A wobbly smile formed on her lips. “Really?”

“Really. He wanted the best for you, and you went out and made the best life you could. There’s nothing to feel bad about.”

“I’ll believe it if you will.”

I was saved from having to respond when our server returned with our whiskey and menus. The restaurant offered Creole and Irish fare, and Ari picked the shrimp and I went for the oysters.

After the server retreated, Ari picked up her whiskey and sniffed. Before she could lift it to her lips, I raised my glass.

“To a long overdue date.”

A smile flitted over her features. “I can drink to that.”

23

Ariel

Be cool, Ari. Act like an adult who has it all together. Because you are. Don’t think about that toast . . .

“What exactly have you been doing for the last year?” I lowered my whiskey glass to the table.

Rhett sipped his, and if the abrupt change in subject threw him, he didn’t let it show. “PI work. Mostly surveillance on spouses suspected of cheating.”

“Wow. That has to be a little depressing.” I picked up my drink again and tipped some back, the heat from the liquor warming a path down my throat.

Rhett shrugged. “Yes and no. What’s depressing is the fact that there’s no trust between them, and they get to the point where they feel like hiring someone is all they can do. Honestly, they could save themselves a lot of grief by just asking the other person where the hell they’re going.”

It sounded like there was a story there. “What do you mean?”

Rhett picked up his drink again. “I had one client who swore up and down her husband had to be cheating on her because he was gone the same time every week and withdrawing cash from the ATM on the same day. She told me it had to be a hooker, but she wasn’t going to file for divorce without proof.”

“Oh my God. That’s terrible.” After the way things ended with Carlos, I never wanted to deal with a situation like that ever again, and we hadn’t had anywhere near that level of commitment between us.

Rhett tilted his head. “Only if you don’t trust your husband enough to ask him where he’s going.”

“What was he doing?” My curiosity piqued, I leaned back in my chair, my glass poised to take another sip.

“Laser hair removal on his back. Technician I talked to after I got the pictures said he felt self-conscious when his wife called him a wooly mammoth on the beach, so he wanted to be ready for summer.”

I laughed, choking on my drink and practically spitting it onto the table. “Oh my God. You’re joking.”

“No, definitely not joking. She cried a lot and apologized. They booked a cruise to the Bahamas as a second honeymoon.”

“Wow. That’s better than the alternative.”

He nodded. “For sure. Plenty of the cases end up using my photos for evidence in divorce proceedings, which is depressing as hell. The best cases are the ones where I’m able to prove that they’re not doing anything wrong. Like the guy sneaking away to play bingo to try to win his wife a new car.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious. I can’t make this stuff up, and these aren’t even the crazier stories.”

“Tell me the crazy.”

Rhett studied me for a moment. “You sure you want to hear this?”

“Of course. It’s fascinating. I’ve never understood people, but I still find them interesting.”

He took another sip and settled back in his chair. “My favorite client was a guy who joined the military when he was eighteen. He went off to boot camp and ended up going to war, and didn’t make it home to find his girl for almost twenty years.”

“Oh my God.” Sympathy washed through me, rivaling the heat of the alcohol.

“Yeah. Vietnam POW. The kind of thing you’d see movies about. He was messed up when he got out, and it took him a long time to pull himself together to the point where he felt he even had the right to go looking for her.”

I shook my head, unable to imagine what it would have been like. “What happened?”

“He looked for her but the trail was cold. She’d left town and disappeared. No one knew where she went. He called in favors, and someone led him to me.”

“You found her?”

Rhett’s lips tugged up in a smile. “Are you going to let me tell the story? You’re just as impatient as you’ve always been.”

I grinned sheepishly. Impatience was a fault I’d openly own and would probably never overcome, and I was perfectly okay with that. “Tell your story.”

He took a sip and then continued. “I had a hell of a time finding leads, until one day it occurred to me why someone would disappear in that day and age.” He looked pointedly at me. “Go ahead. I know you want to guess.”

Rhett knew me well. “She was pregnant, wasn’t she?”

He nodded. “Yeah, she was. The reason he couldn’t find her was because she changed her last name—to his. Said she was a soldier’s widow so her son wouldn’t bear the burden of being raised by an unwed mother. When I tracked them down, he was in college. I found him first. He could’ve passed as his dad when he’d gone off to war. When I showed the surveillance pictures of the kid to my client, he broke down and cried in front of me. Couldn’t believe he had a son he’d never known, but was so damn happy she’d raised him as his.”

I was practically bouncing in my seat to know what happened next, but I was exercising a modicum of patience.

“When I told him she’d never remarried, never dated, and still wore her POW/MIA bracelet with his name on it every day, he was stunned. It devastated him that she’d been alone for so long, but at the same time, he was amazed at her loyalty to his memory.”

My patience dried up. “What happened next?”

“I contacted her and told her that he was alive. She bawled in my arms and begged to see him. When I told her he was waiting in a car out front, you would’ve thought I told her the house was on fire. She barely looked at me before she ran. She threw herself into his arms, and he caught her and held her tight. They stood in her little front yard for an hour, not saying anything.”