That insatiable curiosity overrode any concern she had about bugging him twice in one day. Switching to adorably cute neighbor from a 1960s sitcom mode, even though she wasn’t much of an actress, she marched up to his front door and knocked.
Fifteen long seconds later the door opened. Gone was the straitlaced, strictly by the rulebook cop. In his place was a big, romance cover model of a man. Noah wore jeans and a long-sleeved Henley that molded to his chest—a romance-cover-model-worthy chest, she’d bet—that hadn’t been obvious under his uniform. The New Zealand Police should adopt blue jeans and tight-fitting Henley as a uniform, because she could tell you right now: Any woman caught committing a crime would surrender at one glance of a cop looking like Noah.
She must’ve been gaping at him like an idiot, complete with mouth hanging open and drool possibly hanging from a string at the side. His gaze widened and then narrowed, with what’s happened now? frown lines settling on his handsome face.
Oh. Apparently stopping in unannounced wasn’t her best idea of Stewart Island, Day 1.
Tilly snapped her mouth shut before one of the rumored mosquitoes the size of sparrows flew into it.
“Hiya, neighbor,” she said. “Thought I’d return this.” She held up his fleece. “Since I’m on my way to hunt down something to eat in town.”
He didn’t say anything immediately, so in the way extroverts like her often reacted, she filled in the silence before it could get awkward. “Guess it’s safe for me to be walking alone at night?”
A muscle close to his mouth indented. “Worried about kākā gangs? You should be okay.”
“That gang ruined my dinner and I’m starving. Does Due South deliver?”
“Not unless the chefs, Shaye and Del, have taken a liking to you, and you happen to be elderly and infirm. Don’t think you qualify there, sorry.”
An almost compliment if ever she heard one. “Why, Noah. Are you hitting on me?”
The indented muscle transformed into a smile, one which would have knocked her fuzzy socks off if she’d been wearing any. A smiling Noah threw her completely off her game. Before he could respond she blurted out, “Or are you fishing for an invitation to join me for dinner?”
His eyes widened again and the smile froze in place. Like a horrified rictus, caused by the idea of spending more time with the crazy woman two doors up.
She hadn’t intended to ask him out, and now that she had, she wanted to take it back and vanish into the night like a puff of the smoke curling out of his chimney. One day her big mouth would get her into some serious trouble.
“You’re asking me to dinner?”
His tone sounded as if she’d made an indecent proposal, including but not limited to loud sexual shenanigans on his doorstep in full view of the street. She bristled a little, because surely, if you looked like Noah Daniels, she couldn’t be the first woman to ask him out for a meal. Or to have sex right there and then on whatever horizontal surface was available.
She wiped the image from her mind with a delicate clearing of her throat. “I’m asking if you could eat. If so, I’m buying you a steak dinner at Due South. Unless you’re a vegetarian, in which case I’ll spring for a tofu dinner.”
She eyed the bulge of his biceps stretching the Henley’s sleeves. The man did not live on tofu alone. Carnivorous was one adjective that popped into her mind. Noah somehow managed to still fill up most of the available space between her and the doorframe with sheer charisma. Larger than life. Built like a rugby prop. A hard nut to crack. All apt descriptions, and all causing a little shiver to race down her spine. As that impenetrable stare seemed to peel back the layers of her request to expose her true motivation, he once again became Noah the humorless cop.
“Or not.” She held out his fleece. “Your choice.”
He took it from her and their fingers brushed. There was no lightning bolt, no touching-an-electric-fence start. No instantaneous chemical reaction that would cause his breath to catch and his pupils to dilate in sudden fervent desire. She really had to quit reading romance novels in her spare time. The only instance she’d got a jolt from a man touching her hand was after she’d been scuffing her fluffy socks over long-pile carpet.
He tossed the fleece over one broad shoulder and cocked an eyebrow. “What’s your stance on tofu?”
Trick question? “Cover it in a nice spicy chili and lime sauce, plate it, then toss it in the garbage. I’d rather eat a moist, white kitchen sponge.”
“Let’s hope it won’t come to that.” He pushed away from the doorframe and backed up a step. “I’ll get my keys.”
Chapter 5
The pub was packed, the picture windows overlooking Halfmoon Bay fogged up with all the warm bodies clustered inside. Noah could guarantee more than a few eyebrows would rise interpreting what it meant for him to walk into Due South with a woman by his side.
A newcomer to the island, no less.
Word would’ve gotten around that Mary’s great-niece had arrived, but gossip didn’t faze him. It wasn’t the first time a woman had taken him to dinner. It’d just been a while since he’d wanted one to.
Tilly paused outside the hotel to take in the dark, mirrorlike water of the bay that reflected the wharf’s lights and made them shimmer. Her long hair spilled down her back in soft waves and she tipped her face to the starry sky, giving him another, longer glimpse of her profile.
He’d stolen glances at her all the way on the walk from his place. She’d almost single-handedly kept the conversation going, covering everything from the weather to current movies.
Often a woman filling his silences with chatter caused him to retreat further into himself, but he’d enjoyed her quirky observations and laughed a few times at her self-deprecating sense of humor. And the times he did speak, Tilly listened. In a way a lot of people didn’t because they were waiting for a split-second pause to interrupt with their own agenda. Not for the first time in the past twenty minutes did he wonder what Tilly’s agenda was in asking him out.
“Something smells amazing,” Tilly said as she turned away from the scenery and smiled at him. “You weren’t exaggerating about the food here.”
“It’s good.” Noah gestured toward the steps leading up to the front entrance, and they started up them. “Which is just as well since there are few places to eat here.”
“I feel like I’ve arrived on another planet.” Her head twitched toward the pub’s glass door.
Noah spotted Smitty grinning at them from a nearby table. The old fella lifted his beer mug and winked.
“And maybe the inhabitants have cannibalistic inclinations and want to add me as tonight’s special to the blackboard menu,” she added with a little wave at Smitty.
If she tasted as sweet as the mandarin-vanilla scent still wafting off her skin, who could blame them? Noah stood close enough to her that he couldn’t help but breathe her in and it was doing insidious things to his thought processes. She smelled amazing.
“I think you’re safe with me.” At least in a public place. He opened the door opposite the pub’s which led into the restaurant.
“Really? You’ll protect me from a walker herd who wants to make me into brain soufflé?”
He found himself grinning moronically at her as they entered the welcoming warmth of the restaurant. “Don’t tell me you’re a Walking Dead fan.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not, since you’re pretty much the town’s sheriff.” She laughed, lightly touching his forearm.
Pinpricks of awareness raced over his skin, but he ignored it as Lani, one of Due South’s servers, made a beeline for them.
“Table for two?” Lani asked, barely managing to keep her lips from twisting into a questioning smirk. “Or are you joining the Westlakes on their date night?” She tipped her head toward one of the occupied tables where Piper and West sat sharing a bottle of wine.
“No, just a table for two.” There was a hint of confusion in Tilly’s voice as she followed Lani’s and Noah�
��s gaze.
Piper and West were now staring at their party with hawklike attention.
West gave Noah a bro eyebrow lift as Lani led them to a table off to the side. Dinner service was in full swing and the restaurant half full, so there was enough of a noise to prevent his mate from eavesdropping. Wouldn’t stop him from trying, though.
“Friends of yours?” Tilly picked up the menu and unfolded it.
“Yeah. West is the manager here, and that’s his wife, Piper, sizing you up.”
Tilly’s pretty hazel eyes slid sideways, past a table of four—two men, two women, all in their early twenties, sunburned complexions, one of the women rubbing her ankle and complaining about blisters; likely conclusion: tourists returning from hiking the Rakiura track—to West and Piper’s table.
“She looks like an intense kind of person,” Tilly said diplomatically.
“Former cop. And a former diver with the Police National Dive Squad. Hard core.” And the only person in Oban to truly understand the kind of pressure he’d endured on the job. “We can’t help the intensity.”
She lowered the menu, her gaze shifting from the Westlakes to him. While he was used to Piper’s occasional scrutiny, Tilly’s focused attention stroked over his skin as if she’d reached across the table and run her fingers along his jaw.
“Everyone’s guilty until proven innocent?”
“Something like that,” he said. And what was Tilly Montgomery guilty of? A growing part of him wanted to find out.
After they’d ordered, she sipped her glass of chardonnay and rubbed a thumb along the rim to remove the faint trace of soft-pink lipstick left behind. He’d noticed the habit she had of dragging her teeth over her full lower lip when a conversation pause stretched out, and the way she’d give a little start when he shifted his feet under the table.
“What is it you do in Auckland?” he asked.
“I’m a writer for K-Road.”
He must’ve looked bemused because her forehead crinkled cutely and she added, “The TV soap that no one likes to admit they’re addicted to.”
Noah had heard of the long-running Auckland-based show. In fact, during the eighteen months he’d been under investigation and in limbo, he’d been sucked into the world of prostitutes, madams, scandal, and never-ending drama just to pass the time.
“I’m familiar with it,” he said. “I’ve never met a writer before, but it explains the overactive imagination.”
She chuckled. “That, I’m guilty of. My dad…” She twisted a strand of hair around her index finger, her lips thinning. “My dad always said I’d inherited it from him.”
“Your dad was a writer, too?” He softened his voice in deference to the tensing of muscles along Tilly’s jaw.
“My dad was Robert Montgomery, author of fourteen literary novels, two books of award-winning poetry, winner of a Man Booker Prize, and professor of English literature at Auckland University for thirty years.”
Said in the tone of someone introducing a guest speaker to a crowded lecture hall.
Noah couldn’t quite gauge the emotion in her voice because, for the first time since he’d met her, she’d become as blank as a whitewashed stone wall. There was more than grief at losing her dad in those words, and he sensed the cracks beneath that blankness.
“I’ve heard of him, but I didn’t put your surname and his together.”
She shrugged. “Montgomery isn’t an unusual name and he was such a private person that nobody really knew much about me and my mum. Just as well. Otherwise I’d have an in-box full of wannabe authors who’re begging me to read their next New Zealand literary masterpiece about a 1920s amputee sheep farmer in central Otago.”
“Sounds as if it’s got all the ingredients to become a bestseller.”
Her lips curved, the magnetism of her smile reeling him in until he could see nothing else. A man could get invested in seeing that smile more often.
The conversation turned to books as Lani returned with their meals. He liked seeing the soft arch of her eyebrows as he held his own discussing the merits of genre fiction and offered opinions on a couple of New Zealand literary works that had been made into movies. He liked that he could surprise her and he liked it even more when she challenged some of his ideas. But he liked it a little less when Lani cleared their table and Tilly pinned him with a curious stare over her wineglass.
“From my powers of observation, I’m going to hazard a guess that you’re not a born and bred Stewart Islander.”
“You sure about that?” He gave a pointed glance down at his worn jeans and the woolen sweater he’d pulled over his shirt. “I look like a local.” He raised his elbow and pretend-sniffed his upper arm. “I smell like a local—briny with a hint of wood smoke.”
As he’d hoped, Tilly laughed. But she didn’t for a moment lose the curious gleam in her eyes. “You might look and smell like you’ve lived here all your life, but I detect a slight accent that says a city in the North Island, not South. Hamilton, maybe?”
“Guess again.”
“You’re a JAFA like me.” Her eyes widened and she rewarded him with another of her rip-your-heart-out smiles. “Aha! You know what that means.”
“Just another effing Aucklander. Knowing that acronym doesn’t make me one,” he teased. “But yeah, you’re partially right. I grew up and lived in South Auckland until I was in my early teens. Didn’t think I had an accent, though.”
Tilly tilted her head. “It’s not that obvious. But rural living hasn’t excised the city cop out of you.”
“City cop?”
“The way you notice everything going on around you, like you’re prepared for any eventuality. Over dinner I could almost see your brain rating the threat level in your environment.”
Threat level. His stomach squeezed around undigested chunks of steak. Noah rubbed his fingertips up and down his throat for a few beats, sucked back in time.
The earpiece crackled to life. The only other sound close to his position in the offender’s backyard was the rustling of a small bird or insect in the tree he was partially concealed behind.
“Daniels. Any movement in back? Report.”
His OC’s voice, grittier with more tension than usual for a domestic callout involving firearms, slid all the way under Noah’s body armor to prickle coolly down his spine. This wasn’t just an everyday domestic. The suspect firing shots from his unregistered rifle at the first officer on the scene was enough for the Armed Offenders Squad to be deployed. Although Noah wasn’t the new guy anymore after nearly eighteen months in the squad, the only time he’d heard the same tone in his tough-as-an-old-leather-boot officer in charge’s voice was when there was a kid involved.
“Goes with the job, no matter where you are.” His voice was a study of neutrality, with no hint of the tension mainlining through his veins. He’d had years of practice perfecting calm when hell wreaked havoc below his surface.
“Have you still got family back in Auckland?”
“Some uncles, aunts, and cousins. The rest of my family is closer to Wellington where I was based up until I moved to Oban. My younger brother is in Dunedin.” And a third of the South Island too close most of the time.
“You have a brother?”
“Two. The older one’s in Wellington, married and with three kids under seven.”
“Aw. Uncle Noah.” She grinned. “And your parents? What do they do?”
“Mum’s a lawyer, and my dad’s a cop.”
“That’s would make for some interesting marital dynamics.”
He shut down the memories of his mother’s tears and the one-sided screaming matches that’d heralded his preteenage years.
“They divorced the moment I turned eighteen. She’d had enough stress from being married to a cop who was married to his job, who constantly put his life in danger. Her words—not my dad’s.” He sealed his mouth shut, suddenly aware he’d shared more with this woman in one meal than he had with the previous handful of women he�
��d dated.
“Ah.” Tilly ran her thumb around the wineglass rim again. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I. They would’ve been happier if they’d separated years earlier.”
Tilly took another sip of her wine, and for a moment neither of them said anything.
“So your dad’s a police officer and you’re keeping up the family business?” she said finally.
He huffed out an amused snort. She’d no idea how blue their blood ran. “Yeah. He’s a detective inspector in central Wellington, about to retire next month, actually. My brothers are both in the force, too.”
“Wow. That’s some family business.” She pursed her lips. “Are your brothers detectives as well?”
Ice needles stabbed into Noah’s gut and his fingers tightened on his glass of orange juice. Juice because in public he was always on duty, always needed to have a clear head.
“Mark, the eldest, is.” And most, but not always, he used his skills of detection for good and not evil. Like bugging Noah for an explanation as to why he didn’t want to attend their dad’s retirement party next month. “Wade’s four years younger than me and with the canine unit in Dunedin.” He curled his lips up in what he hoped Tilly would interpret as a smile. “Though he spends most of his time herding drunk university students.” That and multiple callouts accompanied by Luka, his German shepherd partner.
“It’s nice you’ve got family not too far away.”
“Yeah. Nice.”
Family that couldn’t understand why Noah had relocated to the back of beyond, the deep, dark south of the south. They didn’t understand, no matter that they wore the blue uniform as he did, what it felt like to squeeze a trigger and take a life. And what it meant to live through the aftermath.
Bending The Rules: Stewart Island Book 10 Page 5