Damn, he looks hot!

I took a moment to cool myself down by inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. A lot of good that did me when I inhaled the subtle spice mixed with a woodsy scent, and my nonexistent libido kicked in at a low purr.

Get a hold of yourself! You’re standing in his little girl’s room!

Making a great effort, I focused on all the pinks and purples surrounding me in the form of pillows, ruffles, paint, and other assorted accessories. It was cute. It was girlie. It was entirely Lana Rose.

“You’ve got a beautiful room, Sweets,” I told her.

The sight of a framed photo on the nightstand, of a woman holding a newborn baby, had me smiling—despite the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“That’s my mom,” Rosie explained. “Isn’t she pretty?” She grabbed the frame and hugged it to her chest before handing it to me. “Daddy says I look a lot like her.” Her smile made the entire room that much brighter. “Daddy told me that she was the prettiest in the world.”

My eyes were fused on mother and daughter, settled in a rocking chair, and a pang of sadness hit me. My butt found the edge of the little girl’s mattress.

I could have had that once.

Clearing the emotion from my throat, I looked up at the little girl who stood in front of me expectantly and declared, “She’s very beautiful, Rosie, but I think you’re even more so.”

She shrugged off my comment, but gave me another one of her megawatt smiles. “Come on! We don’t want to make Grams and Daddy wait.” Rosie grabbed the frame from my hands and carefully set it back where it had been, before turning to me with a scrunched-up nose. “They get pissy when I take too long.”

I giggled at that, even though I was sure that ‘pissy’ was most likely a word she shouldn’t be uttering at her young age. Getting up, I extended my hand to her. “Let’s go, Sweets.”

Dinner was a quiet affair, entailing mostly of Rosie regaling her grams and father with what we’d been up to at my shop earlier today. Shane’s mother seemed thoroughly interested in what her granddaughter had to say, yet the man himself, seemed more interested in watching me eat. It was a little disconcerting.

By the time dessert rolled around, Rosie offered to help her grams to plate everything, while Shane gave me a tour of their home.

We’d ended the main floor’s tour in the den, but to be honest, I was too busy dealing with the fluttering sensation in my stomach, or recuperating from his slight touch to my lower back as he guided me around, to really take in the beauty of the house.

“Thank you for coming over tonight,” he said. “I have to admit I had an ulterior motive, aside from adding on to my apology.”

“Forgiven,” I croaked out.

The man’s gaze was intense. “Is everything all right?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I asked him.

“You seemed a little tweaked this morning. I saw you on your front steps.”

He made to approach me, which caused me to back up, right into the side of his desk, knocking a slew of papers and the file they’d been tucked into on the floor.

“Shit!”

Hurrying to my knees, I started rallying everything up in a pile when I felt Shane kneeling next to me.

“Let me. You shouldn’t–”

I took a closer look at the shots of random pieces and froze, studying them.

“What? What is it?” he asked. “Do those look familiar?”

“They just remind me of something I once wanted to try and never have,” I told him. “A photographic mosaic.”

His body went rigid. “A what?”

“A photographic mosaic…or photomosaic,” I explained. “It’s when you take different images of the same size and compile them together to make a larger picture. Kind of like a puzzle, because each image has to be in the right color scheme to make the larger image true.”

“You’re shitting me, right?” he asked.

“Well, no,” I said, then inquired further. “How many pieces do you have?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I’d have to pull my files for the last eight years to know for sure. Do you know how to do these photo…”

“Mosaics?” I supplied. He nodded. “I’ve been wanting to try. Most people do these on computers these days, but I’ve seen them done by hand in a few galleries I’ve visited since I moved here.” I studied the photos closer, then moved to inspect the next one in the pile in my hands, and gasped, dropping everything I held onto the floor.

“Emberlyn,” I heard Shane say, but I was too busy processing the shock of what I saw. “Ember,” he tried again.

“Shane! Ember! Dessert’s ready!” Nora called out, but I couldn’t respond, closing my eyes to try and imagine something beautiful to replace the horror I’d just seen.

“Give us a minute, Mom. We’ll be right in.” I felt his hand grab my chin, gently tilting my head until we were face-to-face. “Look at me, Emberlyn. Look at me right now!”

That worked.

My eyes snapped open, and I realized I wasn’t breathing; the dark spots slowly clouded my peripheral vision, and my body swayed.

“Breathe, sweetheart. Breathe with me.” Shane put a hand of mine on his chest, covering it with one of his as his other remained at my chin.

“T-that’s the woman…” I swallowed the bile in my throat. “She was found dead in…Oh God!”

“Don’t talk. Just breathe, baby.”

Something in me snapped, and my body jerked back as if he’d hit me. Cold dread filled me along with even chillier memories. “Don’t call me that!”

Shane’s grip on me retracted as if I’d touched him with a cattle prod. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t call me that,” I repeated at a whisper. “It’s what he used to call me.”

“Who?”

That’s when I realized I’d said too much.

Jumping to my feet, I backed toward the front of the house, stuttering, “I-I have to go.”

“Wait!”

I shook my head, swallowing what I knew would be my dinner coming up to greet me again. I didn’t want to be here when it did. “I’m sorry. Tell your mom and Rosie thank you.”

Turning, I rushed out of the Peters’ residence as if my hair was on fire, barely making it to my front bushes before my stomach revolted, turning the wonderful dinner that Shane had put together into plant fertilizer.

What I didn’t expect were the steel bands that would come to wrap around me while I sobbed and dry-heaved.