by Jayne Denker
“Okay.” But from Gabe’s tone, it was obvious he wasn’t buying it.
“We home, man?” Jesse asked blearily, flinging himself between the two front seats.
“Not quite,” Gabe answered.
“Well, where . . . oh hey! Hey, Cam!” Jesse shook the other Nash in the back seat by the shoulder. “Lookit where we are! Say hi to your old girlfriend! Come on!”
“My what?” Cam’s voice was thick with sleep and alcohol. “Gabe, just take me home, okay? And throw this one out of the car.”
“I’m hungry. Think Jordan’s got any food?” And before anyone could stop him, Jesse rolled down the window, unbuckled his seatbelt, and pushed himself most of the way out of the car, howling at the house.
The logic behind why he thought that would bring Jordan out of the house, and how it was related to obtaining snacks, was locked away in Jesse’s pickled brain. The other Nash brothers didn’t try to reason why; instead, they went into action immediately. Cam grabbed the hem of Jesse’s t-shirt to make sure he didn’t fall out of the car completely, Will hunched down in the front seat to hide and told Jesse to shut up before somebody called in a noise complaint, and Gabe threw the car in gear to get out of the quiet neighborhood.
As they drove away, Will thought he saw a light go on in Holly’s house. But he wasn’t positive.
Chapter 7
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Were you asleep?”
“You’re not answering my question: What the hell are you doing?”
“I heard there was a disturbance in the neighborhood. Came to check on it.”
Jordan swallowed a laugh. “You freakin’ made the disturbance, idiot.”
“It was not me. I was just . . .”
“An accessory to the crime.”
“You know, I thought that whole thing with criminals studying the law while they’re incarcerated was a cliché, but look at you—you’re proving it’s for real.”
“You make the mistake of assuming I’m stupid, Wiley. I’m not. I just do stupid things. On occasion.”
Will gingerly rested his forehead against the doorjamb and looked forlornly at her through the screen. “Can I come in?”
“That’s not really wise, is it?”
“Now you act all cautious.”
Jordan sighed. “Stay there a minute, Watson.”
“You’re going to use up all the W names soon,” he called—or, rather, slurred—after her, “and then you’ll have to call me by my real name.”
Jordan froze, her back to him, but just for a second. The remark was inherently sexual, but she told herself he hadn’t done it intentionally. She was just reading too much into a drunk guy’s random comment, which said more about where her head was at than anything else. “I’ve got plenty . . . Wadsworth. Don’t you worry.”
Trusting that he would stay on the other side of the screen door—because, of all people, Will would be the one to stay where he was told to, even drunk in the middle of the night—Jordan ran upstairs and pulled the blanket off her bed. She didn’t know why he was there, or even why she was reacting so eagerly, but she was going to go with it. Amazing, she thought, how being so incredibly bored could make you jump at the chance for even the smallest distraction.
Not that Will qualified as the smallest anything—including some things she could only guess at. And yes, she had done some educated guessing that morning, when he’d been wearing shiny jogging shorts again, this time in red.
When Jordan barreled back downstairs, almost breathless, Will was gone, and she was surprised at how disappointed that made her feel. Then she peeked out the door as she turned off the porch light, only to find him dozing on the loveseat, and she found herself smiling.
Jordan exited the house without letting the screen door slam behind her for once. She draped the blanket over him carefully, arranging it around his knees, intending to leave him there for as long as he needed to sleep it off. She hadn’t seen a car, thank goodness . . . but Will would never have driven in his condition. Of course not. He’d walked. And he could walk home again in an hour or two. Or in the morning. If anyone saw him leaving her house at dawn—and she had no doubt there’d be at least one person, but probably more, who would notice, because someone always saw everything that went on in Marsden—he could claim he was standing guard over the prisoner, the massive threat to the neighborhood, before she started disturbing the peace. Or he could say nothing, and let people assume the worst. She didn’t care. In fact, she sort of relished the idea of the drama that would ensue if people thought he’d spent the night with her. It was just too easy to rile these people up.
When she finished tucking the blanket around his chest and started to straighten up, Will’s hand shot out and closed around her wrist. “Don’t leave.”
For the second time in minutes—which was a record for her—Jordan found herself without a snappy comeback. It was all she could do to act casual when she said, “Need company, do you?”
He nodded. “Don’t you?”
“Don’t worry about me, Weston.”
“Do you do that . . . name thing . . . because you hate me, or because you like me?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about. Now shove over. And gimme some blanket.”
A little voice in the back of her head was shouting Bad idea! Bad idea! as she curled up under the half of the blanket that Will clumsily pulled over her, but she told the voice to mind its own business. Sitting on the porch with an entire street—no, an entire town—of nosy neighbors? Like anything could possibly happen. Especially with Mighty Ethics Man, here. So she settled in, pulling the blanket up to her chin. As if on cue, the orange tabby that had been hanging around the house jumped onto her lap, curled up as best he could on the cat-curling-up space made unacceptably lumpy by her legs drawn up sideways, and started purring.
Will stared for a moment. “What’s that?”
“Yo, Dr. Doolittle. It’s a cat.”
“Holly never had any cats.”
“He’s not Gran’s. He just showed up. We’ve been keeping each other company. Don’t worry about it—he won’t eat you.”
Will didn’t say anything more for a while, and Jordan wondered if he’d nodded off again. She stayed very still. He’d had a busy night with his brothers, if what she’d seen about half an hour ago had been any indication. God, it had been like her teen years all over again—a carful of boys pulling up in front of Holly’s house. There was even one howling out the car window! Just like old times. She had to work to remember that Nash boy’s name. Jesse, she was pretty sure. He was about five years younger than her and Will, so he barely registered in her memory. Somebody else had hauled him back into the car, laughing, while Will hunkered down in the front seat, radiating humiliation she could feel all the way in the house, and the eldest Nash—the name “Gabe” came back to her—drove them away.
It was pretty darn funny, actually. And flattering. Suddenly she felt sixteen again, instead of this elderly twenty-seven. It was reassuring to know that no matter what the majority of the town’s residents thought of her, boys—of all ages—would invariably cut her some slack. She always had been able to keep any and all of them on the hook with a little bit of flirting. Except the one right next to her. Who was mumbling something incoherent at the moment.
“What’s that, now, Waverly?”
He cleared his throat and slanted bleary eyes at her. “Tell me you’re not like they say you are.”
“Like what?”
Will paused. “Trouble.”
Jordan kept her tone light, even as a sharp pang hit her heart. “Well, I’ll tell you a secret.” She brought her hand out from under the blanket and crooked her finger at him. He dutifully leaned closer. “All the stuff ‘they’ say?” He nodded, lifting his blue eyes, black in the moonlight, to study her intently. “Yeah. I’m worse.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he murmured, “I don’t believe you.”
T
he pang was replaced by an excited little flip. Now he was staring at her lips. Or it was simply all the booze and weariness keeping his eyelids at half-mast, and because spending even this small amount of time in Marsden had turned her brain to jelly, she was reading far too much into everything.
But she sure liked what he was saying.
“You came all the way back here after your brothers dropped you off home just to ask me this?”
“I told you,” Will insisted, eyes still lowered. “Checking on you. It’s my job.”
He was still staring at her mouth. She tried to ignore the urge to lick her lips and failed. “You’re off duty,” she reminded him in a low voice.
“A police officer is never really off duty.”
“But you got hammered tonight.”
“That’s different.”
“How is it different?”
“It’s not as dangerous.”
“As . . . ?”
“You.”
Will had drifted closer, almost imperceptibly. Maybe she had too; she wasn’t quite sure anymore. All she knew was their foreheads were almost touching, and if she moved just a little more, she could nuzzle his nose with her own. Her head felt as though she’d been drinking as well, even though she hadn’t had anything stronger than soda in weeks.
This was crazy. Sure, she’d been alone for a long time—it’d been ages since she’d been with a guy—but Will? No. Insane. And probably illegal—or at least really dumb—what with her being a convict and him being a cop and all. Of course, maybe that was what made the whole thing strangely compelling. She didn’t move away.
Then Will mumbled, “Tell me . . .”
“What?”
“Tell me you didn’t hook up with Cam.”
Wha—Cam? She hadn’t thought about him in years. Not that there was much to think about. Maybe she should have made a joke at this point, reassured Will that a brief fumble at an underage drinking party more than a decade ago wasn’t worth talking about. But she didn’t. Because the nervous flutter in her belly had been replaced by a heavy weight. Was that why he was here? Had the brothers talked about her over their beers, and Cam said some lascivious things that weren’t true, maybe encouraged Will to come here and try his luck? Or was Will acting like a dog in a different way, feeling the urge to pee on the same tree as his brother to one-up him, or whatever it was brothers did? Whichever, the outcome was the same: Her blood was racing in her veins, and not in a good way.
She pulled away from Will and flipped the blanket off both of them, dislodging the cat. “Go home, dude.”
“What? Why? What’s the problem?”
Jordan stood up, bundling up the blanket and shoving it under her arm. “Go on.” Completely confused, Will didn’t move. She crossed to the house door, turned back. “Hey. What if all of it was true?”
He paused, his hands hanging loose between his knees, as he really thought about the question. Finally he said, simply, “I don’t know.”
“Well, at least you’re honest. You know what? I’m not ashamed of me. Come back when you’re not, either.”
And she went into the house, the cat scooting in along with her. Locking the door behind her, Jordan congratulated herself on having the last word and making a dramatic exit . . . but then she crept to the front window to see what Will was doing. He sat there for a moment, then finally stood, wobbling a bit, obviously trying—and likely failing—to sort through their exchange to determine what had just happened. He either figured it out or gave up, because after another minute he ran his hands through his dark hair and stumbled down the steps, into the yard, and down the street.
Jordan immediately turned out all the lights, wrapped the blanket around herself, and curled up on the sofa, eyes wide in the dark. It had to be close to three in the morning, but she couldn’t sleep. Not after that.
Judge. It was all anybody around here ever did. At times like these, she completely understood why, the minute her father had hit his stride as a financial planner, he’d packed up the whole family and spirited them off to a tony Connecticut burg. “Small town, small thinkers,” he’d always said about Marsden. When they’d moved away, Jordan was seven, and she’d hated him with the pure fury of a young child taken away from the only home she’d ever known, away from the rest of the family, especially Gran.
She’d seen nothing wrong with Marsden at the time, but now she understood his point. Of course, life hadn’t been any happier in Connecticut. No, it had ended up far, far worse. Jordan had realized at a fairly early age that it wasn’t where you lived, but the kind of person you were, that determined whether you were happy in life.
At the moment, she was about as far from happy as she could get. Sure, she’d made mistakes—a lot of them—and she’d done a lot of stupid things. But she hadn’t lied when she’d told Will she wasn’t ashamed. There was no point—what was done was done, and it was a waste of energy to regret what you couldn’t change. She was fine with her life, or at least she told herself she was . . . until someone like Will looked at her—really looked at her—and was disappointed.
If she believed in curses, she’d have said she’d been laboring under one since her parents had ruined her life by moving her away from Marsden. Would she have been different—better—if they’d stayed?
Her hollow laugh echoed in the dark, half-empty room. Probably not.
But she was an adult now, and adults were supposed to take charge of their identities, and of their futures. She could do that. House arrest for drunkenly trying ride a pony through the Monticello casino didn’t really qualify as rock bottom, but now she was thinking that was as far down as she was going to allow herself to get.
Chapter 8
It was days before Will could bring himself to drive down Maple Avenue. And running? Out of the question, now that he’d made a complete ass out of himself in front of Jordan, so he changed his route. Although he’d been pretty drunk Saturday night, his memory was crystal clear on one point: She’d gotten pissed as hell at his stupid comments and stalked off, leaving him alone with his dick in his hand on the porch. Okay, not literally—he was just thinking in idioms. Then again . . . even if it wasn’t in his hand, it had made its presence known, at least to him.
Thank God nothing had actually happened. Thank God something had stopped him before he’d ended up looking like a total fool. Well, that something had been Jordan. What would he have ended up doing if he hadn’t upset her? What if she hadn’t walked away?
He didn’t even want to think about it.
The trouble was, he was thinking about it an awful lot.
That meant although he thought he was managing his love life, or at least his . . . urges . . . just fine, he apparently wasn’t. Not if all he could think about was Jordan’s enormous brown eyes, or her adorable mouth, especially when she broke out a smile—something that happened so rarely that, when it did, it was like a meteor streaking across the sky. Sudden, surprising, and then gone, making you wonder if it had even been there in the first place, or if you’d dreamed it.
He’d made her smile Saturday night. At least at first. Not as much later, when he’d started rambling. Damned beer-soluble filter, anyway.
She probably hated him at this point. He wouldn’t blame her; he wasn’t too proud of himself right about now, if he was going to be honest about it. Not just for what he’d said, but what he’d been thinking. God, she would have slugged him if she’d been able to read his mind. What had possessed him?
Well. That meteor-streak of a smile, for one thing. The warmth of her body next to his, under the blanket. The softness of her hair as it drifted from behind her ear and brushed his cheek. Even, in a way, the hurt in her eyes when he begged her to prove to him that she wasn’t as terrible as the residents of Marsden thought . . . as she realized he just might believe what they said about her.
She’d had every right to tell him to get lost.
All he could do now was keep his distance until he figured out a way
to back all this up a few steps and start over, set things right. In the meantime, he threw himself into his work: picking off more speeders from the increasing influx of leaf-peepers and pumpkin-pickers to the area, dealing with petty squabbles (it never ceased to amaze him that some people really thought they could get away with blowing all their leaves onto their neighbors’ properties instead of picking them up), and providing security for the high school football games. And searching for cats.
He couldn’t avoid Maple Avenue completely—the town was only so big—so he justified his early morning cruise down the street by telling himself he was just helping Marisol Otero out: The other day, she’d called in to report something that was concerning several of her neighbors.
“It’s probably nothing,” she’d said. “It’s just that some of the folks on the street? Their pets are missing.”
“Missing?”
“Yeah. All cats. Andy Z, next door? He said Tiny hasn’t come home in a few days. I didn’t think anything of it, but then Therese D’Annunzio said she hadn’t seen her cat in a while. Then we had a PTA meeting, and Robin—you know, the kindergarten aide?—she said the same thing, and she’s over on Cherry. So close by, you know? Isabella, you can’t go without shoes, honey.”
Marisol had three small children, and she had been multitasking, trying to explain the situation while getting them ready for school and daycare.
Once Isabella was sorted out, she’d gone on, “I mean, sure, it might be a coincidence, but . . .”
Will didn’t think so. Although they’d never had problems in Marsden around Halloween, the Humane Society sent out a reminder every year that some would-be wizards (or whatever) stole cats for black magic rituals at best, animal sacrifice at worst. Not that he or Marisol thought that was what was going on here, but he had promised to keep a lookout for the animals all the same.
Yep, small-town police work was usually as uneventful as that. But then there were other calls that were . . . unpleasant. Not violent. Not dramatic. No, there were times he just didn’t want to deal with a complaint. Like the one this evening. Rusty took the call, but he was finishing his shift, so he handed it off to Will. The timing of this one made him truly believe the gods had it in for him.