Had Emily come back from her walk in the time it took him to drive home?
He cut the engine, and as he stepped out of his truck, the gravel crunched behind him and he pivoted.
Emily waved from behind the stroller and dropped Denali’s leash. “Hello. You’re back sooner than I expected.”
Denali trotted up to him, his leash dragging behind him, his tongue lolling out of his mouth in pure joy.
Nash scratched him behind the ear as he studied Wyatt, kicking his legs out in the stroller, a little hat shading his face.
Usually silence and a lonely meal greeted him when he came home from work, not this picture of domesticity. He didn’t need the wife and kid, but he should get himself a dog.
He finally shifted his attention to Emily, her fiery hair in a demure braid over her shoulder. The freckles on her nose were pronounced in her pale face, and she stood behind the stroller stiffly, gripping the handle.
Nash cocked his head. “Is everything okay? Did you have a good walk?”
Her smile flashed easily across her face, too easily, and she said, “Great. Our walk was fantastic.”
“I hope you’re not regretting taking the job. I really need you.” Nash cleared his throat. “Need your help.”
Emily tossed back her braid. “Not at all. Wyatt and I had a good morning. I just wasn’t expecting you back so soon. I was going to make some lunch.”
“Don’t bother. That wasn’t in the job description.” He held up the bag of food from Rosita’s. “I brought lunch with me. Do you like Mexican food? Of course you do. You’re from Phoenix.”
“Actually, I live in Phoenix now, but I’m originally from the Midwest. I’m still getting used to some of those hot salsas.” She waved her hand in front of her face as if cooling her puckered lips.
He dragged his gaze away from her mouth and pointed to Wyatt. “I guess our conversation bored him. We put him to sleep.”
“Good.” She ducked her head into the stroller to remove Wyatt’s hat. “What I mean is, he hasn’t slept all morning, not even on the walk, so he does need a nap.”
Nash made a move toward the porch. “I’ll let you get him to bed, and I’ll set up lunch.”
He held the door wide for Emily to pass through with the stroller. “We can leave that on the porch.”
She shook her head so fiercely, her braid whipped back and forth. “No, I don’t want to leave it out in the heat.”
She skimmed past him, and his hand shot out to pluck a leaf from her hair. When she swiveled her head around, he cupped the leaf in his hand. “Looks like you took a stroll through the pecan groves.”
“Are they all yours?”
He closed the door behind them and removed his hat. “They belong to my family. We used to ship them to a processing and packing plant in Texas until some partners convinced us to build one here. A lot of people in Paradiso resent that plant.”
“Why should they? It must’ve brought jobs and a level of prosperity that a lot of these small towns down here must envy.” She folded back the canopy on the stroller and slid her hands beneath Wyatt’s sleeping form.
“It turned sleepy Paradiso into a real town, and a lot of the locals don’t like it. Brings more of everything—more people, more traffic, more crime.”
She put a finger to her lips and floated into Wyatt’s makeshift nursery with Wyatt fast asleep against her chest.
Nash swung the bag of food onto the counter and got two plates from the cupboard and silverware from the drawer. He set them on the kitchen table next to the sliding doors to the back. He never used the dining room, had never used it once since moving in here after Mom and Dad took off for Florida.
He lifted the containers of food from the bag and placed them on the table.
He jumped as Emily came up behind him. He really wasn’t used to having someone else in the house.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She lifted her nose in the air and sniffed. “Smells good.”
“Chicken burritos.” He held up a small container of salsa. “And you can add your own heat.”
“Do you like it hot?” Her cheeks sported two spots of color to rival the red of the salsa. “Spicy?”
He raised his eyebrows. So, he wasn’t the only one who felt the pull between the two of them. “I do. I grew up in Paradiso, just about spitting distance to the border. Do you want some lemonade? Iced tea?”
“Some lemonade would be great.” She pulled out a chair and sat down in front of one of the plates. “You mentioned crime before. Does Paradiso have a lot of crime? I wouldn’t think so.”
He emerged from the fridge clutching a plastic bottle of lemonade. “It’s not fresh or anything.”
“I grew up in the Midwest, remember? I don’t think I saw a real lemon until I was a teenager.” She shook out some chips onto her plate and dipped a corner into the salsa. “Crime?”
He poured the lemonade over ice in two glasses. Was she worried about her safety here in Paradiso in the home of a Border Patrol agent? “We get some crime here—mostly tweekers stealing stuff. Most of the crime happens on the border. We had a case last month...”
“What was the case?” She held her chip suspended in the air and a drop of salsa fell to the table.
“You’re eating. I’ll tell you later.”
“My dad was a cop, homicide detective. I’m accustomed to inappropriate mealtime conversation.”
He cut his burrito in half, choosing his words carefully. “We found a body without a head at the border, and then that head showed up on a fellow agent’s porch. Then we found a headless body not far from the pecan groves and the second head showed up on another porch.”
Emily put a hand to her heart.
