Page 48 of Home Town Knight

The corner of his mouth inched up. “Afraid not.”

“No reporters allowed?”

Instead of answering that question, which had been mostly tongue-in-cheek, he lifted me up all the way from the ground. I grabbed onto his shoulders. “Put me down! River already carried me in here. I’d rather walk out on my own two feet.”

“River carried you, did he?”

“I might’ve been trying to run away. I was pissed that he wouldn’t explain what was going on.”

Owen set me down, though he kept an arm slung around my waist like he was afraid I’d keel over. He led me to Jessi’soffice, which was unlocked. “Lay down for a while. I’ll ask Jessi to give you an update.”

“Okay.” I curled up on the couch, and he took off his coat, wrapping it around my shoulders. I almost protested that I didn’t need it, but it was warm and smelled like him. So I kept it.

“We have to figure out what to do now that your information is public. Please stay here until I come back for you? I’m asking nicely.”

“And I’m still mad at you for thinking I was behind that article.” We looked at one another. Seeing who would blink first. Then I realized how exhausted I was. “Fine,” I murmured. “I’ll wait for you.”

He nodded. “I won’t be long.” Owen reached out, brushing a strand of hair from my forehead. “I believe you,” he said again. And then he was gone.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Owen

After leavingGen in the office, I stopped by the reception area. Things had calmed down, and the other guests had returned to their cabins after being assured that the property was secure.

“Trace got back a couple of minutes ago,” Jessi said. “He’s with the other guys. I thought you’d be with them by now.”

“I was talking to Gen.”

Jessi lifted an eyebrow. “That article she wrote?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t her. But she’s shaken. This has been a difficult day. I was hoping you could go sit with her. She’s in your office. She promised to stay there until I got back.”

Jessi said she would, and I headed to a room tucked away beyond the kitchen. It was an old bedroom from the building’s ranch days, one wall still covered with ancient wallpaper. But for now, it served as the temporary headquarters of the Protectors until they could build something more impressive, or so Aiden and Trace claimed. As it was, this space was rudimentary at best. A cot against one corner, some mismatched chairs. Monitors on a desk showing camera feeds from various places around the property.

The most elaborate feature of the space was a biometric-locked, fortified storage room for the Protectors’ growing weapons arsenal. Trace had the weapons closet open and was replacing the gear he’d been using. Aiden was leaning against the old wallpaper, looking thoughtful, while River tapped away at his laptop. They all turned toward me when I walked in.

“It wasn’t her.” I tried and failed to keep my gaze steady, but my glance at the floor betrayed me. “Gen didn’t write the article. I shouldn’t have assumed she had.”

“Explains why she kept saying she had no idea what was going on,” River noted.

Aiden shook his head. “You keep going back and forth on whether we should trust her or not. One minute it’s yes, the next it’s no.”

“I was wrong.”

“About which part? And how do we know you’re not wrong now? I’ll admit, when I went to evacuate the cabins and that shot went off, Genevieve dove for the little girl, Cece. Tried to shield her. But that was one moment.”

“It would’ve been instinct though,” I pointed out. “That says a lot about her.”

“You’ve only known this woman for a day.”

“And how long had you known Jessi before you’d appointed yourself her defender against anyone and everyone? If I remember correctly, you were pretending to be her brother within hours of having met her.”

Aiden and I glared at one another, and Trace held up his hands. “We’ve all made bad calls in the past. But we’ve made far more good ones. The question is, are yousure, Owen? You’re vouching for the fact that we can trust Genevieve?”

I thought about everything she’d told me since I’d met her yesterday. Yes, it had only been a day. But the way she’d reacted in that storage room just now couldn’t have been afacade. She had sworn on her father’s grave, and Ididknow what that meant to her. Same thing it would mean if I’d sworn on my parents. Aiden himself had seen her shield that little girl.

Regardless of our differences, I trusted that Gen would choose to protect those at Last Refuge if given the chance. What more did I need to know?

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