Noah shrugged. “I’m just hoping it will help keep anyone from recognizing me.”
He slipped into a black sport coat, which he wore over a silky black T-shirt and black trousers—the uniform he’d adopted after graduating from MIT. He didn’t remember why, except it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Dylan insisted it was because he wanted to appear older. Maybe it had been. Whatever the reason, now people expected him to show up head-to-toe in black.
He cupped his iPhone in one hand and started out into the hall.
“How many messages did you have?” Dylan asked as they left the room.
“What makes you think I looked?” At his friend’s roll of the eyes, Noah answered with an exaggeration. “Ten thousand.”
“You mean ten, and one you answered.”
It was close. That was Dylan. He could read people.
They headed down wide, elegant stairs to the main lobby, then outside onto a sweeping porch overlooking expansive lawns and the stunning mountains where they’d spent the past four days and three nights.
As they walked to Dylan’s car, he frowned at Noah. “Everything okay?”
“I got bit by mosquitoes. Do you worry about West Nile virus?”
“No, and you don’t, either. What’s up?”
Noah shook his head as he climbed into the passenger seat of Dylan’s Audi. He’d bought the car for his Knights Bridge residence now that he was spending most of his time on the East Coast. Noah didn’t offer to drive.
He needed to think.
In fact, he’d had one call from San Diego that made him uneasy. He would have to return it once they arrived in Boston. He had no choice.
He could see that Dylan was on alert. He would help in a heartbeat if Noah was in trouble. NAK trouble, personal trouble. It didn’t matter.
This time, Noah didn’t want Dylan to get involved.
The San Diego call was his problem.
Dylan seemed to guess that asking more questions would get him nowhere. His years on the ice, practicing, playing with a team, had honed his natural instincts about when to make a move, when to hold back. Noah had always been more of a solo operator.
As he started the car, Dylan took a breath, obviously reining in an urge to interrogate Noah. Finally he said, “Olivia’s done a lot of work on her house since you were there in April.”
“That’s good,” Noah said neutrally. Olivia’s house had needed a lot of work.
“We’re tearing down my place,” Dylan added.
“Ah.”
As far as Noah was concerned, it was the only sensible option. He’d been to Knights Bridge just that one time, in early spring, not long after Dylan had received a handwritten note from Olivia Frost demanding he clean up his property, an eyesore for potential visitors to the getaway she was opening down the road from him.
Except her note was the first Dylan had heard of her, Knights Bridge or his ownership of a house there. He’d had no idea his treasure-hunter father had bought the house and left it to him upon his death two years ago. It was built in the 1840s but wasn’t the architectural gem that Olivia’s home was. In fact, it was a rundown wreck.
Dylan hadn’t expected to discover that he had roots of his own in the out-of-the-way Swift River Valley, and he certainly hadn’t expected to fall in love with Olivia Frost.
Despite the miles he had hiked over the past few days, Noah felt restless, frustrated with his situation, even trapped, but at least he didn’t have to keep the players straight in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts. He stuck out enough in Southern California but he enjoyed relative anonymity there compared to what he would endure in a small town straight out of Norman Rockwell. Dylan had tried to explain to him that, despite appearances to the contrary, time hadn’t stopped in Knights Bridge.
Maybe it hadn’t, but it was still small.
Really small.
Noah stared out the window as the mountains and woodlands of northern New England gave way to the suburbs of metropolitan Boston. Dylan drove with occasional suspicious glances at him, but Noah didn’t budge. He wasn’t talking.
When the Boston skyline came into view and traffic picked up, he sat up straight, wide-awake.
This was familiar territory.
Dylan valet-parked at the same five-star hotel in Copley Square where the charity event was being held and they each had booked a suite for the night. Their costumes for the evening would be delivered to their rooms.
“Noah,” Dylan said as he climbed out of the car.
Noah knew there was no point denying there was a problem. He shook his head. “Later.”
“Anytime. You know that.”
“I do. Thanks.”