If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

welcome,” he said cheerfully. “I always feel better when I share an image like that. Helps lessen my mental agony.”
    Popping one eye open, she stared at him as he opened the red-and-white can. “Your mental agony. You’re a strange character, Law.”
    “Yeah. I’ve heard that a time or two.”
    She shuddered and tried to scrub her mind of that image—thankfully it had been years since she’d tried split pea soup, so she wasn’t inclined to gag, and she had a pretty strong stomach anyway. The shit she saw in her job … well, it wasn’t for the faint of heart.
    “Since we’re not going to define just what we’re doing here, I’ve got another question for you.”
    “Yeah?” She was almost afraid to hear, seeing as how his humor obviously ran to the twisted.
    But when she glanced at him, his expression was serious.
    Heavy, even.
    He took his time, putting the soup on the stove, flipping the bacon again. Her belly rumbled at the scent and she thought about getting up to try to steal a piece.
    Then he pinned her with that intense hazel gaze. How those eyes could look so dark and brooding, she didn’t know, but he managed it. Her knees felt a little wobbly and all of a sudden, her heart was racing.
    “Just why are you back in Ash, Nia?” he asked softly.
    “Pardon?” Even as she forced the word out, she wanted to kick herself. Playing dumb wasn’t going to work with him. But she didn’t know how to answer that question.
    Tell him the truth
, a small voice inside her heart whispered.
    Her head screeched,
No
.
    Everything else demanded she do just that.
    The truth—give him the truth.
    But what if he laughed? What if he didn’t believe her?
    What if—God forbid—he pitied her and patted her back and sent her on her way?
    Swallowing, she swiped her hands on the overlong hem of the shirt again, staring past his shoulder at the window. The blinds were down, but the window was open and occasionally, the blinds would move, pushed in by a small breeze. She focused on the small undulation, tried to get her thoughts in order.
    Where to start … hell, where did she start?
    Did she tell him the truth?
    “Nia?”
    She swallowed, jerked her eyes back to his.
    Abruptly, she knew.
    Yeah. She would tell him the truth. Somehow, she knew he wasn’t going to laugh. Wouldn’t pat her on the head and send her on her way. Whether he’d believe her or not, she didn’t know, but he wouldn’t dismiss it, either.
    “My cousin,” she said.
    Law nodded. “I had a feeling it was about her. No other reason for you to come back here, is there?”
    She swallowed again—there was a knot in her throat, huge and awful, and she could hardly breathe around it. But swallowing almost made her feel like she’d choke—choke on the tears, the pain. “You’d think it would get easier, right? I mean, according to the investigation, they found the guy who killed her. That’s the closure I should need, right? What makes it easier for me to move on?”
    For a long time he was quiet, nothing breaking the silence but a quiet sigh and the sizzle of bacon. Then he turned around, switched the soup to low, used the forkto transfer bacon from the skillet to a plate he’d lined with a couple of paper towels.
    “You’re trying to make it a process, sounds like, Nia. You can’t. There’s no right or wrong way to go about healing that sort of pain, to get over that kind of loss. You have to cope with it in your own time,” he said as he turned back, coming to stand in front of her. He cupped her face in a gentle hand, stroked a thumb over her lip.
    The gentleness of the touch, the compassion in his eyes, it all but broke her.
    But the fiery burn of anger had settled in her heart … 
finally
. And it gave her the strength she needed. Reaching up, she curled her fingers around his wrist, not to push him away, but to squeeze, to hold tight. Whether it was for support, to get his attention, she just didn’t know.
    “I can’t
cope
, Law. Not right now. Not yet.” She blew out a breath, focused on the middle of his chest—breathed in, breathed out. “I can’t. Because I don’t think Joe Carson is the one who killed my cousin.”
    Hope couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on a picnic.
    Not that this was a for-real picnic.
    They’d eaten lunch with Remy’s mom, Elizabeth.
    Something about the way the woman had all but hovered over Hope had made her feel so self-conscious—and
that
made her feel guilty because