“You had to ask him?”
“Yes. I had to ask him. As it turned out, he felt the same as me, but I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t ask.”
“So you think I should ask.”
“If you want to know. If you don’t want to know, just do what comes naturally.” She waited another beat. “So is he a good kisser?” She pretended to growl into the phone.
“I felt it all the way to my toes.”
“Hey, Shelly,” she said, and I could hear a moment of hesitation in her voice. It scared me.
“What?”
“I hate to remind you of this, but when you find Megan, what will happen if Marley finds her way back?”
I stared at the wall for a moment. “I have no idea.”
“He loved her.”
“I know.”
“And he probably still loves her.”
“I know.”
“So if you decide to go after it, just know that you might have to give him up at the end of it all. Okay?” She sounded so sympathetic. In all my life, no one knew me the way Lynn did. She knew that I would struggle. But I struggled with everything. This was the one thing in my life that felt effortless. At least until I started trying to analyze it.
“Okay,” I replied. “We’re going on a date tomorrow. So we can see and be seen.”
“Do you think it’ll piss her off?” Lynn asked.
“It would piss me off,” I admitted. “If I were her, I would be livid.”
“Maybe it will draw her out, and I can come home.”
“Maybe.”
“Look,” Lynn said, “I have to go. Mason is glaring at me. There’s some touristy thing near here that he wants to go and see.”
“Tell the asshole I said hello.”
She pulled the phone away from her mouth. “Shelly says hello.”
He replied with something that sounded a lot like “Tell Shelly she can fuck off.” But she said to me, “He says hi.”
“Sure he did.” I laughed out loud. As much as I disliked Mason, I loved the hell out of him. “Kiss my nephew for me, okay?” I blew a kiss into the phone.
“Will do. Love you!” she cried, and then she hung up on me before I could say it back.
The door snicked open and I looked up, just as I was returning the phone to my purse, and Clark walked in.
“Hi,” I said. He smiled at me. Then he leaned down and kissed my cheek, lingering just over my lips for a second, his lips just barely not touching mine. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to lean forward and kiss him or not, so I did nothing. And neither did he.
Then he stood up and went into his office and closed the door. And he stayed in his office late into the evening. He was on the phone part of the time, because I could see the red “in use” light was lit up, but I had no idea what he was doing. So I settled in and worked on the case he’d given me, which I had already figured out.
I knew who the vigilante killer was, and he wasn’t going to like it.
Chapter 27