He’d known she’d eventually slip into that mode.

Just hadn’t expected it this soon.

She disentangled from his lap, offered a mischievous smile, grabbed a purse off the backseat, and stepped out of the car.

He followed her lead.

She looked nice—stunning, really—dark brown hair, mid-thigh, figure-hugging dress with over-the-knee boots that she’d picked up during the same shopping spree that had put him in a button-down shirt, jeans, and dress shoes.

He’d cleaned up okay.

Not as nicely as she had, but more eyes on her meant fewer on him, and under the circumstances, he preferred it that way.

She linked her arm in his and led him toward the museum.

They were a good thirty-minute walk from where they needed to be in the city center. With her in heels, that might be a generous estimate. She hadn’t explained why she’d brought him here instead, and he hadn’t asked, because he had no tolerance for the head games, and every request he made gave her another opportunity to withhold information and lie.

He reached the museum door, held it open. She squeezed his bicep, headed past him for the admission desk, and paid the entry for two.

It was five in the afternoon now.

Museum doors stayed open till nine.

Rendezvous was at seven, at a restaurant in the heart of downtown, not far from the Alamo, right smack in the heart of the city’s tourist mecca. He knew that much because two hours out of Brownsville, she’d pulled off the road and called the number on the Craigslist post and, after she’d hung up, said, “River Walk. You ever been there?”

He’d seen pictures.

As far as he’d been concerned, that was as close as he needed to get—to the River Walk or the Alamo or anywhere else that attracted slow-moving, selfie-snapping hordes by the thousands. If the point of a place was in the experience, he’d had enough of that to satisfy two lifetimes. He’d suspected it’d be much the same for Jack, which had raised questions about why he’d choose the most tourist-infested part of town over a quiet resort or a nature trail or, heck, even a museum.

Jill, tracing her finger in a daisy-chain loop along the edge of the steering wheel, had answered the unasked. “He knows that if we meet in private, I’d greet him with a punch in the face and possibly break his arm. He figures the more public the place, the better chance he has of me behaving. Having you there is a backup, because he thinks me causing a scene in front of you would embarrass me enough not to do it.”

Holden ignored what was written between those lines.

He said, “Is he right?”

Her finger continued tracing. “I’d much rather meet him alone than with you there, so yeah, probably.”