“Carl, man, sit down. What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going to warn him! He can’t mess around with Tobias the way he did at Fatboy Burgers and expect to get away with it.”

“No doubt he already knows Tobias is dangerous. That’s why he was warning him to stay away from his ex-wife.”

“How would he know?” the man called Carl said. “He’s not from around here. I bet he has no clue. Harper probably doesn’t even know, or she wouldn’t be sneaking over at night. Somebody should tell her, Derrick. Somebody should tell them both.”

“But…what if Tobias finds out it was you?”

“He’ll never know it was me,” Carl said. “Lots of people from around here know about Tobias’s record. The man he shot still lives in town, for crying out loud.”

Axel’s irritation had turned to curiosity. Tobias’s name was unique enough that he knew who they were talking about. But surely he had to have heard wrong. Had they really said that Tobias had shot someone?

The cute gal behind the counter called out the name Dexter—the name he’d given when he ordered because Axel was too distinctive—but he ignored her and stepped closer to Carl and his buddy. “Do you two have something to say to me?” he asked.

The two men exchanged glances before Carl cleared his throat. “Yeah. I just… I wanted to tell you that you might not want to cross Tobias Richardson like…like you did at Fatboy Burgers.”

“Because…”

“Because he just got out of prison five months ago—and from what I’ve heard around town, even the dudes he served time with knew to leave him alone.”

Axel felt his jaw drop. “What’d you say?”

“See, he didn’t know,” Carl said to Derrick. Then he got up and lowered his voice. “It’s true. He served thirteen years.”

“For…”

“Shot an eleven-year-old boy when he was seventeen,” he said. “Crippled him for life.”

When Tobias picked Harper up at eleven, she had her hair in a ponytail and was wearing leggings, sneakers and the same parka she’d had on the night he first saw her. Glad he no longer had to park down the street, he smiled as she closed the door and turned to face him. “Look what I remembered,” he said and pulled her necklace from a small pocket on his coat.

“Oh, thanks for thinking of it,” she said and ran it into the house before emerging again only a couple of minutes later. “All set?”

“All set,” he said. “Unless… Do you think your girls might want to go with us?”

“Not today,” she replied. “Their father will be here soon to spend a few hours with them before he has to go back to Europe.”