Page 44 of The Saint

“You can’t take offense to it. The people who do their kind of work are looking out for the greater good in the world. You know what I mean? They wouldn’t sign up for that kind of trouble and make sacrifices that we’ll have no idea about if they didn’t want to leave the place better and safer than they found it.”

When he put it like that… “Our parents died when we were young, and I think it killed Hailey that she wasn’t old enough to charge out into the world and take care of us.”

“How old were you?”

“I was nine. Almost ten. She was twelve.”

“You said they were in a car accident. Want to tell me what happened?”

Amelia toyed with the water bottle. “Someone was trying to find a gas station and playing with the GPS on their phone while it was raining. Their choice changed the course of so many lives.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.”

That was a dark time, maybe almost as dark as right then. Amelia was hoping Hailey would be found. There wasn’t even a scant hint of hope when their parents died. It had been complete and utter devastation.

“We lived with some family member that CPS found and we’d never heard of. I think she took us in for the stipend the state paid.” She balled up the water bottle wrapper in her hands, making it crinkle. “It wasn’t easy, coming from a life so ideal it could’ve been on a postcard to then living with someone who literally didn’t care. But we did it. What choice did we have?”

“Not much, I guess.” He opened the refrigerator and retrieved two beer bottles. Camden held them up. After she nodded, he uncapped and handed one over.

“Thanks.”

They took long pulls of the cold beers. She couldn’t have imagined how her day would turn out when she woke up that morning in solitary confinement. Safe and warm, drinking a beer during a power outage wasn’t something she could have dreamt up. “What about your family?”

He smiled. “It’s a big, loud family. Lots of brothers. A dad who’s a good sport about it all and a mother who’s impatiently waiting for grandchildren.”

“None yet?”

“Nope. The woman raised a hell of a brood that would be hard to tie down.”

Amelia laughed.Tied downsounded like an awful punishment, yet she knew exactly what he meant. She had orchestrated many weddings at which she didn’t think the couple had a snowball’s chance in hell of survival. Then Amelia thought about Hailey and Jonathan. They were perfectly matched.Tied down? More like tied together.“Maybe no one’s tied down when it’s the right match.”

His index finger tapped against his beer bottle. Camden rolled his bottom lip into his mouth then took a long drink. “Maybe so.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The power hadn’t returned, and their second round of beer bottles was empty. They had moved to the couch and talked for hours. He liked watching her, studying her. He liked the way her mind worked. One question had led to another and then another, and before he knew it, the meeting of two semi-strangers had become the formation of a bond. A tenuous friendship, perhaps.

Perhaps more.That was what Liam would call his impulsiveness. Camden saw a pretty girl and was jumping for more of her. But he swore this was different. The enigmatic pull he’d felt from the first phone call was all the more potent, and since he’d met her in person, since he’d seen the way her dark hair hung over her shoulders with a slight wave and how her eyes danced when she laughed or narrowed when she interrogated him, he couldn’t force himself to go to bed and give them space.

It didn’t really matter, though. Beyond the fact that she was essentially a client and a grieving woman who’d been fucked by the system, he could be called back to Abu Dhabi at any time.

Still, he wanted to sit there all night. He wanted more, if he wasn’t lying to himself. He could reach out and touch her hair, her skin. He wanted to breathe her in—man, those beers were doing a number on him. He ran a hand over his face and into his hair with a long, reprobative sigh.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t realize what time it was.”

His chest tightened. Regret needled under his skin. She’d taken his actions as exhaustion when they had been anything but. Camden checked the time: far past midnight. He would have guessed it was pushing eleven. They’d covered a lot of her questions, and he was sure she had more, but she was probably tired.

“You need to get some sleep,” he said.

She glanced toward the dark stairs. “I wish the power would come back on.”

He was glad it had gone out. It had pulled them together on the couch. He gathered their empty beers and deposited them in the recycling can. “I’ll walk you upstairs and make sure you have everything you need.”

Camden followed Amelia up the stairs to the only bedroom. She set a candle on the nightstand. It danced and bathed her in a buttery golden light. Fuck, why the hell was his mind registering her like that? He needed to get a move on instead of focusing on the woman in a way he very much needed to ignore.

“This place is all yours.” He walked through the bedroom to the bathroom and gathered his toiletries. The space was small but clean. It wasn’t stocked like her condo, but generic supplies were kept for anyone who needed them. “If you need anything, you know where I’ll be.”

“Honestly, Cam. I can sleep on the couch.”

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