Page 17 of Skin and Bones

But then it rang again, more insistently this time, followed by three sharp knocks.

Chowder, who had been sprawled across half my bed despite his diminutive size, raised his wrinkled head and gave a half-hearted woof that clearly meant, “You’re the human, you deal with this.”

“Thanks for the support,” I muttered, pushing back the covers and fumbling for my vintage peach silk robe with the extravagant feather trim. I slipped it on over my matching peach nightgown, the familiar weight of the silk a small comfort in the midnight darkness. I cinched it tightly at the waist and stumbled toward the stairs, pushing a mass of tangled blond curls out of my face.

By the time I reached my front door, I was awake enough to be properly annoyed. I peeked through the sidelight window, ready to give the midnight intruder a piece of my mind.

And there stood Sheriff Dash Beckett, looking tense and alert, with something tucked under his arm.

I pulled open the door just enough to peer out at him. “Somebody better have died.”

His eyebrows rose slightly. “Excuse me?”

“The only reason you should be showing up at my door after midnight is if there was a murder. And even then, I’m not exactly qualified.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “No murder. Not yet, anyway.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you threatening me, Sheriff?”

“Dash,” he corrected. “And it sounds like you’re threatening me.” His grin widened. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly aware of how the silk of my robe clung to me in the night air. A traitorous heat crept up my neck at his proximity in the darkness—a heat that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the intensity of his gaze.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” I managed, hoping my voice sounded steadier than it felt. My heart was suddenly performing a jazz drumbeat against my ribs, and I found myself fixating on the scar along his jawline, wondering how it would feel beneath my fingertips.

The thought ambushed me so suddenly that I nearly gasped. Where had that come from? I took a small step backward, trying to put distance between us that might cool whatever this was.

“No clue,” he answered without checking his watch, those dark eyes still studying me with an attention that made my skin prickle with awareness. “I’ve pretty much been working twenty-hour days since I took over the job. May I come in? This is…sensitive.”

It was then that I noticed his tension—the tight set of his jaw, the careful way his eyes scanned the street behind him. And I suddenly realized what this must look like—the town’s new sheriff on a single woman’s doorstep after midnight. Mrs. Pembroke lived on the opposite corner from me and she could see down our entire street from her drawing room window. She was known to suffer from insomnia and treated neighborhood surveillance as an Olympic sport.

“Get in here,” I said, opening the door wider and practically yanking him inside by his sleeve, ignoring the electric current that seemed to jump from his arm to my hand. I shut the door quickly behind him, but not before catching a glimpse of a light flicking on in Mrs. Pembroke’s house. “Brilliant. Just brilliant.”

“Problem?” he asked, standing in my front hall like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. His presence seemed to shrink the space, making my normally spacious entryway feel suddenly intimate.

“You just guaranteed we’ll be the main topic of conversation at Grits and Giggles by breakfast.” I sighed, tightening my robe’s belt again, painfully conscious of how I must look—hair a mess, dressed in my nightgown and robe. Not that I cared what Sheriff Beckett thought of my appearance. Not at all.

Yet even as I told myself this, I could feel my pulse fluttering at the base of my throat like a trapped moth, my breath coming just a little quicker than normal. Patrick had never made me feel so bewilderingly off kilter, so aware of every inch of my skin. The realization brought a sharp pang of guilt that twisted beneath my ribs.

Ten years a widow, and suddenly I was behaving like a teenager with her first crush—all because of a man who probably made all the women on Grimm Island feel this way with nothing more than that intense gaze and the quiet confidence he wore as comfortably as his badge.

“So what’s so important it couldn’t wait until a decent hour? At my tea shop. Where I work. In public,” I said, focusing on irritation to mask the confusing symphony of reactions his presence was orchestrating in my body.

In response, he held out what I now saw was a worn leather-bound book. “This.”

I took it gingerly, and as our fingers brushed in the exchange, a shiver ran up my arm, spreading across my shoulders like spilled water. I hoped he hadn’t noticed, but the slight narrowing of his eyes suggested otherwise.

The binding was cracked and faded, the once-white pages yellowed with age. “What is it?”

“Elizabeth Calvert’s diary.”

That woke me up like an ice bucket challenge. “Her diary? Where did you?—”

“Found it hidden in evidence storage. Behind a false panel in a filing cabinet that looked like it hadn’t been opened since before I was born.”

I stared at the journal in my hands, suddenly aware I was holding the private thoughts of a dead woman. “This wasn’t in the case file.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he confirmed, his voice grim. “Which raises some interesting questions, don’t you think?”

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