by Maggie Way
She punched the accelerator and the car lurched forward. Painful memories hounded her and she pressed down on the gas pedal. The needle on the speedometer bobbed past twenty-six, through twenty-seven and twenty-eight, to top out at thirty miles per hour as she bore down on him.
She continued to push down on the accelerator.
Out of the corner of her eye, the bottle of wine she’d bought at the store peeked out from one of the grocery bags. In a moment of sheer reckless rebellion, she snatched it up and, tipping it high so he could make out its unmistakable shape, she pressed the unopened bottle to her lips.
“Cheers,” she muttered.
Predictably, red and blue lights flashed in the darkening sky. With a self-satisfied smile, she pulled off to the side of the road and killed the car’s engine.
The police cruiser pulled up snug behind her and a moment later a man stepped from the vehicle. In the glare of his headlights, she lost sight of him. She readjusted her rearview mirror until he came into view.
His tall frame seemed less lean than she recalled, and he had a hitch to his walk she didn’t remember noticing before now. Her smile faltered.
Then fell away completely.
The air wheezed from her lungs. With a groan, she slunk low in her seat.
The officer’s hand came up and he knuckled a sharp rap on her window.
Her hand trembled when she pressed the electronic control button. With a soft whir, the glass between them disappeared and she looked up into a face that was very distinctly not Luke Nolan’s disgustingly handsome mug.
Chapter Four
Luke stuffed the last bite of the fast-food hamburger into his mouth and checked his blind spot before easing out over the centerline to pass a tow truck angled on the shoulder of the road.
The truck’s safety lights flashed in the night sky as the driver hitched to the front end of a Jetta.
Luke twisted in his seat. The sedan appeared unscathed, with no mangled fenders or busted glass. Maybe a mechanical failure? A flat tire? He’d missed the license plate, and there was no sign of Emily.
At the station, he parked near the front door and bore a straight path to the main desk. “You know anything about a Jetta getting towed on Main Street?”
Dominic swiveled on his chair, a wide grin on his baby face. “I got a fish in the tank.”
Luke stretched, trying to get a look through the glass partition into the jail’s cellblock. “What’s the charge?”
“OWVI.”
“Drunk driving?” An alarm bell sounded inside Luke’s skull. “Who’s the suspect?”
Newberry launched into his brief. “A female, thirty-two years old, no prior arrests.”
Newberry’s words struck him like a jab to the kidney.
“She said something about outstanding citations, but I can’t find any record of that.”
Probably because Luke never turned in those ridiculous tickets.
“Did you perform a field sobriety test?” Luke’s voice sounded thin and strained to his own ears.
Newberry cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, I did.”
“And?”
Newberry shifted his weight in the chair. “She passed.”
Relief rushed over Luke. “So she isn’t drunk?”
“Upon questioning, the suspect exhibited incoherent, slurred speech and her face appeared flushed.”
Luke stalked toward the cellblock door, his long strides eating the ground beneath his feet. “Buzz me in.”
The grating buzzer sounded, followed by the hard clank of the lock’s release, and he burst through the steel door. At the second holding cell, he lurched to a stop.
She sat huddled on the gray-blanketed cot, her back pressed to the concrete wall. When she looked up at him, her brown eyes appeared huge in her pale face.
Another jarring buzz split the air and the door latch to her cell released. He pulled open the door and stepped inside the long, narrow cell.
A heavy silence hung in the air between them, and with it, an odd sensation surged in him. Something gross and squirmy. It felt kind of like uncertainty, but that didn’t make any sense.
He shuffled forward and dropped onto the cot beside her.
She jostled and risked a sideways glance at him.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
A shaky sigh eased through her lips, and she nodded.
“What happened?”
“I w-w-was teaching y-y-you a lesson.”
At the stutter, he felt a pinch in the center of his chest. “What lesson would that be?”
“I thought it w-was y-y-you in that cop car and I figured if y-you w-were going to pull me over again, I should give y-you a reason to do it. I w-was speeding and—” one hand flitted through the air as if to grab the words, “I p-p-pretended to drink from a w-wine bottle I’d just bought. It w-w-wasn’t open,” she struggled to add.
Despite himself, a low chuckle slipped from him.
She searched his face and he allowed her assessment of him. Indeed, he performed one of his own, noting for the first time the smoothness of her fair skin and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her small, straight nose. She was tragically cute.
“I really w-wish it’d been y-you in that cop car.”
He swallowed the dryness in his throat. “So do I.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “I probably could’ve cited you for three, maybe four, violations. A strip search might’ve been warranted.”
Her shy smile caught him off guard. She lifted her hand to push a hank of bright hair behind one ear, and the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt dropped back to expose her forearm.
He stilled.
Slowly, he reached for her hand. Gently turning her palm up, he pushed her sleeve up to her elbow.
His fingers traced over angry red marks marring the fair skin around her wrist. “What’s this?” There was no softening the hard edge to his tone.
She pulled free from his grip. With her other hand, she rubbed at the marks. “I guess the handcuffs did that.”
He noted similar bands of irritation on her other wrist as well and a cold violence stirred in him. The knife of regret twisted.
He climbed to his feet. “Can you sit tight a little longer while I go fix this?”
Her head snapped up. “You can fix this?”
“Do I hear doubt in your voice?”
She cut him with a look. “Yes.”
He laughed. “Give me twenty minutes. Half hour at the most. You okay that long?”
She nodded.
“Is there someone you want to call to come pick you up?”
“M-Mina’s out of the country. I don’t know anyone else.”
He frowned. He hoped she meant she didn’t know anyone else on the island. But that wasn’t what she’d said.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He left the door to her cell wide open and returned to the reception area.
Dominic cradled the phone against his ear and hunched over a computer. Luke sat at the other workspace, where Dominic had left open Emily’s arrest file.
The final report not yet written, Luke combed through the rookie’s notes. He’d clocked her at thirty-three and gaining speed in a twenty-five mile per hour zone before she came under suspicion of drinking while driving due to a visible alcohol container, just as she’d described.
Upon contact, Dominic observed her speech was jumbled, and at times incoherent, and then described her behavior as uncooperative.
Uncooperative?
Luke continued to read, trying to untangle the disjointed account of events. By the time he’d come to the end of the file, he had a clearer picture of Emily’s conduct, not as defiant or insolent, but increasingly withdrawn and panicked under duress.
His chest squeezed.
Behind him, Newberry shuffled papers.
“Didn’t you administer a Breathalyzer?” Luke asked without turning.
“Sloane did.”
Luke’s finge
rs froze over the keyboard. With a push, he swiveled in the office chair. “Sloane?”
“He booked her before his shift ended.” A defensive edge crept into Dominic’s tone. “And gave her the Breathalyzer.”
Luke’s scrambled brain attacked the information like a pit bull. “Where are the results?”
“They should be…” He shoved some papers around on the desk. “Here.”
Luke waited while the kid squinted down at the report.
A moment later, two bright pink spots stained his cheeks. “Oh.”
Luke pushed to his feet. “I’m releasing her. She isn’t drunk. Can you get her things ready?”
Halfway to the jail entrance, Luke turned. “And try to keep an eye on the handcuffs next time. If they’re digging in, they’re too tight.”
Dominic blinked. “I didn’t cuff her.”
Luke blinked back. “You didn’t cuff her?”
“No, sir.” Dominic cleared the squeak from his throat and his expression turned sheepish. “I meant to, but I forgot and put her in the backseat. I didn’t want to get her out of the car just to put the cuffs on.” He scratched his jawline. “But don’t worry, Sloane gave me a pointed lesson so I won’t forget to do it next time.”
Uneasy tension situated on Luke’s shoulders. “How about you and I go over it one more time later, just to be sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m gonna drive Ms. Cole home. See if you can get her car out of the impound tonight, would ya?”
Luke returned to the holding cell to find Emily pacing the small enclosure.
“Ready to go?”
She nearly leapt into his arms. At the front desk, she signed the receipt for her personal effects and shot toward the exit like a pinball from its launcher.
She didn’t speak on the ride, and for once, Luke couldn’t think of a single quip or barb to lighten the heavy silence hanging over them.
He walked her to her front door and waited while she fumbled with her house key in the dark.
“You should consider installing motion-activated lighting out here.”
In the faint moonlight, he could make out the severe scowl screwing up her features.
He held up both hands. “Sorry. Bad habit, I know.”
Finally, the dead bolt gave and she pushed inside. She turned, but didn’t speak.
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear something about your car,” he said.
Another awkward silence descended. She unsettled him. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. He could guess, but he didn’t want to guess.
So he waited, desperate to hear what she had to say to him.
She shut the door in his face.
Emily pressed her forehead against the solid wood door and listened to the sound of Luke’s footsteps fading. She waited for the bang of a car door, the growl of an engine, and finally, silence.
This was supposed to be her fresh start. Her new life free of sorrow and stigma and self-doubt. Where she could be more than the girl who stuttered.
But Luke Nolan ruined that.
Okay fine, it might not be entirely his fault.
With a frustrated sigh, she whipped around and pressed her back to the door.
But it was mostly his fault. If not for him, she never would’ve acted so reckless, so foolish.
She rubbed her sore wrist, only to recall his gentle touch. Her stomach butterflies fluttered.
Dammit. She didn’t want to soften to him.
With his mischievous smile and lighthearted ways, he was trouble for her. Like the cool kids in school, he flustered and unnerved her to the point she lost her composure. If she were lucky, they’d looked right through her, but on those occasions when luck had abandoned her and they’d drawn her out to stand beneath their perpetual spotlight, she’d suffered mightily, whether through taunts and humiliations or their piteous regard.
Never trust the cool kid.
Her stomach wrenched, whether from hunger or upset, she didn’t know, but the ache served to remind her that her kitchen cupboards remained bare while her groceries languished in the passenger seat of her car, wherever it was.
What a fool she was to think she might be able to gain the upper hand with him.
A fool. That’s what her dad used to call her. The first time he’d said it, she’d been five years old and three weeks into speech therapy. Her progress was slow, if not altogether absent. Her dad, Harrison, grew frustrated with her and accused her of not trying hard enough to overcome her stutter, an accusation she adamantly denied.
Thinking to teach her a lesson in determination, he’d locked her out of the house, refusing to let her in until she could speak the words clearly. Of course, she couldn’t, not through the tears. It was getting dark, and she was afraid of the dark. Hours passed. She was hungry and tired, and she had to pee.
By the time he let her into the house, she’d wet her pants.
A strangled sound reverberated in her throat and she took off through the house, as if she might outrun the torturous memories. She slammed through the kitchen’s swinging door and charged across the room. At the back door, she flung it open and plunged out into the night.
A large moon hovered low in the night sky and she raced toward it. Only the steady sound of waves crashing against the shore assured her the lake was out there in the dark.
Hard ground gave way to sand and she kicked off her sandals. She didn’t stop running for fear the memories might catch her. Her lungs burned. Cold water splashed her feet. She wriggled out of her yoga pants, discarded the remainder of her clothing, and rushed toward the blackness.
A scream tore from her when she smacked into the frigid water. Gooseflesh broke out over her skin, but she was naked, so she leapt into the waves and dove for cover.
She swam down, down through the dark silence, where humiliation and regret didn’t exist. Shame drowned away.
Out of breath, she burst through the water’s surface and gasped for air. She turned onto her back and floated while her breathing slowed. Stars punched holes in the black sky. Looking up at them, her small worries washed away.
Then a shout rent the air. “What in the hell are you doing?”
Emily sank like a stone.
She splashed and spluttered her way back to the surface. “Luke! Wh-what are you doing here?”
On shore, he stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, his body rigid. Ready to pounce.
“I heard a scream.”
“That was me.” She swam closer to shore so that her feet touched the spongy seafloor. “I’m sw-swimming.”
His stance visibly relaxed. “Swimming? Sounded more like cats fighting. Or dying.”
Emily frowned. Her teeth started to chatter.
He crouched in the sand and she squinted, trying to glimpse his movements through the dark.
His head cocked to one side and he pushed to his feet, her yoga pants clutched in his fist.
Emily gasped. “Uh, you can just leave those there.”
White teeth flashed in the shadows of his face.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
Luke rescued a pair of white cotton panties from the sand swirls at his feet.
He raised his voice over the rush of wind and sea. “I’ll just wait here for you. Until you’re ready to come out.”
After a beat, her reply carried across the water to him. “That isn’t n-necessary.”
“Oh, but I insist.” He fought to banish the laughter from his voice. “Did you growl?”
“Wh-what are you doing h-h-here?”
“Good news. Your car’s been released from the impound.” He’d received the call from Dominic while on the return drive to the station and, wishing to make it right for her, had turned around and headed straight back to her place. “I can take you to pick it up now, if you want.”
“Great!” The word erupted as a yelp. “I owe you o-one.”
“Now isn’t that an interesting thought,” he murmured.
“Wh-what?”
“Nothing. Any idea when you’ll be done? I need to get back to work.”
All kinds of amusing squeaks and grunts drifted across the water’s surface. “Uh… I’ll meet you up at the house in a few m-minutes.”
“I’ll wait,” he said.
“No, really—”
He rescued her bra from the beach and lifted it in front of his face.
He waited for her eruption of indignation, but it didn’t come. Instead, something happened. Something changed.
She changed.
Right before his eyes, her frantic movements eased. Her breathing quieted and she swam closer to shore, pushing forward through the water until her shoulders emerged, pale and pure in the moonlight.
And then she kept right on coming, until the mounds of her breasts rose above the surface.
His mouth went dry.
The two beaded nipples poked through the water’s surface and he sucked a hiss of air between his teeth. Water scuttled down her body.
Over the erotic flare of her hips.
Gripped by the slow reveal, his gaze became riveted on the juncture of her thighs. He licked his suddenly parched lips.
Holy fuck.
Was that—? Was she—? He squinted to see in the dark. Was she a natural redhead?
His senses misfired. He could taste the color of her gold-brown eyes. Hear the soft whisper of her thighs brushing together as she walked toward him. Smell the aroma of her uncertainty and obstinacy.
Her breasts and hips swayed in time to the beat of his pounding heart, the hypnotic rhythm holding him captive.
Never once had he suspected a body like that existed beneath the pajamas she constantly wore. Bountiful and toned, with lush breasts and hips offset by a narrow waist and shapely thighs. He unabashedly drank in every naked, glorious inch of her body. He couldn’t have hidden his reaction to her if he’d wanted to.
Spellbound, he stared as she came to stand before him.
He searched his mind for something—anything—to say, but nothing would come. He swallowed to dislodge the lump of lust and shock jammed in his throat.
A bemused smile twitched at the corners of her plump mouth. Slowly, one arched eyebrow inched upward.
He shoved her clothes at her.