by Fiona Lowe
Unlike his fingers on her clitoris, this orgasm didn’t explode unexpectedly; instead it crept up on her—delicately, deliciously, daringly—until a ripple became a riptide. As it pulled her up into the pleasure realms, her fingers dug into his shoulders and she screamed his name.
Will followed—his entire body tensing then shuddering against hers, his chest heaving. They sank into each other, waiting for their breathing to slow, and for a moment neither of them said a word.
Will moved first. “My legs have gone to sleep.”
“Sorry.” She rolled away from him, but he grabbed her and pulled her in close, spooning against her. “Don’t be sorry.” He kissed her shoulder. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Squee! Will Bartlett had just thanked her for sex. What wondrous universe had she just entered?
She snuggled into him, her mind going a thousand miles a minute trying to process everything that had just happened. Rafts of giddiness shot through her every time she thought about Will being as attracted to her as she was to him.
Truth is, Millie, you’re the first woman I’ve wanted to have sex with for a long time.
Did it mean anything more than friends having sex? She stopped the thought right there. It was way too soon to be thinking about that.
Behind her, his breathing deepened and she smiled. Obviously, Will wasn’t overanalyzing anything. Perhaps she should learn from that and go with the flow. Only, going with the flow didn’t exactly fit in with her diabetic life. She automatically reached out her hand and grabbed Dex off her nightstand. Two ominous arrows pointing down. Shoot. She’d eaten a healthy dinner, but she’d forgotten how much of a workout sex was, and now she needed more food.
Will will fuss.
And she’d get mad.
She didn’t want to argue with him after the best sex of her life, so decision made, she lifted his arm and slowly moved away from him.
“All right?” he mumbled, his eyes closed.
“Bathroom.”
“Hmmm. K.”
Grabbing her handsets off the nightstand and sweeping up her pajamas, she left the room.
Chapter 12
Tara walked around the Bear Paw park surveying the layout. It had been almost a week since the agonizingly uncomfortable Fourth of July family fun day meeting, where Ethan had been the perfect convener—on task, efficient and excruciatingly polite. If her unexpected attendance after their blackmail argument had surprised him, he hadn’t shown it. He’d merely noted down Mitch’s apology on the official minutes and turned away from her.
The first time in the meeting when he’d been required to direct a policing question to her, his gaze had been quick and matter-of-fact. Initially, she couldn’t put her finger on what the difference was until he moved his attention to the parks and recreation officer. That’s when it hit her—before she’d accused him of blackmail, his toffee-colored eyes had always looked at her with warmth. Now there was a very noticeable chill.
She was used to men looking at her in a variety of ways—with fear when she was in uniform, with sexual hunger when she was not, and there’d been times during her military service when the hunger had tangoed with disgust because she was a woman in uniform in a country where women were hidden away. But Ethan’s gaze held none of those things that she understood. Instead, she read disinterest.
She’d told herself it didn’t matter—in fact it was better this way. The few times she’d found herself drawn to studying him closely, she’d experienced dangerous sensations of attraction—sensations that she didn’t trust, because they’d only ever led her astray. After her divorce, she’d vowed she was never giving in to attraction again, and now that she’d killed any interest Ethan may have had in her, she felt she’d gained some protection from her own feelings. Yes, it was definitely better things had turned out this way. After all, she wasn’t in town to be liked—she was here to do a job.
You accused him of a crime. Again. You owe him an apology. Again.
The difficult truth had been like a prickly burr in her skin for almost a week. It pierced her sharply and often, reminding her that she was in the wrong and she needed to do something about it. She’d planned to apologize to Ethan after the meeting. She’d spent the entire meeting rehearsing it, but the moment he’d said the words Meeting closed, he’d risen and left.
Stressed, she’d gone directly to the ER to ask Millie for some advice, but when Millie had said, What’s up? the thought of confiding in someone she didn’t know very well was harder than making the apology to Ethan. So, she’d set another coffee date and left.
She’d stopped by the library on Thursday and Friday, but both times Ethan hadn’t been there, and she left without leaving a message because what was she going to say? Call me? He wouldn’t, and besides, she doubted the offhand Tahlee would actually pass on the message. Plans to find Ethan over the weekend were stymied when her time had been consumed by supervising three bored teens clean up the mess they’d created with their Friday night graffiti spree, and by then the time lapse since Wednesday had gotten both embarrassing and increasingly difficult to bridge. So here she was, another forty-eight hours later, and tomorrow she’d see Ethan again at another damn meeting.
She’d been putting off the park reconnaissance for the family fun day assuming—desperately hoping—Mitch would step back into the role, but when she’d brought it up in this morning’s telephone call, he’d said, “It’s good experience for you.” A week ago, she probably would have agreed with him. Now, not so much.
So here she was at the park at the technical end of her shift and ironically right outside the library. The building, with its glass-walled reading room, backed onto the park and overlooked a grove of large cottonwood trees that shaded the half dozen picnic tables. The children’s playground and horseshoe pit were close by, and farther over, there was a covered BBQ area where the Lions Club would be cooking breakfast for the fun run participants and later in the day hosting the burger barn.
Consulting the map in her hand, she inspected the three entrances to the park—one came off Railroad Street, another off Main and the third off the smaller side street. With the Fourth of July falling on a Saturday this year, there wouldn’t just be Bear Paw traffic coming through town but tourists as well. This meant detouring a sizable amount of traffic during the fun run and later for the parade. It would impact how many entrances they could use. She scrawled a note in the margin and wondered wryly if Mitch was up to directing traffic with his crutches from a wheelchair.
Using the map, she plotted out the proposed distance between the lines of vendors and the different community organizations’ tents, making sure there was plenty of room for people walking in both directions. Many of the boxes on the map that represented tents were labeled with their planned occupants. Along with a variety of food and arts and crafts stalls, there was a sustainability and green energy tent, a story time and craft tent, a teen’s tent, animal control adopt-a-pet, first aid and even a police department tent. She wondered why the PD needed a tent, let alone why it was positioned next to the petting zoo.
You have no clue how to work in a small town, Tara.
The same unnerving sensation that had been bothering her since her arrival in town ran up her spine. Had she done the wrong thing coming to Bear Paw?
Probably. Maybe. Perhaps.
Refusing to give any fuel to the unsettling thoughts, she finished listing her questions for tomorrow’s meeting before cutting back across the park toward her patrol car. As she passed the library steps, she automatically glanced up. She winced as a rush of delight shot through her and her heart rate kicked up.
Ethan had his back to her as he locked the library for the day. A leather computer satchel strap was slung across his slim-fit paisley shirt and brown vest, and the actual bag bumped off his mustard-colored jeans. Jeans that fit tightly and showed off his unexpectedly strong legs and taut behind. It was an oxymoron, because the guy dressed like a hipster a
nd professed not to play sports, yet his body was remarkably toned. She instantly remembered how he’d risen to his feet when she’d handcuffed him.
Hauling her gaze away from his ass, she immediately noticed he was holding a black and red sports bag in his left hand with the words Tae Kwon Do stenciled across it in large white letters.
So that’s how he does it.
Stop thinking about his buff body. Think about apologizing.
“Hello, Ethan.”
Jeez, you’re supposed to sound friendly, not like a suspicious cop.
He turned abruptly from the door and jogged down the steps, walking straight past her. “Officer.”
She matched his stride and tried again, this time shooting for genial. “Call me Tara.”
Now you just sound demanding. You totally suck at this.
He stopped and raised his brows. “Feeling appropriately guilty, are we?”
Yes. She launched into her well-rehearsed speech. “Ethan, I wish to apologize—”
“Yeah, stop right there.” He held up his hand and ceased walking. “I’ve heard this speech once before, remember? Only last time it started with ‘Doctor Langworthy’ and the sentiment lasted all of nine days. This apology doesn’t mean a damn thing. It’s just standard operating procedure for you, isn’t it?”
“Actually, police officers apologizing is definitely not standard operating procedure,” she said decisively, thinking about her training. “In fact, they strongly recommend that you never do it.”
He gave her a penetrating look that seemed to go on forever, and his silence jostled and bumped her with its antagonism. Then he did something totally unexpected. His tense face relaxed, his friendly mouth curved up, often-used happy lines creased the skin around his eyes and he laughed.
“I never picked you as having a sense of humor, Tara.”
His laughter made her feel uneasy. “It’s not what I’m known for,” she said tightly.
“No kidding.” A moment later, surprise chased away the laughter. “You’re actually trying to apologize, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
His shoulders rose and fell as if to say, Okay then. “I’ll shut up and let you.”
She squirmed under his all-seeing gaze, and she nervously licked her lips, which was crazy, because she didn’t get nervous around men. “What you said the other day. You were right.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
Her chin shot up. “You really want to make this hard for me, don’t you?”
“Sadly, a part of me really does,” he said, as if the realization shocked him. “I much preferred being mistaken for a thief than being accused of blackmailing you.”
Her gut churned. “I understand.”
His intelligent brow creased in a frown. “Do you? Because it’s important to me that you can make the distinction.”
She heard a noise and was surprised to see she was frantically clicking the pen she still held in her hand—her thumb going up and down fast. She tried to stop. “I can make the distinction. I mistook your selfless deed and turned it into something self-serving and mean-spirited.”
“You did.” With his free hand, he adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Although to be fair, I probably should have told you that I gave Judy the video as much for me as for you. I prefer having footage of me playing soccer badly and celebrating like a crazy man to a photo of me in a police cell.”
From her perspective, both were embarrassing, but obviously for him one was more so than the other. “Another example of your moral stance?”
“You bet.” He gave a rueful smile. “It also avoids the inevitable family interrogation and the headline Son of Judge Arrested for Theft. I don’t want to give the old man an early heart attack.”
“No. Of course not,” she managed to say, trying to sound like she understood, when she had no real experience of family expectations.
Far too often in her childhood, she’d had to be the mom. The only times Tara remembered being interrogated was when Lexie wanted more liquor and Tara had hidden the rent money where she couldn’t find it. Problems like that probably hadn’t featured in the Langworthys’ home. Being shot at probably wasn’t something he’d had to deal with, either, and it was a sharp reminder that his experiences of life both as a child and an adult were clean and sanitized compared with hers.
“Earth to Tara?” Ethan clicked his fingers in front of her face. “You okay? You seemed to vanish into another world there for a minute.”
And she had—only that other world was the one she was familiar with while Bear Paw and people like Ethan were as foreign to her as her life was to them. You’re apologizing, remember? Get it over with. She cleared her throat. “The other day you said I had no clue how to work in a small town, and you’re right. I’ve spent the last few years working with people who shoot first and ask questions later. Actually, that was Detroit. In Afghanistan, they don’t even bother to ask questions.”
Her chin shot up as she reined in every emotion exactly as she’d been trained. “I apologize for judging you by that yardstick, and I’ll endeavor to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
“You served in the military?” Ethan asked, clearly stunned.
“I did,” she said matter-of-factly, “and it was a natural choice to go into law enforcement when I de-enlisted.” But I don’t want to talk about it. “So, you do Tae Kwon Do?” she said, locking her gaze onto his gym bag. “Interesting choice in a town obsessed by baseball, softball, football, volleyball and basketball.”
He smiled and again his eyes crinkled up in their friendly way. “As Judy told you the first day we met, ball sports aren’t my thing.”
“But you have to be coordinated to do martial arts.”
“Yeah, but in a different way. I took it up at thirteen when I needed some street-cred to offset the fact I played cello.”
“But you play it like a rock star,” she blurted out, sounding like a fangirl and instantly regretting it.
“I do now, and thank you for noticing, but back in middle school I hadn’t yet busted out my bad-boy cello riffs. I was still under the thumb of the classical music teacher.”
She thought about her confusing middle school years when she still felt like a little girl but she’d developed the body of a woman. Not only had boys started staring at her, but men, too, and always with naked desire in their eyes. She’d craved to stay the child she’d been, but not even her mother had allowed her that, forcing her into clothes she didn’t want to wear. “Middle school can be tough.”
He shrugged. “It was a perfect storm, really. I was a weedy and skinny kid, I wore glasses, I played the cello and with a voice that was late to break, Mrs. Solberg, my well-meaning but deluded English teacher told everyone in class I had the reading voice of an angel.”
Tara could picture it clearly. “You wouldn’t have survived five minutes in my neighborhood,” she said spontaneously.
He glanced at her with that intense look of his, and she immediately regretted what she’d said. What was wrong with her? First she’d mentioned Afghanistan to him and now this. She’d disclosed more about her life to Ethan in the last ten minutes than she’d told anyone else in her thirty-one days in Bear Paw. Or, for that matter, anyone else in a very long time.
But he didn’t ask her where she’d grown up; he just continued with his story. “I ignored most of the stuff the kids did, like dressing my cello in a girls’ basketball uniform and calling her my girlfriend, and making stupid band camp jokes, but one day Rudy Baker pantsed me and something inside me snapped.
“Before I knew it, I’d punched him in the mouth with the world’s wobbliest left hook, but somehow it took him down anyway. Rudy was shocked speechless, the other kids were impressed by the copious amounts of blood, I bruised my hand so badly I couldn’t play cello for two weeks and I got suspended for a few days.”
“That really was very badass of you,” she said, smiling for some reason.
&
nbsp; “Oh yeah. Totally badass,” he said wryly, “although as a police officer, I’m not sure you’re supposed to say that. Anyway, my parents were horrified, mortified and every other ’fied in between. Words not fists was the tenet in our household, and I was marched over to the Bakers’ house and made to apologize to a family whose philosophy was Boys will be boys. That almost undid the cred I’d scored with the punch.
“My mother talked at me nonstop for a week about how street brawling and using brute force wasn’t something civilized people did. Dad didn’t say quite as much, but his message was the same, only he added in a practical component. One night he drove me to Great Falls to a Tae Kwon Do class. There were no balls being thrown at my head, and unlike my usual deer caught in headlights approach to sports, I loved it.”
“Your dad drove you to Great Falls and back once a week?” She couldn’t stop her voice from rising on a tide of incredulity.
“Sure,” Ethan said with a shrug, “and he drove me to the monthly weekend competitions. We even went to a couple of out-of-state meets. I think I loved the road trips with dad as much as the competitions. What about you? Did you do the whole traveling-for-sport thing?”
“I played soccer.” Until the other team mothers said it wasn’t fair that Lexie wasn’t on the schedule to drive.
Again she looked at the bag, which was becoming her savior in keeping the conversation away from her. “So are you heading to Great Falls now?”
He shook his head. “No. I teach a kids’ class here on Tuesdays to save the parents the drive.”
“Wow, that’s generous.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said quickly as if being generous was something sordid. “The kids are great and it’s good to see them learning that success doesn’t hinge on the ability to catch, kick, hit or throw a ball. I get back way more than I give.”