And why all this stuff was stirring up inside him when he should just be enjoying dinner with a pretty woman, he didn’t know. But it had to stop—he’d damn well make it stop. He wasn’t going back to that dark well, ever.
He cleared his throat, crumpling the paper napkin into a ball and tossing it onto his plate. “It’s getting late. I’ll walk you back.”
Tilly blinked owlishly at him, her gaze then sliding sideways and down to her small silver wristwatch. He didn’t need to glance at the face to know the small hand probably hadn’t touched the eight digit.
“Early to bed, early to rise,” he muttered, standing. “Finish your wine. I’ll take care of the meal.”
“But I was going to—hey!”
He didn’t wait for the rest of her objection, striding away from the table to ask Lani to add the two mains to his tab. Easier than overanalyzing the hurt he’d glimpsed on Tilly’s face as he’d shut down what could’ve been, for a normal, undamaged man, a fun evening.
From Mary Duncan’s secret journal:
How do you know a man wants to kiss you? Shouldn’t the question be, in this liberated age, whether or not a woman wants to kiss him?
* * *
Criticism was nothing new to Tilly Montgomery, whether it was in the form of an editor’s red ink slashing through her work—or track changes in a document, which didn’t sound as glamorous—or her mother’s despair at Tilly’s specially imported Trekkie cos-play outfit. She shrugged when an idea of hers was pooh-poohed around the writers’ table, rolled her eyes when Jonas shot one of his passive-aggressive insults her way, and smiled apologetically when she accidentally cut someone off during rush-hour traffic.
But Noah’s abrupt switch from easygoing and almost chatty to freeze your tits off cold, stung. It dredged up the gawky teenage girl who still resided inside her. A girl who’d taken longer than she should’ve to realize boys didn’t want to hear about Star Trek: Voyager and Stephen King’s mastery of the horror genre. That most sixteen-year-old boys weren’t interested in anything she had to say, and would, in fact, have preferred her to shut up and put out. And that’d been the ones who’d even noticed the chubby brunette with braces and allergies up the wazoo.
Noah, Tilly was sure, probably would’ve preferred she shut up on the walk back to her house. But keeping her mouth shut wasn’t in her DNA, so she’d talked nearly the whole time—quite a feat, considering the last five minutes was uphill. They closed in on Noah’s house, but although she slowed her steps, he didn’t, continuing past his driveway.
Ohhh-kay.
He was taking this gentlemanly first date thing seriously and walking her all the way home.
She slid another glance at his relaxed profile, at his lips tilting up slightly in the corner as if he were out for a solo stroll under the stars. He lifted his chin and inhaled deeply, his broad chest expanding under his sweater, making her realize how close she’d drifted toward him in these last few yards. She stiffened and angled her steps away, all the while continuing to explain the history of prostitution in New Zealand—and bloody hell, don’t even ask how she’d gotten onto that topic.
Her pulse doing a bump and grind against her vocal cords, Tilly watched the looming silhouette of Southern Seas appear in front of them. When a good-looking man walked you to your front door, wasn’t a kiss supposed to be a part of a first date’s conclusion?
Maybe if this had been an actual date instead of a dutiful civil servant making sure a woman got home safely. Kinda like the stereotyped cop bringing a tipsy teen home after they’d blown curfew.
And she wasn’t nearly tipsy enough to plant one on Officer Sexy-Britches. Didn’t matter how fine his ass looked in blue jeans—yes, she’d checked—or that the few times he’d smiled at her over dinner had curled her toes inside her leather boots. Or that he was a walking, not-talking, sexy-as-sin male who smelled better than the chocolate mud cake she’d been tempted to order.
She was not kissing him, period. Edit that punctuation with a red pen. Exclamation point.
“Thanks again for dinner,” she said as they climbed Southern Seas’ porch steps. She nearly added something about it definitely being her treat next time, but she swallowed the comment before it could embarrass her.
There wouldn’t be another time.
She fumbled in her jacket pocket for the house key, and dragging it out, promptly dropped it. She stooped down to pick it up, her fingers jerking back as Noah’s hand appeared in her line of vision. Giving him the side-eye, she found his face close to hers with an inscrutable expression in his eyes.
He hooked the key chain on his finger and slowly straightened. As did Tilly, finding herself standing a lot closer to him than she expected. Every hair along her arms stood to attention, the sensation more electrifying than uncomfortable. A tingly, hyperaware few seconds where her vision was dominated by male muscle bulk, her nose twitching with the warm, subtly spicy scent of his cologne, and her ears thudding with the swiftness of her heartbeat. She swayed toward him as if a sudden cyclone-force wind had sprung up behind her.
“You need me to come in and check for kākā?” He dangled the key chain between them, effectively preventing her from body slamming him into her front door and kissing his face off.
“No. I’m good.” She snatched the keys from his hand and this time—this time—the jolt of their fingers brushing sizzled through her like a fork stuck into a socket. Or so she imagined if electricity were painless, harmless, and conducted straight to each of her erogenous zones.
She jammed the key in the direction of the lock and missed, the key skittering off the metal plate.
“You okay?”
Said, she believed, in his ma’am, how much have you had to drink tonight? voice. Heat rose on her skin, starting at the neckline of her sweater and swiftly making tracks to her cheeks. Maybe she had drunk too much wine because her reaction to him was ridiculous.
And mortifying.
Another sideways glance revealed that, yes, concern lines creased Noah’s forehead and his hand hovered just below her elbow, as if ready to grab her should she look like she was about to collapse on her ass.
She stiffened her spine and took a deep breath, angling her chin to meet his gaze. “Kākā notwithstanding, it’s been a long and stress-filled day.”
The corner of his mouth creased up, emphasizing what really were sinfully kissable lips. “You should probably go straight to bed.”
“Yeah.” She was not thinking about kissing or going to bed with a man she’d only just met.
Of course she wasn’t. Bad Tilly.
He crowded her in the doorway, lifting the key ring from her numb fingers and sliding the key effortlessly into the lock. It clicked into place and he pushed the door open. This close, she could’ve turned her face to the right and found one of his hard pecs with her teeth—a thought that didn’t help the flush crawling over her face. Thank goodness for the low wattage of the porch light.
“There you go.”
“Thank you, Constable Daniels.” The words were jerked out of her before she could extricate the hint of sarcasm from them.
He straightened from unlocking the door and suddenly his face—his sinfully kissable face—was far too close for comfort. Her stomach yo-yoed down to the soles of her boots while every other part of her stilled on high alert. Noah’s gaze flickered to her mouth, lingering there for one drawn-out beat. In that stretched-to-breaking-point silence, every anticipatory moment before every first kiss she’d ever had flashed through Tilly’s brain. Every moment from the teenage boy who spritzed his mouth with breath freshener to a man who’d surprised her with a stolen kiss under an umbrella in a sudden downpour. How did you know when a man was about to kiss you?
“You’re welcome,” he said.
A different kind of heat rose under her skin, the kind that turned your insides to melted pools of wanting. And God, she had to admit to wanting. Just a little taste. She gave her lips a quick swipe with the tip of h
er tongue so they wouldn’t feel like two strips of beef jerky, and judged that she’d talked most of her remaining lipstick off on the walk back. Nothing was as awkward as leaving a man looking like a scary clown after a good-night snog.
Noah leaned in and her lungs stopped functioning. Closer, closer—and then there was his stubbled jawline as he angled away, pushing open her front door. It swung open, the outside light causing a widening triangle to expand down the dark hallway, illuminating the house’s total emptiness.
Tilly blinked, sucking in her cheeks and holding them in with her back teeth—an effective means of keeping any disappointed sounds from emerging. She ducked past him into the hallway, flicking on the nearest light switch and half blinding herself as cold white light exploded around her.
“Good night, then.” She squinted up at him as she grabbed the door edge and began to shut it.
Noah backed up and stepped off the threshold. He dipped his chin. “’Night.”
Tilly eased the door shut—anything close to slamming it would send the wrong kind of message—and leaned against it, shutting her eyes.
Unrequited attraction; it was a thing.
All that salty, earthy-smelling Stewart Island air must have been playing havoc with her instincts, making her imagine something that wasn’t there.
Chapter 6
Tilly spent the next four days in a cleaning frenzy. Dusting, scrubbing, wiping, spraying, mopping, and freaking out at the many locally grown creepy crawlies that’d made themselves at home in Mary’s B&B.
Once the main house was again habitable, meaning one pissed-off weta relocated to the garden and spiders flushed down the toilet, Tilly sat at the kitchen table with her notepad, laptop, and a maple walnut coffee muffin she’d picked up from the little wharf café. The day before, she’d discovered a bicycle in the garage. It was an old-fashioned pushbike with a wicker basket attached to the front and fire-engine-red paint. She’d pedaled it into town—wobbly at first since she hadn’t been on a bicycle since she was a kid—and picked up a few necessities at the grocery store. That morning, having grown in confidence and not so wobbly anymore, she’d returned to the grocery store and then made a trip to try one of Erin’s muffins at the suggestion of the store’s cashier.
She started her laptop and opened a fresh document.
Character name, she typed. Start with the basics, easy-peasy.
Tilly crinkled her nose at the screen. Guess she’d better decide whether this new character Christophe wanted would be male or female. Male, she decided. Less complicated. She snorted softly and tilted the kitchen chair back on two legs. Some men weren’t complicated, but then there were the Noah Danielses of the world.
Drumming her fingers on the tabletop, she narrowed her eyes. Character name. The two words seemed to mock her. She laid her fingers on the smooth keypads and let them take over, an all-around bad idea since the letters N-O-A-H D-A-N-I-E-L-S appeared in twelve-point Times New Roman.
Awesome. Now she was writing the man’s name like a twelve-year-old girl.
Her phone buzzed and Tilly snatched it up off the table gratefully, barely glancing at the caller ID before she took the call.
“How’s the deep south treating you?” Jonas asked after Tilly said hello.
“Great,” she said. “The commute to work is a breeze.” A wasted joke because Jonas had the same sense of humor as a pickled onion.
“What have you got for me? I assume you’ve made a start since I don’t imagine Oban has much in the way of nightlife.”
“Ah, no. Not much.” Tilly’s gaze shot to her blank-but-for-Noah’s-name document. “I’ve been thinking about a cop for the show. A big, broody, sexy beast of a cop with a really juicy backstory we can use to create endless drama with.”
“We’ve done cops before. What else’ve you got?”
Tilly ransacked her brain. Drug-addicted single mum? Done that. Stalker after one of the prostitutes? Done that, too. Military guy with a chip on his shoulder? Wouldn’t be believable in the K-Road world.
“Not just any cop,” she blurted. “Something more elite. Like a…” Her mind flicked back to dinner with Noah two nights ago and something he’d said about Piper Westlake. “Police diver. You know, the ones who retrieve the bodies of drowning victims and find weapons at the bottom of a canal. Or a member of the Special Tactics Group. That sort of thing.”
She could almost hear the wheels in Jonas’s brain chewing through her suggestion. “Mmmm. You could be onto something there. Keep me updated.”
After a few more insincere pleasantries, Jonas disconnected, leaving Tilly to once again stare blankly at the computer screen. She backspaced over Noah’s name and typed in Trevor Marshall. That was a good Kiwi bloke’s name. He sounded hardworking and straitlaced, the kind of cop who’d follow every rule to the letter. The kind of cop that a Machiavellian writer could wreak havoc on his boring, everyday life.
Tilly typed like a demon for the next hour, mainlining coffee and the muffin—which really was to die for. Finally she powered down her laptop and stood to stretch the kinks out of her spine. She needed to mull over a few of the ideas she’d come up with, and, from past experience, the best way to accomplish that was to do something mindless. Like cleaning or, in this case, something she’d put off for the past four days: tackling her great-aunt’s bedroom.
Stepping into Mary’s room felt like an invasion of privacy. Like the rest of the house, the décor was a mismatch of the swinging sixties and seventies. Faded orange and brown swirly wallpaper, brown shag carpet, and a multicolored granny-square afghan draped over the bed. Dad had often told Tilly his aunt’s B&B was stuck in a time warp, that he doubted it’d changed in the all the years she’d lived in Oban. It certainly hadn’t changed on the occasions that he’d visited as a young man, and later, when he’d taken Tilly on her first and only visit to her great-aunt on the island.
Tilly walked to the beautiful oak dressing table and stared down at the scattering of personal female clutter on it. An old-fashioned paddle hairbrush with a few wispy strands of iron gray hair caught in it. A neat line of medication bottles. A small wicker basket with an assortment of lip balms, deodorants, clear nail varnishes, and a manicure set. Three framed photographs. One of Mary and a group of elderly women—Mrs. Taylor among them. Another of Tilly and her father, taken at Mary’s sixtieth birthday party. The last was a shot of a much younger Mary with her arm slung around the shoulders of Tilly’s dad. He looked to be in his early teens, and he was holding up a big fish to the camera. Tilly chuckled at the proud look on her dad’s face.
She picked up a half-empty fat bottle of Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris perfume and sniffed, the lingering scent waking her olfactory memory of Mary giving her a fierce hug at her dad’s funeral. How the old woman had cupped Tilly’s face in her hands for a moment and locked both their red-eyed gazes together.
“You’ll get through this, Tilly,” she’d said. “And you’ll live, really live. Make sure you do.”
She’d nodded with a watery smile, her heart too swollen with grief to argue that she already was living. She had a great life, a satisfying life—up until three days earlier when she’d gotten a phone call from her mum at just after two in the morning.
Tilly set the perfume bottle down and swiped her fingers across her wet cheeks. The pit in her stomach grew to unsettling proportions as she gazed around at someone’s life cut unexpectedly short. She crossed to the nightstand next to the double bed. On it was a stack of paperback novels and another framed photograph.
This one was of a solitary man who looked to be in his early thirties. It was an old photo, and she didn’t recognize the man. It was taken outside Due South, with the slightly out-of-focus wharf in the background. Tilly cocked her head, studying the portrait. The man was of Māori descent, with thick dark hair starting to gray at the temples. From the way he was smiling into the camera, Tilly would bet a week’s pay that he liked the person taking the picture.
Liked the
m a lot.
Tilly pursed her lips. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary. And maybe living la vida loca once upon a time. Good for you, Aunty.”
She turned away from the nightstand and got to work, sorting her aunt’s belongings into boxes—trash, donate to charity, offer to Mary’s remaining friends in Oban, and a much smaller box with a few family keepsakes for Tilly and her mum. It was uncomfortable, intrusive, and emotionally exhausting work. It sat heavily on her heart, painfully reminding her of having to help her mum clear Dad’s things out of the room they’d shared for thirty years.
After going through Mary’s dresser drawers and closet, Tilly grabbed her marker pen and labeled another box I can’t deal with this right now. That one she used to stack a shoebox full of handwritten letters and other bits of paper and greeting cards she’d found on the top shelf of the closet.
She eyed the nightstand drawer, saying a silent prayer that she wouldn’t find anything mortifyingly embarrassing inside. Rolling her eyes, she slid open the small drawer. A purse pack of tissues and half a roll of antacids hit the trash. Two pairs of reading glasses she set aside for a charity she’d heard of that delivered spectacles to those who desperately needed them in third world countries. Underneath all that was a leather-bound book. Bible?
Tilly removed it from the drawer and flipped it over to reveal the word Journal embossed in gold lettering. She flicked through the pages yellowed with age. Neat handwriting covered every page except the last dozen or so. She flipped to the front and written on the inside first page in her aunt’s beautiful script were the words: The secret journal of Mary Duncan.
Well, hell.
Crinkling her nose, Tilly moved the book over to the I can’t deal with this right now box because a secret journal certainly qualified. But for some reason, her fingers wouldn’t open to release the book she had no idea what she was going to do with. She sank down to sit on the bed, resting the closed journal on her lap and fighting with her inborn writer’s curiosity.
Bending The Rules: Stewart Island Book 10 Page 6