Rescue After Dark

by Marie Force

  “I believe it’s directly related to the selfie craze.”

  “Stupidest thing I ever heard.”

  “Agreed, but it’s happening so often that Blaine and I think the town is looking at a real liability if we don’t do something sooner rather than later to limit access. As you know, the mayor is adamantly opposed to putting any kind of fence out there. We were hoping we might call upon you to try to talk some sense into him. It’s only a matter of time before someone is killed. The guy today was inches away from certain death.”

  “Jeez.” Big Mac took a big bite of a doughnut and pushed the plate across the table toward Mason, who was powerless to resist when it came to McCarthy’s sugar doughnuts.

  He took one and bit into the fried deliciousness. “Goddamn, that’s good.”

  Big Mac laughed. “Damn right they are.” He wiped the sugar off his lips with a paper napkin. “I get the argument about preserving the natural beauty of the bluffs, but we gotta do something.”

  “Please, before we lose one of our guys saving some tourist who can’t read. Blaine and I have discussed it in depth. If we did some sort of wire fence, you’d hardly notice it.”

  “That’s a good point. I’ll bring it up with the council.”

  “And you’ll leave our names out of it?” Mason asked, speaking for himself and Blaine.

  “Of course. No worries.”

  Big Mac certainly knew how Upton could be, and Big Mac could be trusted, which was why Mason had come to him in the first place. “Appreciate it.”

  “Whatever you guys need. That’s my philosophy. Not one of us would want to do your jobs, especially this time of year, so we’ve got to keep you well supported.”

  “It does get sporty round about this time every year,” Mason said with a grin. “As Dermot said, it keeps the blood pumping.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “How’s the family?” Mason asked.

  “Everyone is great. We’re about to have a baby boom the likes of which this family has never seen. My daughters-in-law Maddie, Abby, Grace and Stephanie are all pregnant, as is Maddie’s sister. And Maddie’s having twin girls.”

  “That’s a lot of babies.”

  “We can’t wait. Linda and I canceled our travel plans for the fall and winter so we can be here for all the excitement.”

  “Not sure if this island can handle that many new McCarthys all at once.”

  Big Mac barked out a laugh. “Speaking of getting sporty.”

  “That’s the best kind of sporty, I’d imagine.”

  “Indeed. We’re thrilled to see all the kids so happy with their families. That’s all we need to be content.”

  “Happy for you all.”

  Big Mac gave him a fatherly look. “Everything good with you?”

  “Yeah, it’s good.”

  “Heard you made one hell of a rescue out at Evelyn’s place the other night.”

  “I did. Thankfully, I saw the flames before they could do serious damage.”

  “Which wouldn’t have taken long with the way the wind was howling that night. Did you figure out how it started?”

  “Best theory we’ve got is the sparks came from the neighbor’s fire pit.”

  “What’re they doing having a fire on a night like that?”

  “Who knows? People don’t think.”

  “Nope, they don’t, and then you and your team get to clean up the mess. Thank goodness you were there to get Evelyn’s granddaughter out. Jordan, right?”

  Mason nodded and popped the last bite of doughnut into his mouth.

  “Her sister, Nikki, is doing such a brilliant job for us at the Wayfarer. She’s such a sweetheart.”

  “Jordan is, too.” Mason realized his error when Big Mac’s eyebrow arched upward.

  “That right?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’d better get back to the station. The paperwork doesn’t take care of itself.”

  Big Mac walked him out and shook Mason’s hand. “Thanks for all you do to keep us safe.”

  “Appreciate your support. Means a lot.”

  “Any time. You know where to find me—and my doughnuts.”

  Mason laughed. “Those things are dangerous.”

  Big Mac patted his still-flat belly. “Best kind of danger, my friend.”

  “If you say so.”

  Still smiling, Big Mac waved him off as Mason pulled out of the lot to head back to town. He glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly three thirty. He had another hour, maybe two, before he could escape and get to the best part of his day.

  After he’d parked at the spot reserved for the chief at the station, he took a minute to text Jordan. Trying to get out of here in an hour. Gotta go home, shower and change. I’ll let you know when I’m headed your way.

  She replied right away. Come get me before you go home.

  Will do.

  That she wanted to see him as badly as he wanted to see her ramped up the urgency to get done with work so he could be with her. It’d been a very long time since any woman had ever made him feel like he was going to die if he couldn’t see her as soon as possible. Only the woman he’d almost married had ever gotten to him this way, which made his growing obsession with Jordan that much more dangerous to a heart he’d patched back together more times than he cared to count.

  He’d known her for two days, and he already knew she could crush him. Not to mention her life took place three thousand miles from where he lived and worked. But even being painfully aware of the many ways this could end badly for him, he couldn’t stay away from her.

  Mason rushed through the paperwork that absolutely had to be done that day, including submitting timesheets for payroll, a summary incident report for the mayor and making final preparations for a water safety training he was running for his team and Blaine’s later in the week. He’d been coordinating that with Deacon Taylor, who would be presenting most of the material.

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, he walked out of the station without a word to anyone. They knew how to reach him if they needed him. If he told them he was leaving, that would’ve slowed him down. He got into the SUV and texted Jordan.

  On the way.

  Hurry up.

  Two words had never turned him on more than those did. I’m hurrying.

  * * *

  As Mac drove himself and Maddie away from their house in his truck, he tried not to worry about leaving the kids behind in the capable hands of their sisters and parents. Whatever came up, they could handle it, and if they couldn’t, Mac and Maddie would be five minutes away.

  “Are you feeling guilty about this?” Maddie asked as he brought the truck to a stop at one of the three intersections between their house and his parents’ hotel.

  “Super guilty.”

  “Glad it’s not just me.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “It was nice of them to make this happen, though.”

  “Very nice. I just hope the kids don’t make them regret it.”

  “I’m sure they will,” Maddie said, laughing.

  “They’ll have a great time with their cousins.”

  “True.”

  Mac drove up to the hotel’s main door a few minutes later. He’d gotten the room key from his mother earlier in the day so he could take Maddie directly to the room when they arrived. “Be right around for you, love.”

  “You shouldn’t be hauling me around. If you throw your back out, where will that leave us?”

  “I’m not going to throw my back out.”

  “And you know that how?”

  Mac leaned across the center console and looked her in the eyes. “The day I can’t carry my own pregnant wife around is the day I’m ninety-two and feeble.”

  “I will not still be pregnant when you’re ninety-two, because you’re getting that thing snipped.”

  “On behalf of my thing, we’re offended, and don’t talk about the snipping in front of him. It makes him shrivel up and die.”

  Mad
die laughed, as he’d hoped she would. “He’s of no use to us at the moment anyway.”

  Mac shot her a horrified look. “Speak for yourself.”

  His lovely wife was crippled with laughter.

  Pleased to see her laughing, he got out of the truck and walked around to retrieve her. “Hold on to me, my love.”

  She curled her arms around his neck and held on as he lifted her out of the truck and into his arms.

  One of the young bellmen opened the door for them. “Welcome, Mr. McCarthy. May I help with your luggage?”

  “Yes, please,” Mac said. “It’s in the backseat.”

  “Very good. I’ll bring it right up and take care of parking the truck for you.”

  “Thank you,” Mac said, adding for Maddie, “The keycard is in my shirt pocket if you’d grab it for me.”

  She fetched it and held it up to the new electronic readers his parents had installed a year ago as part of their efforts to modernize the old hotel. Their room was on the second floor and had a balcony that looked out over the family’s marina and the vast Salt Pond.

  Mac deposited Maddie gently on the bed and went to open the drapes to let in the view.

  “We should ask for a different room,” Maddie said.

  He turned to her, surprised. “Why?”

  “You shouldn’t be looking down at work while you’re supposed to be relaxing.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll pretend like the marina is someone else’s problem while we’re here. Besides, if my lovely wife is around to distract me, I won’t even notice the place.”

  “Your extra-pregnant wife can’t do much to distract you these days.”

  After accepting the luggage from the bellman and handing him a ten-dollar bill, Mac shut and locked the door and went to stretch out next to her on the bed. “That is absolutely not true. My lovely wife distracts me by being in the same room as me, by breathing, by looking at me with those eyes that remind me of melted caramel. She distracts me by being such a wonderful mother to our kids—the ones we already have and the two she’s taking such good care of while they wait to join the party.”

  “You’re very good at this.”

  “Good at what?”

  “Making your wife feel better about not being able to do much of anything.”

  “Making my wife feel better about everything is my most important job.”

  “I miss being able to, you know…” She waggled her brows suggestively.

  “Don’t say it, or I’ll want it. Don’t even think it, or I’ll want it.”

  “Don’t say what? That I miss sex?”

  Mac groaned, immediately interested in something they couldn’t have for months yet.

  “It’s gonna be a really long summer.”

  “It’ll go by fast,” Mac said, praying that was true.

  “I don’t know about you, but ever since David told us we can’t, it’s all I can think about.”

  Mac covered his ears. “Don’t tell me that either.”

  She rolled onto her side and studied him with those beautiful eyes that saw right through to the very heart of him. “Have you lost the bet yet?”

  “I have not,” he said, indignant that she would even ask.

  Her brow lifted. “Not even once in the shower when no one was looking?”

  Before her, Mac had never found eyebrows to be particularly sexy. Hers were. Everything about her was sexy to him. “Not even once, and I’m appalled that you’d even ask. What about you?”

  Her snorting guffaw made him smile. “First of all, I couldn’t reach it if I tried—”

  “Try.” Strangled by the epic surge of desire that crimped his windpipe, Mac pushed himself up on one elbow. “Right now. Let me see you try.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s a fantastic idea. Do it.”

  “Mac.”

  “Please? I won’t be able to think about anything else until I know whether or not you can.”

  She released a nervous-sounding laugh that only made him more determined to make this happen.

  He slid closer to her, resting his hand on the huge baby bump. She was already as big as she’d been the day she delivered Hailey and Mac. “I’ve never seen you back down from a challenge. Don’t start now.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that in front of you.”

  Words alone had never turned him on more than those did. “Maddie, sweetheart, if you don’t do it, I’m going to die from wanting you to.”

  “Don’t talk about dying after you recently had me thinking you were going to.”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never seen this manipulative side of you before.”

  “Yes, you have.” He moved his hand to her leg, inching the hem of her dress up to her waist. Then he reached for her hand and brought it down to where he wanted it, noting that she could, in fact, reach.

  “There. Now you know.”

  “Don’t stop now.”

  “I have to! I’m not supposed to—”

  Mac covered her hand with his and pressed it into the warmth between her legs as he leaned in to kiss her neck.

  “We have to stop.”

  “I know,” he said, panting, “but I so don’t want to.”

  “You don’t have to.” She pulled her hand free of his grip and stroked his hard cock through his shorts. “David said no sex. He didn’t say anything about this.”

  “Doesn’t this count as sex?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Right. This is like an appetizer. It’s the main course he was concerned about.”

  She dissolved into helpless laughter at his metaphor. “If we could’ve been having appetizers all this time, why haven’t we?”

  “Because I was afraid to go near you. I’m really, really starving for the main course.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mac—”

  He kissed her before she could finish that thought. “You, my love, have nothing at all to be sorry about. Look at what you’re doing. You’re growing two little ladies in there. You’re a freaking badass goddess. Don’t ever apologize for what we can’t do while you’re making babies.”

  “Well, since I’m not growing any more babies after this.”

  “Less talking.” He kissed her as he covered her hand with his. “And more of this.”

  She continued to stroke him. “I like this.”

  “Me, too. It’s gonna take nothing.”

  “Let me do it.”

  “Those words might be enough.”

  Maddie laughed as she pulled at the buttons to his shorts, her hand brushing against the tip of his impossibly hard cock.

  For a second, Mac thought that alone would finish him off. Somehow, he managed to hang on until her soft hand was wrapped around his shaft. “Madeline.”

  She squeezed and stroked. “Yes, Malcolm?”

  That was all it took. He came so hard, his heart nearly stopped. “Holy crap.” Mac opened his eyes to realize Maddie was laughing uncontrollably. “What is so funny?”

  Between gasping bursts of laughter, Maddie said, “We suck at abstinence.”

  “We suck so hard.”

  “Don’t say suck.”

  “Because it rhymes with fuck?”

  She lost it all over again, taking him with her until they were both helpless with laughter. They laughed harder than they had in a long time.

  He reached over to wipe away her laughter tears, leaving his hand on her sweet face. “I hate to say my sister was right about something.”

  “Same. It goes against everything we believe in to confess such things. However.”

  “They were right. We needed this.”

  “We need this, and we needed appetizers.”

  “I’m a big fan of appetizers,” he said. “In fact, they’re my new favorite food, and I can’t wait to have more.”

  “I’m very happy to be able to just kiss you. That’s all the appetizer I need for now.�
�� Maddie’s smile was his favorite thing in the world, especially when it was directed at him. “Why did we ever think we could stay away from each other?”

  “We tried. We really did.”

  “I hate feeling like I need to keep my distance from you. It’s the opposite of what I want and need.”

  “Same, babe. It’s torture to stay away from you. I actually think that’s been adding to my stress.”

  “Me, too. So let’s not do that. And forget the bet. If you need to take the edge off, I’m your girl.”

  “Yes, you are. My best girl.”

  “Remember the day we met when I kept trying to get you to go away?”

  He chuckled as he recalled the most important day of his life. “You were very hard on my fragile ego.”

  “Oh, please. Your ego was and is robustly healthy.”

  “It took some hard dents that day.”

  “I just want you to know that I’m really glad you didn’t listen to me.”

  “Even knowing you didn’t want me around, I couldn’t stay away from you or Thomas.”

  “I was afraid to want you around. I was so used to taking care of myself and Thomas that the idea of leaning on you, of getting used to having you around and then you leaving.”

  “You didn’t know then that I’d never leave. How could I when everything I want and need is right here in one beautiful package who came with a son I love more than life itself?”

  “I just hope you know that despite how I treated you at the beginning, I’m so, so thankful for you and this life and our family and everything we have.”

  He caressed her face and smoothed his hand over her soft hair. “I’m just as thankful to you. You’re the one who makes it all happen.”

  “We make it happen together.”

  “Yes, we do.” He slid his leg between hers and grasped a handful of soft ass cheek as he placed a series of strategic kisses on her neck. “How about some more kissing appetizers?”

  Maddie shivered the way she always did when he kissed her right there. “I’m down with that.”

  Chapter 14

  After Jordan told him to hurry, Mason grinned like the lunatic he’d become since he met her. He drove toward Eastward Look much faster than he should have, but whatever. There were few advantages to giving most of his awake hours to the town of Gansett. Speeding without consequence was definitely one of them. He resisted the temptation to flip on his emergency lights, laughing to himself over the idea of using his lights to get to a woman faster. That was a line he wasn’t far enough gone to cross. Yet. It took eight minutes to get to Eastward Look when it probably should’ve taken fifteen.