I wanted to scoop Shay up and steal away back to the house for an hour or two. She was just too adorable. I needed to lose myself in that for a while. But when I looked around at the mess that was the garden, I knew I’d be shot down. We’d moved into what Shay had deemed her gardening months, and everything else came second.

I kneeled and began searching for weeds. “Where’d you hear this stuff about music and sweet nothings for plants, anyway?”

Shay smiled. “Evergreen. She knows a ton about that stuff. And when I was drowning, not sure if I could handle this job, she walked me through a lot of things.”

“Has she agreed to come and visit?” I was more than a little curious to meet the woman who had helped Shay so much over the years.

“She said things are too busy at work right now, but maybe in a couple of weeks.” Shay rested back on her heels. “You know you can go paint, right?”

My fingers were itching to get something down on paper or canvas. I hadn’t done nearly enough of it over the past few weeks. And whenever that happened, I got twitchy. “I’m fine.”

She gave me a pointed stare. “Whoever it was is long gone. You know we’re safe.”

It had been three weeks since Shay had discovered the body on the dock. We’d been on high alert for days afterwards. But then another victim killed in a similar fashion to one of my older paintings had been found on the mainland. And just yesterday, a body had been discovered over the border in Oregon.

It should’ve eased something in me to know that he or she was moving farther and farther away. But it hadn’t. Everyone was still on edge. Constantly looking around for an unfamiliar face.

Shay sighed and moved closer to me. “Brody. I need you to go paint. At some point, we have to get back to normal. You can’t stay with me every moment of every day.”

She was right, of course. But when I thought about having Shay out of sight, something in my chest squeezed painfully. “You’ll just be in the garden?”

She leaned over and brushed her mouth against mine. “I’ll be right here. If I see anything even remotely out of the ordinary, I’ll scream my head off.”

“We need a dog,” I muttered. “A big, scary dog.” An almost wistful expression flashed across Shay’s face. “You want a dog?”

“I only had a pet once growing up.” Everything in her posture closed down. “It didn’t work out well.”

God, I wanted to hurt her brother. Even though I knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, I couldn’t help the rage that pounded through me. “But now you’d like one?”