It looked like he’d be handling two settlements.

He pulled out his phone, stood right there on the side of the road, and made Charmaine’s day.

* * *

He went back into town, signed the contract, picked up some pizza, and took Britt to lunch in the empty office space of the building he’d bought right on Main Street.

They sat on the floor, drank Cokes, ate pizza.

“We can do this a lot more, at an actual table, once you’re really in here. It’s a good spot, Zane. Smack on Main Street, front entrance, the little porch. More than enough room for your office, a receptionist, a law library, and maybe a conference room upstairs. You even have the little kitchen.”

“It’ll work. We’ll see if I will.”

“Our great-grandfather was a town lawyer,” she reminded him. “Another Walker family tradition.”

Sitting in her bare feet, her quietly professional gray dress, she glanced around. “And you bought a building. And a house! That’s the one I can’t get my head around yet.”

“Me either. I don’t do that.”

“Buy houses?”

“Go on impulse. The building, that’s different. But I just bought an entire house, a fricking big-ass house, on impulse.”

“It’s a great house, or it looks great from down here. I’ve never been up there.”

“It’s amazing, but still. It’s a lot of house for just me.”

“It’s not just you.” Before she pointed, she licked sauce off her finger. “You come with a big family, and we expect you to entertain us lavishly and often.”

“Ha. I don’t think I’d have done it if I hadn’t run into the landscaper.”

“Darby? I like her. She’s…” Searching, Britt circled her Coke in the air. “Infectiously appealing.”

“That’s one way to put it. Accurately,” he decided.

“But what’s she have to do with it?”

“Nothing, really, but she starts talking and you start seeing what she’s saying. Or you don’t but you’re nodding along in your head. She bought the Hubbard place this morning, asked me to handle the deal for her, and before I know it, I’m telling her about this place, and the house, and she’s convincing me I should buy the house. She’s buying a truck on the way to buy a tree.”

“Okay.”

He snagged more pizza, wagged it for emphasis. “No, I mean, she ordered the truck over the phone—like I did this pizza—and she’s buying it just like that, picking up a tree, and coming back. She’s got Roy and Gabe working.”

“Oh yeah, no school today. Well, if she convinced you, good for her. Because you’re going to live on the tall hill, work in town, be right here. I missed you like crazy.”

“I missed you, too, and all of this, more than I let myself admit.” Reaching over, he laid a hand on hers. “He’ll most likely make parole this time.”

“I know. Eighteen years, Zane. It’s a long time. Maybe not long enough for you and me, but a long time. She’s never come back, not once. Lee would know if she had, and he’d have told us. There’s no reason he’d come back.”

“She still visits him, every week.”

“She loves him.” At Zane’s instinctive sound of disgust, Britt pushed on. “She does love him. Remember the way—even after she’d rolled over to get a reduced sentence for herself—she testified for him at his trial? Swearing under oath what they had between them wasn’t violence but passion. It’s not healthy, it’s not genuine, but it’s real to her, maybe to them.”

“It’s obsession.”

“Yes.” As she spoke Britt turned her wedding band around her finger with her thumb. A gesture, Zane thought, he’d seen her make before when they spoke of their parents. “Yes, it is, and they have a terrible, destructive dependence on each other. We were just by-products, just status to them.”

“It was always about them,” Zane added. “About how they looked to outsiders, and their own sick connection.”

“Oh yeah. I doubt they give either of us a thought.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Did you come back, now, because you believe he’s going to get out?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Protecting me again?”

“Always will.”

“That goes both ways.”

When Britt went back to work, Zane wandered around the empty office space. He could probably use some of his condo furniture, currently in storage.

His desk would work in the reception area. Once he hired a receptionist, or paralegal. Once he had actual clients.

Christ, what was he doing?

He’d worked as a prosecutor his entire career. Sure, he’d handled a few outside legal matters for friends, and he’d taken care of whatever Emily or Britt needed, but his focus had been making sure bad guys paid the price for bad acts.

And he’d been good at it.

Now? Wills, divorces, DUIs, civil suits. Well, there was a need. But who knew if he’d be good at it?

He walked to the window, looked out at the shops, the restaurants, the people taking advantage of a pretty spring day. Some he knew; some he didn’t. He didn’t know the guy on a stepladder over at the Breezy Café hanging baskets of flowers.

Did he need to do that? He had the nice little porch, so maybe he needed, what, a bench, a flowerpot, or something?

A good way for Darby to trade off the settlement work—then he wouldn’t have to think about it.

Maybe he’d put his leather sofa in reception—or in what he’d use as the law library or conference room. He supposed most of his condo furnishings hit the same note as his car.

Single guy.

Maybe he’d buy himself a seriously lawyerly desk for his office, get some lawyerly art for the walls—walls he had to have painted something besides investment property off-white.

He’d worked in a tight, overworked space for so long, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d do with so much room. Or time.

He’d just have to find the way to fill them both.

He watched a woman—really pregnant—with swingy blond hair push a kid in a stroller down the sidewalk. He started to turn away, get back to the business of figuring things out, when it struck him.

He rushed to the door, stepped out on the porch. And thought: Holy shit!

“Ashley Kinsdale!”

The woman glanced toward him, did a double take. Her version of Holy shit, he supposed. “Zane!”

He strode down to the sidewalk, and into her laughing hug. She smelled like baby powder, he realized, and weirdly, the one inside her gave him a little kick.

“Jeez, Ashley, look at you!”

“Baby boy coming your way this April.”

“You look great. Seriously.”

“I’m fat, but I feel great. And you, I’ll just say mmm-hmm. You grew up just fine. Oh, Zane, it’s so good to see you. I heard you were coming home.”

“I didn’t hear you were. Didn’t you move to Charlotte?”

“Yeah, and it’s been good. But I really missed home, missed my family, and realized I really, really wanted to raise my kids here. Nathan—that’s my husband—got right on board.”

Pretty as ever, he thought, her eyes still a laughing blue. “You’re happy.”

“Stupid happy. We just opened Grandy’s Grill. I’m Ashley Grandy now. Nathan’s a chef, and when we decided to move back, we decided we’d go for the dream of opening our own place. You have to come have dinner one night. Remember The Pilot?”

“Sure. I took you to dinner there once, before—” He broke off, winced, pressed a fist to his chest.

“Zane! Are you all right?”

“It just comes back on me now and then. My broken heart.”

Her face cleared with a laugh, and she added a friendly swat. “Listen to you. Grandy’s Grill took over The Pilot. New menu, new look, new, new, new. Got us a hell of a bar, too, good selection of craft beer. You come, Zane.”

“I absolutely will. And who’s this lovely lady?”

“That’s my Fiona. Fi, say hi to Mr. Bigelow.”

“It’s Walker,” Zane corrected as he crouched down.

“Oh, I forgot. I’m sorry, I—”

“No problem. Very pleased to meet you, Miss Fiona.”

She smiled at him, a towheaded girl who couldn’t have seen her second birthday, then wagged the doll she held in his face. “My baby.”

“And almost as pretty as you.” Still crouched, he looked up at Ashley, thought of a night, a kiss under a starry sky and swimming moon. “You’re a mama.”

“I sure am. And you’re a lawyer.”

“You don’t happen to need one, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, we do.” Her hand circled over the mound of her belly as he’d seen pregnant women do. “With a second child on the way, Nathan and I want to make a will, and name a guardian. We just don’t want to think about it, but it’s the right thing. If anything happened to us, we want to know our babies are looked after.”

“That’s smart and responsible, and simple. We can get it done, then you can forget about it.”

“Can I make an appointment?”

He jerked a thumb toward the building. “I just got myself office space this morning. I’m not set up yet.”

“How about this? Give me your phone, and I’ll put my number in, the restaurant’s, too. When you’re ready, you can give me a call. That’ll give Nathan and me more time to talk it through anyway.”