“By far. Coming to a standstill like this feels like a dream.”
Understanding flooded Rami’s dark gaze. “Know the feeling, mate. Not that my job has ever been seasonal.”
“Do you have many cases at the moment?”
Rami cast a glance into the living room, then shook his head. “I went part-time when Damon died. I only take a few at a time now. A couple are in the prison, but most of them are post-release at the moment.”
“How’s it going?”
“What do you care?”
“Harsh.” I folded my arms across my chest. “You think that’s a weird thing for me to ask?”
“Unless you’re asking about someone specific, then yeah. You know what my job is like. It’s not something I want to bring home.”
“You’re not at home. And I wasn’t being specific about an offender, I was asking aboutyou.”
Rami’s face did something complicated. I wanted to decipher it, but he was too quick for me. His expression flattened before I could take a breath, and he offered me a bland smile that killed my appetite. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m a moody twat, okay? And there’s nothing to tell about work that you don’t already know. I do my job and look after Charlie. That’s all I am these days.”
I didn’t believe him. He was built for more than that, and the spiky probation officer I’d known back in Manchester had never treated how he spent his days as just a means to pay the bills. He’d cared, deeply, and he’d sweated blood to make sure the offenders under his wing got a second—or third, or fourth—chance at life. If I’d ever found myself on the wrong side of the barred windows, I’d have wanted him on my side.“That’s all I am”didn’t apply to Rami Stone.
Still, I changed the subject. “Did you get hold of Safia?”
He nodded. “I did. You were right about the mobile signal, so I used the landline in your bedroom.”
Thinking about him in my bedroom was a new kind of wow. I forced my attention back to the cabinet and grabbed two cans of baked beans. “She okay?”
“She is now. Think I blew her mind when I told her that we already knew each other.”
I knew that feeling. “She’s probably relieved. If she thought I was putting up a stranger on her behalf she’d likely try and give me a whole sheep again.”
“A whole sheep?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry, it was alive, but my dog chased it back up the mountain before it could get its hooves under the table.”
Rami shook his head. “You guys live on another planet up here. I swear down, I couldn’t understand most of what she was telling me.”
“That’s because you’re southern and soft.”
“So’s she. At least, she used to be. Now she’s herding goats and breaking rocks with her bare hands. What are you doing in that cupboard? Have you lost something?”
It belatedly occurred to me that I’d been staring into the same cabinet since he’d come downstairs. I shut it with a bang and dropped the bean tins on the counter. “I’ve got a pie in the outside freezer. Can’t say what’s in it, but it came from the butcher in the village. That all right for your dinner?”
“You don’t have to cook for us, Fen.”
He said my name, and his soft tone drew my gaze from the bean tins to his face. My whole body tingled as I fought the urge to inch closer to him. To crowd him against the door where he stood and breathe him in. It was strange as hell to have him here, but ignoring the fact that I wanted him as much as I ever had felt stranger still. “I want to cook for you,” I said instead of blurting out the nonsense running through my tired brain. “Makes me feel better about the fact you’re stuck here when you need to be with your family.”
“I need to be at home, actually. At work, while Charlie’s at nursery. Safia told me I was crazy to come here and she was right.”
I fought the frown that threatened to descend on my face. “Crazy? That’s a bit harsh considering she left her whole life behind to move here.”
“Yeah, but she wanted to. I like my life in the city—at least, I used to. Maybe if she came down and helped me sometimes, I wouldn’t do stupid things like drive through a snowstorm to catch a break.”
“Attemptto drive through a snowstorm,” I corrected him. “You never got where you needed to be and the fact that you tried tells me how desperate you were.”
“Raging, more like.”
I wasn’t about to argue with him over his state of mind. I didn’t know Rami as well as I wanted to, but the stubborn frown creasing his forehead told me all I needed to know about how he’d react to me telling him how I thought he felt. And his instinctivego fuck yourselfwould’ve been relatable. I didn’t like being told how to feel. Why would he?