by Jack Rogan
His smile faded. “That was the deal, right? I mean, Agent Hart said the only way he could tell me where you were, even after he gave me the note, was if I was gonna … y’know, stay.”
Still she couldn’t accept it, couldn’t believe it. “You’re not going to want to go home?” she asked, as Leyla began tugging on her hair.
Jordan shrugged, unable to meet her gaze. “I never really had much of a home, Cait. Not anywhere.” He glanced around. “It’s beautiful here. As good a place as any to find out what home feels like.”
Her heart hammered in her chest. It had taken her a long time to figure out exactly what she wanted to put in the note she had written for Josh Hart to give to Jordan. She’d written twenty or more versions of it before she had realized what she really wanted to say. He had always been there for her, in the desert and afterward, and he had kept her daughter safe when the rest of the world had shown her its ugliest face. There was no one alive she trusted the way she did Jordan, and she knew that he had feelings for her. She knew she cared for him, and that it could be more if they had a chance to find out.
She went to him now without another second’s hesitation and kissed him, Leyla on her hip, still tugging her hair. When the baby hit Jordan with her goopy plastic ring, he laughed and kissed her head, just the way Cait always did.
“I missed you, little lady,” he told Leyla, eyes alight as he raised his gaze to meet Cait’s. “Almost as much as I missed your mom.”
Cait kissed him again.
“Home’s going to be good,” she said. “Really, really good. I just hope you like chocolate.”
