by Jill Shalvis
“Mallory’s money jar went missing, that’s what’s up,” Jan said. “She’s on her way, too.”
Amy’s stomach hit her toes. “Her HSC money jar? The one for the teen center?”
“Yep. Luckily you emptied it out a few nights back. Still, I reckon we lost about a hundred bucks, and it pisses me off. That girl’s ass is grass.”
Amy had thought her stomach couldn’t get any lower than her toes, but she was wrong. “What are you talking about? What girl?”
Jan looked at her like she was a dim bulb. “Riley.”
“Wait—You can’t think that Riley did this.”
“Hell yeah, I can,” Jan said. “She stole the money, sure as day.”
“Did you catch her at it?” Amy asked.
“Well, no. But she was in earlier, and it’s her day off. She was slinking around, and then she was gone. And so was the jar.”
Amy’s gaze slid to Henry, who gave her a slow nod. “Sorry, babe,” he said. “But she was in here, just like Jan says, and she was looking guilty as hell.”
“But you know how she is,” Amy protested, feeling sick. How many times had she herself done something so stupid, something so desperate? But Riley wouldn’t. She had no such need anymore, Amy assured herself. She’d been feeding and clothing her, not to mention the girl had been working at the diner, so there was no reason for this. “She’s just sullen and defensive naturally. She always looks guilty.”
“She’s a loose cannon,” Jan said. “An unknown.”
“All teenagers are loose cannons,” Amy said. “It doesn’t mean she did it. How many customers have you had in here today? How many people at the counter? Hell, how many helped themselves behind the counter to pour their own coffee because you were too busy watching the cooking channel to be bothered?”
Jan shrugged, unwilling to be repentant about her own serving deficiencies. “She’s an unknown,” she stubbornly repeated.
“I was an unknown,” Amy said. “And you took a chance on me.”
Jan shrugged, again signaling that Amy might not quite have 100 percent proven herself yet either. Nice. “Look,” Amy said, not nearly as calmly as she’d have liked, “it wasn’t Riley, okay? She wouldn’t do that. She’s trying to get her life together.”
Jan was shaking her head. “That girl is feral. She’d do whatever she needed to in order to survive, and you know it.”
Yeah. She knew it all too well. Just as she also knew how shitty a person’s life had to get in order to live that way. “Well, I refuse to believe it of her. And I can’t believe you believe it. My God, Jan, just last night there was some guy out back attacking her. You saw that, both of you,” she said, encompassing Henry. “You both saw us come in here right after the fight. She’s in trouble. She’s not the trouble.”
“I saw you both afterward,” Jan allowed. “But I didn’t see anyone attack her.”
“So I made it up?” Amy asked in disbelief. “Because I saw, Jan. I saw him.” She lifted up her shirt to reveal the covered stitches. “I was there.”
Jan sighed. “Look, I get that, and I’ll be sure to tell Sawyer what I know. But the person who stole this jar was someone inside the diner. Today. Not the guy in the alley outside. This was someone who walked through here, familiar enough with our comings and goings, someone we recognize, someone we serve or talk to on a regular basis. Someone we know.”
“Yes,” Amy agreed. “So let’s start talking to the customers.”
“Oh, hell no.” Jan was already shaking her head. “It was the girl. I know it.”
Sawyer walked in the back door, immediately followed by Mallory.
And then Matt.
The sight of him both stopped Amy’s heart and filled her with dread, because she knew right then and there that the promise she’d made to Riley was about to blow up in her face. She whipped back to face Jan, who met her gaze evenly and without apology.
Thirty minutes ago, Matt had sent her skittering over the edge into an orgasm with just the heat in his eyes. Now those eyes were filled with concern.
For her.
She shook her head as the dread doubled, heavy in her gut.
Jan pushed everyone out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where they all sat at one of the big corner booths. Jan gave the gist of what happened, including last night’s alley fight.
All eyes turned to Amy, who then spent the next few minutes repeating the story from her point of view. When she was done, Jan jumped back in with her theory on Riley, making a damn tight case.
“Okay, so it looks bad,” Amy agreed. “But it wasn’t Riley. I really think we should question the customers—”
“No,” Jan said, standing up. “No way. I can’t have this getting out. I don’t want people to think I don’t trust them, or worse, that I hire thieves. I don’t want anyone to be worried about coming here.”
Amy opened her mouth, but Matt put a hand on her arm. She met his calm, quiet gaze, and got his silent message. He wanted her to know that this would be okay.
But she had no idea how.
“No one can know,” Jan insisted to Sawyer. “No one!”
“Then you should stop yelling about it,” Sawyer told her. “Sit down, Jan.”
Jan’s lips tightened, but she sat. “I’m not yelling.”
“Yeah, you are.” This from Lucille, who’d been eating two tables over with her entire blue-haired, bingo-loving, trouble-seeking posse. “And I couldn’t help but overhear…”
Jan rolled her eyes.
“You hired the girl,” Lucille reminded her, coming over. “Scoot,” she said to Sawyer, who scooted. Lucille sat. “You knew Riley was trouble. So raising your voice at everyone else isn’t doing you any good.”
“Riley’s not trouble,” Amy said, and when Matt’s hand tightened on her arm, she yanked it free. Screw being calm. “None of you know what you’re talking about. There’s no proof it was her. It could have been anyone.”
“Honey,” Mallory started.
Amy shook her head. “No. Riley’s doing her damn best to make a life for herself. She’s working hard at changing—” Horrifying herself, her breath hitched. She sucked in some air and met Matt’s warm gaze.
They both knew she was talking about herself. Dammit. “Move,” she said, shoving at him, needing the hell out of the booth.
He slid out in his usual unhurried manner, and she barely resisted shoving him again to make him move faster. When his big, stupid, perfect body was out of the way, she jerked to her feet and went to pull out her ordering pad because she needed something to do. She planned on insisting that everyone order a damn meal just to keep herself busy, except she pulled out her pocket sketchpad instead.
Before she could replace it, Lucille gasped in delight and yanked it from her hands, flipping through the small sketches, making little noises of approval as she went through. Finally, she looked up at Amy, eyes sharp. “You’re not a waitress.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Girl, you’re an artist.”
“Well, I…”
“A damn artist,” she repeated, almost accusingly. “And you’ve been right under my nose this whole time?” She looked around the group, thrusting the book at them of each in turn. “Seriously? I keep track of every single one of you and your needs, and no one bothers to tell me that I have the next hottest thing serving me coffee?” She snatched the book close and hugged it as she turned back to Amy. “I want to see all of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your portfolio. Your drawings. Your pads. All of them. Bring them to me.”
“I don’t—”
“Whatever you have,” Lucille said, waving a bony finger in her face. Then she sent Jan a calculating, shrewd look. “She won’t be a waitress for long. You should know that right now. Look at this.” She opened the pad to a colored-pencil sketch of Lucky Harbor at night, drawn from the end of the pier looking back at the town, with the brightly lit Ferris wheel in the foreground. “This on
e should be on all the town’s marketing efforts and on the website, at the very least. It’s a work of art and a pot of gold waiting to happen.”
Amy stared down at it. “Is it?”
Lucille smacked Matt upside the back of the head. “How could you not have told her this already? How could you have kept such a secret?”
“Jesus, Lucille.” Matt rubbed the back of his head. “And I did tell her they were amazing. But her head is even harder than mine.”
Lucille turned back to Amy. “You listen to me. People love local art. Especially Pacific Northwest art.” She waved a dramatic hand in the air. “I’m seeing a series of hand-drawn postcards, detailing all the popular trails.” She smiled. “You’re going to hit it out of the ballpark, honey. Out of the ballpark, I tell you.”
Amy shook her head, her brain too full to deal with this right now. Sawyer stood up and gestured to Matt.
“Where are you going?” Jan asked. “I’m a crime victim here.”
“We’re going to talk to Riley.” Sawyer looked at Amy. “She’s at your place, right?”
“Uh…” Unexpectedly cornered, Amy went still. “Actually, no.”
“No?” Matt asked.
“No.” Suddenly uncomfortably aware of everyone’s attention on her, she met Matt’s gaze pleadingly, not even sure what she wanted from him. Here she’d thought her biggest problem today would be keeping her mind out of the gutter after what she and Matt had done back at his place. No such luck. “She’s not staying with me.”
“Since when?” Matt asked.
She managed to hold his gaze, knowing there was no way to keep this from him now. “Since that first night. Well, she was around this morning, but I think that was only to make sure her stepbrother didn’t come after me for saving her.”
There was a very heavy beat of silence at this. Sawyer looked at Matt, but Matt didn’t take his eyes off Amy. “Where has she been staying?”
This wasn’t the guy who’d cuddled her after she’d fallen down a ravine. Or the one who’d slid his body down hers and put his mouth on her until she’d come, crying out his name. This wasn’t that easygoing, sexy guy at all. He was the law now, distant and cool.
“In the woods,” she said quietly. “Camping.”
More weighted silence. And a muscle ticked in Matt’s jaw. “Illegally camping, you mean?”
She gave a mental cringe. “Yes.”
Oh, he was good, an utter professional, not allowing his shock and anger to show, but Amy felt the blast of it just the same. And something else, too, something far more devastating.
Hurt.
“Riley’s innocent,” she said. And knowing she had no right, she turned and appealed directly to Matt. “Completely innocent.”
His gaze roamed her features but didn’t soften like they usually did, and she tried again. “She’s been through hell…” Her throat tightened. He knew this, goddammit, he did. “And I know you might not understand it, but you have to believe me. She wouldn’t do this. She’s just a scared, lost runaway, and she needs us. She needs to be trusted, to believe someone cares.”
“Honey.” Lucille took her hand and gently squeezed, her rheumy eyes surprisingly shiny. “You know we all love and trust and care about you, right?”
Her own past was biting her in the ass, all those times she’d screwed up, lied, pushed people away… until no one had believed her. She’d hated that. She’d felt so helpless. Just like she felt now. “Then believe me about this.”
Lucille squeezed her hand again. “Love and trust are earned, Amy.”
No one knew this better than she. Unfortunately, she’d just blown any hope of either of those things with Matt, which made her sick to her stomach. She knew that, in his eyes, she’d chosen Riley over him, and that sort of thing couldn’t be undone.
Sawyer turned to leave, and Matt was right on his heels. Amy excused herself and ran after them, stopping Matt just outside the diner with a hand on his arm.
Sawyer looked at them both, then met Matt’s gaze.
“Two minutes,” Matt said to him.
Sawyer nodded and gave Amy what might have been the briefest glance of sympathy. “I’ll be in the truck,” he said.
When they were alone, Matt just looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I couldn’t break my word to Riley.”
“But you could break your word to me.”
“I never gave you my word.”
“No,” he said in a voice that sounded terrifyingly final. “You sure as hell were careful not to do that.”
She felt like he’d slapped her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He took a step back. “Nothing at all.”
“Look, I said I was sorry, but I had to do this for her. She needed me.”
“I understand,” he said. “After all, all you and I ever had was sex, right?” And with that, he turned and walked to Sawyer’s truck.
Chapter 22
Love’s a fad. Chocolate’s the real thing.
In the end, Matt drove up to Squaw Flats by himself. Sawyer had gotten an emergency call, leaving Matt alone to search for Riley.
That she’d been camping, alone, vulnerable—not to mention against the law—drove him nuts. And she’d been doing it with Amy’s blessing, which really fried his ass. He understood that Amy’s loyalty to Riley had a lot to do with Amy’s own painful past and lack of adult guidance, but damn.
He parked at the campgrounds and headed into the forest where he’d first found Riley, all too happy to have something concrete to do rather than think about Amy and what had just happened.
She’d lied to him, and he was good and pissed off about that. Except it hadn’t been an out-and-out lie, more like an omission. Even as furious as he was, he understood her thought process. He knew how badly she wanted, needed to believe in Riley.
Just as he knew that Riley had taken the damn money.
Amy wouldn’t thank him for finding out one way or the other, but he made his way to what was most likely going to be the final nail in the coffin of… whatever the hell they had going. Which was fine. His life had been fine before Amy had been in it, and it would be fine without her.
Fucking fine.
As he walked, he couldn’t help but remember how he’d found Amy up here not that long ago, and let out a reluctant smile. She’d been so out of her element.
And now he was out of his.
Ten minutes later, he found Riley at her illegal camp spot. She was packing, shoving things into the backpack that Amy had bought her. When he stepped closer, she spun around and jumped up, something glinting in her hand.
A knife.
The minute she registered him, the knife vanished, tossed behind her. She shoved her hands into her ratty pockets, shoulders hunched.
“Expecting someone else?” he asked.
“No.”
“Where you going?”
She shrugged and didn’t meet his eyes. “Nowhere.”
“You’re packing.”
“Well, you told me I couldn’t stay here.”
“I told you that two weeks ago,” he said. “And you’ve been staying out here anyway.”
Nothing.
He blew out a breath and walked up to her backpack.
“That’s mine,” Riley said, but before she could snatch it, he pointed at her.
“Stay,” he said, and crouched at the bag.
“Hey, you can’t just look in there—” She broke off when he reached inside.
And pulled out the charity jar.
“Damn, Riley.” She hadn’t even tried to hide the thing. The money was still in it. Furious, sick, he sat back on his heels and regarded her.
She was studying something fascinating on her battered sneakers.
“You have any idea what this is going to do to her?” he asked.
At that, Riley’s head snapped up. She’d paled to a pasty white. “You can’t tell her!”
Ma
tt stood. “No?”
“No!” Riley’s cry was fierce. She nearly deflated with it, her entire body sagging as if the only thing holding her up had been Amy’s belief in her. “Please don’t.”
“Okay.”
Riley sagged in relief.
“I’m not going to tell her,” Matt said quietly. “Because you are.”
She went from pale to flushed in an instant, her eyes shimmering brilliantly. “I can’t do that.”
“If you can steal it, you sure as hell can give it back.”
Riley’s lip quivered, but she bucked up and shook her head. “No.”
So she was going to be difficult. Shock. “Let’s go.”
“You going to arrest me?” she asked.
Matt would rather be just about anywhere other than here, facing this. Give him Afghanistan. Give him a crack house to bust. Anything other than this. But that’s not how his day was going so far. “Your knife.”
“Huh?”
“Give me your goddamn knife.”
She bent and picked up the knife she’d tossed behind her and handed it over.
He took it and then held out his hand. “And the other one.”
Riley stared at him.
He stared back, steadily.
She let out the sigh of a martyr and bent, pulling a Swiss Army Knife from her sock.
“What else do you have on you?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He picked up the backpack and shouldered it. “Get your other stuff.”
She grabbed an ancient looking folded-up tent and sleeping bag. He had no idea where she’d gotten them and didn’t want to ask, afraid he’d have to add to the list of things she’d stolen.
“I didn’t take them,” Riley said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. Some old guy out here gave them to me.”
Great. “You got anything else?” he asked.
“You see anything else?”
He ignored the belligerent tone because he recognized false bravado when he saw it. For the moment, he was willing to let her have that. It beat the shit out of tears any day of the week.
But it killed him that those two things, along with the backpack on his shoulder, were her entire worldly possessions. “My truck’s down the road.”