by Maggie Way
Which he quelled with a look.
“You’re kidding.” She searched for signs of humor on his face. “Aren’t you?”
“It says here you’re five feet four inches tall.” He looked at her beneath lowered lashes; their length so long they tangled at the corners. “That seems awfully generous.”
She floundered for words while he scribbled something in his notepad. Then he tore the sheet from the tablet with a flourish. He held out the ticket, along with her license and registration.
She reached for the papers, but at the last moment, he pulled back and she missed.
His arm on the roof of her car, he leaned close. The scent of soap and sun-warmed skin teased her senses while a soft light shimmered in his eyes.
A band of butterflies fluttered to life inside her belly.
“Unless…” His tone, deep and penetrating, sloped through her.
She swallowed convulsively.
“Would you like me to get you off?”
The seductive smile on his flawless face set off a series of alarm bells inside her skull as an image of his long fingers cradled around a pink vibrator came screaming to life in her mind.
She gasped and her face flushed with furious heat.
His smile widened.
“You’re talking about BOB, aren’t you?”
His brows snapped together. “Who’s Bob?”
“Y-you haven’t confiscated him from m-me, h-have y-y-you? I didn’t think s-s-sex toys were illegal.”
“Are we talking about your vibrator? No, no, vibrators definitely aren’t illegal.” He frowned. “Though it probably depends what you’re doing with it.”
“You didn’t steal him on p-purpose?”
“On purpose? No.” A knowing light danced in his bright eyes. “But now that I have it, maybe I can make you come for it later.”
The shocked gasp shot from her.
His lips parted and the red sucker disappeared inside his mouth.
She stuck out her hand. “I’ll take the ticket.”
Two days later, as Luke made his way along Lakeshore Drive, the familiar tension built in his shoulders. He tilted his head from side to side, trying to loosen the corded tightness in his neck muscles, and exhaled a few sharp breaths—part of a relaxation technique they’d taught at last weekend’s retreat.
The nightmares kept him awake the previous night, and the exhaustion he’d become accustomed to dragged at him now, weakening him to the chaos inside his mind.
Then he spotted the royal-blue Jetta, and his racing heart skidded to a stop at the cliff’s edge. With a slow, steadying breath, he recalled her bowtie mouth moving in wordless outrage.
If he weren’t a seasoned professional, he might feel a twinge of pity for her.
It wasn’t his fault—or at least, that’s what he told himself—it was his job, and he took his job very seriously. A cop and all-around good guy, he’d pledged to keep the quiet, sleepy island community quiet and sleepy. No drama. No shocks or surprises. No tragedies.
Never again.
To that end, it was his job to know, with intimate detail, what was going on in the private lives of the citizens living on the island. Each and every one of them. What mattered to them most. Who they were sleeping with, and who or what they ached to possess. He needed to know their weaknesses. Their vices. The thing they could not live without.
It was his duty. His calling. The proof he was a good guy and not made of the same DNA as his father, a murderer. Nothing mattered more to him than his job.
Which meant, in that moment, nothing mattered to him more than finding out everything he could about Emily Cole.
The thought delivered a smile to his lips.
He cranked the steering wheel and swung the SUV around to follow her. What the hell, he was already late to work. He flipped on his police lights.
She spotted him immediately and eased the sedan over to the curb. He approached her window, surprised by the effort it took to keep his stride slow and measured.
Once again, she wore a shapeless gray sweatshirt and her red hair drawn back from her face in a tangled mass. She looked as though she were coming from a particularly grueling session at the gym. Or, after a long day, was on her way to bed. To sleep.
In that getup, sex would be the last thing on her mind.
Her deep scowl as she glared up at him was so severe it came off as insincere.
He bit the inside of his cheek. “City ordinance forbids frowning at an officer of the law.”
“That’s a lie.” A thread of uncertainty tinged her assertion.
“License and registration.”
“Is there a reason y-you p-p-pulled m-m-me over?”
“I was concerned by your erratic driving. You were clearly distracted with something.”
She flushed an attractive shade of pink. “I wasn’t.”
God, this was fun. She was fun.
He tapped a finger against the corner of his mouth. “You got a little something right here.”
Her pink tongue darted out to lick the smudge of ketchup.
A punch of lust hit him like a kick to the nuts.
She handed him her documents and he took a moment pretending to study her vehicle registration while he grappled with his confused lust. What the hell was that, anyway?
“Are you aware you have ninety days to apply for a state-issued driver’s license before you are in violation of the law?”
Her throat worked and she gave a curt nod.
With an exaggerated motion, he pulled the notepad from his breast pocket, licked his index finger, and flipped it open. He paused with pen poised above the pad. “Have you applied for a new license?”
The sound originating in the back of her throat sounded suspiciously like a growl.
He started to write.
Her mouth opened, as though she might argue, but then snapped shut again.
He ripped the top sheet from the pad with a large sweep of his arm. “This will just serve as a little reminder. When you have your license, take it to the clerk’s office and the violation will be dismissed.”
She lobbed toffee-brown daggers at him. No woman ever looked at him like that. All he ever saw was adoration and longing.
A whiff of disappointment wafted through him. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Her brown eyes cooled like an autumn frost. “Wo-would you, if y-you talked like m-me?”
A pang struck his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Slicing him with a dead-eyed stare, she reached for her keys in the ignition. “Is there anything else, Officer?”
He didn’t want her to leave, not without giving him the fiery tongue-lashing he deserved. “Look, I wasn’t complaining. A quiet woman is like a mild winter. Both a rare and welcome relief.”
She flung back in her seat. “Have I d-d-done something to offend you?”
“Not at all.” He leaned against her car. “It’s my job to protect the good citizens of this town from harm. I take my job very seriously.”
“And you think I’m going to hurt someone?”
“The problem is, I don’t know. I have to assume the worst until I’m shown otherwise.”
“You don’t have to,” she muttered.
“I mean, what do I really know about you? You’re five foot three if you’re an inch, thirty-two years old, and you recently bought an insanely large house.” He lowered his sunglasses to peer at her. “Oh, and you’re a Wildcat.”
Her mouth fell slightly ajar. “You've been spying on me?”
No, he hadn’t, though the thought had occurred to him. Rather, he’d obtained a wealth of information in a brief conversation with his brother, but she didn’t need to know that.
He shrugged. “I’m a cop.”
“You’re a terrorist.”
It occurred to him then that the more he tormented her, the less she stuttered. “You were a year shy of graduation when you quit. Why is that?”
She stared
up at him with soulful, brown eyes, but she didn’t speak for several long moments. His heart started to race once more.
“My m-mom got sick and I m-moved home to take care of her.”
He straightened away from the car. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t know—”
Her hand shot out and she plucked the ticket from his grasp. Without another word, she put the Jetta in gear and guided the car out onto the road.
That night, while he kept watch against the darkness with his bottle of whiskey, he contemplated the fact that his encounter with Emily Cole was the best part of his whole day.
Chapter Three
Emily dreamed of a green-eyed man.
A naked green-eyed man, with a well-defined bare chest and a flat plane over his stomach. The fuzzy hair of a happy trail disappeared into his low-slung blue jeans while pink fuzzy handcuffs swung from his fingertips.
She leapt out of bed at first light.
In the kitchen, she started coffee brewing and settled in front of her laptop at the center island. Switching on her laptop, she pulled up the bare-bones website she was in the midst of designing and connected her digital camera to upload the photos she’d taken of the grand house and its breathtaking views.
She still couldn’t believe they called the body of water outside her door a lake. To Emily, a lake was an inland body of water she might swim or paddleboat across. No one would dare attempt to paddleboat across Lake Michigan, as the distant horizon showed no signs of far off lands and the waves crested and crashed to shore as ocean waves might.
She fussed with the web layout in search of a design that pleased her. In college, she’d studied photography and graphic art, and it felt good—really, really good—to use this particular skill set again.
Once done with the website, she kept working, relishing the distraction from the disturbing dream and her even more disturbing thoughts of the real man. Despite the anger and frustration roiling through her at his galling behavior, an itty bitty, teeny tiny corner of her treacherous heart wanted to see him again. If only so she’d get the chance to find and fling the perfect words at him.
She forced herself to focus. Searching the web, she found other bed-and-breakfasts in the northwestern part of the state and studied their websites, taking notes on everything from their web layout to their prices and general marketing strategy.
By mid-afternoon, an angry growl in her stomach roused her from her spot hunched over the laptop. A quick search for food turned up a bag of potato chips leftover from the sub sandwich she’d picked up at a deli in town a few days ago. She snagged the bag off the counter and returned to the computer.
Crunching on a chip, she logged in to check her e-mail. A new message waited from her cousin, Mina, and she clicked to open it. In two weeks, Mina would return to Michigan, along with her boyfriend, Noah, for an extended stay and wanted to rent the apartment from Emily over the carriage house on the inn’s property.
Having grown up two thousand miles apart, Emily and Mina didn’t know each other all that well. Not yet, anyway, though Emily very much wanted to change that.
She sent an immediate reply stating the apartment was Mina’s, free of charge, for as long as she wanted it, and that she couldn’t wait to see her and Noah when they arrived.
After she fiddled with the website some more, emailed a local sign shop for a custom design quote, and registered the Winslow Inn and Bed-and-Breakfast with the state’s tourism board, she e-mailed the city to request the house and the eighteenth-century dwelling recently discovered on its premises be added to their list of local area attractions.
Whenever possible, she sent texts or e-mailed. She despised the phone, as her stutter intensified severely when she tried to use it.
Soon, her stiff muscles demanded she step away from the laptop. The chips had done little to slacken her hunger, but the fridge and cupboards remained mostly empty. Stuck in her slump, she’d been avoiding making the trip to the grocery store to stock up on essentials.
She hesitated. What if he was out there, waiting to pull her over again?
A rumble of hunger gnawed at her stomach. Who was she kidding? Chances were, he’d had his fun at her expense and had moved on to torment his next innocent victim.
By now, he’d have forgotten all about her. Again.
On the drive toward town, she rolled down her window. She inhaled deeply and relished the feel of the warm breeze kissing her skin. Her lightheartedness sagged a little when she turned onto Main Street, and deflated a touch more as she approached downtown.
She kept a lookout for the Thief Island police when she eased through a stop sign. The sign for Mike’s Country Store sprang into view and her heart kicked in her chest. She was going to make it.
The red gauge on the speedometer sat on top of the twenty-five. She flipped on her turn signal.
Red and blue lights winked in her rearview mirror.
A curse shot from her before the frustration rose up to choke her.
She sidled up to the curb with expert ease. As he climbed from his vehicle, her arm flopped out of her car window, her license and registration poised between her fingers.
His stern scowl only intensified his dark beauty. “A rolling stop is not a stop, Ms. Cole.”
“You’re right. Must be the dead body in my trunk. I didn’t account for the extra weight.”
The corners of his kissable puffy mouth pinched and stirred a twinge of satisfaction in her.
He took the license and registration from her hand. “I’m glad you find this funny.”
“I don’t find a single thing about this funny.”
Infuriating. Maddening. Interesting, maybe. But definitely not funny.
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
She wiggled her fingers at him. “Ticket, please. I need to get back to the lab to check on the meth.”
“Oh, come now.” He tore a sheet from his notepad. “You wouldn’t want to give me probable cause to follow you home and conduct a search of your… premises.”
Feverish heat burned her cheeks. “You can’t keep pulling m-me over. It’s harassment, and it’s not legal.”
“This is a small town, Ms. Cole. A tiny, isolated island, to be more precise.” He lifted his broad shoulders and let them drop. “I can pretty much do whatever I want.”
She snatched the documents from his hand. “Good day, Officer.”
Her tires spun on a patch of gravel when she tore away from the curb.
In her rearview mirror, he shook his head, a wide, sparkling smile on his face.
He was laughing at her.
Following her run-in with Luke, Emily had returned to the inn, her already muted enthusiasm for traipsing through the grocery store all but silenced. Two days later, the situation was dire.
Besides, she refused to live like a prisoner any longer, a captive in her seaside resort mansion, without wine or potato chips.
Enough was enough.
She waited until dusk to make her move, hoping the cover of night and the potential for a shift change would confuse his overzealous radar and allow her to carry out her shopping mission undetected.
Outside, the hot, muggy air licked her skin while the last rays of sunlight danced atop the rippling lake surface. She’d been on the island two weeks already and hadn’t so much as stuck her big toe into the water. Talk about a crime. Tomorrow, she resolved, she’d go for a swim.
A few minutes later, she stole into town like a thief. She saw no sign of Officer Bright Eyes when she rolled down Main Street. Maybe it was her lucky day. Her lungs stopped expelling air until she slid safely into the parking lot of the small market store and the breath she’d been holding burst from her.
She scurried inside the store. Learning how to cook a proper meal remained on her list of things yet to do, so she loaded up on frozen dinners and prepackaged foods. Mike’s produce section was a thing of beauty, and she filled her cart with an array of colorful, oversized fruits and vegetables
before winding her way to the checkout lanes.
At the car, she flung the grocery bags onto the passenger seat, darted around the front end, and fell into the driver seat. She hunched low as she steered out into traffic. When she neared the stoplight leading out of town, it blazed bright green and her adrenaline soared. This time, she would make it. Victory never tasted so sweet.
The light changed. She bit back a curse and eased to a stop.
That’s when she spotted him. The white SUV, with its dark green lettering, sat tucked beneath an elm tree on one of the neighborhood side streets, no doubt stalking innocent civilians going about their legal affairs.
While the car idled, she kept her eye on the SUV. Would he harass her today? Was there any chance he had actual police work to do? Had he been spying on her some more?
Let him snoop. Some things he didn’t know. Could never know.
Like the fact that she’d been a painfully shy child with a torturous stammer. Or that, in all her thirty-two years, she’d slept with exactly one man, and him only a handful of times.
Or the real reason she’d dropped out of college.
While it was true her mom had started to show symptoms of the disease that would kill her, Audrey hadn’t yet required full-time care when Emily left school, nor did they yet know how serious her illness would turn out to be.
Emily left school because, in order to graduate, she had to complete a public speaking course, which required her to give a ten-minute speech in front of 250 of her classmates. Rather than subject herself to that cruelty, she had dropped out, nine credits shy of a earning her Bachelor’s degree.
The old wounds stung anew and her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel with the remembered hurt.
She scowled at Luke’s police cruiser. He’d been having a good laugh at her expense. Well, no more. She wasn’t that painfully shy, stuttering girl anymore. Well, she still stuttered, but she’d worked hard to overcome her deficiencies, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him drag them back out into the light.
It was time she put an end to his bullying ways.
A car horn honked and Emily startled to see the traffic light glowed green overhead.