“You do, and you get to sew all the buttons back on,” I told him. “Jesse is planning on reusing this.”

“Soon?” he asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“Somehow,” he grumped, “that’s not as

reassuring as it ought to be.”

“Gabriel’s going to college in Seattle in the fall,” I reminded him. “I think you’re safe this year.” My right-hand man had a thing for Adam’s daughter, and right now he was living in the tiny manufactured home that the insurance had replaced my old trailer with. A situation that made them happy and Adam antsy. He liked Gabriel, but Adam was an Alpha werewolf—which put him off-the-scale protective of his daughter.

Eventually, Adam managed the buttons. While I hung the dress up and put it in the closet (yes, there was a closet), Adam stripped off his tux and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t often

dress down that far. Except for when he was working out, usually slacks and a button-up shirt was as grubby as he got. My clean shirt and jeans were dressed up for me. I was a mechanic by trade, and it was a rare thing when my fingernails were clean. Somehow, we fit together anyway.

He bought us milk shakes and burgers (one for me, four for him) from the nearby restaurant, filled the diesel tanks in his truck, and we were back on the road.

“Are we going to Portland?” I asked. “Or Multnomah Falls?”

He smiled at me. “Go to sleep.”

I waited three seconds. “Are we there yet?” His smile widened, and the last of the usual tension melted from his face. For a smile like that I’d ... do anything.

“What?” he said.

I leaned over and rested my cheek against his arm. “I love you,” I told him.

“Yes,” he agreed smugly. “You do.”

THE COLUMBIA GORGE IS A CANYON THAT

RUNS nearly eighty miles through the Cascade Mountains, with the Columbia River cutting through the bottom. It is part of the border between Washington and Oregon. Most of the travel is on the main, divided highway on the Oregon side, but there is a highway on the Washington side that runs most of the length of the gorge. Though the western part of the gorge is a temperate rain forest, the eastern section is dry steppe country with cheatgrass, sagebrush, and breathtaking basalt cliffs that sometimes form columnar joints.

Adam turned off the highway at Biggs and took the bridge back over the Columbia to the Washington side. That bridge is one of my all-time favorites. The river is wide, a mile or nearly so, and the bridge arches gracefully up and over the water to the town of Maryhill.

It was founded by financier Sam Hill (as in