She knew better than this. Jackson Knight had trouble written all over his handsome face. The kind of trouble she couldn’t afford. She’d worked her butt off to shake her rebellious image, and going on a date with Jackson, even a pretend one—after arresting him no less—had only given the town a reason to remember the way she used to be.
And that was before their picture had been taken.
Jackson left her to mull it all over in silence, and the second he pulled up in front of the apartment building she barely lived in anymore, she couldn’t scramble out of the car fast enough.
“Hold up a second.”
She shut the door but leaned into the window.
“Today didn’t go like I’d planned.”
Not the way anyone had planned, Hayley thought, resisting the urge to ask him exactly how he had planned for their fake date to go.
Jackson stared out the windshield, and she took a step back from the car. “Bye, Jackson.”
“It wasn’t just because of the picture.” The words came out rushed, like he might trip over them if he didn’t get them out. “The kiss, I mean.”
The rough confession was either the perfect line or he meant every word, and no matter how much she tried to fight it, her body responded as though it was the latter, warming her head to foot.
“Sure you’re not just trying to smooth things out with the cop who arrested you?”
“Absolutely,” he admitted, grinning. “That doesn’t mean I’ve ever kissed anyone like that either.”
The warmth gave way to a knee-weakening flush almost as potent as their kiss had been.
“Bye, Hayley.” He smiled again, the sexy curve of his lips making her think crazy thoughts that went against her better judgment. She’d just reminded herself why being anywhere near him was a bad idea, and she still found herself half wanting to crawl across the seat and see if what happened in the lobby had just been some crazy fluke.
She settled on keeping her distance, knowing it was for the best, but couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Your kissing skills have improved.” Smiling, she didn’t wait to hear his response, but felt him watch her until she reached the front of her building and let herself inside.
Welcome home, Jackson.
Jackson sat in his car long after Hayley had gone inside. What the hell had she meant by that?
It crossed his mind to turn off his car and find out, but he doubted she’d let him in. She wanted him to stew over that tidbit. Probably wanted to drive him crazy wondering about it, and damned if he wasn’t halfway there already.
He would have remembered kissing Matt’s sister, and he’d never had so much to drink that he would have forgotten something like that.
And after that kiss at the inn—poorly timed though it might have been—he was even more convinced something like that would have stayed with him.
He’d been fighting the impulse to kiss her for most of day, and somewhere between his frustration with the wedding and his unexpected attraction to her, he’d just gone with his gut.
The camera had registered only a moment before he’d made up his mind to reach for her, and it ceased to matter the second she was in his arms. He wasn’t sure if she believed that it wasn’t just about putting on a show. The fact that she’d looked like maybe she wanted to get back in the car nearly as bad as he wanted her to gave him hope.
Determined to figure out this mystery kiss on his own, he finally drove away.
A few minutes from Hayley’s place he passed the hospital, trying hard not to think of Mitch Stone. It didn’t work.
Distracting himself with thoughts of what just happened between him and Hayley wasn’t even enough to keep him from remembering what Matt had told him that afternoon.
Coach had cancer. Fuck.
The tough old bastard was the reason he’d been drafted, and the thought of that disease eating away at him made Jackson’s gut ache. He pulled in to the parking lot even though he’d rather do anything than face Mitch Stone. The old man was dying, and Jackson didn’t have anything for his coach to be proud of. Not anymore.
He turned off the car once he found a place to park but stayed where he was, dragging it out. He wasn’t sure what the hospital’s visiting hours were, but maybe that didn’t matter so much with palliative care. He gripped the wheel hard then climbed out.
Counting on the small hospital not to have changed all that much, he headed up to the fourth floor. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d walked these halls after countless sports injuries growing up.
The area outside the double doors marked Palliative Care was quiet and Jackson hesitated. He should come back another time. He even turned around, but never made it to the elevator, changing his mind.
He pushed through the doors, noticing the different in atmosphere almost immediately. The walls were painted a warm yellow instead the industrial off-white found in the rest of the hospital. The scent of antiseptic was much softer, and he didn’t hear the usual buzz of monitoring devices.
Jazz music drifted from a room down the hall, and two people laughed at something as he passed a waiting room of sorts. But instead of uncomfortable, practical chairs lining the perimeter, plush leather couches and a big flat-screen television filled the space.
He didn’t reach the nurses’ station before stumbling across Mitch’s room. The hockey paraphernalia decorating the door, along with posters depicting stick figures on the ice proclaiming Mitch the best coach ever, gave the room away.
Something familiar caught his eyes, and he studied the crayon picture long enough to notice the kid on the ice was wearing his hockey jersey number. A second stick figure with bulging eyes and a trademark toothpick between his lips yelled, “Go, Jackson, go.” Coach.
His throat tightened up and he couldn’t make himself take another step inside the room.
“He’s sleeping.”
Jackson turned toward the voice. A woman in her midfifties emerged from the room across the hall. She crossed to him and nudged the door open enough to give him a peek inside.
He wished to hell she hadn’t.
His first instinct was to tell her there had to be some mistake. Mitch Stone had been a big, burly man, too much life in him to ever be confined to a meager hospital bed that nearly swallowed him.
Christ.
She closed the door and offered a friendly smile. “I hope you’ll come back tomorrow. He’s been talking about you more than usual lately.”
Jackson managed a nod, staring hard at the closed door for a long moment.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Mitch Stone was not supposed to go like this. Not fading away while cancer ravaged his body.
Frustration tore at Jackson. Something else that was beyond his control.
He made it to his car, holding on to the helpless emotion lodged in his chest, then lashed out. The hood of his car vibrated under the force of his fist, the pain barely penetrating his thoughts.
Palms down on the car, he dragged in a deep breath, then another. And another.
He dug out his keys and slid behind the wheel, cranking the music until it drowned out everything else. The drive back to his parents’ wasn’t long enough to settle the relentless ache wedged between his lungs. He tried watching television for a couple hours, then gave up, contemplating heading to Stone’s to see if Matt was there. In the end he decided to go for a run.
The sun was dropping behind the trees when he cranked his iPod up until he couldn’t even hear himself think, and ran until his muscles burned and his knee throbbed. By that time his thoughts had returned once more to Hayley.
She was a whirlwind. Cool, calm and collected cop meets animal activist and loyal best friend with a mouth hot enough to melt a polar ice cap.
And just like that running became uncomfortable. He slowed to a walk, a little annoyed that something as simple as a memory of one kiss could make him harder than a sixteen-year-old flipping through a borrowed Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
&nbs
p; God damn.
He turned down a dead-end street. Spotting the lake through the trees should have made him feel like he was breathing through a straw all over again. Instead he felt himself grinning, reminded of winters he’d played hockey on that lake in mid-January.
Fifty feet to the southeast of the house on the lake was exactly what he needed. He didn’t know what he’d do with it exactly, but something.
The house was dark and he found the shed unlocked like always. Coach hadn’t locked it for as long as he could remember. The light switch inside worked for about half a second then fizzled out, plunging him back into darkness.
He threw both doors wide open, relying on the light from the full moon. A flashlight would have made his search go that much faster, but he couldn’t see one, naturally. Crates of hockey gear of all kinds—gloves, helmets, skates, pads, tape—spilled from boxes stacked higher than Jackson.
He tripped over stuff on the floor and bumped into a tool bench hard enough to knock loose whatever had been hanging on the wall. Squinting to make out the shapes in the dark, he replaced the tools one by one, almost losing a finger to a hatchet or small ax.
Wouldn’t that just be the perfect way to end the day?
Someone really needed to go through this stuff. It was both a hockey enthusiast’s dream and an organizational nightmare all rolled into one. How Coach ever found anything in this chaos made Jackson’s head spin.
Movement to his left had him turning around, ax still in his hand, and then something slammed into him and all he could do was yell.
Chapter Five
“Our perp is getting bolder. He didn’t even wait for it to get dark this time.”
Hayley crouched opposite one of the other detectives. Brian Gauthier was pushing fifty, had been divorced three times and was addicted to lemon-filled doughnuts, and lucky for her, she’d gotten to stare at the gel-like stain on his shirt from said addiction for the past ten minutes.
After Jackson drove away, she’d called her partner back, filling him in on the wedding disaster, then decided she should clean her neglected apartment. When that wasn’t enough to keep him mind of Jackson, she’d changed into her favorite pair of ripped jeans and an old T-shirt, planning to head back to her gramps’ to get more painting done. She hadn’t made it as far as her front door when the call came in about another robbery.
Offering to assist whoever was already on-site had seemed like the perfect distraction after the past twenty-four hours. Things couldn’t possibly get any more surreal.
“You and that hockey player gonna shack up?”
Apparently she was wrong.
Ignoring Gauthier’s question, she glanced from the shallow impression in the mud next to the basement window, and across the private backyard.
Being the last house on the cul-de-sac, the backyard was only visible to the neighbors on one side. The woods bordering the far side of the property left plenty of cover for the perpetrator to get into the yard virtually undetected.
The couple who owned the two-story brick home had been guests at Allie and Josh’s wedding—along with half the town, it seemed—and then had dinner with friends instead of attending the reception. Their arrival had startled the thief, and the couple heard him flee the house, leaving the back door open behind him.
“What alarm company do they use?”
“Big company out of Boston,” Gauthier answered. He moved to the basement window, careful not to disturb the footprint.
Retracing what she’d guessed might have been their guy’s path, she kept her eyes open for any other evidence that would give them the break they needed to nail his ass to the wall. Like every other scene, though, there wasn’t much to go on.
She returned to Gauthier’s side as he picked at the dried lemon on his shirt. Hayley had the strong suspicion he would have lifted his shirt to lick at the stain if she hadn’t been standing there.
“I’m going to check the basement.”
Gauthier didn’t look up from his shirt. “I’ll see if the neighbors saw anything.”
“Okay.” Hayley let herself in the back door, relieved the couple had gone to the neighbors so they wouldn’t be in the way. Hayley didn’t want to be in their house any more than they probably wanted her there, but that just came with the job.
Nothing looked to have been disturbed in the kitchen. Their thief hadn’t wasted precious time here. He’d probably assumed he’d have much better luck with the owners’ home office and upstairs bedrooms.
The owners had already turned on the basement light, making the likelihood of getting a viable print from the switch unlikely, assuming their guy had turned on any unnecessary light. She doubted it though. Would have drawn too much attention.
The space was empty except for a handful of boxes and an old exercise bike. The window used to gain entry into the house had been left unlocked. Since their perpetrator hadn’t needed to smash his way into any of the previous properties, she was betting the window had been unlocked to begin with. Not everyone paid attention to the warnings to keep their cars and houses locked.
“Any viable prints?”
Hayley jumped at the sound of Gauthier’s voice. “Jesus, Brian. How does a linebacker like you get down those stairs without making a peep?”
“Living with a ghost is making you twitchy, Stone.”
She rolled her eyes knowing full well where this was headed. Thanks to Matt and his tendency to exaggerate at work—which then became gospel to anyone drinking enough not to see right through his tall tales—half the people in Promise Harbor were convinced her nan’s spirit haunted Gramps’s house.
One stuck window and a few door slams did not a ghost make in Hayley’s opinion, but people had way too much fun joking about it for Hayley to convince them otherwise.
“You’d think you would be used to being taken by surprise,” Brian continued. “Matt says he can’t even sleep in the place anymore.”
“Matt also believes in Bigfoot and alien abductions.”
Brian waved her off. “He just says that stuff to entertain folks.”
Hayley didn’t disagree, but she knew full well he hadn’t entirely outgrown his childhood fascination with Sasquatch sightings and little green men.
“You think you’ll actually be able to sell that place with it being haunted?”
“It’s not haunted.” Hayley studied the panes of glass and window casing, then branched out to see if they’d missed anything else. “I thought you were going to talk to the neighbors.”
If Hayley had her way, she wouldn’t be selling the place at all. But with her gramps’s rising health costs and stubborn refusal to let anyone else help with the bills, they didn’t have any choice but to sell.
Letting go of the bar to pay his medical expenses wasn’t an option, so that left her gramps’s place. Surprisingly, her gramps was more okay with that than Hayley.
“Figured I’d wait for you. You being a celebrity and all these days.” He held up his hands when she glared at him. “Don’t cuff me.”
Knowing better than to let him bait her, she waved him back upstairs.
As expected the neighbors didn’t have any information they could use. Their suspect, judging by a few vague descriptions and the size of the print in the mud, was male and awfully slick.
Processing the scene wasn’t enough to work off the restless energy from the crazy day, and since she still hadn’t heard from Gavin, she decided to get in a little painting after all. She didn’t bother heading back to her apartment to change. Most of her stuff was at Gramps’s place. Had been for the past couple of weeks so she didn’t have to go back and forth all the time.
She parked her truck in the driveway, but by the time she left her bag by the front door, kicked off her shoes and walked through the dark house, the last couple of nights of too little sleep started catching up with her.
The breeze from the sewing room on the second floor drew her down the hall. The room hadn’t been touched since Nan died tw
o years ago. Gramps had been firm on no changes being made to their home until both of them were gone, and then he’d gotten sick.
Like the den, she was saving this room for the end of the renovations.
She stepped over the plastic that was on the floor to protect the carpet from getting wet and pushed open the curtains. The window had been stuck since they found out her gramps had cancer, and no amount of banging or wiggling had been able to unstick it.
When neither she nor Matt had any luck putting it down, she’d had one of Gavin’s brothers over to take a look. He hadn’t fared any better, and neither had his contractor friend. Replacing the entire window, frame and all, had been their professional opinion, although no one could figure out why the window wasn’t closing to begin with. She’d finally ordered a new custom-made window last week, but it wouldn’t arrive for another couple of weeks.
Hayley dropped down on the old sofa by the door, her brain too tired to think about renovations or work or even Gavin.
That kiss, on the other hand, wasn’t too tiring to think about at all. Replaying the taste and feel of Jackson’s mouth managed to reanimate the butterflies back-flipping in her stomach.
It was really too bad she wouldn’t get to kiss him again, but she wasn’t interested in some casual fling before Jackson left town, which would probably be sooner rather than later with a coaching position in the works.
And kissing him earlier had likely cost her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if that picture taken at the inn started circulating the Net. If she’d ticked off half the town arresting him, she couldn’t imagine what people would say behind her back with a picture like that going around.
Once upon a time she wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought, but all that had changed when she’d turned her life around.
Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding) Page 8