A Fairfield Romance Box Set 1

by Lydia Reeves

  Eventually, Jenny left us to reopen the store, and I was left alone with Sherry in the small break room. She had answered all the questions I could think of and I was just finishing up my notes when she turned a nonchalant eye on me and said, “So, how do you know Marian?”

  I glanced up in surprise at the abrupt change of subject. “She’s my neighbor.”

  “Ahh, I wondered if that might be the case. Your first name must be Levi, then, Officer Mathes.” Her mouth quirked slightly, as if she was suppressing a smile.

  I raised an eyebrow, unsure how to respond. Marian had mentioned me to this woman? Marian, who was friends with everyone in the world, except me, had mentioned me to her friend? I cringed, wondering what horrible things she would have said when describing me.

  But before I could think of what to say in response, Sherry rose from the table and headed toward the door. “Carla should be here by now; I’ll send her back to talk to you, shall I?”

  * * *

  Back at the station, I typed up my notes, sifting through the information in my head.

  It was similar to the two previous break-ins, I thought, insofar as only cash was taken, and not a lot of it at that. No real property damage—minus the register—and nothing else missing. It seemed like a whole lot of risk for not a lot of reward.

  The robberies at the bank and the dry cleaners had both taken place during the day, with employees present, albeit only one each time, and despite this I still didn’t even know the gender of the perpetrator. But the craft store break-in had taken place at night. Did that mean it was a different criminal? Or maybe just the same person getting more savvy? I had a hunch it was the latter. All three stores were within walking distance, only blocks away from each other. And besides, Fairfield wasn’t big enough for multiple crime sprees to be going on at the same time, and this hadn’t been widely publicized enough yet for a copy-cat.

  I leaned back in my chair, balancing on the back legs. What about Marian’s break-in though? Was that related, or a one-off? I know the chief and Jansen had the story from the kid that he had been drunk and thought it was his own apartment, and while I knew the drunk part was true enough, I wondered about the other. I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to the kid, after all. Even if his story was true, it didn’t preclude him breaking into other places.

  I sighed, letting my chair fall forward to the ground. I knew it likely wasn’t related—the two situations were too different—but I resolved to look into it further anyway, just in case. By the time I shut down my computer and headed home, my mind was still churning with questions.

  I went to bed early that night, determined to make up the sleep that I’d been missing over the past few days. But when an hour had passed and I was still lying there, eyes wide open as I glared at the ceiling, I knew I wasn’t going to be catching up on sleep tonight.

  I watched the clock on my bedside table click over to eleven. I wondered if Marian was asleep on the other side of the wall. I wondered what she’d been doing at the craft store. Shopping? Visiting her friend? I wondered how she was doing after finding out the store had been robbed, and how she was recovering from her own scare.

  Then I berated myself for wondering. I pulled my pillow over my head, which successfully blocked out the light, but unfortunately didn’t do anything to stop my thoughts.

  Why was I so aware of her? Why did I notice stupid things like the patterning on her umbrella, or the water droplets in her hair? I resented the fact that I was aware of her at all. I’d spent the majority of my childhood and most of my adult life dealing with other people’s problems, cleaning up after their messes. The last thing I needed was another broken person in my life.

  Every time I visited my mother, she asked me if there was a girl in my life, and every time I brushed her off like it was the last thing on my mind. My job was too demanding. I was too busy. But in reality, this town was just too small. I already knew everyone worth knowing, and as a police officer, I already knew way more than I needed to about most of them. How could I find a “nice girl,” as my mom put it, if everyone in town was such a mess?

  Not that I didn’t have my own share of issues—I certainly wasn’t blind to my own faults. But I didn’t know where my mother thought I was going to find this “nice girl” who didn’t have a drinking problem, or three kids from different guys, or an arrest record, or a history of flings with married men. That perfect woman didn’t exist. Not in Fairfield, anyway. And to make things worse—when I closed my eyes and tried to picture this impossible woman, all I could see was dark red hair and oversized brown eyes.

  Damn it.

  The clock ticked over to midnight and I threw off the sheets and sat up, grabbing a t-shirt and pulling it on over my head. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway, I might as well just get up and be useful.

  Useful, it seemed, took the form of cleaning my already clean apartment. It ticked all the boxes, I figured. It was boring as hell, and physically demanding, so it would wear me out. And keep my mind occupied, hopefully.

  I tried to be quiet, remembering how sound carried through the walls, and had just stepped down off the ladder after changing the burnt out lightbulb in the kitchen when I heard the slightest shuffling sound outside in the hallway. I froze in the act of folding the small ladder and listened hard. Was there someone out there?

  It was a long moment before the sound came again, muffled through the door, and I leaned the ladder against the wall and moved to peer through the peephole in my front door.

  My vision filled with a distorted fish-eye view of Marian, standing just outside the door. Her hand was raised and poised to knock, but she didn’t move, just stood there frozen like a statue as indecision flashed across her face.

  I sighed, realizing I was losing this battle. Even if I worked hard to block her from my thoughts, she just showed up in person. And yet I couldn’t explain the warm feeling in my chest at the sight of her, and the tightening somewhere deep inside as I took in her sleep-rumpled form and messy hair.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped back and pulled the door open.

  Chapter 9

  MARIAN

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing in the hallway, waffling between whether to knock or go back to bed, when the door swung open.

  Levi’s broad form filled the space, and he looked huge and menacing with the light spilling out from the room behind him, illuminating his silhouette and casting his face in shadow. And yet the relief I felt at his presence alarmed me more than his intimidating shape.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you up,” he said. “I was trying to be quiet.”

  “What?” I wrinkled my brow in confusion. “I didn’t actually knock, did I? I don’t think I did.”

  He huffed out what could have been a laugh. “No, you didn’t. I was up anyway, and I heard you outside the door.”

  “Oh.” I chewed on my lower lip. “You were already up?”

  “Yeah. I was cleaning.” He gestured me back a step and I moved out of the doorway, giving him space to join me in the hallway. He didn’t invite me in, and I didn’t ask him to, but he pulled the door shut behind him and leaned against the wall next to me.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, eyeing him sideways.

  He sighed. “Nope. What about you?”

  He turned to face me fully, and his narrowed eyes took me in from the top of my messy head to the bottoms of my bare feet, leaving behind a warm tingling awareness everywhere his gaze touched. “You look like you’ve been asleep.”

  Flustered by the intensity of his eyes, I leaned against the wall and slid down to sit, pulling my legs in tight, and he joined me on the floor, each of us taking up a position that seemed almost familiar.

  “I was for a little while,” I admitted. “Had a bad dream and couldn’t get back to sleep after that.”

  Neither of us commented on the fact that my first reaction was to seek him out.

  When he spoke again, his voice was lo
w. “You wanna tell me about it? Your bad dream?”

  I didn’t, not really, so I hesitated, shaking my head, then did the next best thing, giving quiet voice to my fears.

  “I don’t usually watch the news,” I began haltingly, “or keep up on local events, but Sam had the news on in his office at the bookstore this afternoon. I saw…I saw there had been a break-in a few days ago too, at the dry cleaners. The one next to your gym?”

  There was a pause, then Levi slid a glance my way. “There was one before that too, actually. About three days earlier.”

  “Where?” I gasped. The lady on the news hadn’t mentioned that. Or at least, not while I’d been standing there. I hadn’t lingered long.

  “Fairfield Financial.” He watched my face as he said it, as if gauging my reaction.

  I tried to control my shudder, but wasn’t sure I was entirely successful. Someone had robbed the bank? “Did anyone get hurt? Do they think it was the same person? At both places? And the craft store too?”

  He shook his head. “No, no one got hurt. Though the first two didn’t happen at night. But it’s likely it was all the same person. We don’t know a lot yet. It’s still being investigated.”

  I let my voice drop low, almost afraid to speak my thoughts aloud, lest they become real. “Do you…do you think it could be related to my break-in?”

  He paused, just a hair too long, and I ducked my head, burying it in my hands. He’d said that guy was out on bail, just out there somewhere. And not just somewhere, I realized—he lived on the other side of our apartment complex. What if he was behind the store robberies as well? What if he started hurting people? What if he came back?

  I felt the warm circle of Levi’s fingers around my wrist, and let him pull my hands away from my face. His face was close to mine, his eyes serious, and when he responded it was as if he could hear my thoughts.

  “We don’t know anything for sure, but it’s really unlikely that it was the same person. There’s no reason to think that guy’s story wasn’t true.” He pulled my arm down between us but, after a moment of hesitation, didn’t let go of my hand, instead threading his fingers through my own. My shock at his action pulsed through me, his hand warm and calloused on mine as he continued. “And regardless, he’s not coming back here. Not with that new unbreakable door. Not with me here.”

  The last words twisted his face almost into a snarl, and I thought about the difference just a few days could make. I’d seen that snarl before, more than once, and it had always scared me. The intensity of his expressions, his thick, muscular form, the silvery scar on his jaw—he’d never been anything to me but intimidating. But knowing that ferocity was focused on my behalf, rather than at me…it changed everything.

  It made me wonder if I’d always misread him. Had he really always hated me, as I’d assumed? Or was he this serious and surly with everyone? And had he always been that way, or had something happened to make him like this? Because as we sat together in the hallway, his hand strong and reassuring on mine, I realized I’d still never seen the man smile.

  * * *

  Levi was the first to fall asleep in the hallway this time, his breaths evening out into a slow, heavy rhythm as his head lolled back against the wall. I watched as the frown lines between his brows relaxed, the creases smoothing away, and I realized I’d never seen him look peaceful before. I didn’t even notice how much tension he carried with him until it was gone, and I suddenly felt loathe to wake him up and steal away the ease he never seemed to find while awake. My hand was starting to go numb though, trapped under the unconscious weight of his, and I couldn’t just leave him in the hallway overnight again.

  Besides, I needed to get back to bed. Tomorrow would be my first full-time shift at the bookstore, and while the stress of that had likely contributed to my bad dream, I didn’t want to oversleep and show up late on my first full day, either.

  Carefully, I detangled my fingers from his and slid my hand out of his grasp. The glide of his warm dry skin on mine was more romantic contact than I’d had in years, and the thought made my throat feel tight. Not that I thought whatever was going on between us was romantic. For all I knew he was still just comforting a scared neighbor. I had no idea what was happening between us, at least on his end. I had a vague suspicion I knew what was happening on my end, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to examine it too closely, lest it slip through my fingers.

  Leaning over, I shook his shoulder, and watched as his eyes came open, the furrow between his brows creasing back into its familiar position. His face was only inches from mine, and from up close I could see that his serious blue eyes had dark flecks in them.

  “Time to go in, I guess,” I said softly, and he nodded but didn’t move, his eyes shifting between mine.

  His hair was mussed, his eyes cloudy with sleep, and my gaze dropped, tracing over his features to his mouth. His lips were parted slightly, and they looked soft and full, and suddenly I was gripped with an overwhelming desire to lean forward and bridge the gap between us.

  Did I dare? Could I—

  “Marian,” he said, and though his voice was low and soft and filled with gravel, it jerked me back to awareness. What was I doing? Blood suffused my features as I hastily moved back and levered myself to my feet. There was nothing I wanted less than to hear the rest of that sentence.

  “Marian, what are you doing?”

  “Marian, don’t take this the wrong way, but…”

  I didn’t meet his eyes as I offered him a stilted good-night, and fled back into the safety of my apartment.

  With the door safely closed between us, I leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath.

  It had taken me years to settle my life into the safe, boring routine that it was, and suddenly everything was changing, flying out of my control. An intruder in my apartment. Robberies in stores all up and down my block. Sherry, dealing with a break-in at work on top of an impending surgery. Sam, losing an employee and having to rely on me to pick up the slack. Geoff, taking a huge step into the unknown. And Levi, going out of his way to take care of his crazy neighbor.

  It bothered me to think that one of the things that was changing the fastest—my relationship with Levi—was also the one that was offering me the most comfort, and to think I’d almost just ruined it.

  Between my tangled mess of nerves, worry, and anticipation, there was no sleep to be had after that. I spent an hour tangled in yarn as I continued on my journey to learn how to knit, then spent another hour after that sifting unsuccessfully through the mess in my spare bedroom looking for a bag full of needlepoint supplies I remembered buying at one point before my poor over-stimulated brain finally calmed down. It wasn’t yet dawn, thank god, so I set every alarm I had as a precaution and finally fell into bed and into a deep, blissfully dream-free sleep.

  * * *

  When I woke, rather than feeling exhausted from my missed hours of sleep, or nervous about the impending day, I felt surprisingly refreshed, as if my body had rallied all of its resources. I was determined to do my best today, to show Sam he wasn’t making a mistake in letting me take over Geoff’s shift and all the extra duties.

  As I rushed through my shower, I kept reminding myself that I’d been working at the bookstore for quite a while now, and this wasn’t anything new, but in the back of my mind I knew the extra responsibility was real, and I resolved not to let Sam down. I’d be in charge of opening the store, of taking the morning deliveries as they came in, of running the cafe through the morning rush. And while Sam was always right upstairs if I needed him, I promised myself I wouldn’t go up to his apartment unless it was an emergency. I wouldn’t be a burden.

  I took the time to dry my hair and put on one of the forest green Sam’s Books employee t-shirts over a pair of dark jeans. We weren’t required to wear the shirts—as long as we had our name tags on, Sam didn’t really care what we wore—but it seemed like good luck for my first day. Then I fixed myself a sandwich to eat for lunch, tuc
ked it into my purse, and headed out into the bright early morning light. It was a full hour before my shift started, but I had nothing else at home to kill time, and I just wanted to get the day moving as soon as possible.

  To keep my nerves from jangling, I looked for the little changes on the way in. I noticed that the grass along the edge of Pike Street had been freshly mowed. I saw that Jerry’s Carwash was offering a spring sale. I watched as a landscaping company spread a fresh layer of mulch around the garden display outside Moody’s Supermarket.

  Another block, a left turn, and I was on Main Street, the brightly colored awnings of the shops swinging into view. Antiques on Main, not yet open for the day. The stoplight where Sam’s girlfriend, Ellen’s car had died, leading to their first chance meeting.

  I reached into my purse for my keys, fishing them out as I crossed the street and—

  Oh my god.

  Halfway across the street I broke into a run, dashing forward then screeching to a halt in front of the bookstore. Glass littered the sidewalk where the big front window had been smashed in. The lights were still off inside the store, not a soul to be seen inside or out, but shards of glass winked up at me from the interior as well.

  Sam didn’t have an alarm system. Damn it, how was this happening? There was no crime in Fairfield!

  My breath came fast and shallow. When had this happened? Could the person still be here?

  My racing thoughts slowed just enough to spur me into action. I stepped back away from the door, mindful of the broken glass as I rushed around the side of the building. My phone was in my hand, numb fingers calling the police even as I did the one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t need to do on my first day—and rushed up the back stairs to pound on the door to Sam’s apartment.