Page 68 of Waitress at the Shadow Ridge Inn
“Because I told him.”
“What? How didyouknow?”
Steve tugged me back against him. “I wasn’t going to tell you this until later, but … after I left you, I swung by Jessie’s to check on her. She rents the second floor of a Victorian over on Elm, only a few blocks from the inn. When she didn’t answer her door, I woke the lady who owns the house and got her to use her key. We found Jessie on the floor, barely conscious.”
“Oh no! Is she okay?”
“They’re keeping her at the hospital for another night for evaluation, but yes, she’s going to be fine,” Steve assured me.
I sighed in relief. I didn’t know if migraines could be so severe that they made someone pass out, but I knew the meds had serious side effects. My mother had suffered from awful headaches. The pills she'd been prescribed had knocked her out for hours at a time and left her groggy and feeling out of it for hours afterward.
Then, I connected the dots.
“Jessie didn’t pass out from a migraine, did she?”
Another heavy sigh. “No. Apparently, Angie had paid her a visit while you were at work yesterday.”
My head began to swim again. “What? What possible reason would Angie have to go to Jessie’s? How would she even know about Jessie?”
Steve was quiet for several heartbeats, and then I realized the horrible truth.
“She knew about Jessie becauseIhad told her. I’d told Angie about what happened that day in the kitchen and that I was planning to ask Jessie to do a reading. Oh my God.”
I started shaking again. This was all my fault. I was the one who’d brought Angie here. I’d left to keep the people I cared about safe, and all I’d done was make things worse.
“Stop,” Steve chided, as if reading my thoughts. “This is not your fault. Angie needs help, and now, she’s going to get it.”
“How can you be okay with this?”
“Okay?” he said in disbelief. “Casey, I’m not okay withanyof this. In fact, I’m barely holding it together right now. You could have been killed. Again. Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
I turned in his arms and looked at him. Really looked at him. The gold flecks were flashing wildly in his beautiful eyes, and though his tone and his touch were gentle, his expression was hard. I’d been so caught up in myself that I hadn’t considered how this was affecting him.
“Steve, I’m so sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”
My words only seemed to make him angrier.
“What exactlywereyou thinking? Please, tell me because I am racking my brain, trying to figure out, on any level, how you thought this was going to play out.”
He knew about theplanbecause he’d been with me when I laid it all out to Sheriff Kerrigan. Steve had sat there and held my hand and said nothing. I closed my eyes and pictured him as he’d been then. Tense. Controlled. His expression blank.
“I was thinking I wanted to move on,” I whispered. “That I finally had a chance to end this. I know it was stupid, but I was so desperate to have a life with you that—”
“No,” he said firmly. “We talked about this. We had a plan. One that didn’t involve you risking your life.”
The barely repressed anger made his voice rough. The only other time I’d heard him speak like that was the night in the barn, after Mike had played his ill-conceived prank.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You should have told me about Angie. And about that ridiculous stunt you’d planned. But you didn’t because you knew I sure as hell wouldn’t go along with it.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Goddammit, I’m falling in love with you, Casey. Don’t you get that? What if something had happened to you?”
I crawled into his lap and straddled his powerful thighs. I felt his strong hands gripping my hips as I looked into his gorgeous face. It wasn’t just anger I saw there. It was fear. And hurt.
“I’m falling in love with you too. I’m sorry.”
