepped out, Carson in slacks and a sweater, Max in his trademark dark suit and blue tie.

Carson walked around the front of the car, opened the door for Birdie and helped her out.

Even in his sixties, even with bruising and burns, he was straight and tall and movie-star handsome.

Birdie was not yet thirty, dark-skinned, bony, with bandages on four knuckles and swelling that unevenly reshaped her face.

Yet as they stood together, they smiled at each other, and they looked so sweet.

Max stood, legs braced, hand crossed behind his back, waiting outside the hotel door. He looked good. Strong. Stable. Stern. He came to the car, opened the passenger door, offered his hand.

She looked at his hand and flashed back to that moment on his porch in Pennsylvania.The shape of the palm, broad and square, the length of the fingers, long and blunt, the nimble thumb, the sweeping lines, the scar under the index finger.She put her hand in his and used his support to climb out. “Hi there.” Wow. Eloquent.

He looked into her face without smiling and without speaking.

She had wondered, with a rapidly beating heart, whether he’d take one look at her and sweep her off her feet in a massive reaffirmation of their passion.

She guessed not.

Really. Not.

She looked past him into the lobby.

People were standing around. Front desk staff, mostly, as they should be, but…why were the spa employees there? Why were the chefs lingering close? Temo and his sister and Adrian lurked by the concierge desk, too.

“What’s going on?” Kellen looked right at Max. “What’s wrong?”

Like Birdie, he tried to speak, then sighed. “Nothing’s wrong. But…let’s go in and up to Annie’s office.”

A brief moment of alarm made her ask, “Is it Annie? Did she…?”

“She’s fine, I swear.”