by Rachel Lacey
He wiggled his toes and silently cursed himself for coming here with her. But fifteen minutes later, when they finally worked their way up to his chest, he was feeling pretty damn relaxed. Listening to her soft voice, he let the bands of tension around his ribcage slip away.
She spent a long time on his neck and shoulders, talking him through the relaxation process without ever touching him. Then they moved on to his jaw, his cheeks, his eyes and forehead. Even his scalp.
“You’re rocking this,” she said. “I can feel the change in your energy. Can you feel it?”
“Yeah,” he said. It was true too.
“Okay, so don’t laugh, but since this is probably my only chance to give you a meditation lesson, I need to get it all in. We need to find you a ‘happy place.’”
He did laugh, just a little. “If you say so.”
“Think of someplace peaceful and calm. Someplace that makes you feel happy. The beach. The mountains. Where do you usually go when you need to blow off some steam?”
“The shooting range,” he answered.
Olivia snorted. “Well that won’t work. Start with this right here. Open your eyes and look out at the lake. Remember how it looked when we first sat down, with the sunset over the water? That was pretty breathtaking.”
He opened his eyes. The sun was gone now, the sky a muted purple. Birds swooped over the lake’s surface, fishing for their dinner. In the distance, he heard the rumble of a truck passing by on the road. And he felt Olivia’s presence at his side, overshadowing everything else.
* * *
Olivia closed her eyes and soaked in the moment. Pete sat at her side. Calm. Peaceful. And she’d helped him get there.
“Do I have to call it my happy place?” he asked.
She bit her lip to keep from grinning. “You can call it whatever you want. And while you’re at it, keep focusing on your breathing. Keep it slow and steady. Feel your belly move with each breath. Keep your muscles loose and relaxed.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“There’s so much more I could teach you, but this is probably enough for today. Just remember the steps to relax yourself. If you don’t have time to come out here and meditate like we are now, just take a minute in your car to concentrate on your breathing and relaxing your muscles. Visualize your manly happy place. You can train yourself to work the effects of meditation into your day whenever you need them if you practice.”
He was quiet, staring out at the lake.
She slid closer and rested a hand on his shoulder. He still felt tense, but nothing like the way he’d been earlier. “You might be sore tomorrow.”
He grunted.
Slowly, she massaged the last of the tension from his shoulders. She pressed her fingers deep into his muscles, releasing the lactic acid that had built up in them.
Pete sucked in a breath.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yeah, but not entirely relaxing.” There was a new tension in his voice, one that had nothing to do with stress or anger.
She looked down. In his gym shorts, there was no hiding the effect she’d had on him. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry about that.” An answering tug of desire began to pulse inside her. She’d really love to slide into his lap and feel the bulge in his shorts up close and personal. Even more, she wanted to free him from his shorts and feel his bare skin on hers.
“Somehow I don’t think you are.” His voice was low, gruff, thick with arousal.
She squirmed. No, she wasn’t. Well, she should be since there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about the need throbbing inside her. She couldn’t touch him, couldn’t do anything but sit here, burning for him and wishing things were different.
“I’m not sorry either.” He gripped her hand and pulled it lower, so that she felt his heart pounding in his chest. “I didn’t want to come out here with you tonight. I never would have done anything like this on my own. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” The last light of the sun was fading now, leaving them in near darkness. The night pressed in around them, heavy with insect song and the crackling of desire in the air between them.
“I wish…” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Her skin tingled beneath his lips, and the fire deep in her belly raged.
“Don’t. Don’t wish. I’m the one who screwed up and got arrested.” She pulled her hand back and stood.
“Don’t sell yourself short.” He stood and faced her. “You made a mistake. We all make them. Most of us just don’t get arrested for them. But I have to say, from what I’ve seen, you’re pretty damn honorable, Olivia. If things were timed differently…”
He trailed his fingers over her cheek, and she felt it all the way to the depths of her heart. “But they’re not.”
Feet heavy with regret, she took his hand and led the way back to the car.
CHAPTER NINE
Need some help?” Olivia stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching as Merry balanced a baby on her hip while she warmed his bottle.
“Sure.” Merry passed the baby to her. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Olivia cradled baby Jayden in her arms. He whimpered, tiny fists flailing. “Shhh. She’s getting your supper ready right now.”
“You think you’ll do this someday?” Merry asked with a half smile.
“Fostering?”
“Well that, or one of your own.”
Olivia looked down at him. She liked the feel of a baby in her arms, his warm, solid presence against her heart. “I’m certainly not opposed to the idea.”
“Me neither.” Merry led the way into the living room, bottle in hand. She lifted Jayden from Olivia’s arms and sank onto the couch with him to give him his bottle.
“I’d settle for a man first.” Olivia sat in the chair across from the couch.
“Any prospects?”
“No.” Her mind was replaying every moment of her evening with Pete, the pride she’d felt in helping him relax and the way he made her body sizzle every time they got within a dozen feet of each other.
“What about the hot deputy?” Merry asked.
“He can’t date me. It’s a conflict of interest, seeing as he also arrested me.”
Merry smiled. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
“I think it’s technically only until my court date, but I kind of get the impression I’m not good for his reputation either way.”
“So you’ve had a conversation about it?”
Olivia sighed. “Yeah. The chemistry is hot. We’d be in his bed right now if not for the whole conflict of interest, but you know, it might be for the best.”
Merry looked up. “And why is that?”
“Because I’ve been down the scorching chemistry road before, and I got burned. I think I’m ready to start looking for someone more serious. I want what you have.”
Merry’s eyes narrowed. “And you don’t think T.J. and I have scorching chemistry?”
“What you guys have is much more than scorching chemistry.”
And maybe things with Pete could go farther than chemistry too, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were bad for each other in the long run. She lived to stir up trouble, and his job was to prevent it. There was a reason she’d never crushed on men in uniform. She needed a man with a wild streak, someone who could stand beside her on the picket line.
But damned if she wouldn’t like to at least sample what Pete had to offer.
The front door opened, and T.J. stepped inside, six feet of strapping cowboy. He hung his hat on the rack inside the door, toed out of his boots, then crossed the room to kiss the woman he loved.
Olivia retreated to the kitchen for a glass of water. She was so grateful to her friends for taking her in, but she so couldn’t wait to go back home to her own house.
“Hi, Olivia,” T.J. called, from the other room.
Water glass in hand, she walked back into the living room. “Hi.”
S
he saw the way Merry and T.J. were looking at each other. They hadn’t seen each other all day, probably didn’t get much alone time these days with Jayden staying with them. “Well as long as I’m crashing here, I may as well make myself useful. I can put him to bed while you guys catch up if you like.”
“Are you sure?” Merry asked. “He goes down pretty easily. I usually just lay him in his crib and hum to him for a few minutes.”
“I can handle that.” Olivia extended her arms.
“Thank you.” Merry stood and passed him over. “Remember to lay him on his back.”
“No problem. I’m going to work on a blog post afterward so I’ll be out of your way.” She carried Jayden upstairs to the nursery. She changed his diaper and rocked him for a few minutes until his eyes started to droop. Then she laid him into his crib. She hummed a few lullabies, and his eyes drifted shut.
That was easy.
Motherhood wasn’t easy. She knew that. Merry herself had lost a baby to SIDS. Bringing Jayden home, albeit temporarily, had been a huge step for her in overcoming her grief. But she’d done it, and with Jayden and T.J. beside her, she was healing from her painful past, moving toward a happy future.
Olivia didn’t have a traumatic past. She’d led a fairly charmed life, aside from being a constant disappointment to her parents. But watching the baby sleeping before her, she felt a new urgency to get her act together and move forward as Merry had done.
She needed to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. It wasn’t waitressing at the Main Street Café. She didn’t think it was being a lawyer either. But what was it? What came next for her?
One thing she was sure of: she needed to wrap up this business with Halverson Foods and get on with her life.
* * *
Olivia woke the next morning to a strange tickling sensation in her nose. She opened her eyes to find a kitten tail across her face, and oh gross, kitten butt against her cheek. Cringing, she shifted Hallie to the side.
In response, the kitten purred loudly into her ear.
“You sure got the hang of domesticity pretty easily, didn’t you?” Olivia rubbed behind her ears, and Hallie purred louder.
The kitten had been surprisingly well behaved here in T.J. and Merry’s guest room. She’d taken right to the litter box and had only climbed the curtains once (that Olivia knew about anyway).
Hallie batted a paw against Olivia’s nose.
“All right, go play then, little girl.” She set the kitten on the floor. The guest room was where T.J.’s nephew slept when he stayed over, and as such, it was outfitted in blue with a huge bin of Legos in the corner. Hallie ran straight to it and began batting Legos around on the carpet. “I should go get you some kitten toys, shouldn’t I?”
Olivia rolled out of bed and wrapped a robe over her pajamas so that she could venture down the hall to the bathroom without being indecent. Man, she really missed having her own place. On the other hand…
“I’ve got bagels,” Merry called from downstairs.
“Be right down,” she answered.
A few minutes later, she went down the stairs and found her friend on the floor in the living room, playing with Jayden. She had him propped against a pillow, rolling a ball across the carpet to him as he waved his fists and giggled.
“Bagels are in the kitchen,” Merry said. “So are the dogs. Tank is too rough to be in here while I have Jayden on the floor.”
“Gotcha.” Olivia stooped to kiss the baby, then went into the kitchen. She let herself through the baby gate and was immediately assaulted by two hyper boxers, Ralph and Tank—appropriately named as he was the size of a small horse. She went to the counter and fixed herself a bagel and poured a glass of water. “Where’s Amber?” she asked, as she rejoined Merry and Jayden in the living room.
“She’s down at the barn with T.J.” Merry’s smile said everything. That she’d helped T.J. overcome his fear of stray dogs to love Amber, a former stray herself, was a happily ever after moment for sure. “The house is being painted today.”
“Oh really?” Olivia still felt bad about the graffiti that had defaced the house she was renting from her friend.
“The insurance company approved the claim. A fresh coat of paint will look good on it, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” She took a bite of her bagel and chewed thoughtfully. “I want to go home.”
“Not until the police catch whoever did that.”
“We’ll see.” She’d been pretty thoroughly freaked out at the time, especially about the thought of them looking in the windows at her while she slept on the couch. But now, in the light of day and with a little time to think it over, she was ready to be in her own space. Well okay, she was still a little scared, but they hadn’t hurt her or threatened to hurt her, and they shouldn’t get this much power over her life.
“What’s your plan with Halverson anyway?” Merry asked. She laid Jayden on his belly facing a little pop-up baby mirror. He smiled at his reflection.
“Good question. I’ve had a huge increase in traffic to my blog and Facebook page since my arrest. People are riled up. They want to see the place shut down. It’s time for me to take this farther than Facebook, but I’m not sure how.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t. No way am I getting arrested again or jeopardizing my probation. I’ve been having people write their lawmakers to try to get new legislation on the ballot, something to better protect factory-farmed birds. Maybe we need to organize a protest outside Town Hall.”
Merry gave her a skeptical look. “Do you think that will help or just make you a bigger target for the guys at Halverson Foods?”
“It’s better than doing nothing.”
“Nothing is exactly what you need to be doing until your probation is over.”
Olivia sobered. “You’re right. No protesting until after my court date.”
Merry lifted Jayden into her arms. “Not for nothing, Liv, but are you sure you aren’t fighting a losing battle? I mean, I have to think the chances of getting that place shut down completely are pretty slim.”
Olivia chewed and swallowed another bite of her bagel before she answered. “And has that ever stopped you when you were fighting for something for one of your dogs?”
“Point taken. But no one ever threatened me either. Be careful.”
“I am, and I will be.” Her phone rang, and she glanced at the display. Her heart beat a little faster. “Good morning,” she answered.
“Morning.” Pete sounded ridiculously sexy over the phone, his voice low and just scratchy enough to give her a thrill. “I wanted to check in with you about the vandalism on your house. You got a minute?”
“Sure.” She stood and headed for the stairs.
“I went out to the Halverson factory on Monday and poked around. Spoke to the manager and several employees. Naturally, they all claim their innocence, but they’re not the kind of guys who like having the police nosing around in their business. I promised to be back with reinforcements if anything else happened to you.”
Olivia closed the door to the guest room behind her. Hallie mewed from the bed, poking her head out to be petted. “Thank you.”
“I may have also threatened to call a friend in Immigration.”
She gasped. “I don’t want to get anyone deported.”
He chuckled. “It’s a bluff. I just needed to get their attention.”
“Well, good, because I’m ready to go home.”
“I wish you didn’t live alone, but I think it’s probably okay.”
She heard the protectiveness in his voice, and it spread something warm and syrupy through her chest. “I have guard dogs to protect me anyway.”
“They didn’t look all that vicious to me.”
She sighed. “They’re not. But they’re big and loud, and that’s better than nothing.”
“Much better than that furball you call a kitten.”
“Yeah. Well, thank
you. Hopefully I can stay out of your hair from now on.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he said.
And somehow, so did she.
* * *
Pete needed to get his head checked. And not just because he was voluntarily trying to meditate. Meditation was some kind of hippy-dippy crap he had no time for, and yet here he was, trying to recreate the magic he’d shared with Olivia.
Olivia. The real reason he needed to get his head checked. Because he was sitting in the dirt with his hands on his knees and a bored-out-of-his-mind German shepherd at his feet, mentally calculating how many days until her court date and wondering if he could possibly get away with dating her if she got off without a record.
The answers were: twelve days, and not unless he wanted to risk his good standing with the sheriff and subsequently his chances of making detective at the end of the year. So it must be some kind of self-punishing bullshit that he was thinking of asking her out anyway.
“Woof,” Timber bellowed at a couple of geese below them on the lake. He’d finished the rawhide Pete had brought for him, and his patience with sitting here taking in the view was obviously wearing thin.
Pete huffed out a breath and started again at his toes. It was no use. He’d started over at least five times, and still he couldn’t come close to recreating what he and Olivia had done here the other night.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
As if he’d summoned her from his imagination, her voice came from behind him. He opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. She stood a few feet away, dressed in blue yoga pants and a black jacket, staring up at the sky. “That’s definitely a hawk, but have you seen any pigs flying up there? Because I could swear I just caught you sitting out here meditating.”
“Maybe one or two pigs.”
Timber leaped to his feet and rushed at her, yipping with excitement as his tail swooshed a happy dance in the dirt.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“Timber. He’s a K9 flunkie so watch your fingers.”
“Um.” She lifted her hands out of reach. “Seriously?”