"Hell, I'm the cop. If anyone should have put it together, it's me. Nope. Not a clue."
She just laughed all the harder, and so did he. They laughed for a while, until they were both sitting on the lawn, completely breathless and wiping tears off their faces.
"So now what?" she finally asked.
He clawed a hand through his hair. "We can pretend none of this ever happened. Rewind to before I suggested that we meet. Rewind to before that first message."
"Maybe rewind to before the birth of the Internet. I'm going to need a good amount of distance." She hugged her arms around herself. She wore a nubby sweater in a deep nightshade purple, along with tight black pants and a pair of half-boots whose heels sank into the grass. One thing about Merry, she always looked good.
Would it kill them to at least spend some time talking? Right now, he had a million unanswered questions. She probably did too, considering Merry always had questions.
He pulled the bottle of champagne out of the bag. "You know what might help this moment? Alcohol."
"Amen to that." She hesitated, glancing toward the gazebo. "So…this is going to sound silly now, but Suzanne put together a whole package for us. One of her Stars In Your Eyes experiences. I suppose we could…nah. Never mind."
He looked at the gazebo, which had room for several long picnic tables under the lovely carved roof. One of the tables was set with a blue-and-white checkered tablecloth and two wine glasses, as well as hurricane lamps and plastic-wrapped trays of food. "A picnic?"
"Yes, nothing elaborate. Not romantic at all. Really." Her smooth brown face looked rosier than usual.
Her embarrassment brought out all his protective instincts. "Look, I know this isn't what either of us expected. But we're the only ones who know, right? So we're in this together. As long as neither of us caves under questioning, our secret is safe."
He stood and extended a hand to her. One corner of her mouth twitched upwards. She took his hand and pulled herself back to standing. "You know, the girls are going to practically waterboard me to find out who you are."
"I've never heard of waterboarding with margaritas," he said dryly.
"How do you know about the margaritas?" By mutual unspoken agreement, they drifted toward the gazebo.
"I've seen you girls at the Orbit." He remembered the occasion perfectly. He'd been working on the armed-assault case on the Breton trail, the one in which Merry had nearly been kidnapped. He'd been pissed as hell that she'd been in danger. "Now that I'm looking back, I can't believe I didn't figure out that you're AnonyMs. I was close, you know. I guessed mystery novelist, remember?"
Reaching the gazebo, he placed his hand on her lower back to guide her up the steps. The slope between her rib cage and hip bone settled perfectly under his palm. He felt the micro movements of her muscles as she climbed the first step. The sensation electrified him.
Jesus. This was really happening. Merry was AnonyMs. AnonyMs was his perfect woman. Therefore… He shied away from completing that math.
"I was close too. I guessed criminal law professor single dad." She laughed over her shoulder at him. The setting sun turned her skin to dark gold and her eyes to sparkling stars.
His throat tightened. He'd worked so hard to focus on her professional side instead of the fact that she was a beautiful woman. But now? Impossible.
He drank in the sight of her as she stepped toward the bench on the far side of the picnic table. He touched her elbow before she got too far. "You can take this side. You'll get a better view of the sunset."
"Now that's exactly what my sweet, sensitive StarLord would say."
He twisted his face and groaned. "You're going to torture me with this forever, aren't you? Can't a guy just be thoughtful?"
"Yes. A guy can be, in an ad for a juice cleanse or something."
He laughed. She reached out and took his hand.
"And now I know the tough and mighty Deputy Will Knight can be thoughtful too. How about we both sit on this side and watch the sunset?"
"Sounds disturbingly romantic."
She grinned. "Not at all. We're just two people who know each other on a professional basis, who communicate secretly on the Internet, and who are about to get drunk so we can deal with the situation. Not romantic at all."
"Right. When you put it that way…" He peeled off the gold wrapper on the champagne bottle and worked the cork free. The trapped air released with a hiss. He filled two glasses with the foaming bubbly, and lifted one of them high. "Cheers."
11
This had to be some kind of cosmic joke, Merry kept thinking. Of all the people in Jupiter Point, Will Knight would probably be the last man she ever would have connected to StarLord. She would have thought it was some kind of hallucination except for the sharp fizz of champagne on her tongue. That was real. So was the scent of Will's aftershave, something light and spicy, like cedar shavings. His strong, lean body stretched next to hers on the picnic bench.
The more buzzed she got, the more ridiculous the situation seemed. She kept remembering new details and bursting into giggles.
"The tiger lilies! Did you tell Tobias and Ben I like them? But how did you—"
"They asked me, but I was thinking of the other you. I had no idea you liked them too." He shook his head, confusion clouding his gray eyes. "That didn't make sense, did it?"
"None of this makes sense."
"Man, did I have this all wrong. I told my brothers you probably preferred flowers with thorns."
She had to laugh at that. "Touché. I like people to be a little bit afraid of me, if you know what I mean."
"I do. I'm the same way. Makes enforcing the law a hell of a lot easier."
She angled her body toward him. The revelation of this other, softer side of Will Knight was really blowing her mind. "So it's all a front? The big tough lawman act is just for your job?"
"I can't tell you that. You might use it against me." He shot her a sidelong glance filled with amusement. A flutter sparked to life inside her. Attraction, curiosity, interest, desire…a heady mix, on top of the champagne.
"I thought we agreed that we're bound to secrecy."
He laughed and reached for the tray of appetizers Suzanne had left for them. He unpeeled the plastic and offered first choice to her. She smiled to herself. He really was that sweet, thoughtful guy she'd imagined StarLord to be.
"It's not all an act. I am a cop, after all. Also, I was a wild twenty-two-year-old kid in charge of a grieving eight-year-old. He acted out a lot. Sometimes I handled it well, sometimes I had to lay down the law."
"You couldn't just write him a poem?" She winked and selected a cherry tomato and tore the stem off with her teeth. His gaze followed the action.
Okay then. Attraction: mutual.
He cleared his throat. "About that…any chance you can—"
"Nope." She didn't even let him finish. "I love your poems. I think you should publish them."
"Hell no." He filled one of his palms with salted almonds from the tray. "I'm a cop. Do you know how much shit I would get? Suspects would be laughing their asses off."
"You could read them their rights and recite them a poem. It would be glorious."
He glowered at her. "Not happening. I don't write them for anyone to see. It's more like…doodling. Images come to mind, different thoughts, and I work them out on paper. It's private. Not even my brothers have read any of them." He popped an almond into his mouth, as if that was the end of the topic.
She cocked her head at him. Now that his stern-faced facade had cracked, she was fascinated to see what else lived behind it. "You don't like people seeing anything personal, do you?"
He tossed another few almonds in with the first one. Stonewalling by almonds. Then finally, he spoke again. "It's not exactly… I've been in the spotlight. And under a microscope. My whole family went through it. Made me protective."
A chill shivered over her as she realized what he was referring to. "Your father?" she asked
delicately.
He shot her a sharp, resigned look. "I guess it's no surprise you've heard about that."
"I'm just surprised it took so long. You have a lot of fans in Jupiter Point."
"But you've never been one of them."
She brushed a crumb off her sweater. "I admit, Deputy Slow-Mo, that we've had our run-ins. We're natural enemies, after all. An officer and a reporter, that's kind of like oil and water. We're adversaries. Just look at the way you keep stepping in the way of me doing my job."
"Hmm." He nodded thoughtfully. "I do see what you mean. Like how I sent you that photo. Police evidence, sent directly to your inbox. Are you sure I'm the enemy?"
She nudged his side with her elbow. "It's true, every once in a while, you do something that makes me think you've turned over a new leaf and crossed over to our side."
He snorted. "That will never happen. I'm about solving crimes and protecting the populace. It's who I am and who I always will be."
"And I can see why." Now that she was putting all the pieces together, it made sense. Often a tragedy changed the trajectory of a person's life. She'd seen it over and over when interviewing crime victims. She squinted at him thoughtfully, imagining a young Will vowing to catch his father's killer.
He waved a hand in front of her face, interrupting her fantasy. "I can see the gears turning, but you're wrong. That's not why I work in law enforcement. I was headed there all along. I just ended up in the first half of Law and Order instead of the second."
With a sigh, she drew up one knee and rested her chin on it. "I love that show."
"So do I."
"Well, I guess maybe we're not complete opposites."
"No comment," he answered dryly.
She burst out laughing. Another thing they had in common—sense of humor. When Will relaxed, like now, with the last sunlight reflecting in his gray eyes, he was pretty irresistible.
"I can think of a few things we have in common," he added. "We both work hard. My brothers say I work too much. They worry about me."
She tipped champagne to her mouth. "Oh, I'm a hopeless workaholic. I don't even use my vacation time unless it's for a story. I've been that way since junior high."
"What got you into journalism?"
She gave him a searching look, but detected nothing beyond sincere curiosity in the question. "Well, I got hooked early on. I always had a foot in two worlds. I lived in a low-ish income neighborhood in New York with my mother, but we had money from my father that went toward my education. I took a subway every day to a private school uptown. I knew how to blend, no matter where I was. Anyway…"
Jeez, she was getting off track. Will's attentive manner made her want to tell him all sorts of personal stuff.
"When I was fourteen, a reporter came to our neighborhood investigating a story about landlord abuses. But no one wanted to talk to him because they were afraid they'd get evicted. They didn't trust him to protect their names. So I helped him out. I interviewed people, I took photos for him, I got him copies of the illegal notices people were getting. The story was published in the New York Times and it was the most incredible feeling. And it worked—repairs started happening that never did before. And it was all because someone came and shined a light on a problem. After that, I knew I had to be a reporter."
She paused to take a breath.
"Don't stop. Tell me more. What's your mother like?"
"She's a singer. She's fierce. She never babied me. I had to stand on my own two feet, which is how I liked it anyway."
"She sounds impressive."
Any compliment about her mother always made her glow. "She is. We're still close, but she's on tour right now in Japan, along with my stepfather. He's her manager, we both took his name when they got married, that's where my last name 'Warren' comes from. You know, she could have used that money from my bio-father for herself, but she kept it for my education instead. That's one reason I work so hard. She sacrificed for me and I don't want to let her down."
"Jupiter Point's best reporter? Not likely."
She smiled, then shifted the tone of the conversation to something lighter. "You know what I want to do? I want to go back through all the StarLord messages and reinterpret them based on what I know now."
"Yup, a few little tidbits are coming back to me."
The evil gleam in his eye told her exactly what he was referring to. She changed position so she sat on her knees and heels and swatted him on the arm. "How much will it take for you to delete some of my messages and forget you ever saw them?"
He laughed, fending her off easily. "Bribing an officer of the law?"
"Totally justifiable."
"What's the problem?" he teased. "There's nothing wrong with being an independent woman in charge of her own sexuality."
The word "sexuality" shifted the atmosphere between them. Her throat tightened and her lower belly clenched with excitement.
"Yes, but I told that to StarLord, not Deputy Will Knight."
"You know me. I don't tell secrets. I'm the king of 'no comment.' It's one of the things you don't like about me."
The secrets part was true. As for the rest of it… "I never said 'don't like.' That's not an accurate quote."
They smiled at each other. The last light from the sinking sun kissed their faces. The moment seemed to last forever, the two of them wrapped up in the spell of the whispering ocean breeze, the deepening dark. She had the sense of being perched on top of the world here in this mountaintop gazebo with a man who kept revealing new layers.
She wrenched her gaze away before things got too intense. "Sunset," she reminded him.
They both watched the sun's last glimmer of goodbye. A star winked into visibility, like Tinkerbell coming out to play. Merry was acutely aware of Will next to her, as if her body was communicating with him on a level her mind didn't quite grasp. Her heart kept skipping to a different rhythm, the little hairs on her arm prickled. Her mouth went dry, her throat tight.
Looking out at that far horizon, where the last streaks of persimmon and violet shimmered, time shifted. The world suddenly felt both bigger and more expansive than she'd ever imagined, and at the same time, cozier. More intimate. As if she was perfectly safe right now, and forever. As long as Will sat by her side.
She shook off the impossible thought. Their weird relationship hadn't gotten any less strange because they now knew they'd been communicating intimately for months. In fact, it was stranger.
"We should probably talk about what happened before," she said reluctantly. "At your place. After the tranquilizer gun."
12
Will drew in a deep breath at the forbidden topic. He still remembered the panic of spotting Merry unconscious outside of Finn's guesthouse. The dynamic, ball-of-energy girl he knew wasn't supposed to be splayed out like a rag doll in the flower bed. He'd charged across the lawn, and when he'd found her still breathing, he'd actually uttered a prayer to God—not something he often did.
He had enough EMT training to confirm that her heart was beating normally, her pulse strong. She'd been rendered unconscious, but nothing was fundamentally wrong with her. So instead of taking her to Urgent Care, he took her home and settled her onto his couch. He'd called into the office to file a report, and stayed home the rest of the afternoon as she slept it off.
Thinking she might end up spending the night, he brought her a fleece blanket. He was kneeling next to the couch and tucking it around her when she suddenly sat bolt upright and grabbed him. "Where am I? What happened?"
"Whoa whoa whoa." He put his hands on her shoulders, hoping to calm her. "It's okay. You were attacked at Finn and Lisa's guesthouse. Nothing serious, you just got knocked out. I brought you here to sleep it off."
Her pulse was jumping in her throat. He smoothed his thumb over her collarbone in slow, gentle circles. Her eyelids drooped and her head sagged to the side. He realized the drug wasn't out of her system yet.
"Come on, why don't you lie down. I promise
you're safe here. I think you have some more sleeping to do." He eased her back , but when he tried to pull his hands away from her, she resisted. She took one of his hands and tucked it under her cheek like a pillow.
"Feels good," she murmured, sounding half drunk. "I like your hands. They're very sexy. Do you know hands are the first thing I look at in a man? If a guy has big hands, that's a good sign, that's all I'm saying."
He froze. He clamped down on the laughter trying to fight its way out of his mouth. Poor Merry didn't know what she was saying. If she did, she definitely wouldn't be using words like "sexy." Hands weren't sexy, or at least his weren't. They were big and calloused and sported a few scars here and there.
She snuggled her cheek against his palm. He was still reeling with the shock of that move when she did something even more provocative. She licked the heel of his hand like a cat. The surprise of her wet tongue on his skin sent shockwaves all the way up his arm.
"Bet you didn't know I think you're hot. I think you're a little hottie two-shoes," she murmured. "A hotsa-matzoh. A hot-ten-tot. A hot cross buns, a hottie van winkle, a—"
"Okay, settle down." He shushed her, mostly because he was afraid he might laugh if she kept going. So Merry Warren thought he was hot, did she? Or at least she did when she was stoned out of her mind on some kind of tranquilizer. "Just go back to sleep now." He did what he'd always wanted to do—tucked a bit of her springy halo of hair behind her ears. It felt soft and alive under his fingers.
"Don't you think I'm p-pretty?" Merry, stammering? He'd never heard that before. Usually she spoke at a rapid clip with barely an um or an er.
"You're very pretty," he told her. Because it was true. "You're beautiful."
"You're just saying that." She stuck out her lower lip, so plump and delicious he wanted to lick it.
"I'm not much of a sweet-talker. If I say it, I mean it. But you should sleep now, you'll feel better after a nice rest…"
"Even my big butt? I got that from my mama."
Hot Pursuit (Jupiter Point Book 5) Page 9