Page 118 of Recklessly Rogue

Her eyes get a little shiny. “Then you don’t have to worry about me, Henry. I’m in a great place.”

Yeah. She is. I can leave her here, and she will be fine.

Without me.

I lean in and kiss her. She fists the front of my shirt and kisses me back.

Then I turn and leave.

To go back to the job that has meant more to me than anything else in my life.

Until now.

Chapter 27

Henry

It took far too long for me to set up a charter flight between New Orleans and Columbus, and by the time I make the drive to Emerald and walk through the back door of the house, Cian, Scarlett, and Mariah are already home.

The smoke detector is squealing, the kitchen is filled with gray smoke, and I nearly trip over the five grocery bags sitting just inside the door.

“What the hell?” I yell.

“Oh my God!”

The sound of glass hitting tile and shattering barely registers over the squealing alarm.

Scarlett spins to face me and opens her mouth, but just then, Cian storms into the room.

“What the hell!” he bellows. He grabs the broom from where it rests in the corner near the fridge, strides to the smoke detector, and bangs the handle against the plastic disk until it falls to the floor, now silent.

“I leave you alone for five minutes so I can unpack our bags and you’re burning the place down?” he asks Scarlett.

“I was just preheating the oven for Diane’s casserole!” she exclaims. “Something must have spilled on the bottom of the oven sometime.”

“You should have waited for me,” Cian says. “I would have heated the oven.”

“I was justheating the oven!” Scarlett says. “My God, I wasn’t drywalling the room or rearranging the furniture.”

“Then why is the casserole on the floor in a broken pan?” Cian asks.

Scarlett looks down, then over at me. “Henry scared me, and I dropped it.”

Cian notices me for the first time. “Oh, hey!”

“Sorry to scare you,” I say, pushing the back door open to air out the room, then picking my way over the grocery bags, but catching my toe on one and tripping. “Dammit.”

“Sorry, the place is kind of chaotic,” Scarlett says. “We got home only a couple of hours ago. People have been bringing stuff over. Diane brought a few casseroles, Mandy and Ada brought cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls, Amber went to the store and brought…” She gestures at the bags. “A bunch of stuff.”

I can’t help but smile. Of course, all those people brought stuff over. Scarlett’s been helping all of them since the day she moved back to town. I’m sure they’re thrilled to have the chance to pay her back a bit.

“Then April and Elliot stopped by and brought more groceries and picked up their stuff.”

Dammit, April doesn’t need to be spending money on other people. Especially a man with unlimited funds. Still, I know it was her way of supporting Scarlett and saying thanks more than anything.

“I was going to help them get their things gathered up,” I say, crossing to open the window over the sink, then surveying the casserole mess to decide how to best clean that up.

“It was no problem. I told them they should stay,” Scarlett says.

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