“Did you not hear the part about me saying that he loves you?”
Tilly’s heart thudded in her eardrums, a wash of unease making nausea swirl around her stomach. “He told me he loved me. I didn’t believe him.” She shot her mother an apologetic glance. “I thought, emotionally, he was more like Jonas and Dad. Not in an arrogant, noncommunicative way like Jonas, but in a less passionate way”—heat crept rapidly over her cheeks—“the way Dad loved you.”
Her mum’s eyes widened, then she burst into gales of laughter. She laughed so hard she toppled sideways on the couch and lay there looking at Tilly, her eyes glistening with tears. She finally sat upright, still making chuffing sounds of amusement.
“Less than passionate way.” She shook her head, snorting a sigh out of her nose. “I guess it’s the nature of the child-parent relationship to think the parents’ marriage is all about bill paying, raising kids, token anniversary cards, and heaven forbid, occasional sexual intercourse in the missionary position only.” A raised eyebrow and another mirthful snort. “Angel, your dad and I had a wonderful, intimate, and passionate marriage. Don’t let Dad’s quiet way about him fool you. While he wasn’t one for a dozen red roses or soppy declarations, I could show you some love letters he wrote me that would singe your eyeballs.”
“I don’t know if Noah feels that way about me.” But aside from the cringe factor of thinking about her dad penning pornographic missives, her mother’s words settled around her in a comforting blanket.
“So instead of pulling up your big-girl panties and keeping him around long enough to find out, you pushed him away.”
Big-girl panties? Mum was definitely spending too much time with these new friends of hers. She felt like a little girl who’d had a squabble with her best friend and needed her mummy to step in to save the day.
“Maybe,” she muttered. Bubbles of excitement and nerves fizzed in her veins. “And maybe you should clear your schedule to help me pack.”
It was amazing how much clearer the air seemed on Stewart Island. How crisper the smells, how much brighter the jewel greens and sapphire blue colors of ocean, sky, and land. Tilly stood on the ferry’s deck, waiting with growing impatience for Oban’s wharf to come into view. She hugged herself in a new heavily padded jacket draped over her sling-covered arm. This would’ve been the same view Aunt Mary saw so many years ago when she crossed Foveaux Strait to be with Jim. She suspected they shared many of the same emotions as the ferry’s bow sent up another plume of crystalline water.
Trepidation. Excitement. A sense of destiny. Hope.
And not only Noah drew her back to the island. She had to find out how Mary’s story continued.
After storing her suitcase at Ford and Rob’s workshop—Ford promising to run it up to the B&B after he finished work for the day—Tilly headed straight to Mrs. Taylor’s.
“About time you came home,” Betsy barked when she opened her door. “We’ve all been worried sick about you being shot by a posse of gangsters.” Her wrinkled face split into a huge grin. “Shouldn’t you be hunting down a certain Officer Sexy-Britches?”
“Later. I need to ask you about my aunt first.”
Betsy nodded somberly and gestured for her to come inside. Tilly trailed after her into the warmth of the kitchen, delicious smells of homemade soup bubbling on the stove. A sense of peace came over her as Betsy bustled around preparing her usual tea and cookies. She’d been such a good friend to Mary, so it was strange that now the elderly woman had become one of Tilly’s closest friends.
To her embarrassment, Tilly’s eyes filled with tears. Betsy turned, catching her sniffing surreptitiously. She set the plate of cookies on the kitchen table, narrowing her lilac-powdered eyelids.
“You’re not knocked up, are you?”
“No!” But the thought sent nervous but pleasurable flutters through her belly. “Betsy!”
The old woman didn’t look at all perturbed. “Thought it might have been pregnancy hormones making you snivel. Guess it’s just man trouble.” She sat down and pushed the plate closer to Tilly. “Here, have one. Though not even my macadamia and raspberry cookies seem to have cheered Noah up this week.” She raised her eyebrows in an aren’t you going to ask me why Noah needed cheering up? wriggle.
Nope. Not going there. Not if she wanted to keep from dissolving into a puddle of tears.
“I finished reading Aunt Mary’s journal before I left for Wellington. It ended quite abruptly, saying she was really happy and in a relationship with Jim again. But they never got married?”
Betsy slid her an unreadable glance and poured the first cup of tea. “No, they never married. The time never seemed to be quite right. Jim wanted to be respectful to Maata’s relatives who still lived in Oban and not flaunt his relationship with Mary. And Mary wanted to ease slowly into the lives of Jim’s children without traumatizing them any more than they already were.”
Tilly blew on her teacup, steam drifting off it like airborne white ribbons. “Did Jim’s kids not like Mary?”
“Oh no, they adored Mary. All the local kids loved her.” Betsy poured her own tea then wrapped her fingers around the cup. “Jim was always promising they’d be together forever like they’d planned, in just a little while longer.”
“He kept stringing her along? Putting her off so nobody would figure out they were involved?”
Betsy’s mouth pursed. “Everyone knew, but we all played along with the pretense since that’s what they seemed to want.”
“Was it what Mary wanted?”
“She wanted him. Any time she could spend with him, she told me, no matter how short, was precious.”
Tiny hairs rose on the back of Tilly’s neck at the thread of remembered grief in the older woman’s tone. “Tell me the rest of their story.”
“Jim was a fisherman, like his father and his grandfather. The sea is a fickle mistress, so they say, and one day when he went out early in the morning as he usually did, she turned on him. A rogue wave capsized their boat, authorities think. They found the bodies of Jim’s two crewmates, but they never recovered Jim. The sea took him. Every fisherman in the area, plus the authorities, scoured the strait and beaches for his body so that his family could lay him to rest.”
Hurt and shock at her great-aunt’s loss speared through Tilly. She’d already guessed something had gone wrong in their love story, but it never occurred to her it would be something so tragic.
“How old was he at the time of the accident?”
“In his early thirties, I reckon.” Betsy met her gaze. In her sad eyes was eight decades of wisdom and the acceptance that sometimes life wasn’t fair. “Mary was cheated out of the life they’d planned. But she told me once that grief was a small price to pay for loving each other so well in the time they were given.”
Tilly set her cup back into the saucer with a rattle. “I sent Noah home from Auckland.”
“I guessed something like that must’ve happened, though I’m surprised you didn’t have to use a crowbar to pry him away. I could tell he was sweet on you right from the start.”
Tilly pressed her lips together. “I’m pretty sweet on him, too.”
“But you got cold feet.”
“I completely flipped out at the thought of losing him,” she admitted. “And I didn’t believe it when he told me he loved me—in his own Noah-ish way.”
Betsy snorted and sipped her tea. “Goodness, girl. I’ve never known Noah to say anything he didn’t mean. He’s a straight-up fella, that one.” She crinkled her nose. “Bit of a fixer-upper in the communication department, but if anyone can get him to spill his guts, it’d be you.”
“I love him.” God, it felt good to say that aloud. “And Mary’s inspired me to risk it all on the chance that he loves me, too.”
Betsy reached across the table and gripped Tilly’s hand. “My dear, your aunt would be so proud. Now, finish your tea and go find your man.”
Chapter 23
Noah awoke from a d
oze with a start, rapidly chilling bathwater sloshing around him. He’d gone for a run this afternoon and decided to treat himself to the luxury of an actual bath instead of a shower. Since he was still camped out in Southern Seas’ shark room, which didn’t have a full-sized bath, he’d located Mary’s spare key and used her bathroom.
Perhaps it was a little bit stalkerish being in Tilly’s space when she wasn’t there. And perhaps it was even a little pathetic using her bubble bath just so he could smell her again. What the hell.
The bubbles had all vanished. With a wince, Noah climbed out of the cooling water. He froze mid-reach for a towel. Was that a floorboard creaking next door in the kitchen? He angled his head, heart beating hummingbird fast.
Silence.
He snagged the towel and roughly dried himself. How many nights had he spent staring at the shark room ceiling, yearning to hear Tilly walking around above him? Truthfully, he was yearning for Tilly, period. Everywhere he looked there were traces of her. Post-it notes stuck to walls with indecipherable scribbles—his best guess was plot notes to whatever she’d been working on. The lingering scent of her in the house. Her clothes in the closet, a stack of paperbacks on the nightstand. Long dark hair clogging the shower drain.
Noah wrapped the towel around his hips and opened the bathroom door. He came face-to-face with the wide-eyed, open-mouthed, drain-clogging brunette in question standing in the hallway.
It was only because every molecule of oxygen was sucked from his lungs at the sight of her that he refrained from hollering. Tilly wasn’t so in control of her vocal cords.
She shrieked, stumbling back a step and grappling to find her balance with her bad arm still supported in a sling. Her feet somehow tangled beneath her and she started going down.
Noah lunged and scooped her up against him, managing to avoid crushing her bad arm against his bare chest. Her nails dug into his biceps until she’d regained her balance.
“Thanks,” she said. “But what the hell are you doing in my bathroom?”
He drank her in, familiarizing himself with her big hazel eyes, soft lips, and curves that were pressed against him so perfectly. It felt as if he hadn’t seen her for months, not days.
“Taking a bath.” A less than sophisticated response, but in his defense, all the blood in his brain had plummeted to a more urgent area.
“In my bathtub?” Her grip on him loosened, but she didn’t try to wriggle out of his embrace. “Guess you’ve made yourself at home in my bed, too?”
The mention of her bed wasn’t doing his composure any favors. He gently extricated himself from her arms, his hands lingering on her hips until he was sure she wasn’t going to fall on her butt.
“I’ve been making use of Mary’s shark room while Constable Webster has taken over my house.”
“Uh-huh.” She took another step backward then leaned on the hallway wall. “And just what sort of establishment do you think I’m running here?” Her gaze dropped from his face to his damp chest, straight down the center of his abs to—
His towel was puddled on the floor. Hell.
“Well, this is awkward.”
Her cheekbones sucked in as if she were biting down on a smile. “Oh, I don’t know. It seems like a little quid pro quo to me. Kind of fitting for our second meet-cute.”
He’d no idea what a meet-cute was, but his heart met his breastbone over and over like an out-of-control ping-pong ball. While he wanted nothing more than to drag her to the nearest horizontal surface, he had to know what her reappearing in Oban meant. And as much as he liked her heated gaze skimming his bare skin, he couldn’t let the sizzle of their undeniable chemistry distract him.
He bent and retrieved his towel. “Give me two minutes to get changed downstairs. Don’t go anywhere.”
She sent him another wide-eyed, innocent stare. “Yes, sir, Officer Sexy-Britches, sir.”
“Tilly,” he said in a tone meant to convey he wasn’t screwing around. Now that she was there, he wasn’t letting her go again. If she tried to leave on the returning ferry to Bluff, he’d swim Foveaux Strait after her.
Her gaze softened. “I’m staying right here.”
He didn’t want to read too much into that statement, so he left her in the hallway and returned to the shark room to put on clean clothes.
Five minutes later, dressed in jeans and a dark green sweater he knew she liked on him, he stood on the back porch, trying to figure out whether or not he should knock. Considering she’d already busted him breaking and entering, he walked inside.
Following rattling sounds into the spare room, Noah froze in the doorway. Tilly was one-handedly unloading clothes from her closet and tossing them on the bed. He slid a glance at the dressing table, which the last time he’d been in her room was covered in bottles, tubes, brushes, and other female stuff. Now that stuff was tossed haphazardly into a cardboard box.
Dull thunderclaps echoed in his ears and he gripped the doorframe. He’d broken his first personalized rule of Policing 101: Never assume.
She selected the wine-colored dress she’d worn to the Easter Gala. She held it awkwardly up to herself with one hand, crinkled her nose then tossed it onto the pile of clothes still on their coat hangers.
“You won’t make the last sailing.” He spoke in the most neutral tone he could manage.
If he wasn’t mistaken, and right then he didn’t trust his own judgment, he could have sworn her lips turned up in a small smile.
She flicked him a glance. “Guess not.”
Was he planning to bow out gracefully and let her leave the next morning? Hell no. Women liked a man to fight for them. He’d give her a fight, even if it meant bending the rules and playing dirty.
“Need help with anything?” Because he wasn’t so much of a tool that he’d let her hurt herself while packing up her stuff.
“No, I’m good. Ford is going to stop by later to give me a hand.”
Right. Mental note to arrest Ford ASAP.
Tilly crossed to the far nightstand, on the side of the bed he’d slept in, and slid open the top drawer. She removed a roll of cough drops and set them aside, her gaze locked on the rest of the drawer’s contents. Noah knew what her gaze had landed on by the rising tide of pink staining her cheeks.
Condoms. At least two boxes.
She slammed the drawer shut and turned to face him, wrapping her arm around her waist and tucking her fingers under the sling, suddenly looking young and vulnerable. Pain squeezed knifelike in his chest. If she really wanted to go, he wouldn’t stop her. He loved her enough not to want her feeling trapped and miserable. But he owed it to himself, as bloody hard as it would be, to open up so she had the full picture before she made up her mind.
“Can we sit down for a moment and talk?” The concept of which was foreign territory to him. Usually he was the one to hear that particular ball-freezing question.
“Sure.” She sat on the edge of the bed and patted the space beside her.
Noah sat where directed, his skin prickling as if she were emitting static electricity. He ached to hold her, physically ached as if he’d exhausted himself on a grueling obstacle course. He’d missed her so much, needed her so damn much, that it was pure torture being this close.
“You know how I was raised. The kind of man my father was, and how that influenced me. We didn’t talk about feelings, we didn’t show feelings, and none of us cried when my mother left us.”
He took her good hand in his, running a thumb over her delicate bones and smooth skin. “But that’s a poor excuse for shutting down on you when you needed me most. When I found out you’d been shot, I can’t describe how terrified I was on the ride to the hospital. I’ve seen some truly terrible things in my career, but nothing prepared me for this. I didn’t know whether I wanted to punch something, scream until I was hoarse, or throw up from the toxic brew of emotions in my gut. And, God. Seeing you in that hospital bed, I finally got it. What my mother and Hayley must have gone through while I was on
the squad. What you must’ve felt when I confronted that mugger.”
Tilly shuffled closer to him, leaning her shoulder against his in silent support. He was grateful she didn’t try to interject, because now that he’d started he had to get it all out.
“I can’t ask you to go through that kind of hell for me again.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “So I’ve been in contact with a South Auckland company—”
Tilly yanked her hand from his, twisting on the bed to face him. “Please tell me you haven’t accepted a job in Auckland?”
“No,” he said slowly. “I mean, if the security industry won’t work for you, there are other options I can look into.” He met her gaze and tried to project every ounce of sincerity he felt into his eyes. “I love you, Til. I don’t care if you’re not quite there with me yet, because I believe, given time, you’ll fall as hard for me as I have for you. That you’ll believe that what we have is worth risking everything.”
That small smile reappeared on her mouth, and she cupped her palm along his jaw, stroking her thumb over his lower lip. “Then you and I are a safe bet, because I love you, too.”
His stomach in free fall—in a good way this time—Noah covered her hand with his and leaned in. “Are you sure?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Would I lie to an officer of the law? Now shut up and kiss me.”
Tilly clung to Noah as tight as she could, which wasn’t as tight as she’d have liked because of the damn sling. His kisses told her just how much he’d missed her and now demonstrated with perfection that he loved her, too. When they finally came up for air, Tilly found she was flat on her back among the contents of her closet, with a heavily aroused man half pinning her to the mattress. A quick calculation and a glance at the fading light outside the window meant makeup sex was out of the question.
Bending The Rules: Stewart Island Book 10 Page 28