Soothing her campers’ jitters helped to distract Alice from her own fear up on top of the tall platform. It was hard to be too anxious about her own well-being when she was so concerned for her kids.
Justin Arun and Rochelle Phelps were the last pair to successfully fly across the treetops. Just as she lost sight of Justin, she heard a quick step on the stairs.
“Alice.”
“Yeah?” Alice asked Kuvi, her brow wrinkled. Kuvi sounded tense.
“You’d better come down. There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who?” Alice wondered, walking toward Kuvi.
“The sheriff of Morgantown,” Kuvi whispered, her tone hushed to prevent Aidan Salinger, their supervising Durand manager, from hearing.
Alice blinked in surprise. She saw the question in Kuvi’s hazel eyes, but had no answers for her friend. What was the man she’d met last night in Dylan’s den—Jim Sheridan—doing here? She and Dylan were keeping their relationship private. No one at the camp was supposed to know they were engaged in an affair. Hadn’t Dylan warned Jim of that fact after Alice had left? Dylan had mentioned once that the sheriff of Morgantown and he were old friends. Surely he’d asked Jim to be discreet.
So what was Sheridan doing here in the woods asking to see Alice while camp was in session?
Jim looked just as relaxed and amiable standing in the midst of the forest as he had last night in the den. He was chatting with two of Kuvi’s Diamond Team campers.
“Keep in mind, I can’t guarantee what mood Camp Wildwood might be in from year to year. If I were you, I’d give some serious consideration to whether or not the goat is worth the glory,” Jim drawled with a wink. The boys laughed.
“Mr. Sheridan?” Alice asked warily.
“Call me Jim,” he said, turning at the sound of her voice. He stuck out his hand in greeting. “Good to see you, Alice. Sorry to bother you like this, if I could just have a moment or two of your time? Excuse us, won’t you?” Jim said cordially to the two kids. He tilted his head toward the left, and Alice followed him several yards down a path to a solitary clearing.
“Your kids all off successfully on the zip line?” Jim asked, turning to face her.
“Yeah. Mission accomplished,” she replied tensely, not trying to hide the question in her eyes.
“I can see you’re not going to be satisfied until I explain why I’m here. No idle chitchat for Alice Reed, am I right?” he asked, his pale blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
“I’m just a little confused. Does this have to do with the alarm going off last night?” she asked quietly. “I thought you said it was just an electrical malfunction.”
Jim nodded, suddenly more serious. “It was. I think.”
“You think,” Alice emphasized slowly. “But you’re not sure like you were last night?”
He shrugged broad shoulders. Alice had the fleeting thought that he must have to have his sheriff’s uniforms special-made for his big body. “Let’s just say that Dylan’s concern about the whole thing ramped up my worry a little. I haven’t seen Dylan that tense in a long, long time. It got me wondering—what’s got the iceman so ruffled?”
“He didn’t seem ruffled to me,” Alice said dismissively. She felt uneasy, though. What Jim was suggesting was true. To most observers, Dylan would have appeared the picture of control last night. But he had been worried about that alarm going off, tense at the idea of a threat. He’d made no effort to disguise that very thing after they’d both returned to the bedroom suite last night. He’d definitely not appreciated her venturing out of the locked bedroom on her own. She’d thought his worry and tension were out of proportion to the circumstances, and obviously, so had Jim Sheridan. The only difference was Alice knew why Dylan was so vigilantly protective of her.
Jim Sheridan didn’t know, though. But from the looks of things, he was bound and determined to find out.
“It seemed to me he was worried about you,” Jim said, glancing casually around the wooded clearing as though sincerely interested in the foliage. “Very worried.”
“He wasn’t worried about me specifically,” Alice insisted. “He was worried because he thought his house had been broken into. Wouldn’t you be concerned about that?”
“Sure,” Jim agreed, nodding thoughtfully. “But why’s it a bad thing for Dylan to worry about your safety, too?”
Alice blinked, taken off guard by his question. “It’s not a bad thing—”
“It’s pretty clear he thinks you’re special. Most young women would be flattered to see Dylan so anxious for their safety. Most every young single woman I know in Morgantown and a good portion of the older married ones, as a matter of fact,” Jim said with a disarming smile.
“I . . . I don’t think—”
“You two are an item, right?”