by Lori Wilde
“She does like that doll.”
Nate leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I guess this really is good night.”
He let go of her hand, and Becky went back to her apartment with a lengthy sigh of yearning.
16
Over the next two days, the haven of her home felt more like a prison.
She only left her apartment when she was sure that Nate was already gone. In fact, Nate watching became her pastime. Standing on tiptoes and looking out the upper half of the window over the kitchen sink, she could see a small slice of the parking area, enough to eyeball his SUV or get a brief glimpse of his comings and goings.
Her self-imposed isolation wasn’t lonely. Her phone blew up with so many texts that she could barely field them all—her mother, her friends, her sisters-in-law. Maybe because she’d been neglecting people over the past few days and they were hungry for her attention.
They tried to coax her to come out with them, but she started her new job on Monday and she wanted to be prepared. That, and she wasn’t excellent company right now. She fought against feeling sorry for herself, but sometimes she lost her battle and she didn’t want to drag anyone else down with her.
But the one person she wanted to text her, didn’t.
Nate.
He paid her for the last few days of babysitting through a phone app.
And then she got an unexpected call.
From Margaret Dalton. “We’re having a reception for Freddie and Brad, to make up for missing out on their wedding. It’s a perfect opportunity to get acquainted with your parents. If you’ll just give me their phone number and address, I’ll send them an invitation.”
What was happening? Was it possible Mr. Big Strong Sheriff’s Deputy Dalton didn’t have the nerve to tell his mom that he dumped his girlfriend?
Not knowing what else to do, Becky pretended her cell phone was dying. “Sorry, Mrs. Dalton. My service is spotty. I can’t really hear what you said.”
That got her out of the conversation temporarily. She knew Nate’s mother would just try again. He had gotten her into this mess; he could very well get her out of it.
Right this very minute, she could see him through that corner of the window. Water was puddling around the rear tires of his vehicle, and it didn’t take a trained detective to deduce that he was out washing it.
She was so mad; she neglected to stop Ozzie when the cat darted out with her on her way to the driveway. “Darn it.”
Nate was bent over, scrubbing a front tire, his running briefs stretched taut across his firm rear end. Naturally, he was bare-chested. Didn’t the man ever wear a shirt?
Ozzie scampered under her feet, saw something he didn’t like, and arched his back menacingly.
“Take care of your issues,” she hollered at Nate. “I’ve got enough problems of my own.”
Nate lifted his head and blinked at her. “Huh?”
She sank her hands onto her hips and stalked closer. “I have a question for you.”
“What’s that?” He took off his sunglasses, and his eyes slammed into hers.
Good grief, the man even had sexy underarms!
“You were supposed to tell your parents that you broke up with me. Why didn’t you?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Now that was an excuse if she’d ever heard one. Becky was just about to call him on it, when Ozzie streaked past her and ran up a big old oak tree, spooked by a neighbor’s barking dog.
Oh no!
“Quick, call the fire department,” she said.
“Why?”
“They’ll bring a ladder.”
“Just get a can of cat food and coax him down,” Nate said, turning off the water at the faucet.
Becky couldn’t help noticing how his damp chest glistened in the sunlight. “I’ve tried that before, but it doesn’t work. Ozzie can be quite stubborn.”
Nate studied her with amusement. “You really have an enormous heart, don’t you?”
“What?”
“Babies whose mamas drops them off on an uncle’s doorstep. Cats in a tree. You can’t resist helping, can you?”
On the surface, his comment seemed to be a criticism. But the tenderness in his eyes and the way he was looking at her sent a shiver up Becky’s spine.
“It’s a flaw.” She shrugged.
“I view it as a gift. In my line of business, I see so many people out for themselves, without a care for anyone else, so it’s a joy to run across a helper.”
Her cheeks heated as his words filled her with an effervescent happiness. He sounded as if he admired and respected her.
From the oak tree, Ozzie meowed pathetically.
Becky wrung her hands. “He’s trapped.”
“He’s not,” Nate said with an amused smile. “But I understand why you might be concerned. Let me try to get him down for you.”
“Oh, thank you.” She exhaled audibly.
Lithe as a cat himself, Nate leaped up, caught hold of one of the lower branches, and got a toehold on the trunk. He was barefoot, Becky noted, envious of his agility.
“Wait, you can’t climb a tree barefoot. Go put on sneakers.”
“Sweetheart,” he said in a tone that lit up her nerve endings. “I’ve been climbing trees since I was four. I’ve got this.”
Then quick as a monkey, he scaled the multi-limbed tree, murmuring, here kitty, kitty, under his breath.
“Please, be careful.” She clasped her hands together and clutched them to her heart and closed one eye, barely able to watch.
Ozzie had crept out on a limb that didn’t look strong enough to hold Nate’s weight.
Becky’s heart trampolined into her throat.
Nate inched forward on the precarious limb and triumphantly snagged Ozzie and settled the cat into the crook of his arm. “I’ve gotcha little guy.”
His tenderness with her cat split Becky’s heart right open, but she was still nervous. Was coming down easier than going up?
“Here we go,” Nate said, swinging his leg over the limb and the next thing Becky knew, Nate lay sprawled on the ground at her feet. Ozzie might have nine lives, but Nate was looking up at her as if his world had come to a crashing halt with all the air slammed from his lungs.
Guilt fell in on her.
Nate had gotten hurt and it was all her fault.
“Don’t move,” Becky told him. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”
“No!” Nate said, his eyes squeezed shut and he winced. Shouting intensified the pain throbbing through his ankle.
“Omigosh! Your ankle!”
Cringing, Nate dragged himself to a sitting position with his back against the oak tree and cracked open his eyes. Becky hovered, that darned cat clutched to her chest. He peered down as intense discomfort radiated from the red balloon that used to be his right ankle.
“Think I should call 9-1-1 now?” She stroked the cat, who was purring like crazy in her arms.
“No,” he said as calmly as he could. “You can drive me to the minor emergency clinic. Go put the cat in your apartment. I’ll be okay right here until you get back.”
“Be right back.” She zoomed off with the cat and by the time she returned two minutes later, the blasted ankle was hurting so badly it was all he could do to keep up his macho, he-man law enforcement front.
She had a white T-shirt in her hand and a pair of crutches. “Here,” she said. “I’ll help you put this on. You don’t want to give the folks at minor emergency clinic a thrill.”
He smiled at her joke.
“Whose T-shirt is this?” he asked, eying the garment that was much too large for her.
“Kevin’s. He left it at my place, and I forgot to return it. Which in hindsight was fortuitous?”
Nate crinkled his nose. He wasn’t excited about wearing Stalnaker’s clothes.
“I washed it,” she said, reading his mind.
Grunting, he took the shirt and wrestled it on, wincing against the fresh pain that moving around
brought.
“Now then,” she said in the tone she used when she finished diapering Lucy. “You’re presentable enough for health care.”
“Let’s do this thing.”
She sneaked a peek at his ankle. “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” he said, not wanting to admit it hurt like the dickens.
“Hmm.” She didn’t believe him. “This next part will not be fun.”
She helped him up, levering her shoulder underneath his armpit. He bit down on his cheek to keep from crying out at the misery jolting through his ankle. She’d been right; he should have put on sneakers before rescuing her cat, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
Becky drove him to minor emergency clinic near the Victorian, insisting on getting a wheelchair and pushing him inside the building.
Honestly, his ankle hurt too much to argue.
After a long wait and brief examination—with Becky sitting beside the exam room table the entire time—he was x-rayed, admonished about climbing trees, and charged for a pair of crutches.
The verdict? Grade three sprain. He was to stay off his feet for six weeks!
That put him in a snit. He’d be off work for no telling how long because of a cat.
It wasn’t the cat, Dalton. It was your macho need to look like a hero in her eyes.
And there was the truth.
On the way home, Becky stopped for his pain medication at the pharmacy. When they got back to the Victorian, Nate was super grateful his unit was on the first floor and he didn’t have to navigate those stairs on crutches.
Becky helped him inside and got him ensconced on the couch with the remote control, a beverage and snacks within easy reach. “There now.”
The woman had such a heart. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve a friend like her.
Because, Nate realized with a start, she really was his friend. He’d never been just friends with a woman before, but it sure felt nice and he wouldn’t allow his urge to kiss her within an inch of her life ruin that feeling. She’d made it clear they weren’t compatible for a long-term love affair.
And when had he started wanting a real romantic relationship with her in the first place?
Um, from the time you busted her sneaking into Stalnaker’s office.
Yep, it was true. She’d attracted him from the very beginning, but he’d hung on to his outdated fear of getting involved with another damsel in distress. When he’d first met her, he’d painted her with the same brush. Putting her in the same category as Margo and Freddie—although, his sister really had seemed to grow up—and it wasn’t fair.
He’d been a lunkhead, stuck in his ways and hung on some stupid idea that it was up to him to rescue the women in his lives.
Well, this one had rescued him.
“Keep your foot elevated,” she said and slid two pillows under his ankle.
The pain medication had kicked in and the throbbing subsided while the rest of his body relaxed into a rosy glow.
She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bag of frozen peas that she wrapped in a kitchen towel and settled on his ankle. “The instructions say to ice it for twenty minutes every two to three hours.”
“Okay,” he said.
“I can set a timer on your phone if you’d like.”
“Sure.” Feeling pretty agreeable with the pain medication on board, he handed her his phone, and she busied herself setting up an icing schedule.
“That should do it,” she said, putting his phone on the TV tray where she’d left his refreshments and the remote control. “I’m heading out. Do you want me to lock the door behind me?”
“No.”
Nate moistened his lips, overcome with the urge to ask her to hang out for a while. She had her own life. Let her get back to it.
He tracked his gaze over her trim, gorgeous body. She wore white shorts, and her legs were silky smooth from her cream thighs to her delicate ankles. Her navy tank top accentuated her breasts, and she looked terrific.
But he liked so much more than her sexy body. He loved the way she’d taken charge in an emergency and handled it like a pro. He loved the way she genuinely cared about people. He loved her kindness and empathy and ready smile. He loved how easily she accepted what life brought her way, not in resignation, but in adaptability.
“If you need anything, just text. And…” She playfully shook a chiding finger. “Stay off that foot!”
“Bossy, bossy.” He grinned.
Ten minutes after Becky left, the pain medication conked him out. He woke sometime later to dusk settling in through the living room window. He’d been napping for over four hours, and his ankle was throbbing like the dickens again. He hobbled to the bathroom on the crutches, took another pain pill, got a fresh pack of frozen veggies to ice his ankle, and settled back on the couch.
The apartment felt so empty and lonely without Lucy—and Becky—in it.
To distract himself, Nate turned on the TV and watched a program on ESPN, but he couldn’t concentrate. He didn’t know if it was from the medication or longing for Becky, but his mind kept jumping around like a grasshopper in an overgrown pasture.
He dozed again.
Becky came down to check on him. The sound of his door clicking closed bringing him fully awake. “I brought dinner.”
“That was nice of you.”
“It’s the least I could do since you got hurt saving my cat.”
He appreciated how she didn’t tell him I told you so over climbing the tree barefoot. The woman was a class act.
“I brought chicken enchiladas with sour cream sauce from Jake’s Place. They were the special of the day.”
Nate moaned with pleasure. “I love Jake’s enchiladas. Thank you.”
He’d also love to cuddle Becky, but he would not say that. He didn’t want to jeopardize their budding friendship by saying something she wasn’t ready to hear.
Or that you’re ready to say?
Yeah, that too. They’d only known each other three weeks. That wasn’t nearly long enough to be having the kinds of feelings he was having for her, but damn if he wasn’t feeling them, anyway.
They ate the enchiladas in front of the TV, watching a Netflix original comedy series, but Nate’s attention was focused on Becky and the complicated things going on in his heart, mind, and body.
He ached to be inside her. To fall asleep with their bodies spent but still joined. To wake up every morning with her bottom nestled against him and her hair tickling his nose. And to tell her exactly how much he liked, respected, and admired her.
But he couldn’t tell her all that. He needed to wait for the perfect time, when he wasn’t dulled by pain medication and fully had his wits about him. He owed that to her. To them both. He had to make sure these feelings weren’t transient and due to the tender way that she’d cared for both him and his niece.
“Hello?” Becky said.
“Huh?” Nate blinked, lost in his thoughts. The program had ended, and a new episode was queuing up.
She snapped off the TV, then set the remote back down. “Are those pain pills making you spacey?”
“Huh?”
“It seems like you’re not even aware that I’m here.”
So not true. He was so hyperaware of her that he couldn’t focus on anything else.
“I’m going to go so that you can get some sleep.”
He wanted to beg her to stay, but he didn’t.
“Goodbye.” She got up and leaned over to kiss his forehead. “If you need anything in the night, anything at all, text me, big guy, and I’ll be there.”
Then with that, she waltzed out of his apartment, leaving Nate to wonder how on earth he’d spent thirty-one years without her.
17
Without planning it, they developed a routine.
Becky started her new job on Monday. Before leaving for work every morning, she’d pop in to check on Nate. When she returned in the afternoon, she’d check on him again.
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He’d cook or order dinner, and they’d eat together, sharing their day.
Since he couldn’t be out on patrol with his ankle injury, they had assigned him to administrative work he could do from home. That, he wasn’t thrilled about. Nate was an active guy and sitting in front of a computer all day was his idea of torture.
After their meal, they’d watch television together—just friends, no cuddling or kissing or anything like that—or sit on the front porch of the Victorian, enjoying the summer evenings, waving at neighbors walking by.
They opened up to each other, in a relaxed way, no pressure because they weren’t dating. They talked about their childhoods, their goals and dreams for the future. They discovered they had so much more in common than they ever suspected.
The topics they discussed were varied and often turned deep. Politics—they were both moderate independents. Religion—both had been raised Protestant. Neither were impressed by fame or celebrities. Architecture, history, pet care, gardening, public service. So many of their views were the same, and the areas where they didn’t agree, agreeing to disagree had been a straightforward decision.
They both loved superhero movies and chocolate chip mint ice cream. They shared an obsession with Mexican food—tacos rule! Both thought roses were the most overrated flowers. He liked carnations because they lasted longer while she was a sucker for daisies. The ID channel was their guilty pleasure, but Nate, as law enforcement, often knew procedural information about the cases that didn’t show up on television and gave Becky behind-the-scene tidbits.
Nate regaled her with stories of Freddie and all the ways he’d rescued her when they were kids. He’d gotten gum out of her hair with peanut butter when she was a toddler, ran off a suitor with a criminal past, and helped her with her science homework to keep her from failing.
Becky told him what it was like growing up on a farm with four older brothers who were always trying to protect her, and she could empathize with Freddie. She knew what it was like having older siblings who thought they knew best what you needed.