It’s been a bad day,” Riley managed to get out despite the tightness in her throat. As she spoke, she swiped belligerently at the wet tracks on her face with her free hand. Nothing she could do about the streaming tears other than keep wiping them away. She only wished she could have kept him—or anyone—from seeing them. “You try—” She was going to say something along the lines of “going to your ex-husband’s funeral and then almost getting murdered in the same day,” but her voice caught on a sob at the thought of Jeff’s funeral and she couldn’t, could not for the life of her, get any more words out. “Hey,” Bradley said, and there was that damned am-I-imagining-it sympathy again, in his voice. Then her knees quivered and she kind of tilted toward him and he caught her and kept her upright. She thought he sighed. His arms came around her and tightened until she lay fully against him. “It’s okay.” He felt as solid as a concrete pillar, and something about that, about having someone she could lean on after a lifetime of being the pillar that supported everyone else, got to her.
