Page 37 of Landon

Their gazes held for a long moment. They were close—not close enough for him to taste her lips again, but close enough that he thought about it. And wondered why the hell he was thinking about it.

“Why did you leave the FBI?”

He blinked, her question coming out of the blue. “What?”

She hefted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I just wondered. I’ve worked with agents before. Not a lot, but in a couple of cases. Mostly when a parent took a child and crossed state lines.” She shook her head and added, “Anyway, I just wondered. Why you left?”

He opened his mouth to give a pat answer, then shut his mouth as he stared at her. Her attention was riveted to him. He could feel her interest wasn’t idle curiosity but something real. Something almost tangible. His tongue dragged over his bottom lip. Her gaze dropped to his mouth before shooting back to his eyes. Forcing his mind to her questions, he replied, “I got tired of the bureaucracy.”

Her lips curved slightly. “Imagine that… the Bureau having too much bureaucracy.”

He chuckled again, and this time, her smile widened until she pressed her fingers against her lips to hold in the sound.

“Smart-ass,” he accused.

As their mirth waned, she said, “Sorry, I made a joke. I really do want to know.”

He nodded and settled back to get more comfortable while making sure his leg still touched hers, wanting the physical connection. No… he needed the physical connection. Gathering his thoughts, he said, “I told you that my dad was a police officer. I didn’t mention that he’d served in the Marines before that. I remember my dad wearing his uniform every day, and I thought he had the best job in the world.”

“You wanted to be like him?”

“Oh, yeah. Absolutely hero-worshipped my dad.” He smiled at the memories. “I was Recon for a tour but knew the military wasn’t where my career lay. The bottom line was my commander was an asshole who ended up putting all of us in danger before he was reassigned. He was not booted out like he should have been but just reassigned so he could be an asshole to someone else. Anyway, I was recruited by the FBI, and I thought I’d found the right place for me. I was still following in my dad’s footsteps but in a different way. I was trained as an investigator and became an agent. While the cases I worked and closed successfully kept me going, the politics, red tape, and posturing of those above made the field agents’ jobs almost impossible at times.”

“You started to doubt yourself, didn’t you?”

Her words startled him. His gaze searched her eyes but found no recrimination in their depths. He nodded slowly. “I wondered if the problem was me. I left the Marines. I wanted to leave the Bureau. I never considered myself a quitter, but… fuck, yeah… I doubted myself.”

“What did you do?”

“I was assigned to a California area, and I met Carson Dyer, the founder of Lighthouse Security Investigations West Coast.”Seeing her head cock to the side, he explained, “The original is in Maine. The West Coast was the second branch.”

“That’s right. You mentioned that on the plane. It’s such an interesting concept.”

“The original one in Maine was near a lighthouse on the coast. It had significant meaning to the man who started the company. The employees are known as Keepers after the old lighthouse keepers.”

“I was fascinated with lighthouses when I was young. My family would always visit them when we were traveling. I saw some in North Carolina and New England one summer.” She pressed her lips together. “But… I get Maine. And I get California. But Montana? That’s brilliant to think of light towers. Are there many in Montana?”

He grinned and nodded. “Not as many as there used to be, but it’s the only state still with standing light towers on some mountains.”

Her eyes widened, and even in the dim light, he could swear they twinkled. “Light towers guided the planes over dangerous peaks, and the lighthouses guided ships around dangerous shores.”

“Same principle.”

“Are you also known as a Keeper?”

“Yeah.”

She leaned a little closer, her voice soft. “I like that, Landon. You seemed all hard and intense when we first met. Now you seem more… real.”

Their gazes remained locked on each other, and the desire to lean closer to erase the distance was strong. But with the kids sleeping so near, he sucked in a deep breath through his nose and leaned back. She blinked and then shifted back, as well.

Clearing her throat, she asked, “So, um… you were talking about your job…”

“Right. Yes. Well, I finally was able to use the skills the Keepers used. They investigated without the red tape and restrictions that were placed on me. They often solve cases and then turn over the evidence to the police, the Bureau, or the CIA. They didn’t care about the glory. They just wanted to keep people safe. After several years, I knew I wanted to do that.”

“So you joined?” As soon as she asked the question, she shook her head. “But that was California? How did you get to Montana?”

“I felt the need to start over. When I learned that the LSI Montana was just beginning, I met the man who would become my boss. I was offered the chance to get in on the ground up and be part of the beginning. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

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