Melanie offered a tiny smile she didn’t feel as he walked from the room. “I can’t believe he’s dead. I’m . . . jeez, I don’t know what I am.”
Miss Gina patted her knee. “You cared for him once. It’s okay to feel sad.”
Melanie glanced at the candlelit face of her friend. “Hope. What am I going to tell her?”
“Damn it!” Wyatt’s voice from upstairs had everyone on their feet. “Jo!”
Sir Knight was barking above his voice.
“Hope isn’t in here.”
Melanie hardly registered Agent Burton removing a gun from behind her back before Mel jumped to her feet and ran toward the stairs.
Melanie climbed over Jo to look inside Hope’s room.
The window was closed; the dog ran in circles before darting out from under their legs toward the door.
Don’t panic . . . don’t panic. “Hope?”
“She was just here.”
Sir Knight barked obsessively toward the back stairway that led to the kitchen and back door. They heard a loud thud and rushed to the noise. There they shone a flashlight toward the narrow space and paused.
The sight of Hope, standing at the top of the stairs, her little dog running up and down the back steps, nipping at the edges of her daughter’s nightgown, would sit with Melanie for years to come.
“Mommy?” Hope’s tiny voice called to her.
“Sheriff?” Agent Burton called from the bottom of the stairs.
“What are you doing out here, sweetie?” Melanie reached her daughter and knelt.
Hope all but jumped into Melanie’s arms, and that’s when she noticed the moaning from a man at the bottom of the steps.
Jo pushed past them and none too gently helped Agent Burton cuff the man.
“Bloody dog,” she heard him saying over and over again.
Melanie picked Hope up and took her away from the scene going on below. Melanie placed her in the center of her bed and let the dog jump up onto her lap. After lighting every candle in the room, she took stock of her daughter.
She was shaking like a leaf in the wind and hugging the puppy within an inch of its life. “Sir Knight saved me, Mommy. He bit the queen and I pushed her really hard.”
Melanie placed her daughter in her lap and rocked her until all the shaking went away.
EPILOGUE
It took Wyatt a week before he moved his stuff back to his house. Even then, he didn’t leave the Bartlett girls’ sight for very long. It helped that he was laying the foundation to the new guest house and needed to be on the property during most of the daylight hours.
Lewis was in custody, wearing orange and doing his best to avoid extradition. His crimes in the UK superseded those in the past few months in Oregon. As the ends of the case tied up, they did find a money trail from Nathan to Lewis. And Ty had no problem calling Nathan out even before he found out the man was dead.
Melanie didn’t attend Nathan’s funeral. Wyatt could see the doubt in her decision until after it was over. Then she seemed to come to terms with the man and their combined past.
It was Hope that shocked everyone. Two days after Lewis had attempted to take her from her room, she tossed all her fairy tale books in the trash. More surprising, not one of them asked her why she did it.
They all understood perfectly.
Summer was fading into fall when Wyatt finally asked Miss Gina the question everyone wanted to know. “So when are you going to open for business again?”
She pointed across the lawn. “When are you going to get that house built?”
“There’s a correlation?”
Miss Gina shrugged her shoulders and went back into the house.
One particularly breezy afternoon, Wyatt sent the small crew he brought in for the framing home early for the weekend.
Sir Knight barked from inside the rough framing of the house, which told Wyatt that Hope was close by. Sure enough, he found her climbing between the studs, her dog barking at her feet.
“What are you doing, young lady?”
“Climbing.”
“I can see that.” He swiped her off the wall and placed her on her feet. “Your arm just got out of the cast, remember the doctor told you no climbing trees until Halloween?”
“Well the doctor isn’t here, and I feel fine.”
She started to climb again, and he took her by the waist and set her back down. “Enough.”
Her chin came out in defiance. “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re just my mom’s boyfriend. You’re not my dad.”
Her words stung, but he used them anyway. “One day I’m going to be your dad, and you’ll eat those words, princess.”
Hope lowered her defiant little chin and narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
Considering he couldn’t leave Melanie and Hope’s side for a night without texting Mel until midnight and finding an excuse to come over daily . . . yeah, it was safe to say he was in for the long haul.
“Yeah, so don’t make me spank you.”
Hope made a perfect little O with her lips. “You won’t do that.”
“You’re right.” He snatched her around the waist and started to tickle her. “I have much better ways to punish disrespectful little girls.”
Sir Knight barked and ran in circles around them for the few minutes Hope giggled in her attempts to get away. She cried “uncle” before the two of them ran off.
When Wyatt turned back to his work, he saw Melanie standing in the soon to be doorway, her arm leaning against the frame. How long had she been standing there?
“Hey, darlin’.” He moved in for a kiss, didn’t linger long. The fact she never unfolded her arms told him she had something on her mind.