Free Circle Eight Millennium: Lazarus by Beth Williamson Page A

had changed. She had started to fall a little in love with a man she’d hated, or at least he’d been the image she had projected her hate onto, for so long. That sense of weightlessness washed over her and she was glad she was close to the floor or she might have toppled over.
    He was right. Fate was a mighty strange thing. She could either fight it or fly with it.
    “What happens next?” She wasn’t sure whether she was terrified or excited by the answer.
    “Tracking down the leads and investigating the potential suspects.” He sat up and ran his hand down his face. “The crime scene techs haven’t sent me their reports yet so we may be able to connect all of it together.”
    Bea swallowed the lump in her throat. “What happens next?” she repeated.
    His expression softened. “Anything.”
    She smiled, her heart all squishy. “Oh.”
    They spent the next hour going through the rest of the paperwork, searching for information online about the other participants. It was the most fun she’d had in a very long time. Detective work was a surprise delight and could become addictive. It might have been because she’d spent the time with Laz.
    Or maybe a combination of the two.
    Laz put all his notes in a pile and got to his feet. They had made significant progress in narrowing down the suspect pool. He enjoyed his job every day, or at least he thought he’d enjoyed it. Bea had shown him he had been missing a key ingredient.
    Passion.
    She’d aroused him in so many ways, sexually, emotionally, and mentally. He hadn’t felt such a deep level of satisfaction in chasing down information. The only new thing in his life was Beatrice Cartwright.
    Maybe it was because he’d been alone for so long. He had his cousins and his sisters, but they were occasional company. He spent his days, and nights, in a solitary existence. Being with her had shown him what being in a relationship could be.
    It was too soon to say they even had a relationship, but it was something. Indefinable at the moment, but not nothing. A lot more than nothing.
    He had been such a shit to her when they were kids. It was in the past and they were both different people. However, he felt a niggling desire to make things right, as much as he could. There were some memories he could not erase, but they could make new ones.
    “What do you say to a picnic by the pond?”
    Her brows shot up. She swiped a strand of hair that dangled over her eye, the kinky ginger curl moved merrily in the air conditioner’s breeze.
    “Aren’t you on duty?”
    “Supper picnic then.” The idea of a moonlit swim with Bea raised his temperature in an instant.
    “At the pond.”
    He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I thought it would be good to create a new present and shed the past.”
    “I like that idea. A lot.” She smiled and the world seemed to be a brighter place. “I’m not sure the last few days have been real. It’s like one of those movies where you see what the world would be like if your choices had been reversed. Something like that Christmas movie where the angel gets its wings.”
    He shook his head. “I’m no angel.”
    “That makes two of us. I’m not a devil either, but maybe somewhere in between.” She glanced at her watch. “I need to meet Lenny at the shop. He is going to reinstall the front windows today.”
    He didn’t want to leave his pa’s study. There had been a monumental shift in Laz’s view of the world in that room. At the ranch again. He could see more than the hazy mist that had been his future.
    Now he had something he’d lost. Hope.
    They rode back into town together and he got to work doing background checks. When the afternoon waned, he ordered their picnic lunch from Waverly’s diner. Not too hard to believe they were still in business given their food was the best in the county.
    He didn’t think to ask what she liked to eat other than sandwiches, so he ordered standard picnic fare and picked up a six-pack of beer