“Then do what you can going forward, and quit beating yourself up about a past you can’t change.”
“Is that your professional advice?”
“Yep. So you have to heed it.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder, but tendrils fell over her forehead, the interwoven red lending her a wildness that called to him. He leaned forward, his hand twitching from the need to bury itself in the barely controlled chaos. Her light green eyes were otherworldly, the gold flecks at the center prominent in the light.
“Are you one of those men that require meat and more meat on their pizza?” She gestured when he didn’t immediately answer. “You’re not eating.”
“I’m not hungry.” A half-truth. His hunger wouldn’t be appeased until he was back inside her. For the first time, he understood what an addict went through and felt a tick of sympathy. “I want you.”
The primal urge to flip the table away because it stood between them was strong. He walked to her and waited. Her fingers laced and unlaced in a nervous dance.
Without meeting his eyes, she said, “Don’t play games with me. Am I just a convenient outlet? Are you here because of the universe’s timing?”
He’d spent a good part of his adult life denying he had emotions at all. Anger on the job led to mistakes, sadness wasn’t helpful, happiness was undeserved.
This woman was trying to crack him open like a pecan, and he was worried what she’d find inside.
Chapter Seven
Sadie thought she might pass out as the silence stretched. He moved, but she still refused to look up at him. Not because of the threat of a neck crick but afraid of what she’d see in his face.
“What are you talking about?” The slight defensiveness in his voice made her wonder if he was buying time to think.
She stood and backed away from the desire in his eyes. It would be too easy to succumb and lose herself in them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. You get a call about a break-in, and our paths cross nearly the same day your brother gets out of jail, thereby freeing you from your vow of celibacy. I’m convenient and obviously willing, but once you realize you can do better, you will.”
“Women slip me their numbers and come on to me all the time, Sadie.”
An embarrassed heat flared. Of course women were all over him. He was a big, protective, handsome man—the stuff of romance novels, for all that was holy. And in a uniform, he probably dissolved panties on his patrols.
“Okay, I get it. I’m a pity fuck. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
His huff was half-exasperated and half-amused, and all of it annoyed Sadie. Annoyance being the lesser of evils compared to embarrassment and humiliation, she grabbed hold and propped her hands on her hips.
“Are you laughing at me?” Her voice sailed high.
“No.” His lips twitched. “Maybe a little. It’s just that you’re really cute all worked up. Like an angry kitten.”
“Even kittens have claws.”
“Maybe I like to be scratched.” His tone was veering darkly sexual and tumbled through her, breaking down her resistance.
“Do you?” she asked.
Now he did outright smile. “I have no idea. But I wouldn’t mind finding out. With you. I happen to think the universe’s timing is perfect.” He closed the distance between them, picked her up around the waist, and plopped her down on the counter, putting them eye to eye.
“No game playing?” she asked.
“Have I ever given you the impression I’m a player?”
He was a major hard-ass and emotionally stunted, but a player he was not. He was serious and tough but also passionate and protective and disarmingly forthright. “No.”
“Here’s what I think of you.”
She tensed at his opening statement, not sure what to expect.
“You’re sexy and smart and definitely not a pity fuck.” He seared her with a look before his gaze shifted toward the ceiling. “It’s like you emit some sort of homing beacon that only I can see or feel. I can’t help but want to be around you. You’re the one with a doctorate in psychology. Is that strange?”
She didn’t know what her psychology textbooks would have to say about it, but her heart gave a big old-fashioned sigh. Cupping his cheeks, she tilted his face to hers, seeing a flash of vulnerability before their lips met in a kiss so sweet and devastating it left her sagging into him.
She shivered as he kissed his way to the hollow of her neck. “By the way, I’m glad you didn’t go with the more obvious joke back there when we were talking about kittens.”
His forehead dropped to her shoulder, and he convulsed against her as if trying not to lose his dinner. Finally, deep, chesty laughter spurted out of him. He speared his hands into her hair and drew them into fists, the tug against her scalp sending tingles to all her girl parts.
He forced their eyes to meet. Slowly the laughter leaked out of his expression, leaving want and desire and promise but also a hardness. “I could ask you the same, you know?”
“Are we still discussing kittens?”
“Are you playing games with me? Do you only want me around because of my job? Once the lurker’s caught, will you decide you don’t need me sleeping over to protect you?”
“I have my pink nine iron, Chief. I don’t need you for protection.” She ran a finger down the side of his face, wanting desperately to coax a smile back. What did that mean? “But if you want to wear your uniform sometime for a little role-play or pull your cuffs out, I would happily take part.”
She was rewarded with a brightening if not a true smile. “That could be arranged.”
He swung her up in his arms in a cradle hold. Instead of heading upstairs, he dropped her on her couch in the den and loomed over her, his bulk blocking out the light. His strength and dominance didn’t scare her even though part of her wondered why not. Maybe she was finally overcoming her fears, or maybe he was different. Special.
Later. She’d examine the significance later, when his hands weren’t skimming under her shirt to tease the undersides of her breasts.
“You aren’t wearing a bra.” His lips moved against hers.
“About time you noticed. I thought as police chief you’d be more attuned to fine details like that.”
He pinched her nipple and growled against her mouth. She smiled and pulled at his shirt. His magnificent chest called her name. She brushed against his erection and got sidetracked from his chest, fumbling with his belt and pants.
A crash from outside froze them. Both of them were breathing hard, and Sadie wondered if she had imagined the noise. A racket at her back door sent Thad off her and straight to the kitchen. She tried to follow, but he whispered between clenched teeth, “Stay back.”
The coward in her found it only too easy to stop in the kitchen doorway, her hands over her mouth. Her back door shook with someone’s effort to enter. Instead of barricading the door, which is what she would have done, Thad slid the chain free and turned the bolt, slowly, carefully, and with precision, as if playing Operation.
The door opened as if kicked, sending Thad back a step. Framed in the doorjamb was an old woman in a flowered housecoat, slippers, and with flyaway white hair haloing her face. Like pulling the plug on a drain, Sadie’s terror leaked away. She straightened and took two steps into the kitchen. This couldn’t be the person who’d broken into her house.
The woman’s gaze caught Sadie halfway across the room.
“You.” The single word was shot with such hatred and disgust, Sadie stilled, her insides tumbling, nearly sick with another shot of adrenaline.
“Who are you?” Fear hummed in her ear, yet it wasn’t some hooded boogeyman in the dark, it was a strange old woman.
“This is my house. Get out.” The woman stepped over the threshold, the light glinting off a metal hoe that had been camouflaged in the folds of her housecoat. She was a woman possessed, unfazed by Thad’s bulk. He reached for the hoe, but she brought it down on his arm.
/> The blade made contact with his biceps, a wet stain Sadie abstractly recognized as blood bloomed from the site. Faster than she thought possible, the woman rammed the metal end of the hoe into Thad’s temple. He stumbled back a few steps and hit the wall, clearing a path for the woman to come at Sadie.
Sadie glanced to either side, looking for anything to use to defend herself from the hoe-wielding octogenarian. Her pink-and-black nine iron was propped against the table, and Sadie grabbed it like a baseball bat and faced the woman. Even as her sweaty palms slipped over the club’s handle, a sense of ridiculousness came over her.
Was this a dream? It had to be a dream. But the old woman had murder in her watery blue eyes. “Get out of my house.”
“This is my house. Not yours,” Sadie said.
The old woman stared at her and then glanced around the kitchen. “No. No, no, no.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Where’s my table? My lovely table and my china? Where’s my china?”
The woman deflated, the hoe loose in her hand and parallel to the floor. She shuffled forward, and while Sadie’s instincts screamed for her to run away, she glanced over at Thad, who was holding a hand over his arm. Surely there’d be more blood if the woman had hit an artery. She needed to get the hoe away from the old woman and call 911.
She leaned the golf club up against the table and reached for the hoe. The woman’s confusion was mounting into agitation. The hoe slipped out of her lax fingers with an ease Sadie wasn’t expecting, and she put it well out of reach.
“Can I get you some…” What did one offer a possibly insane woman? “Iced tea?”
“Is it sweet?” The way the woman asked made Sadie glad it was indeed sweet—and that she’d taken away the hoe.
“Of course.”
“Then yes, I would.” The lady sank onto a kitchen chair and arranged her housecoat around her like a debutante would a formal dress, even crossing her feet at the ankles and folding her hands in her lap. “But I still don’t understand where my things are. Where’s my china?”
Sadie placed the glass on the table. Thad hadn’t moved, but a pallor had stolen the color from his face except for where he’d been hit at the temple. She took a step toward him, her hand out, but he gave a sharp shake of his head and mouthed, “I’m fine. Call 911.”
Sadie returned her attention to the woman who had either forgotten or chose to ignore Thad’s presence. As Sadie backed out of the kitchen, she took the hoe and the golf club with her. “I can explain everything if you’ll give me a moment to freshen up.”
She ran into the den and grabbed her phone off the table. It took three tries for her trembling fingers to get the passcode entered. A quick conversation with dispatch followed. Once she’d dropped Thad’s name, urgency pulsed over the phone.
With help on the way, she returned to the kitchen to find the woman sipping her tea as if paying a visit to an old friend. Thad gestured to the old woman with the hand of his injured arm. Sadie took that to mean she should keep her busy.
“I’m Miss Sadie Wren and new to Cottonbloom.”
“I’m Mrs. Josephine Cross. It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, I’m sure.” The ridiculousness of the conversation churned up a hysteria.
“Did my husband move my china? I do so want a new cabinet.” The woman looked around her again. “Is he making me a new cabinet?”
“That’s exactly right, Mrs. Cross. It was supposed to be a surprise.” Sadie strained to hear anything resembling a siren, but there was nothing.
“That’s so sweet of him. We’ve lived here since we got married, you know. This farm has been in my family for generations. Arnold took to farming so well. He loves it. Really he does.”
Behind the terror and worry for Thad, her mind worked and sorted out the situation. The neighborhood was called Cross Hill Farm.
“Were you and Mr. Cross blessed with children?”
“Yes. Two beautiful girls.”
“Do they help on the farm?”
A shadow of the present stole over the woman’s expression, her smile drawing down into a frown and aging her a decade. “They both married city boys and moved away. The farm… Arnold…”
In a millisecond, the woman traveled through time and memories to the present. She looked around once more, everything about her, including her voice, smaller. “They made me sell the farm. This isn’t my house.”
With a gun drawn, Buzz stepped through the back door in a semicrouch, two blue uniformed deputies on his heels. Sadie stood and held her hands up. “Everything’s fine, Buzz. Well, Thad’s not fine, but Mrs. Cross is just confused.”
Buzz holstered his weapon and approached them, squatting down in front of the old woman. “We’re going to get you back home, okay, Mrs. Cross?”
The woman patted Buzz’s shoulder. “Home. Will Mr. Cross be waiting?”
Buzz threw a pained, slightly panicked look in Sadie’s direction.
“He’ll be waiting,” she said.
“With my new china cabinet?”
“I certainly hope so.”
The woman smiled and rose, tucking her arm into Buzz’s elbow. As soon as they were out of the kitchen and on the way to Buzz’s patrol car, Sadie ran to Thad’s side. He was in a kitchen chair, an EMT having joined the two deputies, and all three of them were arguing with Thad.
“I’m okay,” Thad said.
“You need to get stitches and have that bump on your head checked out,” the EMT said.
“I’ll drive myself then.”
Sadie pushed between the men. “You’re going to the hospital in the ambulance, Thaddeus Preston. That’s an order.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Tough. Head injuries can be sneaky, and she got you right in the temple.”
His mouth was pinched into a line, and they entered into an unofficial staring contest that she was determined to win.
He huffed. “Fine. But I’m not getting pushed on some damn gurney out of here. I’ll walk.”
The two deputies exchanged a glance and a snicker. Thad stood, dwarfing the two men by several inches. Blood smeared his cheek and neck, giving his anger a primitive pulse. He pointed at the two men. “Why are you two still here? Shouldn’t you be contacting Mrs. Cross’s daughters?”
Two “yes, sirs” accompanied their retreat out the back door. It wasn’t until Thad was sitting in the back of the ambulance that they had a moment alone. Or mostly alone, the flashing lights had brought out several of the neighbors, but Sadie ignored them.
She touched Thad’s cheek and examined his temple, bluish black already tinting his skin. It would only get worse. “I was so scared.”
“I’m never going to live this down.”
“What are you talking about?”
“An eighty-year-old lady in a housedress and slippers took me out with a goddamn garden hoe.”
She bit the inside of her lip to keep from laugh-crying. The image was a funny one, but the reality had been far from it. Before she could stop it, a sob escaped her throat, and she buried her face in his neck, being careful to not jostle his injured arm. “She could have killed you.”
“It’s barely a scratch. Promise.” His breath ruffled her hair. “Listen, I need a favor. Could you ride out and tell Clayton what’s happened? I don’t have a landline at the cabin, and he doesn’t have a cell yet.”
She’d faced the darkness twice now and not panicked, but both times Thad had been by her side. The thought of driving to his isolated cabin under full cover of darkness broke a sweat over her body.
“Yes, of course I can.” Her lips felt numb and rubbery.
He tipped her chin up to see her eyes, muttering a curse. “Never mind, I’ll get Buzz to—”
“No. I’ll go.”
“Clayton won’t hurt you.”
How could she explain it wasn’t anyone or anything specific that terrified her about the dark of night? It was not knowing what hid in the shadows. The
unknown. But it had been a year, and she was ready to take the next step in conquering her fears and moving on with her life.
“I know he won’t. I’ll tell him what’s happened and then come straight to the hospital.”
One of the deputies came to report Mrs. Cross suffered from dementia and had wandered away from Cottonbloom Comfort Home. The EMT was on his heels and cleared his throat. Taking that as a not-so-subtle signal to skedaddle, she slid toward the door. Thad caught her hand.
“You did great tonight. Staying calm and talking Mrs. Cross down.”
“She won’t go to jail, will she? She was confused.”
“No jail, but Cottonbloom Comfort Home better figure out how to keep her contained. If I hadn’t been there tonight—”
“Then you probably wouldn’t have been hit with a hoe,” she said dryly. “I could have handled her on my own.”
He smiled, the smeared blood settling into the creases. “You and your pink nine iron.”
“We gotta go, Chief,” the EMT said.
“I’ll see you in a few,” Thad said as she climbed out.
She stood in her front yard until the ambulance was out of sight. A few neighbors still watched from their front porches, but the barriers of acquaintance hadn’t been breached enough for anyone to approach her with questions.
Instead, she grabbed a sweatshirt and her trusty golf club and ran from the front door to her Jeep without letting herself overanalyze. Once inside the familiar cocoon, she breathed a little easier. The upbeat music on the radio helped muffle the little voice that screamed at her to get back inside the house where it was safe.
But tonight had proved a house couldn’t protect her either. Yet she’d come out the other side. Her pep talk built her confidence… until she turned onto the dark, narrow, graveled lane to Thad’s cabin. The trees blocked any moonlight, leaving only her headlights to cut through the darkness. Her confidence crumbled.
The tunnel of trees seemed to stretch to forever. Her palms slipped over the steering wheel, and the music grated her nerves. Was she even on the right road? Maybe she would drive straight into the river. The lane was too narrow for her to even attempt to turn around. She strained forward and peered past her headlights, trying to see anything beyond the darkness.
Light Up the Night: A Cottonbloom Novel Page 8