Brynne bit her lower lip, relaxing a little, now that an escape route had opened.

She fetched the jacket she’d worn earlier from a row of hooks beside Bailey’s back door, and returned to the front of the restaurant, where Eli waited.

“I hate this,” Brynne said, once she was buckled into the passenger seat of Eli’s official SUV. “I feel like such a coward, running away from my own business—”

“Ease up on yourself,” Eli said, checking mirrors as he reversed the SUV onto Main Street. “You’re probably in shock. It’ll wear off if you take time to catch your breath.”

“He wasn’t supposed to come out here until Davey and Maddie’s school lets out for spring vacation.”

“I take it he didn’t bring them,” Eli remarked. His tone was even. Untroubled.

“No,” Brynne answered, breathing slowly and deeply. “He claims he’s going to Seattle for a conference. Clearly, the Creek is a logical stop along the way.”

“Take it easy, Brynne. You’re not doing yourself any good by getting all stressed out.”

“Well, that’s easy for you to say!” Brynne accused, without intending to say anything of the kind. “You aren’t the one he cheated on. You aren’t the one whose dreams were torn down and then set on fire—”

Her voice fell away, and she sat there, in that rig that smelled pleasantly of leather, dog and Eli Garrett. She would have given anything she owned to take back what she’d just said.

“Maybe you should hear the man out,” Eli suggested, very quietly, after a long interval of silence.

They were pulling into the gravel lot at Sully’s Bar and Grill by then.

“There is nothing he can say that I want to hear,” Brynne said miserably. “Unless it’s about the kids.”

“They’re pretty important to you,” Eli said, parking the SUV but making no move to get out. “The kids, I mean.”

“Too important,” Brynne admitted, choking up. She couldn’t look at Eli just then, though she couldn’t have said why. “I love them too much.”

“How is that possible?” Eli asked, very gently. He didn’t touch her, which was both a disappointment and a relief. “Kids are like everybody else. They need all the love they can get.”

“They’re not mine,” Brynne said. “Why can’t I just face that and move on with my life?”

“I don’t know, Bailey. I thought you were moving on with your life.”

Brynne covered her face with both hands, pressed her eyeballs hard with the tips of her fingers.

That hurt, so she stopped.

“I don’t love Clay Nicholls,” she said, “if that’s what you’re implying.”