On their way, Kerry said, “Did you see those girls clustered around Shay? Maybe she’ll finally make some friends.”
“Shay’s a coach’s dream. Motivated, and with a heart of gold. She’s got it, whatever it is. I wouldn’t mind seeing more kids just like her sign up for fall.”
Alex didn’t stop at the gate but continued to Kerry’s car, where he held her door for her. After she slid in, he stood bent over in the opening with one hand on the roof, giving her a great close-up of those rock-hard abs. “Just to let you know, I still have that chardonnay we liked in the fridge. It’s waiting for you, whenever you’re ready.”
If his compliments for Shay were meant to soften her, they were working. But no. Kerry knew how to read people. That perpetual earnestness etched on Alex’s forehead was the opposite of manipulative. He might have that tough cop persona, but at least, unlike most of the people she dealt with in her job, there wasn’t a fake bone in his body. She hadn’t forgotten how he’d virtually ignored those young chippies at the wine fest. That was no put-on for her benefit. He truly wasn’t interested in them.
“Like I said before, I really don’t date.”
“Neither do I.”
She smirked. “With three kids, it’s not easy for me to get away.”
“That makes it all the more worthwhile.” He smiled down at her, something people did a million times every day, but when Alex did it, it qualified as an event.
The timbre of his voice had her body playing tug-of-war with her resolve.
He’s a cop, she reminded herself. Then again, was she such a bargain? A thirty-eight-year-old mother of three?
“All my brothers have kids. Maybe I can swap babysitting services.”
“I’ll leave the timing up to you. Outside duty hours, I’m at your beck and call.”
He slapped the roof of the car, making her jump in her skin, slammed the door, and stalked back to the pool.
She had driven a couple of blocks before she was able to bite back her smile.
Chapter Fifteen
Alex was giving Kerry a tour of his rental house. He was neat, she had to give him that. You could practically eat off his kitchen floor. His smoke-gray sheets were tucked beneath the mattress with hospital corners and his shoes were lined up in his closet. Now he opened the door for her to step into his minuscule backyard.
“Here’s what sold me. When it’s nice out, I can bring my glass of wine out here to the back patio and watch the birds at my feeders.”
Kerry looked around at a slightly dented ironwork table with matching chairs she suspected had come with the property. Here and there along the edge of yard where it met the woods, bird feeders hung at staggered lengths from tree branches. The only thing moving on this sultry summer evening was a sparrow flitting from branch to branch on an ash tree.
“What do you think?” he asked.
At Kerry’s farmhouse, there was no escape from the three very active and unique kids vying for her attention, and no matter how hard she tried to keep up, there were always toys and shoes scattered from one end of the house to the other. Sometimes, it seemed as though no time had passed since the days when she shared the house with three older brothers who were always talking too loud, having farting contests at the dinner table, or clamoring down the front porch steps, late for practice, with baseball mitts, hockey sticks, or footballs tucked under their arms, depending on the season. Though it might lack privacy, Kerry loved the chaos of a big family. There was no place she would rather be, no place she would rather raise her brood.
In comparison, Alex’s house seemed positively funereal.
“Quiet, isn’t it?”
“Peaceful,” he corrected, proudly surveying the area. “When I’m in the mood to spice things up, I might even bring my laptop out here and watch a movie or work on my blog.”
She lifted a brow. “Wow.”
“I’ll go open the wine. Be right back.”
Kerry wandered out into the yard. This was Alex’s idea of paradise? He wouldn’t last one day at her noisy, unkempt house, coping with her girls’ mood swings, having to scoop up after her wayward dog.
Whatever made her think she and Alex would be compatible?
Well, she was already out now. She had hosted Marcus and Paige’s kids for a sleepover last night in exchange for her freedom tonight, telling everyone she was going shopping. Free for the entire evening. Might as well make the most of it. She’d be decent to Alex. Polite and appreciative. After all, he’d made an effort, and he deserved that. But she would have to think of a tactful way to turn down any future requests for the pleasure of her company.
No dating. That was her unofficial rule, and she’d do well to stick to it. But sometimes, late at night, she imagined a future when her kids had flown the nest, and she pictured herself finishing out her life alone and lonely. That’s when she started berating herself all over again for the mistakes that had put her into this position.
* * *
“Here you go.” Alex returned to find Kerry seated at the wrought-iron table. He handed her the promised glass of chardonnay.
She sipped from it and lightly smacked her lips. “Ah, yes. I remember this one.”
“I’m thinking of blogging about it,” Alex said, holding it up to the light to judge its honey-gold color. “But lately, whenever I sit down to type, I—”
He caught himself.
“You what?”
He lowered his glass. “Remember that night at the Turning Point, when you called me out for being grammatically challenged?”
“In response to your insulting lawyer joke?” Just like that, the edge was back in her voice.
“Probably not the smartest thing to bring up on a date, huh?”
“A little late to think of that now. Where did that come from anyway?”
Alex rubbed his finger across the incised pattern of the tabletop. Their shared history had to come out eventually. He hadn’t planned on it being tonight, but he supposed now was as good a time as any. “You really don’t remember?”
She blinked and shook her head. “Remember what?”
“The Sullivan case.”
Her eyes got a faraway look, then widened in recognition. “Officer Walker. You testified for the prosecution. That was you.”
“I could never forget if I lived to be a hundred.”
He could almost see her computer brain flipping rapid-fire through a catalog of memories thick as the stack of case files that had lain on the defense’s table . . . the aha moment when she came to that page in the proceedings when he’d been called to testify.
“How long have you—” She cut herself off. “You knew that was me that first night, at the Turning Point, didn’t you?”
You’re hard to forget. And yet, she had apparently had no trouble forgetting him.
He huffed a laugh to cover the chasm of emptiness inside. “If seeing you in person wasn’t enough, your name and face were on TV. Guess you’re used to that.”
“Not so much anymore. The embezzlement trial got a lot of press here in Newberry, but you know how it was back in the city. There was always plenty of fodder for the media. Only the biggest stories had legs.”
She cocked her head. “What are you really doing in Newberry?”
He paused. “Looking for something better. You?”
“I already told you. Looking for a place to raise my kids.”
She sounded like a different person than she had a minute earlier. Like the woman who had grilled him on the stand, lighting a spark of anger that had added to the chain events leading to him quitting his job, moving to Newberry, and finally to this moment.
“We’re both professionals with jobs to do. I hope you didn’t take it personally.”
“That an attempted murderer walked?”
“It’s moot, now. There’s no point in rehashing it.”
The anger that still burned invisibly beneath Alex’s surface like a mine fire in one of those hapless, deserted coa
l towns erupted. “At least I can sleep at night, knowing I make an honest living.”
Kerry rose from her chair and slung her bag over her shoulder. “Is this what you do for fun when you’re not conducting illegal searches? Ask women out on dates and then ruin their night?”
Back when they were investigating the crime scene, Alex had heard his partner secure the verbal permission of the defendant’s roommate to search for the weapon. Under the law, this permission only extended to the apartment’s common areas—the kitchen, bathroom, and living room. Not the defendant’s bedroom, where the gun had ultimately been found.
It was Alex’s word against the roommate’s. But he had told the truth and paid the price. Not only had the bad guy walked on the grounds of illegal search and seizure, Alex had lost his longtime partner and friend when the guy asked to be transferred. None of which would have happened were it not for his stubborn need to help people. That’s why he became a cop in the first place. Even as a kid, helping others was all he’d ever wanted to do. But it always seemed to go sideways.
“Kerry—” She’d just got here, and he’d blown it.
“For your information, Officer Walker, I happen to like certain aspects of being a defense attorney. Maybe I get people who are flawed and complicated. Most of my clients have the same hopes and fears, aspirations and despairs you and I do. They might have made mistakes, but they’re not evil.
“I don’t look at my job as just asking for bond reduction, investigating the evidence, and filing motions. I take a bigger view. My work is upholding the Bill of Rights. Making sure peoples’ constitutional rights are protected.
“And with three kids to support, I’d like to know what other choice I have. Maybe if their fathers, who happen to be—oh, that’s right, cops—would step up to the plate, I would have opted to stay in the prosecutor’s office. But kids have this annoying need for things like lunch money and braces and . . . boxing lessons. Not that you would know anything about that.”
She was already striding around the side of the house to the driveway where her car was parked when Alex caught up with her.
“Kerry. Wait.”
She arched a brow at his fingers gripping her arm, and his hand sprang away as if scalded.
“Don’t leave. We have a whole bottle of chardonnay to drink.”
“What’s the point?” she huffed, now almost to the driveway. “This could never work. We’re too different.”
“No, we’re not.”
She halted at her car, giving him a scathing look. “Name one thing we have in common.”
She was the eloquent one. When it came to words, he stunk. He planted his feet in front of her and his tongue battled for the right response, his lips forming around first one and then another attempt, discarding each in turn.
Kerry huffed with impatience and reached for her car door.
By some stroke of luck, he’d gotten Kerry O’Hearn—the woman whose image was tattooed on his mind—here, and now she was slipping right through his fingers.
Alex had always been better with his hands than words. He grabbed her upper arms and positioned her against her car.
“We’re both as stubborn as—as two . . . pigheaded. . . mules,” he finally spat, with a tightly controlled jolt for good measure.
Kerry’s forehead scowled above eyes flaring with self-righteousness, her breath rushing in and out of parted lips.
Those lips. He had never been able to forget them. And now they were only inches away, so temptingly close he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them.
He gulped. Chances like this didn’t come along twice in a lifetime. He leaned forward, wanting to taste them, to revel in their plump fullness.
He dipped his head and crushed them against his.
* * *
In the onslaught of Alex’s kiss, Kerry forgot all the reasons why the two of them were so wrong for each other. Forgot to think, period. Her brain flew off to a tropical island, put up its feet, and sipped a margarita through a straw, leaving behind only pure, unadulterated feelings in charge. And as anyone old enough to have sworn off dating well knew, feelings were the most unreliable basis on which to make decisions. Feelings were treacherous, sneaky, and lacking good judgment. If feelings were a person, they’d be your barefoot, eight-months-pregnant second cousin wearing a skintight T-shirt that shouts KISS MY BASS with a cigarette dangling from her lips.
Kerry’s world zoomed in small . . . smaller, until all that remained was the feel of Alex’s wet, warm mouth on hers, her blood pulsing through her veins, her breasts pressed against his hard chest. His hands on her arms held her up so her heels had left the ground, only her toes in tenuous touch with reality.
The truth was, the moment Alex mentioned the Sullivan trial, her recollection came rushing back like a tsunami. She did remember him. At the time of the trial she was practically a newlywed, and Chloé a colicky infant. Kerry was strained to the breaking point from lack of sleep and preparing for the biggest trial of her career. If there was ever a wrong time to be attracted to a man, let alone an opponent, that was it. So why did she flush and get a buzzing in her head whenever he entered the courtroom? Post-pregnancy hormones running amok, she had scolded herself.
It all came back to her now. The very air between them shimmered like heat waves on a country road in August. That disconcerting, syrupy feeling low in her belly when she paced the floor, roasting him on the witness stand. Those stormy eyes, searing through her tough business suit to the woman she was inside . . . she had the sneaking suspicion he knew the color of her lingerie. At the time, she’d chalked it up to a cop’s self-righteous anger. But even then, she knew she was in denial. The primal connection they shared was unanticipated, unwelcome, downright disturbing, and just plain wrong. She had no choice but to deny, deny, deny. Apparently, she’d done an exemplary job of it. Until now.
Dinga-dong-dong-dinga-ding-dong.
As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, Alex let her go. Her heels hit the ground, her breath came out in a whoosh, and she staggered to stay upright. But only for a second, because now he was embracing her, his hands everywhere, grasping, adoring, now cupping the back of her head, now slipping deftly under her shirt to span her lower back, and he was kissing her again, only this time her own traitorous arms were snaking around his waist and his neck, and now her tongue was meeting his, thrust for thrust.
Dinga-dong-dong-dinga-ding-dong. Louder, this time.
“Mmmmwwwa!” She managed to wrest her head to the side, breaking the suction. “My phone,” she gasped, her lips feeling bruised and swollen.
With a sigh, her brain set down its frozen concoction and asked, What now? Can’t you manage without me for one instant?
She fumbled in her bag as the phone rang yet a third time, jangling nerves that were already shot to hell.
Paige, her sister-in-law. Automatically, scenes of medics running with stretchers and red lights flashing in the background sprang to mind.
“What’s wrong?” she blurted breathlessly.
“Tsk,” Paige clucked her disapproval.
Kerry felt as transparent as Saran Wrap. She imagined Paige frowning at her smeared mascara and lips that felt like fat, overripe strawberries.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Paige continued, sounding a touch miffed. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you trust your own sister-in-law to watch your kids for an evening?” She chuckled then. “Anyhoo, sorry to interrupt, but Marcus and I were thinking of taking the kids for a drive to the river, but that’ll mean we probably won’t be back by the time you get home. I figured you wouldn’t mind. More shopping time for you, right? But if you—”
“No,” snapped Kerry, slipping a thumb under a bra strap and yanking it up, the skin on her lower back still humming with the touch of Alex’s hand, her insides feeling dangerously liquid. “I’m coming home.”
“What? You’ve only been gone an hour. You don’t have to—”
“I said I’m coming home now. I’ll
pick up the kids at your place, and then you and Marcus and your kids can go on ahead to the river.”
While poor Paige tried to make sense of Kerry’s sudden change of plans, Alex backed up just far enough for Kerry to open her car door and slip behind the wheel.
“Okayyyy,” said Paige finally.
Kerry had but one goal—to escape from Alex’s tempting kisses, the intoxicating feel of his hands on her body. She tossed her phone onto the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition, and shoved the gearshift into reverse.
Alex leaned on the ledge of the window that had been left open because of the heat. “Something else we have in common . . .”
The intensity in his face was almost more than she could bear, but she couldn’t back up with him halfway in her car. She averted her eyes and stared, unseeing, out the windshield.
He reached in, cupped her chin, and kissed her yet again, and damned if she didn’t surrender to him again, so hungry for his lips that she shifted into park so she didn’t accidentally jam her foot on the gas and drag him backward along with the car.
Just when she was seriously considering going back inside with him and tearing apart his carefully made bed, he withdrew, leaving her feeling inexplicably bereft.
“. . . passion,” he finished.
Confusion reigned in her. She could never fall for another cop. So then how could she explain these feelings? She needed time, that’s all. Time to think. Time to come back to her usually logical senses.
She shifted into reverse yet again.
Alex took a step backward.
But in her peripheral vision she couldn’t help but see him standing there watching her until she was out of sight.
Chapter Sixteen
Two days after Kerry O’Hearn’s visit, Alex’s head was still back in his driveway, savoring her lush kisses, while his body lounged at a table with his first cup of sludge from the office pot, half listening to Chief Garrett’s morning briefing.
No sooner had he moved to Newberry than Kerry had rocked his world on its axis. He felt the need to re-evaluate, restore his lost sense of balance. Instead of taking notes on Chief’s briefing, he was taking notes on his life.
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