Identity

“No, I’m irritated because it is good, and I wanted a beer.”

“You can always have a beer,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

He heard Nell’s voice from inside. “We’re here! I’m putting dessert on the counter.”

“Crap.” Morgan actually slapped the heel of her hand on her forehead. “I made cobbler. I forgot she was making dessert. We’ll leave the cobbler inside.”

“Hell no, we’ll have both. It’s fine.”

Nell stepped out with Jake. She, too, wore a summer dress, and Miles did his best not to imagine Jake had “thoughts” when he’d seen Nell in it.

She stopped, stared at the table.

“Well, wow. Just wow.” She looked over at Morgan. “It all looks so happy! Oh, is that sangria? Let’s have some. Jake, if Morgan made it, it’s going to be great.”

Miles thought he caught Jake’s longing glance toward the beer, but he said, “I’m game.”

By the time Liam arrived, they sat around a third table drinking sangria. He brought a sloe-eyed, raven-haired beauty named Dawn. It took Miles about ten minutes to judge she didn’t fit. Nice enough, but not someone who’d slide in when Liam was ready. Or when he wasn’t.

On the other hand, he couldn’t say the same about Nell and Jake. He knew them both too well to ignore what he saw with his own eyes.

They worked.

Liam kept the ladies entertained while Miles started the grill. And Jake joined him.

“You’ll hurt her,” Miles said. “She’ll hurt you. People do along the way, can’t help it, because people. And that’s between the two involved.”

“That’s life.”

“Yeah, but if you hurt her, I’ll have to kill you.”

“What choice would you have?”

“Exactly.”

“Right now, she’s running the clock. That’s fine. I’ve got plenty of time.” Jake glanced back at the table. “And when her clock runs out, I’ll be ready.

“So how much did you have to do with all this? Table looks like a magazine.”

“I was slave labor.”

“You’ve got it bad, son.”

“I’ve got it. Can’t say about her yet. Rozwell.”

Once again, Jake glanced back, and kept his voice low. “They think he’s heading to Washington State. The federal task force, the local LEOs, they’re all over it.”

“Doesn’t matter. As long as he’s loose it’s hanging over her.”

He heard her laugh, shook his head. “But not tonight.”



* * *



When they sat at the happy table with its flowers and candles, its food and drink, he thought again: Not tonight.

Nothing hanging over her tonight, because she was in the moment, sliding over her particular hump.

Laughing with Liam, engaging Dawn in conversation about Impressionism—Dawn’s particular interest. She talked baseball with Jake, about anything under the sun with Nell.

He knew some of it was an innate skill, a tool of her trade. But it sprang from simply enjoying people and listening to what they had to say.

“All right, Miles, you’ve definitely mastered the Jameson secret sauce.” Nell nudged her plate away. “You’re head chef next family meeting, if I recall correctly. And I do. I vote for pulled pork. You can handle it.”

“I’ll vote for that. And these potatoes,” Liam added.

“Those are Morgan’s specialty.”

“One of two,” she put in. “If my ladies have anything to do with it, I’ll eventually add at least one more.”

“Your ladies?” Dawn sent Morgan a quizzical smile.

“My mother and grandmother. We share a house.”

“Oh.” She took a delicate bite of chicken. “You live with your mother. I thought you worked at the resort.”

“I do. It’s been fascinating and enjoyable to live in a three-generation household.”

Though she obviously tried, Dawn kept digging the hole. “I’m sure your grandmother must feel safer knowing you’re in the house. Being elderly, I mean.”

Miles caught Nell’s eye-cast to the sky, but Morgan just laughed. “You’d better not let Gram hear you call her elderly. She and my mother go to yoga class every week, and the couple of times I joined them, I could barely keep up. They own and run Crafty Arts and Wine Café.”

“Oh. I’ve been in there. It’s wonderful. I think I’ve met your grandmother there. She’s very sharp.”

Morgan lifted her glass, but didn’t hide the smile. “She’s all of that.”

No, Miles thought, the raven-haired beauty didn’t come close to a fit.

The sun settled in the west before dessert time rolled around.

“Confession,” Morgan began. “I forgot you were bringing dessert, Nell, then your mom came by with peaches.”

“You made something?”

“She walked me through a peach cobbler.”

“A dessert-off!” Liam declared, and Nell shot him a look.

“No. It’s not a competition.”

“Isn’t everything?”

Morgan threw in with Nell. “No. We’ll consider it your lucky night, and you get two desserts. Would anyone like cappuccino? Hot or iced.”

“I’ve never had iced cappuccino.”

“You won’t regret adding it in,” Miles told Jake.

“Do you have skim milk?”

To her credit, Morgan smiled at Dawn again. “Sorry, not on hand.”

“Maybe just a half a cup—hot.”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’ll give you a hand.” As Nell rose, she patted Jake’s shoulder as a signal for him to stay at the table.

“She’s young,” Nell said when she and Morgan were in the kitchen. “Just a tad younger than her age.”

“She is, and didn’t mean any offense. She comes from money, you can tell—and nothing wrong with that.”

“Hope not, because me, too.”

“She’s had an excellent fine arts education, and is enjoying her last summer before she takes her first real job, at an art gallery, in Chicago—though she really wanted New York.”

“You got more out of her than I did.”

“She’s an easy read, and she’s a very nice girl—still a girl, but not a mean one. Neither she nor Liam will give each other a second thought when she moves to Chicago next month.”

“No, they won’t.”

“You and Jake, on the other hand, give each other a lot of thoughts.”

“More than I wanted to, until I did. For a cop, his edges are pretty damn smooth, and end up smoothing mine.”

“Plus, if you’ll excuse me for noticing, he’s got a great ass.”

“He does. It’s hard not to notice. Okay,” she said when Morgan pulled the cobbler out of the warming oven, “that looks great. Just like my mother’s.”

“She step-by-stepped me. Yours looks great. What is it?”

“Cherry Dump Cake—don’t be put off by the name. You dump cake mix over cherries, add a little this and that. Bake it, and done.”

“I could do that. I could actually do that.”

“I’ll text it to you. Are those … those are coffee ice cubes? That’s brilliant. Give me one.”

Morgan obliged her, and Nell sucked it like a popsicle. “God, I could mainline these. Why didn’t I ever think of doing this? I’ll get the desserts. You deal with the coffee.”

Successful desserts led to lingering before the good-nights. Stars swept across the sky when Morgan sat out with Miles.

“How’s that hump?” he asked her.