by Lou Harper
Dark blue exuded the musk of power. No wonder the inky hue of LAPD uniforms and their starched lines were irresistible to many people, including me.
I spotted the hunky cop guarding a film set on my way to work, and the sight woke up in me all the instincts of a kamikaze moth. I could hardly wait for my first break to slip out for a closer look. Fortunately, the shoot took place only a block down from Fred’s Trade Post.
In this town, only newcomers and tourists gawk at movie sets; Angelenos remain blasé, and so did I. Honestly, I couldn’t care less what movie or TV show they were shooting with the cop standing there. His shirt stretched over a sturdy chest, clearly all muscle, no fat. The short sleeve of the shirt strained to hold his biceps. Totally butch. The dark hair on his arms begged to be touched, but I held back my urges. Petting cops in public can get you in trouble. I gave him a casual smile, and he returned it with a stern, move-it-along-now glare. I saved one last eyeful of him for later use before hoofing it back to work.
I’d always had a terrible memory for names and faces, even before a building fell on me and temporarily scrambled my brain. Too often I’d run into someone who’d greet me like we knew each other, but I couldn’t for the life of me place them out of context. Damn embarrassing, if you ask me. You can grin like an idiot and avoid calling the other person by name only so long before they wise up to you. In the old days, I’d solved this problem by calling everyone “handsome.” However, that was too colorful for me now.
I wouldn’t have recognized the cop again out of uniform if he hadn’t come into the store the very next day. Fred’s Trade Post—aka Fred’s or FTP—was a local grocery-store chain specializing in a blend of imported foodstuff and local produce. We carried lots of organic products to satisfy the progressive denizens of Hollywood and the hills above, but we weren’t half as snooty about it as some other places. Thanks to our selection of healthy, quick meals, we had brisk traffic at lunch time every day.
It was my turn to man one of the cash registers when he walked up with his Chicken Caesar salad. He wore a gray suit with a tie the same shade of blue as his police uniform. I had a strong impulse to reach out for a feel of silk under my fingers. Of course, I didn’t—I kept my hands firmly to myself. Looking into the man’s eyes from barely two feet away, I saw they were blue too, although several shades lighter.
The color jogged my memory. “You’ll need more protein than that, Officer.”
His right brow twitched up, but his expression remained impassive.
“I saw you the other day in uniform—at the movie shoot,” I explained.
“Ah.” A glimmer of his eyes got my gaydar pinging like crazy. We shared a flash of confidence, but then the eyebrow reclaimed its regular spot. Being so close, I noticed a nick in that brow, like an old scar. At least that would help me place him if we ever met again. If we did.
Contrary to popular heterosexual belief, batting for the same-sex team didn’t mean instant attraction. Not on my cop’s part, for certain. He paid and left without another word. Well, that was par for the course. For a reasonably good-looking and generally pleasant guy, my love life sucked. I couldn’t click with anyone. As if I was cursed. Because I was. Literally. It might have happened years ago, but I’d been living with the consequences ever since.
So I was more than a little surprised when my cop came back again that week, dressed casual this time, buying a whole basketful of groceries. We had a cordial, albeit brief exchange about food and weather, and I learned his name—Nick, like the gap in his brow. Of course, he knew mine. It was on my nameplate: Jeremy. Although, everyone called me Jem.
Detective Nick Davies became a regular and kept coming in, two, three times a week, always between noon and two, when it was my turn at the register. He had me confounded because our conversations never strayed to a territory more personal than the best use of the chicken cilantro mini dumplings—in a soup or sautéed. However, he picked my checkout line every single time, even when the “less than twelve items” line stood empty and all he had was a microwavable turkey pot pie.
I found myself smiling a whole lot and complimenting him on his choice of fruit, saying things like, “I had those peaches myself—they’re sweet and finger-licking juicy.” I might have even lowered my voice a little and given him a suggestive look.
A twitch in the corner of his mouth was the only response I got, and that was more than usual. I consoled myself with the thought that lack of facial expression must have been a professional attribute for a cop. Unfortunately, I liked him a little more every time I saw him. God knows why. Fine physique notwithstanding, he was plain—brown hair, unremarkable face. And so damn solemn. When he cracked a smile for the first time, I nearly dropped the gorgonzola crackers. Then I felt ridiculous for it, getting flustered like a teenager. Especially since I’d been unflappable that age.
You can run from the past…but the past runs faster.
Caught!
© 2014 JL Merrow
Shamwell Tales, Book 1
Behind Robert’s cheerfully eccentric exterior lies a young heart battered and bruised by his past. He’s taken a job teaching in a village primary school to make a fresh start, and love isn’t part of his plans. But he’s knocked for six—literally—by a chance encounter with the uncle of two of his pupils.
Sean works in pest control, rides a motorbike, and lives on a council estate. On the face of it, he shouldn’t have anything in common with Robert’s bow-tie, classic-car style and posh family background. Yet Robert is helpless to resist Sean’s roguish grin, and a rocky, excruciatingly embarrassing start doesn’t keep the sparks between them from flaring.
Despite Robert’s increasingly ludicrous attempts to keep his past where it belongs, his past hasn’t read the memo. And soon his secrets could be the very things that drive Sean away for good…
Warning: Contains the alarming misadventures of a pest control technician, a stepsister with a truly unfortunate name, and a young man who may have more bow ties than sense.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Caught!:
“Stop pushing! Mr. Enemy, she’s pushing me!” George H was crimson-cheeked and close to tears. Destinee had that hard look on her overly knowing face that meant she was guilty as sin, but she was ready to deny it to her dying day.
“Calm down, please, you two.” I gave Destinee my sternest glare. “If I see any more of that, you’ll be staying in at playtime and sharpening every single one of the colouring pencils. Yes, even the boring colours.”
“But I didn’t do nuffing!” Destinee whined at me, her pathetic tone belied by the evil glint in her hazel eyes. She was probably already planning her revenge, most likely by stabbing me through the heart with a fiendishly sharpened pencil. In sludge brown. We had a short face-off, which ended with her making a tactical withdrawal. I wasn’t naive enough to delude myself into thinking it was a retreat.
All was peaceful for a moment as I carried on shepherding form 2E into St Saviour’s Church, tins and jars for Harvest Festival clutched in tiny hands. Thirty pairs of eyes (actually, twenty-nine and a half; Jodie was wearing a patch for her lazy eye) searched eagerly for sight of parents and grannies. I gazed out on the sea of female and/or wrinkly faces in the pews and wondered idly if there was any job in the world, anywhere, that was worse for meeting men than the average primary-school teaching post. Father confessor in a nunnery, maybe? Avon cosmetics rep? Or one of those poor sods who went round emptying the sanitary bins they put in ladies’ loos?
I gave myself an internal nod of approval. I’d chosen wisely for my first proper job since Crispin—
An outraged squeal pierced my eardrums and reverberated around my skull. My head snapped around, and I winced as my neck cricked. Destinee was kicking off again.
With a wail of “I said stoppit!” George H stumbled into Charlie, a sensitive young man whose mother was no longer in the picture and whose father, I’d realised, didn’t quite know what to do with him. I was rather fond of
the little chap. I was less fond of his father, who had, with criminal lack of forethought, loaded him up with an enormous, heavy jar of pasta sauce. Inevitably, the jar slipped from Charlie’s startled fingers.
I dived for it without conscious thought, launching myself across the stone flags. Time slowed, the jar seeming to fall through treacle, giving me plenty of leisure for a flashback to a long-ago missed catch for the Loriners’ first eleven. History repeating itself, oh, bloody hell. I wondered how many weeks it’d take them to scrub the red stuff off the pews—and me, come to that—and whether Charlie would have stopped crying by then.
Then a pair of hefty, leather-clad arms shot out and fielded the jar mere inches before it could hit the stone floor.
I slammed into said floor myself with an oof and narrowly missed knocking the blasted thing straight out of his grasp again. Bruised and panting, I stared at the saviour of St Saviour’s—not to mention my Harris tweed jacket—from my supine position six inches away on the flagstones.
He grinned back at me from his. “That was a close one!” Green eyes sparkling in a roguish, ginger-stubbled face, my opposite number leapt back up to his feet and handed the jar back to Charlie. “Here you go, mate.”
And then he was gone, startling smile, freckles and all. Charlie was by my side, clutching the precious burden tight to his chest and whimpering softly. I got to my feet, dusted myself off and cleared my throat. “Right. Let that be a lesson to you, young Destinee. Now, carry on. We need to take our seats.”
Heads had turned. More than that, the Head had turned. Thank God disaster had been averted. Losing two jobs in one year would probably begin to look like carelessness. With the uncomfortable suspicion my face must be as red as Charlie’s ragù, I carried on herding the children into the pews and was grateful when I could finally slide onto a straight-backed wooden seat myself. And begin courting backache; apparently ergonomics wasn’t yet in vogue when the pews were designed. Or maybe they were just the furniture equivalent of the hair shirt.
St. Saviour’s was an old church, the present building dating roughly from around the time of the Black Death, when presumably ingratiating oneself with Him on High must have seemed like a jolly good idea. It was constructed on its exterior from the evocatively named Totternhoe clunch, a sort of indigestible porridge of flinty pebbles in mortar, and on the inside from large blocks of pale grey stone. Thanks to a recent sandblasting, it was rather brighter and cheerier inside than you might expect of a medieval building. The sight lines, though, were dreadful; the chancel was crowded with massive stone pillars at least a couple of bear hugs in circumference and the side chapels were all but invisible to those not actually in them.
Not, of course, that I was in any way straining secretly (and in vain) for a glimpse of black leather, copper-coloured hair and a ready smile. I wasn’t that daft. Sworn off men for life, that was me. Or, well, maybe not life. Just the next twenty years or so. Maybe thirty, just to be on the safe side. I’d be in my mid-fifties; surely I’d have acquired a bit more discernment by then.
Was he a biker, I wondered? The man who’d saved us all from the Great Spaghetti Sauce Massacre, I mean. The leather jacket might just be a fashion statement. I frowned. Could he be a parent? I’d had a vague impression of someone around my own age, so yes, it was possible. If he’d embarked on parenthood when I was busy swotting for my A Levels. I pursed my lips.
Charlie pulled my sleeve. “Mr. Enemy?”
“Yes, young Charlie?” I whispered back.
“Why are you making funny faces?”
I froze. “My nose itches.”
He looked at me solemnly. “You should scratch it. Like this.”
A grubby little finger plunged up an only slightly cleaner nose and started to move around vigorously. “Ah. Careful there, Charlie. You’ll give yourself a—oh dear. There we go.” I pulled out my handkerchief and did my best to stanch the Niagara Falls of blood from Charlie’s abused nostril. Then I glared at the children in the pew in front, who’d turned round to goggle at the poor boy. “Eyes front. Haven’t you ever seen a nosebleed before?”
“Is Charlie going to die, Mr. Enemy?” Destinee asked in a tone of relish.
“We’re all going to die, Destinee,” I said firmly. “Some of us sooner than others. Now hush. We’re supposed to be listening to the prayers.”
The rest of the service went rather as expected—Emily J forgot her lines, the reception class were adorable but inaudible, somebody’s little sister had an unfortunate potty-training accident and Mrs. Nunn, Destinee’s mum, got told off by the vicar for chatting loudly on her mobile phone. At least it hadn’t been her daughter she’d called.
I pasted on a smile as I strode to the crossing to lead the little darlings in a whole-school rendition of St. Saviour’s School’s official harvest song, “I Like Baked Beans”. I’d spent the last three weeks coaching them in it, and I was quite possibly never going to eat another baked bean ever again. I even dreamed about them, the song running through my head like a radioactive earworm. If it had gone on one more week, I’d have been at serious risk of having a nervous breakdown in the canned-food aisle in Tesco. I could almost hear the tannoy announcement: Straitjacket to aisle seven, please.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Secrets and Charms
Copyright © 2014 by Lou Harper
ISBN: 978-1-61922-568-8
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Angela Waters
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First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2014
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