by Gina Wilkins
“Sounds like Ethan. He could be rich by now. He says he doesn’t want to be rich. Doesn’t want the hassles and headaches that go along with all that money.”
“I sure didn’t go into law enforcement for the money,” she said with a laugh.
“That’s not why I went into medicine, either.”
“I know it’s not. You love your work. Anyone can see that. Still, you do all right for yourself. You could be living fancier than you do. All the other doctors around here live over at the golf course.”
He shrugged. “Why would I need a big house for just me? Maybe someday, but right now I’m perfectly happy where I am.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
He munched on an apple slice, swallowed, then asked, “What about you? Won’t your mother want her house back when she comes home?”
“She doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to come back. She likes serving as Paul’s hostess and taking care of him over there. But, yes, when she returns to Cabot, this is her home. I’m just watching over things for her. Which happens to be very convenient for me, since she won’t take any rent money. It’s letting me put some money away for a down payment on my own place someday.”
“So you want to buy your own house eventually?” He kept his eyes on the television screen as he asked.
It was the closest they’d ever come to discussing the future. Telling herself he asked only to make idle conversation, she answered lightly, “Well, sure. Isn’t that the American dream?”
“When do you think your mother will come home for good?”
“Probably in a couple of years. I talked to her this morning, by the way. She and Paul are coming here for Christmas. I can’t wait to see them. They’ll be here for almost a month, but then they’re both planning to go back.”
“Did you ever tell her what happened to you in Danston?”
“Well…sort of. I told her I took a fall and split my chin open, but I didn’t see any need to give her all the details.”
“Hmm.”
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to read into that sound, but she hastily moved on. “Have you talked to your family lately?”
“Actually, yes. Ethan called this morning.”
“Yeah? How’s he doing?”
“It was kind of an odd call, actually. He asked me if I was aware that he’d never visited me here.”
Nic cleared her throat. “Did he?”
“Mmm. I told him he was welcome to come anytime, of course. He said he might just do that in a couple of months.”
“I think that’s good. He should know what your life is like here.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with his sudden realization, did you?”
“I, um…”
“Nic?”
She sighed. “Okay, maybe I mentioned to him that I noticed none of your family has visited you here.”
“Well, it’s easier for me to go there than for all of them to come here,” Joel said logically.
“Still, they seem to make a lot of assumptions about your life without actually seeing it for themselves. Ethan didn’t even know you paint watercolors.”
Joel flushed. “I don’t mention that to many people. I’m not all that good. It’s just something I do to relax.”
“I think you’re very good,” she said loyally. “That painting you did of the Old Mill in North Little Rock? It’s really beautiful.”
“You like that one?” He looked pleased.
“It’s my favorite.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded. “You’re welcome.”
Her phone rang, and she answered it expecting to hear Aislinn on the other end. Instead it was one of her coworkers, one of the other female officers on the local force, making sure Nic would really be back at work the next day.
Carrying the phone into the kitchen so that Joel could watch the ball game undisturbed, Nic spent the next twenty minutes chatting, catching up on everything she’d missed during the past week and laughing at her friend’s stories. By the time she hung up, she was even more eager than before to get back to work.
“Sorry,” she said to Joel as she walked back into the living room. “That was Sandy, from work.”
“No problem. I guess your coworkers are ready to have you back.”
“As a matter of fact, they are.”
“You’ll be careful, won’t you? I mean, you’ve just gotten over a concussion.”
She smiled and patted his arm. “I’m always careful. You know that.”
He gave her a look of disbelief. “Hence the six stitches I just pulled out of your chin.”
Laughing, she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him. “Are you worried about me, Brannon?”
He pulled her onto his lap, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Yes, I am.”
“Don’t be.” She took a nip out of his ear and whispered, “I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” he said, but instead of sounding reassured, there was almost a hint of resignation in his voice.
Deciding not to pursue that topic any further at the moment, she pressed her lips to his. Joel seemed perfectly content to let conversation drop in favor of more pleasurable pursuits.
Chapter Fourteen
October slipped into November, and signs of the approaching holidays cropped up everywhere. It wasn’t a particularly cold fall, and the weather was beautiful for the most part. Nic found herself walking around with a perpetual smile on her face, causing speculation among her coworkers.
When asked by a few particularly shrewd friends, she didn’t deny that she was involved in a new relationship, though she didn’t volunteer any information they didn’t guess for themselves. She was resigned to being teased mercilessly when her coworkers found out she was dating a doctor, and that was exactly what she got when a couple of them learned the truth.
“Trying to marry money, eh, Sawyer?” one wise guy jeered as they finished up a two-car call to a particularly ugly domestic dispute involving drunken cursing and wildly swinging fists and culminating with one of their perpetrators vomiting all over everyone around him. “Hoping he’ll take you away from all this?”
Her nose still wrinkled in disgust, Nic handled the taunt with the ease of someone used to being the butt of jokes—and someone who also did a lot of the teasing. “Now why would I want to leave this life of glamour and nonstop adventure? Is there a better job in the world?”
Her fellow officer laughed and shook his head. “Not that I know of,” he said, cheerfully swabbing at his pant leg with a grubby handkerchief.
While Nic didn’t mind revealing that she was involved with Joel, she wasn’t sure he was ready to go that public. If he’d told any of his local friends that he was seeing her, she didn’t know about it.
They went out, of course. They had dinner, they saw movies, they attended a couple of parties. But Nic wondered if anyone who saw them together would realize that their yearlong friendship had recently changed.
Maybe Joel just wasn’t the public-display-of-affection type. He was certainly demonstrative enough in private—though they had yet to talk about their feelings for each other.
She didn’t know if he had told his family that they were now more than friends. She suspected that he had not. And she couldn’t help wondering if he was simply waiting to see if their new relationship had a chance of lasting or if he didn’t want to hear them express their disapproval. Didn’t want to try to defend his choice to them.
She was under no illusions that her effort to rescue Heidi had made Joel’s parents look at her differently. While they had expressed their gratitude on their friend’s behalf, it was still obvious that they didn’t see her as a fitting match for Joel.
She thought of her friends’ teasing about her angling to marry money. She understood they didn’t mean it. Anyone who knew her well had to be aware that she would never be motivated by something so shallow and ultimately unsatisfying. Of course, Joel’s fri
ends and family didn’t know her very well, so maybe they had concerns about that.
But during the few moments she allowed herself to contemplate their resistance, the main reason she came up with was that she was so very different from Heather. She didn’t want to believe that mattered so much, but she reluctantly acknowledged that the skeptics might have a point. If Joel had been so blissfully happy with Heather, why would he want to be involved now with someone who was almost diametrically opposite to his late wife?
But she wouldn’t think of that now, she promised herself. After all, she and Joel were just enjoying the present, right? There had been no talk of a future together, and she wasn’t looking for a long-term commitment anyway. Or so she told herself on an average of three times a day.
She didn’t see much of Aislinn during those early weeks of November. Aislinn claimed to be very busy with her cake-decorating business, but Nic wondered if there was more to her friend’s absence. Was she deliberately making herself scarce while Nic and Joel explored their new bond or was there something more to it? Was Aislinn seeing an ending that wasn’t going to be happy?
Because she was determined not to spoil her present contentment by worrying about a future she couldn’t completely control, Nic chose not to think any more about Aislinn’s uncharacteristic behavior than she did about Joel’s family’s opinions. This would all work out or it wouldn’t, she told herself prosaically. Either way, she could handle it. She’d survived broken relationships before, she could do so again.
Even as she made that brash vow to herself, she suspected that getting over Joel would be a lot harder than anything she had ever faced before.
Joel drew in a sharp breath as he parted Nic’s calf-length terry-cloth robe and looked down at her right leg. “Damn it, Nic.”
She chuckled, unchastened by his scolding. “It’s just a scrape. It looks worse than it is. And you should see the other guy.”
“You just recovered from all the bruises from your fall. Now your whole right calf is purple again—not to mention that nasty scrape.”
“It’s not as if I did it on purpose.”
“You aren’t supposed to tackle in flag football. That’s the whole point of the game. You know—so you won’t be hurt?”
“I had to tackle him,” she said with an unrepentant shrug and a grin. “He was going to score. And besides, he was taunting me. You wouldn’t expect me to let him get away with that, would you? But if it makes you feel any better, I think he’s going to have a black eye.”
“Why would that make me feel better?” Joel demanded, looking at her in disbelief. “You could have been hurt, Nic. You both could have.”
She sighed lustily. “Okay, so sometimes our flag football games get a little out of hand. I’ll start trying to be more careful,” she conceded unenthusiastically.
“Do that.”
Having just returned from a medical meeting of some sort in Little Rock, Joel was still dressed in a dark jacket, a gray shirt and tie and charcoal slacks. He looked very much the successful young professional. He’d come straight to her place when he’d returned because he’d been held up by freeway traffic and was running late for the dinner date they’d planned.
He’d found Nic just getting out of the shower, having lost track of time herself when a group of off-duty coworkers had taken advantage of a beautiful Saturday afternoon to play in an area park. He’d caught a glimpse of her latest injuries when the robe had parted as she’d walked across the room toward him. And he hadn’t stopped fussing since, she thought with a sigh.
“If we’re going out to dinner, I’d better get dressed,” she said, grateful to change the subject. “You can run home and change if you want. We’re not in any hurry.”
He shrugged. “I’m okay. I’ll just wear this.”
Which meant she wouldn’t be wearing the jeans and sweater she’d laid out on her bed, she thought, reluctantly putting them away. She could hardly wear jeans when Joel was dressed like Mr. GQ.
Pulling out her black slacks and black-and-purple sweater—the infamous Penderville Pirates outfit—she threw them on the bed and slipped out of her robe. “How was your meeting?”
His gaze was focused on her as he answered, and it would have been nice to think he was admiring the way she looked in her bra and panties. He probably did, but she was well aware that he was glaring at the deepening bruise on her right calf when he answered absently, “It was okay. Kind of dull.”
“Sorry to hear that.” She stepped into her pants, hiding the offending bruise from his sight, though she knew it was still in his mind.
Since they were dressed up, he drove her to a nice restaurant in North Little Rock, just over a twenty-minute drive away, where he encouraged her to order anything she wanted. “I’m having the steak and lobster tail,” he informed her when she frowned at the prices listed on the right side of the menu. “You like seafood, don’t you?”
She loved seafood, actually, but her budget rarely extended to these prices. Anything over ten bucks was an extravagance to her—and these meals were well over ten bucks.
“Look, they have Alaskan king crab legs,” Joel pointed out helpfully. “I know you like those, I’ve heard you mention it to Aislinn.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“That’s settled, then. Want to split some stuffed mushrooms for an appetizer? If we’re going to indulge tonight, we might as well go all out. Besides, I’m sure you worked off the calories today,” he added in a mutter.
Putting the prices out of her mind, Nic set the menu aside. “I love stuffed mushrooms.”
“Good. We might even save room for dessert. The key lime pie here is the best I’ve had in this state.”
Nic could almost hear the echo of her coworkers’ teasing in her mind as she listened to Joel rattle off their food order without seeming to even care that the tab was going to be higher than her monthly electric bill. And it wasn’t even a special occasion, she mused, reaching for her water glass. Just dinner.
She told herself that Joel wasn’t trying to impress her. He had been in the mood for surf and turf and he could afford it, so why not treat himself—and her—if he wanted?
Their conversation was just a bit more stilted than usual, maybe because of the atypical formality of their surroundings. They talked about his meeting, and about her game with her friends—though that seemed to be a rather sticky subject, for some reason. Finally they just concentrated on their meals, agreeing occasionally that the food was delicious.
It wasn’t late when they returned home, so Nic invited Joel inside. It occurred to her as he entered that they never went to his house. She wondered if there was any significance to that or if it was just coincidence. She seemed to be trying to read too much into everything tonight, she told herself with an impatient shake of her head.
She assured herself that she wasn’t being cowardly when she wrapped her arms around Joel’s neck and smiled flirtatiously up at him. She wasn’t really avoiding any further awkward conversation. She just missed touching him.
“That,” she told him, “was a truly delicious meal. A real treat. I owe you a special dinner in return. Maybe I’ll cook my famous shrimp-and-asparagus casserole for you soon.”
He looped his arms loosely around her waist. “Famous, huh?”
“I’ve taken it to two department potlucks and gotten rave reviews both times.”
“Then I’ll definitely have to try it.”
“In the meantime…” She rose on tiptoes to brush her lips against his.
“Oh, yeah. In the meantime…” He gathered her close.
They moved to her bedroom, and the nice clothes were thrown in a careless heap on the carpeting. Mouths fused, hands roaming, they rolled on the bed, heat building rapidly between them.
Nic flinched instinctively when Joel’s shin scraped over her freshly bruised calf. He stilled immediately, making her silently curse herself for revealing her momentary discomfort.
“Did I hurt
you?”
“No,” she assured him, tugging at his shoulders. “I’m fine.”
He held back with a frown. “Just let me look at your leg….”
“Later,” she said, pulling him down to her. “I’m busy right now.”
“Nic—”
But her name was smothered against her lips. After a moment, Joel stopped resisting.
They were sitting in front of Nic’s TV a few nights later when they almost got into another quarrel. It started innocently enough. They were watching a newsmagazine-style show and they were both intrigued by a story about a program for at-risk youth that had been initiated by a psychologist and a police officer in Baltimore. Because both Joel and Nic had professional interests in troubled kids, the program sparked a discussion between them about whether a modified version would be helpful in their small town.
“You could do something like that,” Joel suggested as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Work with at-risk kids, I mean.”
“I do, sort of,” she reminded him. “A lot of my calls involve kids in trouble.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean in the course of your regular police work. I meant you should think about focusing exclusively on that work. You’d be good at it. Maybe in a high school setting. You know, like a counselor.”
“A counselor?” Nic stiffened and pulled slightly away from him on the couch. “I’m a cop, Joel. Not a shrink.”
“But you said you wanted to work with kids—”
“I’d be interested in getting involved in a program like the one we just heard about. A joint thing with the police department and social services. I never said I wanted to leave the force.”
“Look, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said getting a good look at her expression. “We were just talking.”
Nodding, she pushed herself off the couch. “I think I’ll get a soda. You want anything?”
“No, I’m fine. Nic—”
“I’ll be right back,” she said and escaped into the kitchen. She needed a couple of minutes to compose herself before she rejoined him.