by D. D. Ayres
As she forked the oysters to turn them over in the grease, she began to analyze her feelings so that they could be brought to heel before James emerged from her bathroom. She needed to think of something to talk about over dinner, nothing too personal. And maybe she should go brush her hair. She must look a mess after—
“Crap!” Shay glanced guiltily at the kitchen doorway. She was making plans for the possibility that the man in her bathroom might care how she looked.
As if she had just found a new prospect for her love life.
As if the last disaster hadn’t just stalked out her door.
No! James made her uneasy. For instance, why had he come back? Just because he had turned up in time to stop Eric before things got completely out of control didn’t mean her silent pleas for help had worked. He must have had some other motive.
She glanced down at Bogart. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what’s up with your partner?”
Bogart thumped his tail, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth.
She tossed him a fried oyster which he caught and swallowed without even rising from his prone position.
Afterward, he sat up and barked and offered her his paw.
She laughed and shook it. “Yeah, you’re cute, my charming Prince. But it seems you come with attachments I can’t afford to have in my life.”
When the last oyster had been fried and a salad of kale added to the table to fill out the menu that included black-eyed peas over rice, she glanced at the clock.
He’d been in the bathroom thirty minutes. How much water could one man use?
On the way through the living room, she glanced at her front door. She knew she had locked it after James came back in but she found herself checking, just in case.
All three locks were in place.
Her breath came out in a whoosh of relief. As she turned into the bedroom she heard music coming from behind the bathroom door. No wonder he hadn’t heard her call. He was singing rather loudly to a Jake Owen country and western song.
His rather nice baritone was crooning “can’t be alone with you,” as she tapped on the bathroom door.
No response. She rapped more loudly, saying in a near shout, “Dinner is—”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shay had seen naked men. But not one quite this impressive close-up. He was bigger than he appeared when clothed. As the steam curled out of the room behind him, he seemed to have emerged from some primitive grotto. Muscles she’d felt in their morning struggle and later brief encounter in the hallway were covered in smooth tanned skin lightly furred in a golden pelt that still held a few drops of water from his shower.
Instantly embarrassed to be staring with lips parted in surprise, she looked down. That didn’t help.
The hair on his torso turned darker and sleeker as it arrowed down his flat abdomen, skirted his navel and then sank out of sight behind well-used jeans left unsnapped and half zipped. In fact, the denim seemed precariously hung on the hook of one jutted hip.
“Yes?” A voice from somewhere over her head delivered the word in a quiet, deep register.
Shay closed her mouth. She’d come here to say something. She was pretty sure she had.
“Dinner ready?”
“Yes.” It took her another second to lift her gaze to his face.
A single slick of shaving gel covered the last patch of uncut whiskers. Where he had shaved, the smooth skin of his lower face was drawn taut in a grin.
He must have seen something in her face because he glanced down at himself then muttered, “Oops! Sorry!” He tossed the razor into the sink and used both hands to yank up his zipper.
“And don’t leave a mess in my bathroom.” She spun quickly, and stalked away.
He was watching, she could feel his gaze slide warmly down her spine to her behind. That made her aware of the way her boots made her hips sway.
She turned the corner into the living area before she let herself slump against the wall. Her mouth was dry, her breath tangled up between “oh my God!” and “hot damn!”
The details of him still simmered in her overstimulated senses. The swell of his shoulders, still damp from the shower, were freckled. He smelled of soap and shower steam. There was a small scar on the swell of his right bicep and a small mole above and to the right of his left nipple. Her palms still prickled with the ridiculous urge to touch the whorls framing those flat brown male nipples.
Shay felt her skin ignite as her body betrayed her attraction. Officer Cannon was getting in under her guard. Just by being here, he was taking up valuable space that she desperately needed to keep herself whole.
She struggled with the impulse to turn around and tell him to get out. She didn’t want to share her meal with him. He made her uncomfortably aware that what she really wanted to do was go back in there and join him in that steamy room, and show him what a slutty mind she had.
Shay took a deep breath. If only she had the same courage she did in her imagination. But she was not a wild girl. At least, not outside her head.
She could hear her counselor now. The exaggerated intensity of her emotions was simply because Officer Cannon represented safety and order. And his confident sexual attractiveness was easy to appreciate. She needed to stop fantasizing in order to face her anxieties.
Those thoughts sobered her. Yes, James Cannon was a babe magnet. Probably accustomed to women going all gooey at the sight of him. That’s why he’d thought nothing of opening a door half naked. It wasn’t a come-on. It was a comfortable fact of his life.
She needed to keep it together. An hour and he’d be gone. Plenty of time for a full-blown meltdown after that.
Lifting her bangs from her damp forehead, she straightened up and headed for the kitchen.
Bogart was there waiting for her by the stove, all innocence with his bright eyes trained on her. That’s when she knew there was a problem.
“Oh Prince! You didn’t!”
Prince had gobbled up half the platter of fried oysters.
* * *
Shay stirred her iced tea in silence as she watched James eat. He was nearly done and they hadn’t yet exchanged more than half a dozen words. The silence was worse than talking would have been; it gave her brain nothing to do but be acutely aware of every inch of the man sharing her table. He wore a Henley shirt of waffle fabric and, over that, an unbuttoned flannel shirt to ward off the evening chill. His hair, still damp from the shower, molded to his head in dark wet spikes. She wished she was bold enough to catch on her finger the single bead of water hanging from his right earlobe.
No, she mustn’t touch. Out of her league.
Annoyed with her thoughts, she got up and turned on her digital music player plugged into its dock across the room. It blared to life with a driving beat that scattered the silence.
Bogart sat up and glanced at her, his head and ears cocked to take in the unfamiliar music.
James continued to eat in silence because every time he looked up, his hostess was staring at his plate as if he were her last customer whose idling over his meal was keeping her past the end of her shift.
When he’d opened the bathroom door he hadn’t thought about the fact he was shirtless until he saw the blush flare in her cheeks and her top teeth catch her lower lip. She looked vulnerable and wary, and yet he knew she could be tough and bold. Because there, behind the surprise and instinctive modesty, was the shimmer of sexual interest. He’d felt himself expanding in reaction to the curiosity in those tortoiseshell eyes.
James swallowed, hard. He was thinking way too much about things he shouldn’t. Her interest died soon enough. He saw it the second she began to recoil. She must have thought he was being deliberately provocative with his unzipped jeans.
When he’d entered the kitchen, he half expected her to change her mind about him staying for dinner.
He stole a look at her plate, empty but for a smear of black-eyed peas and three rice grains. She’d said he’d taken so long to dr
ess that she’d eaten her share of oysters ahead of him. He wondered if she had lied about having enough to share, and was forgoing the oysters so that he could eat the plateful she’d served him. If so, it was too bad for her. Honest to God, it was so good he wanted it all.
“When is the last time you had a meal?” she asked, as if she had read his mind.
A corn bread muffin paused halfway to his mouth. “Yesterday. I was too busy trying to keep my ass out of a sling today to think about food. According to the sheriff’s office and my sergeant, I broke enough rules today to get me fired.”
“Sounds intense.”
He shook his head. “If I was in serious trouble I’d have been sent home by escort.”
“That kind of stuff happen to you often?”
“Never before.”
James put his muffin down and gave her a level look. “I’m a by-the-book police officer. You don’t make the K-9 unit unless you’re above average in performance. That’s not a boast. It’s a fact. I made it on my first try. Even harder. What happened here today, that was about Bogart.”
“What about Pri—Bogart?”
James felt deep emotion push up through his police armor of professional distance when he thought about how long and hard he’d searched for his partner.
Embarrassed, he took a long gulp of his iced tea. He remembered being told the first day of training that when a K-9 officer served what was often a graveyard shift, night after night, just you and your dog, a bond of mutual respect and interdependence developed as tight as with any human partner. He and Bogart lived alone, ate alone, patrolled alone. How to explain a connection like that and not sound obsessive?
Then he remembered how fond she’d grown of Bogart in their few weeks together and knew he would be revealing their relationship to a sympathetic listener. Even so, he found himself staring at his plate as he spoke.
“He’s not a pet. I mean, Bogart’s my friend and I take care of him, feed him, and I enjoy his company off duty. But he’s really something special. Not one dog in a thousand can do what he does and do it as well, every time he’s asked. He’s tenaciously loyal and I completely trust him. He would die for me so I try to make certain that won’t occur because of a mistake I made. I’d give my right arm to protect him.”
He glanced at her to see the effect his words were having. She was still looking at him expectantly.
“I don’t expect you to understand but when I saw him last night, alive after I thought he could be dead … Something snapped.” He ran a hand across his mouth. “I’m not proud of it.”
“That’s some speech. You practicing it on me for your sergeant?”
That forced a chuckle from him. “How’d I do?”
“I’d cut the ‘right arm’ crap. Sounds lame.” She reached for the last oyster on his plate and stuck it in her mouth.
He smiled, almost accustomed to her contrariness after a day of exposure.
“Who is the woman who stole him from you?”
James shrugged. “A mistake. You ever make a mistake in a relationship?”
She glanced away at that. “All the time.”
“If you want, next time I see this Eric guy I can clear up any misunderstanding about our relationship.”
“We don’t have a relationship.”
“No?” He forked a last mouthful of peas and rice into his mouth, his gaze never leaving her face.
Shay felt a quiver run through her. From the moment she met him, she’d thought James Cannon was one unemotional son of a gun, except where his partner was concerned. But gazing across less than two feet of space into eyes so ridiculously blue they made her think of heat-blasted summer skies, she knew she’d made a mistake. Behind the cool law enforcement exterior, there was a lava flow of emotion held in check by a cocky grin. At the moment, all of that was directed at her.
Run. You don’t need this. You can’t handle it.
Needing to put distance between them, she picked up their plates and carried them to the sink before she spoke again. “You should be getting on the road.”
James nodded and tossed Bogart the last bite of his muffin. “You’re a great cook. Don’t know when I’ve eaten better. Only I won’t tell my sister Allyson.”
“You have lots of family?” She didn’t know why she asked when she was trying to get rid of him.
“Yes. Three sisters. All older, all married. So, two nephews and two nieces, plus my folks. And that’s just the immediate family. You?”
“No one.” She busied herself scraping plates with nothing left on them. “Mom died three years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. So, what do you do?”
She shrugged. She knew she shouldn’t have started another conversation. It had just spawned questions she didn’t want to answer. That’s what cops did, ask questions.
But he was persistent. “What do you do for a living?”
Her expression flattened out as she turned around. “Nothing special.”
James came to his feet. Obviously the casual chitchat was over. Still, his ever-professional gaze narrowed in on her posture.
She was leaning her hips against the sink, a seemingly relaxed pose. But she was also twisting a dishrag between her hands as if she were trying to strangle it. Intuition said she was hiding something more than anxiety over Eric. She certainly didn’t like to answer even the most casual question. Experience said that he wasn’t going to find out why.
Sometimes you hand them your card and walk away.
He pulled one of his professional cards out of a pocket and held it out. “You have any more trouble, don’t hesitate to call.”
She came forward and took it in two fingers, careful not to touch his hand.
James shook his head and turned toward the living room.
“What are you going to do about your ex taking your dog?”
James looked back over his shoulder. Trust her to go to the heart of his remaining problem. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”
“She’s pretty. You’ll probably forgive her.”
He didn’t respond but the change in his expression made Shay suddenly a little sorry for the woman who would have to face this man.
She glanced over at Bogart.
But not that sorry.
She bent down to hug him one last time.
James saw the telltale sheen of unshed tears when she rose to her feet. Damn. He wished he could offer her something as consolation but he knew better than to sympathize with her again. “You should think about replacing Bogart with a dog of your own.”
“No one can replace him.”
“Right. But if you decide to look for real protection, you’re going to want a dog trained to act on command. You weren’t getting half the use you could have outta him. Want me to show you?”
She jutted out her chin. “What would be the point? You’re taking him away from me.”
James was rendered silent. It was those deep-set eyes framed by her bangs. Even though her mouth was saying back off, her gaze was vulnerable, heartbreaker sweet. Naturally, something stupid popped into his head.
“Tell you what. It’s Saturday night. We don’t have to be back on duty until Monday evening. Why don’t you keep Bogart until tomorrow? Say your good-byes.”
She studied his face for several seconds, trying, he suspected, to figure out where the trap lay in that offer. She must be accustomed to disappointment. “Where will you sleep?”
He glanced at his watch, hiding a smile. “Charlotte’s less than three hours away. I can still make it home in time to catch the end of a ballgame on TV.”
“You’d drive all the way back here tomorrow to pick him up?”
He racked his brain, trying to figure out why he’d opened his mouth in the first place. But now that he’d done it, he didn’t want to argue.
“Feed him in the morning, early, and then again about eleven A.M. He’s off his schedule and it’s important that he be back on it by the time we’re on
duty Monday night.”
He turned and reached for his backpack, which he’d left by the kitchen door.
“Wait!”
It was only a whisper of a breath but James felt the fear in her voice slide up his spine like ice. And then he heard it, the faint creaking of floorboards on the porch, almost drowned out by the music.
He glanced down first at Bogart, who stood expectant but not at full alert. Then he looked back at Shay. She stared past him at the cabin door, eyes wide. He turned his head in that direction as Bogart issued a low growl. The front doorknob was turning slowly.
James motioned her back with one hand as his other went for the Sig P239 he’d tucked into a pancake leather holster attached to his belt in back. He watched the doorknob jiggle as someone tried to force it open. If this was Eric again, he wasn’t going to be restrained in his response.
The hard rap of knuckles on the door made them both jump.
“Ms. Appleton! Shay, you in there?”
The voice of Deputy Ward came loud and clear through the wooden door.
“Yes!” Shay expelled the word in a harsh breath but her face was bloodless and she seemed rooted to the spot.
“Shit!” James let go of the butt of his weapon and went to unlock the door. “Evening, Deputy Ward. You might have knocked first.”
The deputy’s eyes widened at the rebuff. “I did knock a minute ago, and got no answer.” He lifted his chin to aim his line of sight past James’s shoulder. “You okay, Ms. Appleton?”
“I guess it was the music.” Shay glanced at James. “We didn’t hear you.”
The deputy moved his bulk through the door, gaze moving from one to the other. “I thought you’d have left this area by now, Mr. Cannon.”
James shoved his hands into his pockets, letting his annoyance slide away. “I came back by to allow Ms. Appleton the chance to say a final good-bye to Bogart.”
The deputy eyed the dog that had come forward to sniff his leg. “I see. Seems like a big to-do over a dog.” Then he seemed to catch a whiff of something. “You frying oysters, Shay?”
“Yes.” She unfolded her arms, forced them to her sides. “We just finished, or I’d offer you some.”