by Cathie Linz
“Whoa.” She nearly choked on the last bit of her kolachki. “How do you figure that?”
“If we don’t, they’ll just keep putting us together. Who knows what they’ll pull next.”
“They seem like reasonable women to me.”
“Trust me, they’re not,” Connor said.
“They’re only going to be here a few more days.”
“You have no idea the havoc they could wreak in that time.”
“And you do?”
He nodded. “You bet I do.”
“Come on. They’re just a pair of women and you’re a big strong cop. Don’t tell me you can’t handle them.”
“Can you handle your family?”
“Sometimes.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes I can handle mine, too. Just not now, apparently.”
“What’s different now?” she asked.
“You.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You had to tweak the tiger.”
“They don’t look like tigers to me,” Marissa said.
“Little do you know.”
“So you keep telling me. You know, I am not the Pollyanna you seem to think I am.”
“Sure you are. A divorced Pollyanna but still, one wearing rose-colored glasses.”
She glared at him. “You take that back.”
“So you don’t believe that people are basically good?”
“No,” Marissa said. “Not everyone is good.” Her ex certainly wasn’t.
“But you think the kids in your group are good?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
He shrugged.
“Okay, I may be a bit of an optimist compared to you,” she said. “But that’s setting the bar pretty low. If you don’t think the kids are good then why are you working so hard to help them?”
“Because they can be prevented from…”
“From what?” she interrupted him. “From making mistakes? They’re going to make mistakes. We all make them and learn from them.”
“What have you learned from your mistakes? That men aren’t to be trusted?”
“Bingo.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “Thinking that is a mistake and you’ll just have to learn from it.”
“Learn what?”
“That there is a guy you can trust,” he said.
“You?” she said bluntly.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Of course you didn’t. You speak in riddles.” She gathered her purse and tote bag. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”
“I heard we could be in for some big storms this evening,” he warned her as she left.
Great. Just what she needed. More stress.
* * *
The weather gods granted Marissa with enough time to climb into her tub filled with citrusy bubbles and soak for a few minutes with her remaining bag of French fries in hand. She’d gone through the drive-through and made her selections and eaten most of them the minute she walked in the door. Time was of the essence if she wanted to beat the storm.
The distant rumbling of thunder made her feel so edgy she almost dropped a fry into the water. She finished the last one and crumpled the paper, tossing it toward the wastebasket near the sink.
“You go, girl!” she congratulated herself as she made the basket. Once she’d completed washing up, she carefully got out of the tub and dried herself off before wrapping a floral cotton robe around her body. The familiar feel of the soft material reassured her but a nearby flash of lightning had her nearly slipping on the damp bathroom floor.
She waited for the ensuing clap of thunder, which sounded like an explosion. She felt as if nature was declaring war on her. The threatening storm clouds had turned the early evening to premature darkness.
She tried to stay calm, brushing her teeth in an attempt to focus on normal everyday things. She had a weather radio set to turn on automatically if a watch or warning was issued. The sound of the automated voice startled her. “The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning effective until eight thirty P.M.” Their county was listed. “Cities in the line of this storm include Hopeful.” She didn’t hear the rest. She heard all she needed to know.
“Severe thunderstorms don’t mean tornadoes,” she told herself. The sound of her own voice was drowned out by increasing loud bangs of thunder.
Wait, some of those bangs were coming from her front door. Someone was knocking. She was so rattled she opened the door without looking through the security peephole first to see who it was.
“Are you okay?” Connor asked. “I know you don’t like storms.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “Because of the tornado.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“So storms no longer bother you?”
A nearby crack of thunder made her jump and contradicted her statement.
His smile told her he’d noticed.
“You bother me,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” He was clearly pleased with her admission.
“Don’t smirk at me. That’s not a good thing.”
“What’s not a good thing? Storms or the fact that I bother you?”
“Either one of those.”
“I wasn’t smirking, by the way,” he added.
“Right. I know a smirk when I see one. You also have a tendency to glower. Especially when you’re around the kids.”
“That’s my cop face.”
“It’s not nice.”
“It’s not supposed to be.”
With his declaration, the electricity went out. Somehow she ended up in his arms, her face turned up to his. The next thing she knew, he was kissing her.
Chapter Eleven
Marissa closed her eyes and parted her lips. This was the guy who’d taught her how to French kiss and he was still a master. Not that he tugged her into the deep end of the sensual pool. He started out hot and gentle before progressing to hot and hungry.
Her sensual memory recalled his moves despite the long passage of time. Lightning flashed around her and the thunder mirrored the boom of her heart as his right hand moved from cupping her face to caressing her throat before lowering to slide beneath her robe and cup her bare breast.
It had been so long since she’d been kissed this way, touched this way. The last man to do so had been her husband. Her ex-husband. And he’d never really kissed her like this. He’d never touched her as if she were the most precious and sexy woman on the planet. He’d never made her feel treasured as well as desired.
Marissa needed this. And Connor was giving it to her. One kiss blended into several as he rhythmically brushed his thumb over her nipple. She was completely bare beneath the thin cotton of her robe. He had only to lower his hand over her hip to reach her feminine core. They were in the semi-darkness. What was to stop them?
Another bright flash of lightning brought with it a sliver of reality. Connor had come to check on her. His mother had probably sent him. That possibility was like a dash of cold water.
She broke away from him. “We can’t do this.” Her fingers shook as she refastened her robe.
“Why not?”
“Because your mother is next door. Your grandmother, too.”
“So?”
“So this is too weird.”
“Weird?” She could tell by the tone of his voice that he was clearly insulted.
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. “Are you two okay in there?” his mom loudly called out.
“We’re fine,” Connor answered.
“You said you were going to check on Marissa because she’s scared of storms,” his mom said.
“Maybe he just made up the scared thing,” Grandma Sophie said loudly.
Connor turned to Marissa. “Okay, I can see your point now about the weird factor.”
Marissa opened the door to his family. “Connor didn’t make it up. Storms really do spook me.” So did sexy cops who kissed better than any
guy she’d ever locked lips with. At seventeen, she’d thought Connor was an awesome kisser and she realized that hadn’t changed. It was a disturbingly exciting discovery.
“You were gone a long time, Connor.” His mom aimed a compact flashlight in his face. “I always travel with one of these, but we were getting worried.” Then she looked at Marissa, who was hurriedly checking her robe to make sure nothing was showing that shouldn’t be.
“We were looking for a candle,” he said.
“That was thoughtful of you,” Grandma Sophie said.
The lights went on as abruptly as they’d gone out.
“It sounds like the worst of the storm has passed,” Marissa said. “And the electricity is back on so I’ll be fine, Connor.”
“Don’t take a bath while there’s any lightning,” Grandma Sophie said. “I had a friend back in Chicago who was electrocuted by taking a bath. Lightning hit her house and traveled through the metal pipes.”
“Now you’ve given Marissa something else to spook her,” his mom said with a chastising look.
“What? What’s wrong with what I said?” Grandma Sophie demanded.
“I think we should leave Marissa in peace now,” Connor said. He herded his relatives out.
“I just didn’t want her to get electrocuted,” Marissa heard Grandma Sophie say as they all headed to Connor’s apartment. “Getting a shock like that would not be a good thing.”
Marissa raised her index finger to her lips, which still vibrated from Connor’s kiss. She was shocked at how much pleasure she’d gotten from the feel of his mouth on hers. Shocked and awed…and that wasn’t necessarily always a good thing. Not in her current circumstances.
* * *
“I raised you to be thoughtful,” Connor’s mom told him once they were inside his apartment. “Not to make out with the nice girl next door.”
“You’ve been trying to hook me up with her since the second you arrived,” he said.
“No.” She frowned her disapproval. “Not ‘hook up.’ You think I don’t go online and read the blogs and stuff? I know what ‘hook up’ means these days. It means sex. Marissa is a good girl. She’s not the kind you take advantage of. Not that you should take advantage of any woman. That’s not what I meant.” She paused. “Where was I?”
“You were telling Connor not to have sex with Marissa,” his grandmother said.
His mom nodded. “Right.”
“I don’t believe this,” Connor muttered. “I need a beer.”
“You don’t want to become dependent on alcohol,” his mother said, trailing after him as he headed for the fridge. “That’s a dangerous road. You saw what happened with your father. As the child of an alcoholic, you may be more prone to become one yourself, not to mention the fact that you’re a cop like him.”
“I’m not like him,” Connor said. He’d heard this lecture a million times before.
“I only know that you were not over there looking for a candle. Unless Marissa stores them under her robe?”
He wore his cop face and his most intimidating glare but his mom didn’t budge. So he tried logic. “The only thing Marissa and I have in common is that we are both anti-marriage.”
“Meaning you want to have sex with her and not marry her?” Grandma Sophie smacked his arm. “You were raised better than that.”
Connor didn’t say that he’d already had sex with Marissa when he was a freshman in college. He didn’t want to say anything. None of this was anyone’s business but his.
“What have you got against marriage?” his mother demanded.
“The fact that it ends in divorce,” he said.
“That is a problem,” his grandmother conceded.
“Marissa is still recovering from her divorce.” Connor said it as much as a reminder for himself as for his relatives.
“Then you need to go slow with her,” his mom said.
Connor set his beer on the kitchen counter. “She’s not interested.”
“She looked interested to me,” his mom said.
“Me, too,” his grandmother agreed.
“I am not having this conversation with you two. End of discussion.” He walked away and turned on the TV to a baseball game.
“If that’s what you want…then fine,” his mother noted. “End of that discussion for now. But please change the channel. I can’t stand to watch the Cubs lose another game.”
“Maybe they’ll win.”
“And maybe pigs can fly,” she retorted.
“Actually, they can at the Rhubarb Festival. One of the booths has plastic toy pigs you can toss at a pile of empty cans to see how many you can knock down.”
“Just one of the many things I’m looking forward to at the festival,” his mom said.
Connor was looking forward to the time when the festival was over and his relatives would head back to Chicago. He loved them, but he loved them more when they weren’t in his apartment grilling him about his sex life.
* * *
“Wouldn’t it be nice if you met a nice guy here in Hopeful and the two of you settled down to raise a family?” Her mom voiced the comment out of the blue as she and Marissa ate a packed lunch on a picnic table at the compact Book Street Park located across the street from the library. Marissa was on her hour lunch break from work, where things were crazy as they all geared up for the library’s participation in the Rhubarb Festival. The bottom line was that her mom’s tempting promise of cold shrimp salad was too hard to resist.
“Where is this coming from?” Marissa said. “I thought you wanted to talk about the Rhubarb Festival tomorrow and Jess’s birthday next week.”
“I do. That doesn’t mean I can’t share my hopes and dreams for your future along with my salad.”
“My hope and dream is to make it from paycheck to paycheck and to hopefully put a little away for emergencies,” Marissa said.
“Or you could hook up with a nice guy and let him take care of you.”
Marissa angrily jabbed a plastic fork into a plump shrimp. “The way Brad took care of me?”
“Obviously not. The sheriff is a nice guy. Granted, he wasn’t all that polite when you first arrived but he seems to have gotten over that. I really enjoyed the time we spent at his place with his mom and grandma. They seemed to have raised him right.”
Marissa stayed quiet. She should have said that she didn’t need a man to take care of her but the truth was that when she was lying awake in the middle of the night worrying about bills and debts, a part of her did wish for a partner to help her through tough times. A little help and moral support would be so nice.
That’s what she thought she’d have with Brad. Instead he’d left her empty and scared.
You’re tough, she silently reminded herself. You’re better off depending on yourself. Then you won’t be disappointed. If you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. That applied to moral support, too. Easier said than done, though.
“Let’s talk about Jess’s birthday,” Marissa said firmly. Anything was better than listening to her mom try to reunite Marissa with the guy who was Marissa’s first love.
“I thought I’d make her favorite red velvet cake.”
“Uh-huh.” Marissa was already thinking about work, making a mental list of things to be done before tomorrow.
“And I got her a gift card from her favorite online store.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I also dumped your dad and had sex with Jon Bon Jovi.”
Marissa almost choked on her salad but managed to keep a straight face. “How was it?”
Her mom threw a balled-up paper napkin at her. “You weren’t paying attention to me. I get enough of that from your father. I don’t need you taking a page out of his book. His ancient Egyptian book.”
“I’m sorry.” She squeezed her mom’s hand.
“You were always more like him than me.”
The accusation stung. “That’s not true.”
“You both stick y
our nose in a book and ignore the people around you.”
“You mean that Jess is more like you. Outgoing and a former beauty queen.”
“We share the honor of both being former Rhubarb Queens, that’s true. I just wish…”
“What?”
“That you were happy,” her mom said quietly.
“Yeah,” Marissa said. “I wish that, too.”
* * *
Connor glanced up from the paperwork he was dealing with on his desk to find Ruby Mae standing there with a look on her face that did not bode well for him.
He sighed and put down his pen. “What’s my mother done now?”
“She and your grandmother are driving me nuts.”
Welcome to the club, Connor wanted to say but didn’t. “I thought I was being polite by offering to give them a tour of the facility here,” Ruby Mae said.
“And?”
Ruby Mae stuttered and shook her head over her own inability to communicate her frustration with the situation.
That’s when Connor knew it was really serious. Ruby Mae was never at a loss for words. He’d heard stories about her going back decades. Even during the disastrous tornado, which had struck her first year on the job, she’d been in total control throughout the chaotic aftermath. Or so he’d heard and he believed. Nothing rattled her.
But then she’d never met “two Polish broads from Chicago,” as his paternal grandfather Buddy referred to them. They were indeed a force of nature.
Connor immediately went into triage mode. “Was any blood spilled? Any bones broken? Anyone seriously hurt?”
Ruby Mae shook her head. “Nothing like that. Not that I wasn’t tempted.”
“Where are they now?” he asked.
“Talking with the mayor.”
“Why? What did my mom do wrong?”
“Where should I begin?” Ruby Mae sank into the visitor’s chair across from him and briefly lowered her head to the edge of his desk before sitting up and glaring at him. “You should have warned me that they’re dangerous.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far.”
“They wanted to look at our holding cells, so I showed them.”
Connor could see where this was going. “Don’t tell me you let them near the busted cell…”