by Sara Daniel
“I’m beyond being able to exercise,” he said in defeat. “I can’t even keep up with my dog. This is the most I’ve exerted myself in a decade, and I almost had a heart attack doing it. Drop me off at my house so I can change. Text me if you find Fetch, and I’ll meet up with you.”
She so wanted to help Jake with a weight loss regimen. She lived and breathed exercise, looking forward to it the way most people looked forward to the treat they could indulge in as a reward for suffering through exercising. She’d even found a way to incorporate the hobby into her major for her online college degree.
She knew she should start off slowly, not jump into the complete lifestyle overhaul Jake needed to improve his health. “You know, I have an exercise blog, which will give you a starting point if you’re looking for diet and exercise tips.”
He grunted in reply.
She bit her lip. She’d offended him. Years of conversing with customers at the grocery store should have taught her most people simply wanted her to commiserate, not try to change their habits.
After leaving Jake, she drove to the edge of town, where Connor’s squad car idled on the side of the road. She parked behind him and got out. When she’d offered to help, she hardly expected to find herself alone on a dark roadside with him. Sure, she was physically safer with him than with anyone else. But with the reminder of his finely sculpted naked chest still etched in her brain, her nerves sprang to life.
She wouldn’t give him any reason to notice she felt the slightest discomfort. Grabbing the carryout dish, she stepped out of the car, pitching her voice with a breezy tone. “Did you find Fetch?”
Connor scowled. “He slunk into this field and refuses to come out. Where’s Jake?”
“He’s coming in a minute in his own car.” She shot off the promised text, then pocketed her phone and opened the Styrofoam container. As she walked down the steep slope of the ditch, she couldn’t help remembering that they were next to the very same field entrance where they had shared their first kiss twelve years and several lifetimes ago.
The kiss had been magical.
The rest of the evening, not so much.
Connor’s car had sunk into the mud. Both their fathers had come to dig them out and escort them home, resulting in a scorching lecture for her about abstinence and making sure she didn’t end up stuck in town because of a baby. She’d taken those precautions to heart, but the unplanned pregnancy she feared would sideline her dreams never materialized, leaving the job instead to an obstacle she’d never imagined.
Now the intensity of Connor’s gaze as he watched her slog through the mushy ground to the field of knee-high corn brought back the sixteen-year-old girl who had a world of possibilities in front of her just waiting to be explored.
And she would explore them, she reminded herself. Just not with Connor. The dream of being with him had died even before she’d had to give up her plan to leave town.
…
Connor offered to take the food from Becca, but she ignored him. He didn’t think anything could frustrate him more than Larry showing up and expecting to take over his role as police chief, but Becca brushing him aside to take on the task of glorified dogcatcher ran a close second.
He felt damn near useless as she called, “Fetch, here boy.” She stood with the container, then lifted her feet high as she stepped over some trampled brush at the edge of the field. “I brought some meat for you.”
The wind ruffled her shoulder-length brown hair, and she shivered slightly, probably regretting she hadn’t worn a coat. The day had been warm, but with the sun now completely below the landscape, the chill of the April evening had set in.
A whine sounded from far out in the field, followed by the rustle of leaves and the snapping of stalks. It sounded like a commander had signaled the order to strike. No, that belonged to another continent, another life. Here in Kortville, the same sounds signaled something much more mundane. The dog, smelling the food, eagerly chose to return to civilization.
Becca backed up toward the edge of the field. The small pile of brush she’d stepped over a moment before lay at ankle height. Not looking at her feet, she tripped over a branch.
Too far away to reach her, Connor watched her fall happen in slow motion. One minute Kevin laughed at his own joke. Then a blast shot him up into the air, throwing him backward on the ground. Enemy fire whizzed by Connor as he ran to his fallen comrade. “Man down at three o’clock.”
Still ten feet away, a second attack sent him rolling for cover. A massive black canine dashed between the cornstalks straight toward them, its gaze fixated on the Styrofoam projectile. The animal’s paws slammed against the fallen man’s chest, knocking him onto his back. Using Kevin’s chest as a springboard, the monster jumped the final distance over his head to tear apart the container.
“Kevin!” Connor scrambled over and knelt next to his comrade. The scene didn’t usually unfold this way, and he couldn’t identify the dog as friend or foe. Then again, enemy grenades and landmines packed enough punch to dismember a body.
“Catch Fetch before he runs off again.”
Connor blinked his suddenly blurry vision at the incongruous female voice. Kevin had never had a chance to say another word. He’d died before he hit the ground.
Becca lay in front of him, and they were both in a bucolic town that landmines had never touched. He wiped his hand over his face, dripping with sweat, just like when he awoke in the night.
Becca had tripped. He’d seen it happen right before she’d morphed into Kevin through a trick of his mind. He despised the moment of mental weakness. Not even evil attack dogs threatened the people of Kortville. “Are you—are you okay?”
“Just stunned.”
That he could relate to. Every time he approached her, unfortunately. He slid his hands around her head feeling for blood or bumps, reassured by her intact skull. Before he could utter a word of thanks, he noticed the round circle of blood staining her chest. Sweet Jesus, not a chest wound. Desperate to get to the source and apply pressure, he grasped her shirt and ripped.
“What are you doing?” She struggled beneath his hands.
“You’re bleeding. Don’t move.” He willed himself not to panic as he recalled his first aid training.
“I don’t feel anything. I’m fine.”
She couldn’t feel where she’d been hit, which meant her system had gone into shock. Damn it, he would not fail Becca too.
She lifted her head. “Honestly, Fetch just gave me a couple tiny scratches. A little antiseptic cream, and I’ll be fine. You’re making a big fuss over nothing.” She struggled to sit up beneath his grasp.
Connor stared at her chest. Just above the edge of her bra cup, the scrapes on her left breast barely broke the skin. But blood covered her shirt. He turned over the ripped garment and touched the wet, gooey substance.
Raising his hand, he analyzed it in the glow of his car headlights. Brown, not red. Not blood. Simply a fat, muddy paw print.
The final apparitions from his years as a soldier fighting in Afghanistan evaporated, leaving only a delusional, humiliated police officer and an innocent woman whose shirt he had a ripped open. Her pale breasts rose with each breath, shimmering in the faint light.
“I—I’m sorry. I overreacted,” he admitted.
“You think? Just a little bit?” She smiled, taking any edge out of her words.
His hands shook, brushing her lacy bra as he tried to cover her chest with her tattered shirt, which would have come through the ordeal no worse for the wear if he hadn’t shredded it in his haste to save her.
The weight of her breast and the smoothness of her skin tempted him with a need as powerful and strangling as any of his dreams. He battled it back, determined to keep a firm hold on reality this time. “Hey, you saw my chest earlier,” he tried to joke. “Seems only fair, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t laugh. “If we were still in high school trading touches, maybe.”
He yanked his
hand away, as the memory assaulted him. Being granted permission to caress those breasts had once been his holy grail. She had let him once when they’d pushed the boundary of kissing. Her moans of pleasure had let him know she’d loved his hands on her every bit as much as he had.
But unlike him, she’d also been clearheaded enough to realize if they continued they wouldn’t stop, and eventually pleasure and desire would convince them to go all the way. She’d had the strength to set boundaries. He’d been a teenager with raging hormones convinced he was going to spend the rest of his life with her.
Presented with her naked flesh, he felt like that naïve kid again, as if the intervening years hadn’t changed him a bit. However, the war memories that caused him to rip her clothes aside proved he’d changed so much, no vestige of his childhood innocence remained.
Chapter Two
The headlights of an approaching car broke through Connor’s haze of unwelcome desire, guilt, and regret. He welcomed the distraction to remind him of his police duties. The threat of a fine should scare Jake into keeping control over his pet. “Get a leash on your dog now.”
“Need a hand?” an authoritative voice called. Jake hadn’t joined them. Larry had.
Didn’t it just figure? At the precise moment he felt most out of his element, the person he least wanted to see him out of control would arrive.
“Wear this.” Trying to ignore the memories of touching her skin and the darker memories leading him to overreact to the merest scrape, Connor stood and shed his jacket, draping it around Becca, her shoulders suddenly seeming small and vulnerable as she held her shirt together at her chest.
She pushed his hand away, letting her shirt gape open as she bent her head and refastened her ponytail. “It’s okay. I’m going straight home.”
She flipped upright, her neck now exposed and the shirt sliding off one shoulder, showing way more toned skin than his rational mind could handle.
“If you don’t want rumors about us to start circulating, please put this on.” He honestly wasn’t sure how he felt about feeding the rumor mill with her. He certainly didn’t want a rerun of the way her reputation had been shredded in high school. Even more, he didn’t want Larry or anyone else ogling her bare skin.
She finally accepted his offering, pulling the edges of the jacket around her. “If you’re worried about Larry, I’ll vouch for your professionalism.”
Positioning his body between her and Larry, Connor shielded her as much as possible as he advanced on Fetch. If things went well, maybe the animal would distract the other man so he’d fail to notice Becca’s torn shirt. Of course, in a true best case scenario Connor would have corralled the dog before anyone else arrived on the scene.
Somehow, Larry got to the dog first, grasping the collar securely in one hand while rubbing the mutt behind the ears with the other. The animal put up no resistance, continuing to devour the meatloaf on the ground.
Another vehicle—Jake’s rusted Blazer—pulled off the road. About time. After several long moments, Jake lumbered out. “You found him already.”
“Nothing to it,” Larry said genially, handing the animal over. “Glad to be of service. No place I’d rather be than protecting Kortville’s two-legged and four-legged citizens.”
Someone needed to remind everyone who did protect Kortville’s citizens. “Damn it, Jake, I have to write you up for this. Fetch injured Becca.”
“Becca’s hurt?” Larry demanded. “Connor, boy, don’t just stand there. Call for medical assistance.”
Boy. He clenched his jaw. “If assistance had been required, it would already be on its way.”
“I don’t need assistance, and I’m not hurt,” Becca said, her cheerful voice coming closer behind him. “If I hadn’t tripped over my own feet, Fetch wouldn’t have touched me at all.”
Connor hardly dared to glance back, afraid of catching another peek of her black lacy bra and igniting a host of inappropriate thoughts. But he had to make sure she wasn’t giving Jake and Larry an eyeful.
His bomber jacket snapped up to her neck, nearly swallowing her frame, reminding him of when she wore his letterman jacket in high school. A wave of possessiveness flooded him. He had no business feeling that emotion; she had no business making him feel it. And whatever had happened to his old jacket anyway?
He tried to refocus his mind on the present. “Well, Fetch did scratch you and knock you over.”
“Scratched you where?” Jake asked in concern, circling his hand around the dog’s collar.
“I just renewed my first aid certification. Let me take a look.” Larry held his hand out.
“It’s just a little scratch. On my boob,” Becca added before he could insist.
“Oh.” Larry yanked his hand back. His gaze took in the jacket, then swung to Connor.
The unspoken speculation rang in the charged silence. He’d successfully avoided the rumor mill for two years but couldn’t go back now. Worse, he’d dragged Becca in with him, exposing her to the darkness and despair no one in Kortville should ever be touched by. “The situation is under control. Please disperse and return to your homes.”
“I’m taking Fetch and getting out of here,” Jake said loudly. “Thanks for helping me out, you three. Doughnuts are on me in the morning.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” Larry said, patting his slightly rounded belly.
Jake leaned over awkwardly as he walked Fetch to the Blazer before closing the animal in the backseat. A moment later the car fired up, backfired once, and then roared down the road.
“You want your jacket back? I don’t need it. I’m going straight home.” Becca pulled the snaps open.
“No.” Connor covered her hands with his over the leather. The simple touch made his fingers tingle, but he resisted the telltale responsive jerk. “Keep it on. You can return it whenever you come to yell at me about your brother again.”
He thought the reminder would piss her off and remind both of them they were on opposite sides of the proverbial fence. But she looked more concerned than angry. “Are you okay, Connor?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” The damn war memories had never popped up while on duty, not in the two full years he’d lived here. They’d picked a hell of a time to start.
“Because of him,” she whispered, tipping her head toward Larry standing just behind him.
Right, Larry. He rubbed the scar on his shoulder but didn’t contradict her. He preferred she believe he worried more over the former chief than how he would look her in the eye again after he’d gone from thinking she was dying to wanting to ravish her on the side of the road. He certainly had no intention of explaining why he’d mistaken mud for blood and a Styrofoam projectile for enemy fire.
Connor took her arm and walked her to her car. “Go straight home. Promise me.” He stood next to the vehicle as she got in, started the ignition, made a U-turn on the road, and headed home. Then he turned to Larry. “Thanks for your help, but it wasn’t necessary. I have everything under control.”
“If this is your idea of under control,” Larry said, “I came back just in time.”
The ringing phone shot Connor upright in bed. Outside, the pitch black of the interminably long night had finally subsided to a half-hearted lightening of the sky. Despite being drenched in icy sweat, he awoke safe in his own bed in Kortville, where the worst offenses were rolling through a stop sign or Fetch on the loose.
During the day, he lived as far as he could get from the sand and bombs and blood of Afghanistan. But when he closed his eyes, he couldn’t get far enough.
This time his nightmare had mixed the old visions of Kevin with Becca being thrown backward.
He tossed aside the tangled sheets and grasped the receiver, taking a deep breath to make sure his voice would sound normal. “Hello?”
“The cars are back again,” Zelda Amos said in her customarily grumpy voice.
“The same four?” His lips curved as the past receded and the familiar, safe present eng
ulfed him.
“Yes. And they slammed their doors extra loud this morning. If I can hear it inside my house, it’s surely violating a noise ordinance.”
“Closing a car door, even if you slam it, doesn’t violate a noise ordinance,” Connor said, allowing a wide smile, since Zelda couldn’t see his face. They had the same conversation every morning. “How are you today, other than irritated you were awakened earlier than you wanted to be?”
“Oh, I’ve been up for hours. My hip aches something fierce this week.”
“Have you made a doctor’s appointment yet?” He shifted the phone to speaker, so he could throw on his running gear as he talked.
“Oh, now it isn’t so bad,” she backpedaled.
“Zelda, you promised me for the past three days you would call and make an appointment.”
“Heavenly days, I have potatoes boiling over. I need to go.” The phone clicked dead.
Connor grinned, laced up his sneakers, and left the house. He had the best job in the best town in the world.
…
“Come on, ladies. Ten more reps,” Becca called above the pulsating music. “These stretches will strengthen your abs.”
“I think you misunderstood. I don’t want to look like those man candy pictures. I want to look at them,” Rochelle grumbled.
“Three—four,” Becca counted off resolutely. Nearing the end of the hour, her tired group began to lose focus. “What you want is for the guy with the great abs to look back at you. Picture him in your mind now.”
Becca tried to imagine a Greek tycoon with a stunning supermodel body swaggering toward her while she relaxed on a beach in the Mediterranean. Her chance to travel was drawing tantalizingly close. As soon as Toby had his diploma in hand, she’d book a reservation for her first destination.