Page 29 of The Guest Cottage

“You’ve gone awfully quiet.” She tipped her head with a gentle smile. “More so than usual, I mean.”

“Thinking, actually.”

“About?”

“Being here was an eye opener.” He met her gaze. “I chose this place because it was obscure, private, and property was cheap.”

“Then,” she teased. “Not so cheap now.”

“Actually, because it’s watched so closely, it’s impossible to buy here now. Mom and I got in at the right time.”

“It was meant to be.”

Yeah, as he watched Marlow, he realized a few things were starting to feel that way.

“Herman said you brought her here?”

Good old Herman. He couldn’t even be bugged with the guy, knowing he’d just been reminiscing. “My father found her.” It still made his heart clench when he thought of it. “It was because of him I wanted to be a Marine.” When some kids watched movies about superheroes, Cort had watched videos on the Marine Corps. He’d needed money, training, a way to change his life and make things better for his mother. A way to defend. To serve. The only path he’d seen was to become one of the few. The proud. The Marines.

Reaching across the table, Marlow touched his hand, surprising him. “She was hurt?”

“He hurt her.” The words seemed to stick in his throat. “He was a drunken, abusive bastard—and I wasn’t around.”

“How did you find out?”

“In the hospital, she gave them my info, and they tracked me down. We were stateside, thankfully, so I was granted leave, got to her as quickly as I could, and relocated her in record time.”

“To Bramble?”

“Best decision I ever made.” There’d been so little time to consider things, to weigh the pros and cons. For a few seconds, he turned his hand so Marlow’s fit against his palm. It was nice having that connection to her as he dredged up ugly memories from his past. “I wanted to find my father and take him apart.” Being a Marine, he’d learned discipline, and thank God for it, otherwise his life might be vastly different now. “Instead, I made my mother and her well-being a priority, and we ended up here.”

“What happened to your father?”

As he drew in a deep breath, he released Marlow and put both hands on his coffee cup. “He’d stolen Mom’s car, and he did me a favor by getting stinking drunk in an unfamiliar bar. He started trouble with the wrong people, and the next day he was found in an alley.”

Her searching gaze read the truth on his face even before she said, “Someone killed him.”

“Yes, and good riddance.” It had saved him, and his mother, the trouble of filing charges against him and going through the legal channels to have him removed from their lives.

Needing something to do, Cort bit into the cookie, surprised again as he realized it was homemade. The cookie gave him the perfect opportunity to talk about something else. “Wow, this is good.”

She saw the change of topic for the evasion it was, but Marlow being Marlow, she accepted it gracefully. “I found a recipe online.”

“A recipe is only as good as the person following it.”

“I haven’t done much baking, but it seemed simple enough.” Folding her arms on the table, she watched him. “I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to misinterpret what I say.”

Going on alert, Cort gave her all his attention.

“I think you’re fascinating.”

Okay, he hadn’t seen that one coming. He could make a lot of assumptions based on that simple statement, but assumptions were dangerous things. Instead, he asked, “How so?”

“Maybe it’s the way you see things, so black and white. You’re . . . Well,acceptingisn’t the right word. It’s more that you seem to adapt to everything so easily.”

She couldn’t be more wrong. Nothing was ever easy, but he knew better than to waste his energy trying to change something that either wasn’t important or was set in stone. “What is it you think I’ve accepted?”

Silence ticked by while she continued to scrutinize him, and he let her.

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