She pitched in alongside Theo, Doreen went to put both cheese and wine in the kitchen, Ben took Mattie over to inspect the spilled books—and for a second, Aria felt like she was standing in the eye of the storm.
Everything around her felt strangely orderly, even after all that had happened. It had been a day of total chaos—and she still hadn’t had dinner—but for right now, it was surprisingly peaceful.
She had her family safe and together. She had Colby. She had his friends, whom she liked already.
And this quiet, calm hum of activity—of silly jokes and easy conversation—was what Eli Hebbert wanted to take away from her.
It only hardened her resolve. She couldn’t let that happen. This was her safe haven, the place she always returned to after all her wanderings, and Eli Hebbert had already done enough damage to it. He wasn’t going to do any more.
She was going to help Colby put him behind bars where she would never have to worry about him again.
Colby emerged, dressed again and now looking less like a little kid who’d just gotten a huge growth spurt for Christmas. The clothes Theo had packed for him seemed to be a combination of vintage gentleman’s wear, designer fashion, and just enough of a bent towards comfort and coziness to tie it all together in a way that was adorable instead of just astonishing.
He wore a shirt of black, rough-cut silk, open just slightly at the collar, a midnight blue jacket that looked like it was as soft as butter, and a pair of jeans somehow exactly the right in-between blue-black shade to match them both.
Aria’s impartial assessment was that he looked hotter than a supernova.
He handed Theo a square of ivory silk.
“I appreciate the thought, buddy, but I’m not wearing a pocket square. I’ve never even seen you wear a pocket square.”
“It’s not supposed to be a pocket square,” Theo said testily—and while he did in fact shove it in his pocket, it was his pants pocket and not his jacket one, and it was crumpled up into a ball. “It was supposed to be to help you to clean the blood off your face, you idiot.”
“It’s made out of silk!”
“To be fair,” Gretchen said, looking up from where she was hauling the busted coffee table over to the corner, “it’s not like he was going to have a handkerchief made out of medical gauze.”
“I’ll fix you up,” Aria offered. “I’m pretty good at first aid. You have to be, if you do a lot of camping alone.”
“And if you wander off where I told you there might be wolves,” her mother added.
True. She wanted the number of wolf stories going around to be zero.
And while she’d managed to forget Susan’s claims in all the fuss earlier, seeing her again had reminded Aria of just how close they both were to the preserve. Susan’s cabin was just at the other end of the block.
If Eli had been close enough to her house for her to spot him, then he must have been hanging around in the area a lot. He was familiar with it. If they stayed here too long, he could easily figure out when and how to strike again.
He would be regrouping after his brother’s death, sure. But he had a hard heart, so it wouldn’t take him long to bounce back. And the last thing she wanted was for her family to be collateral damage.
Colby must have noticed her spacing out. “What is it?”
“Eli’s still after me,” Aria said. “I don’t want him to come here again.”
“I don’t want him to come anywhere,” Colby said.
His eyes looked darker than usual, and she had the same sense she’d had with Theo—that his wolf was lurking just behind them, somehow more visible than usual.
“I don’t either,” she said calmly. “I want to sit here, drink Gretchen’s wine, and give you time to heal. But if I can’t have that, then I at least want to keep him far away from the people I care about. This is too close to his territory. If he’s comfortable here, he might get bolder, more aggressive. If anything happened to my family—”
“It won’t,” Colby said instantly. “Ben, Doreen, could you take Mattie to your house?”
“Of course,” Doreen said, already wrapping her arms around Mattie.
Colby turned to Aria. “Is that far enough away, do you think?”
“It should be.”
“Good. Then it’s just a matter of relocating us. No point in giving Eli turf he already knows. We tried me moving in with you. Want to try moving in with me?”