Page 27 of To Steal a Heart

He offered her a rueful grin. “Yeah, it was, but we got by.”

Briefly, she wondered if she should ask her next question but then decided to forge ahead. “Is your mom still alive? You speak of her in the past tense.”

His expression grew pained. “She died of leukemia a few years back.”

Arden touched his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said gruffly. “It was a rough time for me and Hank.”

“What’s the age difference between the two of you?”

“Two years and four months.”

She searched his handsome face, taking note of the tightness of his jaw. She sensed that it was hard for Crew to open up about himself. Maybe his charm was his first line of defense—his way of keeping his pain hidden. Her gut told her that Crew was a complicated man. She wondered what secrets he was hiding behind his quick smile. Or maybe she was reading too much into him. As a writer, Arden was always looking beneath the surface and going deeper than the ordinary. “How are you and Hank doing now … after Chloe?” She could tell from the way his jaw tensed that he was giving her question a fair amount of thought.

“We’re good.”

She studied him to see if he was sincere.

A charming smile broke over his face. “You don’t believe me?”

She locked gazes with him. “I think you’re good at holding your secrets close.”

He blinked in surprise, and she caught something in his eyes that let her know her assumption was correct. Crew was harboring some sort of secret. Curiosity simmered in her breast. Rather than being repelled or frightened by that knowledge, it did the opposite. In some way she couldn’t explain, she felt a deep connection with Crew. Maybe the two of them weren’t so different, after all.

He probed her with perceptive eyes. “What secrets are you harboring beneath that captivating face?”

She laughed. “The plot thickens.”

“So it would seem.”

“Tell me about your growing-up years,” she persisted. “We’re nowhere done talking about you.”

A crooked grin tugged at his lips. “Okay. What else do you want to know?”

“How did you become an architect?”

“I studied architectural design at the U.”

She arched an eyebrow. “And the U stands for?”

“The University of Utah.” He made a face. “I thought everybody knew that.”

“Not everybody,” she said lightly. She tried to think of more questions that would give her insight into Crew. “When you were a kid, what did you want to become?”

His answer was immediate. “A cop.”

“Wow. A cop. You wanted to fight the bad guys, huh?”

A corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “Something like that.”

“I guess you really are Captain America,” she surmised. It was cute how color crept into Crew’s cheeks.

A second later, he turned the tables by looking her in the eye. “How about you? What did you want to be?”

She didn’t try to hide the smile stretching over her lips. “A writer.”

He grunted in amusement. “Before that.”