“I know you’ll still want to leave today,” Camille said to Summer. “No one’ll blame you for that.”

Summer looked into her mom’s jade eyes, usually soft and relaxed, now dark with emotion. “You’ll need help through all this new investigation and insurance fiasco. I gained all that experienced with the warehouse fire. I’m too good at it now to pass the torch.”

“Honey, no.”

“I want to.”

“You have your work.”

“I’m going to call in and explain why I need more time.” She set a hand over her mother’s, stilling the tenth teaspoon of sugar from going into her cup.

Camille began to stir her tea and didn’t say a word.

Summer exchanged a helpless glance with Tina. “I thought maybe it was helping you, Mom, having me around.”

“It is,” Tina said for her sister. “It is.”

Summer wanted to believe that, but she wanted a lot of things. She also wanted to find her place in a world that she used to belong to. Ironic that she could find her way through a jungle, over a mountain, down a river, and yet right here in her own hometown, she felt so lost. “I’m so sorry about the store,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wish—”

“No. No regrets,” Camille said so forcefully it surprised everyone. “Trust me. Living with them is too hard.” She turned over her hand and squeezed Summer’s. Once, twice.

Love you.

Summer let out a half laugh, half sob, and squeezed her back three times.

Love you back.

And could only hope this was a sign of good things to come.

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

By that afternoon, Summer was in the back of the original Creative Interiors. She sat surrounded by opened boxes, going through some of the stock that Bill had just brought in from his and Tina’s garage, secretly munching on the bag of cookies he’d sneaked her.

Tina kept coming into the room to check on her, telling her that no one expected her to work today, she should be resting, taking it easy.

Summer refrained from admitting that being alone, without any distraction such as a naked fire marshal in her bed, would drive her right into the loony bin.

Braden sat behind her in a corner chair, working on the computer, muttering to himself. Chloe kept finding reasons to come talk to Summer, and every time she did, she took sidelong—and not particularly discreet—glances at Braden.

He, on the other hand, kept working, not looking up from his screen, not doing anything, possibly not even breathing.

“So,” Summer said to Braden after Chloe had left for the fifth or sixth or hundredth time. “You do have a thing for her.”

Braden looked up. “A thing? Sounds like an infection.”