Trust with a Chaser (Rainbow Cove Book 1)

by Annabeth Albert

  “Careful now. Don’t cut yourself.” Flint straightened as I started sweeping.

  “I can handle it.” I managed a bitter laugh. “Jimmy and Freddy broke enough windows playing ball as kids. I’ve got glass cleanup down.”

  “Easton and I busted a few in our time.” Flint nodded. “He had a hell of an arm.”

  “I bet. Word is that you were something on the baseball field back in high school, too.”

  “I was all right.” Flint shrugged, smile tugging at his mouth. Deep lines bracketed his eyes, and I finally escaped my own concerns enough to notice how exhausted the man seemed.

  “What are you doing out tonight, anyway?”

  “Holmes was working a traffic accident. Nasty one. I was backing her up by re-routing cars when the call came in about your place. I checked to be sure that she had everything handled then headed here.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Long damn day.”

  “Did you eat yet?” I tried to make quick work of the sweeping. “I can cook you something. Logan’s not the only one who can cook a burger.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Stooping down, he steadied the dustpan for me. “I better get back to the station, be there in case Holmes needs to debrief about the accident.”

  Who will be there when you need to talk? I wanted to ask but didn’t. The urge to be that person for him ate at me, made me want to rub his tense neck, get him to talk. But close on the heels of that urge was one to kiss him senseless, take solace in each other, and that wasn’t happening. “Coffee for the road?” I said instead.

  He nodded. “I’d be obliged. You going to be okay on your own until the guys get back?”

  I bristled at the notion that I might need taking care of, even if part of me wanted him to stick around. “I’ll be fine. I’ll finish cleaning up before they get back.”

  I abandoned my sweeping to pour him coffee from the carafe Adam had behind the bar. It wasn’t the freshest this time of night, but it was the best I could do. An espresso machine was on our wishlist. That might have to wait depending on what the insurance said about the window.

  “Okay. You call if you need anything—even if you hear a strange noise or something. Don’t take chances.”

  “I won’t,” I assured him as I passed him a to-go cup. A jolt of electricity zoomed up my arm as our fingers brushed. Nope. Definitely not calling Flint. I refused to need this man in spite of my body clamoring for him.

  Flint headed out, and I cleaned until Adam and Logan came back. The three of us patched up the window as best as we could. Adam was right. It did look like ass, but at least it was secure. Adam had to be talked out of going all mountain man and sleeping at the tavern in case the vandals came back.

  “Flint would have a fit if you use your hunting rifle for anything other than going after Bambi in season,” I warned him.

  “God forbid we do something Flint doesn’t like.” Adam rolled his eyes.

  “Go home, Adam. Get some rest. Tomorrow I’ll handle all the insurance stuff.” I ushered him out to his truck, Logan following along behind us.

  “You take care of you, too,” Logan said as he swung into the passenger seat.

  I wasn’t sure how to do that—I was too keyed up to relax by the time I got home. I lifted my free weights until my arms burned, took a shower, and pulled on a pair of shorts before heading to the kitchen. I was contemplating food when there was a knock at the door.

  Fuck. If it was Logan come to tell me that Adam had done something stupid…

  But it wasn’t Logan. Or a family emergency. It was Flint, standing on my porch, not in uniform, no truck or Jeep in sight. Every denial I’d been making about not needing this man went up in smoke as I opened the door.

  Eleven

  Nash

  I had no clue what I was doing on Mason’s front porch. His lights had been on when I’d headed home after talking with Candace, who had, indeed, needed to debrief. The traffic accident she’d handled had necessitated a call to life-flight. But seeing Mason’s lights on wasn’t the same as an invitation to intrude, and I’d pulled into my own driveway, forced myself to go inside and change and shower.

  I hadn’t been able to get him off my mind. The broken window had obviously rattled him. And he wasn’t angry like Ringer or quietly stoic like his chef friend. No, as always, Mason wore his worries on his sleeve, putting his business, customers, and friends before himself. But his jerky movements and need to be useful said he was struggling inside. Hell if I knew how to make it better for him.

  I didn’t want to make it worse, so I hadn’t let myself add to his to-do list and had turned down his offer of food. Staring at the contents of my freezer, I was struck again with wondering if he was okay. Going to the window, I glanced down the street. The house Mason was renting was the smallest on the block, set farther back from the road with a scraggly lawn and wide, welcoming porch. His lights were still on. And before I knew what I was about, I pulled on shoes and headed down the block. The fact that I hadn’t driven made it hard to pretend this was official business, but I tried to cling to that illusion as I waited for him to open the door.

  “Something new wrong at the tavern?” Mason’s raised eyebrows said that he knew there wasn’t, but he’d let me have that pretense as he held the door open, ushered me into the house.

  “No, everything’s fine. I drove by there on my way home. I just wanted to see how you were doing.” I played it casual, like checking on him in the middle of the night was something I did all the time. The small entrance hall opened up into a living room that was almost bare—only a single couch and an end table with a lamp. No art or pictures on the wall. I’d been in his parents’ place before, and cluttered didn’t even begin to describe their property. I guessed that minimalism might be Mason’s grand rebellion.

  “I’m good.” Mason looked me up and down. “You still haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

  “I’m okay,” I lied, willing my stomach not to growl. The rest of me was close to growling for a whole different reason—Mason was shirtless. The only thing he had on was a pair of stretchy shorts. Damp hair said that he too had recently showered. But it was his chest that mesmerized me—far fuzzier than I would have expected and as muscular as those biceps of his. His nipples were a deep tan color and pebbled from the night air.

  “No, you’re not.” Mason jerked his thumb for me to follow him to the kitchen. “I was just about to make myself something anyway. You good with an omelet?”

  “Could be.” I didn’t want to sound too eager for him to feed me. The kitchen was a narrow, L-shaped room with an eating nook on one end and what looked like the original 1950s cabinets. The stove was probably about that old, too, but Mason slapped a space-age looking stainless steel pan on the burner and set to collecting ingredients from a fridge that didn’t match the other appliances.

  He tossed me a plastic bag that held the same bread he served at the restaurant. “Can I trust you with the toaster?”

  “You can trust me.” I hoped I wasn’t lying. I owned three toasters because I kept buying new ones, hoping something different would stop me from burning things. Then Mom had gifted me a toaster oven that required an engineering degree to operate but looked nice enough on my counter. I glanced around Mason’s kitchen and had to stifle a groan.

  Sure enough, he owned the same MIT-level toaster oven, just waiting to confound me. He must have sensed my apprehension because he turned from cracking eggs. “Here. I’ll do it. It’s…tricky.”

  Smiling slyly, he made it appear like no such thing, getting the toast arranged just so and the toaster counting down like a rocket launch, all while he kept whisking the eggs with his other hand.

  “You have plates? I can manage setting the table.”

  “Cabinet over here.” Mason pointed to the corner cabinet next to where he stood at the stove.

  Heck. Now if I wanted to be helpful, I was going to have to get all up in his personal space, which was…

  Exactly what you ca
me over for.

  No. I’d come over to check on him. And yeah, on my walk over, I might have entertained the idea of him greeting me wordlessly with another of those soul-melting kisses and nature simply taking its course from there. But he hadn’t gone that route, not that I was surprised.

  This whole meal-sharing thing was not what I was prepared for, and since Mason wasn’t acting like a guy up for kissing, I wasn’t sure how to handle myself.

  Coming up behind him to grab the plates, I tried hard to avoid brushing his body. But at the last second, Mason turned, and there we were, face-to-face, chest-to-chest.

  “Hi.” Mason grinned at me, a smile full of sin that said he knew exactly what I’d been thinking—hoping—coming here. He brushed a kiss across my cheek before returning to the eggs on the stove, normal as could be. “You’re seriously cute all flustered.”

  Huh. Guess he was up for kissing. But…

  “I can hear you thinking, Nash. Set the table,” he ordered. I’d been right. My name did sound good on his lips, and it had been far, far too long since I’d been simply Nash, the slightly confused, more than a little turned-on man, and not Flint the figurehead.

  I put the plates on the table and found silverware in the drawer closest to the table. In surprisingly short order, Mason produced an omelet that smelled of sausage and sharp cheese, and he rescued the bread just in time, all with the effortless ease of a man at home in his kitchen. Dividing the omelet in half, he served us before taking the seat opposite me.

  He took a deep breath, and I hoped like heck that he wasn’t about to say grace. I hadn’t had that ritual since Dad, and I didn’t really want to associate Mason with those memories.

  “Why’d you really come, Nash?” he asked instead, and for a second, I almost wished he’d gone with the prayer.

  “To check on you,” I answered automatically.

  “Yeah…but why?”

  “Because I needed to.” Hell. He had me all frustrated. Man was lucky he was all the way across the table or he would have found himself thoroughly kissed.

  “Do you need to…do this often, then?” His voice was too carefully pitched to be casual.

  I finally got what he was after. He wanted to know if I made a habit of coming on to people. “No,” I answered truthfully. “Never on duty, rarely locally, and never with someone who drives me as nuts as you do.”

  This seemed to please him, and he nodded, blushing.

  Kryptonite, I tell you. If I hadn’t already been gone on him, that blush would have done it.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled before tucking into his food.

  The omelet was perfection—crispy sausage pieces, creamy cheese, fluffy eggs with just the right amount of seasoning. “Tell me how you did this,” I asked, both to break the silence and because I wanted to know. Mason talking food was quietly addictive.

  “You really curious or you just being polite?” He laughed as he broke off a piece of toast.

  “I want to learn more. Who knows, you might inspire me to try cooking something for myself sometime.”

  “I’ll happily give you lessons. Any time you want to figure out how to make the basics, you just give me a call. Everyone should have at least one go-to late-night meal that doesn’t come from a box.”

  I coughed at that because all my late-night meals came from boxes and he knew it. The idea of coming over here more often, letting Mason show me his tricks, was more than a little seductive. “Not sure that’s a good idea,” I muttered.

  “Sure it is.” His grin was damn near lethal, the way it poked at me, made me unhinged. “Now, let’s start with stocking your pantry for all the things you can do with eggs…”

  As he went on about the versatility of eggs, I kept thinking of all the things I wanted to do to him. I had a feeling we would get there before I came to my senses and headed home, and a delicious shiver of anticipation rocketed through me. I hadn’t had that in forever, the knowledge that something was going to happen, but not yet, and not knowing what or when.

  “I’m going to do a strawberry-rhubarb pie this week,” Mason said when he was done with his ode to eggs. “You want to come by early some day, maybe before you have to be on duty? I’ll show you how easy pie crust is.”

  Regret coursing through me, I shook my head. It was a pretty picture, him teaching me how to do a pie, us rolling out dough together, but that was all it could be—a picture. “I’ll be sure to order a piece,” I said.

  Mason sighed like he was disappointed for me, and I supposed I was, too.

  “How bad was the accident?” he asked as he mopped up some melted cheese with his toast.

  “Bad. Driver will live, but we had to get the firefighters there with the jaws of life.” I had no one that I talked shop with, and discussing details with him made my chest thump. Discussing his life and food stuff was easier. “Candace—Holmes was shaken up. She was first on the scene. But we spoke, and I told her she did all the right things.”

  “Who do you share with when you’ve had a bad day?” His head tilted, and his voice was so full of compassion I almost couldn’t stand it.

  “I don’t. No need to spill my guts.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—I kept my bad days tucked in close against me, the weight pushing down on my shoulders until I sorted myself out, but something about Mason made me wish I were wired a little differently, made me wish I was more of talker. Or that I had a listener… But that way lay madness, so I pushed the thoughts aside.

  Omelet done, I took my plate to the sink without looking at him. The old-fashioned kitchen didn’t have a dishwasher, so I grabbed a sponge and the soap.

  Mason added his plate to the sink and grabbed a towel to dry. I’d never done something so…domestic before. Steve and I never had much time for shared food, and none of my other rare, brief encounters were much interested in doing the dishes.

  I made quick work of the plates and silverware, and he got them dry and back in their spots. “You’re a bit of a neatnik, aren’t you?” I asked.

  His kitchen was almost spartan—exactly four white plates and four matching forks and a tidy row of three pans on the pot rack.

  “Guilty.” He shrugged. “You know my family. I swore up and down I’d live differently when I moved out of my folks’ place. It used to drive Felipe nuts how I never wanted to buy anything or keep clutter. But I refuse to turn into them.”

  I didn’t like hearing about this Felipe one bit. “You’re not going to turn into your family,” I said firmly. “You’re already made better choices than most of them put together.”

  “You really think so?” His smile this time was slow and cautious.

  “Yeah.” I dried my hands on the towel hanging from a hook by the sink and let myself do what I’d been dying to do since I’d looked out my window and spotted his lights. I turned him to face me, hands on his broad shoulders. God, his skin was so warm and soft. Freckles dotted his shoulders and, just like his blush, the sight drove me crazy. “You’re a good man, Mason Hanks.”

  I wasn’t talented with pretty words and off-hand compliments, so that was the best I had, but apparently it was acceptable because Mason smiled wider and looped his arms around my neck. “So are you.”

  I might have been broader, but we were almost the same height. It was nice looking into his eyes, seeing him telegraph his intent right before he grazed his lips across mine.

  That first kiss had been all me, all my pounding drive for control and need to claim him like some crazed caveman. This kiss was the polar opposite, tender and slow and full of finesse as he led the way. He tasted salty at first, but that quickly gave way to the same addictive flavor I remembered from the first time. His lips were soft and surprisingly full, and the hitch in his breath right before he deepened the kiss nearly undid me.

  Growling, I took back a little control, exploring his mouth with my tongue. He met me eagerly, joyfully even, sucking on my tongue in a way that made my dick pulse. I pressed him back against the cabinets, giving in t
o the need to rock against him.

  “Oh, fuck yes.” Mason tipped his head, giving me access to the column of his neck. His skin was slightly stubbly, and I welcomed the abrasion against my lips and tongue.

  I hadn’t come in my pants since I’d been a teen. I’d fooled around with Troy, long before he became hung up on Curtis, and I got hung up on…myself and all the limitations that went along with being me.

  Mason revved me up far more than Troy or even Steve ever had, and climaxing just from rubbing on him was a definite possibly, especially the way he clung to me, meeting me thrust for thrust.

  I discovered all the spots on his neck that made him gasp and moan, trying not to leave marks, but it was hard, much as I needed him.

  “Not enough.” Mason worked a hand between us, working my belt like a man who knew what he wanted, and damn if that confidence wasn’t sexy enough to have me groaning. “Fuck, Nash. Should have figured you’d be packing.”

  I was not one to preen at dick compliments, but my shoulders lifted at that. Before I could get with the program and return the groping, Mason had my dick out and was shoving his shorts down to mid-thigh. He wrapped a hand around both our dicks and started a slow stroke. Got to love a man who wasn’t afraid to go after exactly what he needed.

  “Nash… God, this feels good.” He was a talker, and I loved that every bit as much as his blushes and confidence. He’d gone on about me packing, but his dick was plenty meaty, a thick, uncut column pressing up against my cock, damp cockhead dragging against my own in the most blissful kind of torture.

  “I wanna come,” he moaned against my mouth, rucking my shirt so our bare torsos met. “Kiss me,” he demanded, and his mouth met mine hungrily.

  His hand sped up, but it wasn’t quite enough for me—I needed to feel him. Batting his hand away, I growled, “My turn.”

  “Oh, fuck yes.” He arched into my touch. My hand was bigger, allowing my grip to be that much tighter, and the increased friction had me moaning, too. He leaked copious amounts of precome, coating my fist, and my mouth watered with the need to taste him.