Heavy Netting

by Nicki Greenwood

  The sun had set. As she left town, Jenna surveyed the starry sky with mild surprise. Summer days were longer, true, but it seemed that the sun always disappeared in a hurry at the end of the day. She smiled. Retiring and living off the clock must be such a pleasure.

  Her car behaved itself until she returned to Mount Desert Island. As she drove along a tree-lined stretch of Route Three, the engine puttered, then finally gave out, right in the middle of nothing for a couple of miles. She managed to cajole it onto the shoulder of the road, where she tried in vain to restart it. She groaned. Lobster Cove was only a few minutes away, but at this time of night, she couldn’t expect a random passerby to help her. Her best friend Bobbie was probably asleep, preparing for an early day at Cliff Notes, and Sally had a second job.

  Jenna reached for her cell phone. The last call received flashed on the screen: Branson Cudahy.

  Take a chance, Sally urged in her head.

  Holding her breath, Jenna punched the button.

  He picked up on the first ring. “Cudahy.”

  “It’s me…Jenna,” she said.

  An altogether pleasurable note of concern entered his voice. “Something wrong?”

  “My car broke down,” she said. “I would have called somebody else, but it’s pretty late. You probably think I’m some sort of stalker, myself.”

  “You don’t need to explain. Where are you?”

  “I’m on Three, only a few miles or so from home…” Great, that just made it sound all the more ridiculous.

  He prodded her for a few more specifics then said, “I’ll be right there.” He hung up. Only after she’d ended the call did Jenna realize she’d just called a near-stranger for help. Never mind she had Tess’s seal of approval that Bran was an ex-cop and stand-up guy.

  She groaned. Well, nothing to do about it now but wait.

  She tried to busy herself with a knitting pattern book, but the few pairs of headlights passing down the road distracted her, making her wonder if it might be Bran.

  And that just brought her right back to kicking herself for calling him rather than dragging Bobbie out of bed.

  A thousand rationalizations later, another pair of headlights pierced the darkness. Jenna swallowed back her nerves when she saw Bran reflected in the glare of her own headlights.

  He parked his car nose-to-nose with her own, then emerged to lift a toolbox from his trunk. “Pop your hood,” he called.

  She did, still wrestling with the way her heart began thumping on his arrival.

  After a few minutes, he rounded the hood to stand at her window. She rolled it down.

  “Your battery’s dead. I’ve hooked up my jumper cables. Give it a few minutes then try to restart your car. If it works, I’ll follow you home. If not, I’ll take you there in my car, and we can come back for yours in the morning.”

  She nodded, unable to say anything because all the words jumbled together in her head. Maybe Sally was right. Maybe taking chances wasn’t a bad thing. Jenna never took chances…and her life never changed.

  Never. She’d been doing the same things every week since high school graduation.

  She found herself wishing—ridiculously—for a failed jumpstart, but a few minutes later, the engine roared to life. Bran gave her the thumbs-up, then unhooked the jumper cables and returned to his car.

  She struggled with relief mixed with disappointment. She pulled back onto the road then began the drive home.

  Bran’s headlights in her rearview mirror were a surprisingly comforting sight. That alone was enough to make her hold her breath.

  When she reached the driveway of her duplex, Bran parked his car at the roadside. He rolled down his window as she emerged from her vehicle.

  With her stomach in a turmoil of flutters, she approached him to stand at his door. “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue.”

  “No trouble, Tink. You should get that battery looked at. It wasn’t totally discharged—I checked—but you might not get that lucky next time. You need to replace it. Looks like the thing might be original to the car.”

  She nodded, self-conscious. “When I can get it in to my mechanic, I will,” she promised. When I can afford it, she amended silently. Jay’s Automotive already owned her twice over. She reached out her hand.

  He extended his own, enveloping hers in a warm, gentle grasp—but instead of shaking it, he turned it over and brought it to his lips to brush her knuckles.

  Surprise and a hot little zap of attraction burned their way through her body from the spot where his mouth touched her hand. The sensations reverberated like a clanging bell buoy, right down between her legs. Shivering, she opened her mouth to catch her breath, and stared at him.

  “If I can do anything else for you, just let me know,” he said. “My cell’s always on.”

  A nervous flutter of warmth followed the heat spiraling through her. She tried to force out some appropriate words. Thank you. Have a good night. You’ve been a lot of help.

  Had she ever done anything remotely reckless in her entire, dull life?

  The words came without another instant’s thought: “Come in.”

  He blinked. “Sorry?”

  “I know it’s late. You went to a lot of trouble. Come in. I’ll make you a cup of coffee. You’ll probably need it, right? Be up all night working on your…work?” She trailed off, wondering what shade of red her burning cheeks must look, even under street lights. Bran was watching her with one eyebrow quirked, as if he thought her car trouble might have sent her over the edge. She bit down on her tongue until she trusted it to behave. “You know what? It’s okay if you can’t. You probably have to—”

  “I’d like that,” he said.

  She screeched to a halt in the face of another surge of surprise. Had she just invited him in, and he accepted? She replayed the words in her head to make sure she hadn’t just imagined herself being that bold. “Really?”

  He grinned. “Sure. Who else do I know in this town? My other option is to go back to the Sea Crest Inn and sit there, staring at my four walls.”

  “My four aren’t much more exciting,” she warned. “In fact, maybe less so. At least at the Sea Crest, you have the option of going outside—”

  “It’s okay,” he said, then chuckled. His eyes softened, catching the overhead street light, almost the exact shade of the fudge frosting on the double-chocolate cupcakes at Julie’s Coffee & Sweet Shop.

  Chocolate again, she thought, melting.

  “Look, it’s all right if you want me to go,” he said. “I didn’t help you to make you feel obligated.”

  Be brave. Be brave. Do something brave, for once. She shook her head quickly. “No. No. I invited you, and I’m not going to un-invite you.”

  The amusement returned to his eyes. He fingered the brim of his baseball cap then settled it more firmly on his head. “All right,” he said. He got out of his car to stand beside her. “Lead the way.”

  Her cheeks on fire, she marched toward the door of her duplex with one clear thought: whatever happened tonight, at least she could say that just once, she had broken free of her routine life and done something unexpected.

  Chapter Five

  Bran followed Jenna up the stairs to her apartment. What the hell was he doing? Number One: he should be working on the case. That was first priority, right there. Number Two: even if he wasn’t working on the case, he shouldn’t be spending his time in town nosing around Jenna like some hormone-ridden teenager on spring break. Number Three: he wasn’t the kind of guy to do this after knowing a woman only two days.

  But ever since she’d invited him in, his manhood had sprung to attention and hadn’t shown any sign of quitting. Walking up the stairs behind her sure as hell wasn’t helping. Her curvy ass was just about eye level, and the skirt of her sundress swung with her hips, taunting him every step of the way.

  You’re on a job, he reminded himself. So do your job.

  She opened the door to a plain but functional apartm
ent. “This is it,” she said, with a half-hearted flourish of her hand.

  He entered behind her, taking in, all in one glance, the simple furniture, the curtains in the windows, a fish tank, and a large bookshelf on one wall. Not what he’d call glamorous, but he noticed homey touches here and there that he identified with Tink. He stalked to the bookshelf, where she had a small collection of photos. One was obviously taken at a wedding. Jenna stood beside the bride, outshining her in a simple blue dress that was absolutely no help in stifling Bran’s erection.

  “Sugar?” she called.

  He jerked back from the photo. “What?”

  “Cream and sugar? In your coffee?”

  “Oh. No, just black, thanks.”

  While she left to putter around in what he assumed was the kitchen, Bran circuited her small living room, stopping to waggle his fingers at the goldfish in their tank. The interior sported a fanciful sunken ship encrusted with algae. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  “In Lobster Cove? All my life. My great-great…uh, great…grandparents settled here when they came over from England. Fishermen, of course.”

  “Family still here?” he wondered, studying a wall portrait of a younger Jenna, standing beside two smiling older people that resembled her.

  “Yep. My parents live up the street. I guess that makes me a homebody.”

  “Nothing wrong with having roots,” he said.

  “I guess not,” she called. “What about your family?”

  He sighed, running his fingers along the spines of the books on her shelf. The pinkish cover of a romance novel caught his eye. He pulled it down. The Duke’s Desire, by Scarlette LaFlamme. The woman on the cover was clutching a man with his shirt off.

  Raising an eyebrow, Bran skimmed the back cover. “I have two meddling parents, an older brother in horse training, a sister who’s an equine vet, and a buddy on the force back home who acts like a meddling parent,” he responded finally. “Then there’s the assortment of cousins and aunts and uncles. My parents run a horse farm.”

  The clink of dishware reached him from the kitchen. He followed the sound. “That sounds nice,” she said.

  He found her tying a daisy-covered apron around her waist. “For a certain value of nice,” he said. “They like to be up in everybody’s business.”

  Her gaze fell on the book in his hand. She grinned. “You don’t seem the romance novel type.”

  “It was the dramatic embrace,” he said, flipping through the pages. He picked a passage from the middle. “…but when Rolf turned, he saw her standing in the doorway, her hair glimmering in the candlelight.” Bran held up the book. “Do people actually glimmer?”

  Jenna wrinkled her nose then lifted the book out of his hands. “She’s a local author, and I’m showing support.”

  “What, no signed copy?”

  “I would have, except no one knows who she is. She writes under a pseudonym.”

  Bran gave her a playful smirk. “Hmm. A mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a…dramatic embrace.”

  Jenna giggled and set the book down on the counter. She reached for a pair of coffee cups from the cupboard beside the refrigerator. Bran took the opportunity to enjoy another view of her backside.

  What the hell was he doing? His mind was on anything but work right now.

  The kettle started whistling, and he was about to grab it off the burner for her when she turned around to get it herself.

  They bumped together in the middle of her tiny kitchen. She turned a blushing face up to his. “Um…sorry. Hi.”

  Irresistible, he thought. No other word did her justice. “Tink,” he said softly, “what are we doing here?”

  Her blush intensified. She fumbled a bit—adorably so. Then she pushed the kettle off its burner and shut the stove off. “Getting you coffee?”

  He took another step toward her. “I don’t think this is about coffee.”

  Backed up against the stove, she looked around the kitchen as if she were searching for an escape route.

  He hesitated mid-step, giving her time to make a run for it if she wanted. He was many things, but he’d never made an advance uninvited, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  But Jenna Sanborn stayed right where she was, with that fire-engine-red blush and the pulse speeding in the hollow of her throat. In one glance, he knew she’d never done this kind of thing before. Jenna wasn’t a fast mover. He admired her guts even more than he admired her petite figure.

  He took the last step. Leaning down, he said, “Your move, Tink.”

  She sucked in a breath then shocked the hell out of him by tugging him closer and planting a kiss on his lips.

  Bran’s senses went haywire. The scent of her skin flooded him. The touch of her soft mouth on his smashed holes in his reason. She gave a little squeak as he circled her tiny figure with his arms and pulled her toward him. The sound sent his blood rushing south. In an instant, he was so hard it hurt.

  He traced the seam of her lips with his tongue, and she opened for him. He plunged his tongue inside with a greedy groan and backed her up against the counter.

  Holy crap.

  Her arms looped around his neck. She pressed herself against him, a sweet agony. He broke the kiss to bury his nose in her neck, drinking in her scent while struggling to catch his breath. “You sure about this?”

  “I’m sure,” she murmured.

  The last of his rationale warning Slow down went under in a careening avalanche of Hell, yes. Bran grasped Jenna’s hips and hiked her against him. She circled his waist with her legs.

  Pushing the coffee cups and sugar canister out of the way, he set her on the counter’s edge. Fiercely, he shoved his reservations to the back of his mind. The job could wait. Thinking could wait. All of it could take a one-way ticket to hell, because her mouth felt too damn good to make room in his head for anything else. Bran tugged at the ties on her apron.

  She arched back to help him, her eyes lit with a fiery look that boiled his blood. When she undid the strings in the back, he lifted the apron off her then flung it onto the counter. An instant later, he lifted her back into his arms and stalked out of the kitchen. “Where’s your room?”

  “You want the tour now?” she mumbled against his lips.

  “You. Me. Bed,” he said in between answering kisses.

  She kissed his lips, his cheek, his neck. “Keep going. End of the hall.”

  He hardly noticed the room as he entered. Only the vaguest impression of a warm atmosphere and quilted blankets greeted him. He laid her down and stretched out over her, relishing the feel of her along the length of his body, at once a tease and a torment. “You’re sure you’re sure about this?” he asked.

  She stroked his cheek. “I’ve never done a single crazy thing in my life,” she said. “I want this, and I want it with you.”

  A wash of tenderness went through him, startling him in its strength. He lifted her hand to brush his lips across her knuckles. “I’m honored to be your crazy, Jenna Sanborn.” He transferred his kiss to her exquisite lips.

  Her hands flitted underneath his shirt. Her touch electrified him, urging him to hurry their clothes off. He ignored it. There would be no rushing this. He wanted to savor every second, and more importantly, to make this worth it for her. She’d picked him for her adventure, and damn it, he was going to do this right.

  So instead of tearing off that flirty sundress the way he wanted, he molded his hands to her, learning each curve and lingering at each sensitive contour when she moaned. He pressed kisses along the fine ridge of her collarbone, slowly and deliberately, relishing her reactions. Jenna was better than the most expensive bourbon, and a man took his time with that. And, like the best bourbon, she had him pleasantly reeling.

  Why the hell had he rushed through sex before? Or was taking his time so much better because it was her?

  When he ran his fingers along the underside of her arm, he found to his delight that she was incredibly tickl
ish. Grinning wickedly, he made a game of it—teasing her to the edge of abandon, only to snatch her back with a playful brush of his fingers along one of her ticklish places. Her eyes shot sparks at him every time he did it, which he answered only with a haughty look.

  Her glares drove his libido ever higher. He strained to ignore his impulses, but when she ground her hips against his, she tore a groan from him. Her eyes flashed in what could only be feminine triumph.

  Pretending not to notice—though it was damn hard—he dipped his head to the top of her dress. When he touched his lips to the swell of her breast, she arched toward him. Her hands clenched in the flannel shirt he’d put on this evening, pulling it upward. He decided he’d exasperated her enough, and allowed her to slip it off. When she went to remove the T-shirt underneath, though, he arched back. “Tsk-tsk, Jenna,” he said on a grin. “You aren’t in a hurry to get this over with, are you?”

  That triumphant look never left her eye. She wrapped one of her long legs around him and pulled him against her. He caught his breath as his erection pressed against her center, then bit back a swear word. Too. Damn. Many. Clothes.

  He skimmed his hands up under the skirt of her dress. She gasped out something between a laugh and a groan when he passed his palms over her ribcage. He drew the dress upward. She arched up from the bed to help him pull it off. He let the garment fall wherever it would, then drank in his first look at her near-naked body.

  And his mind was a complete blank. He propped himself on an elbow and stared his fill.

  Underneath her sensible clothes, she wore the sexiest, laciest little scraps of lingerie he’d ever seen. “You are one surprise after another, Miss Sanborn.” Delighted, he traced the edge of her pale-pink bra.

  Ticklish there, too. He grinned as she squirmed. Bran couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed himself this much in bed with a woman. He eased the tickles with a trail of kisses.

  He raised his head, and found her eyeing him with that sly look. She slipped his T-shirt upward. Bran conceded defeat, letting her remove it. “A little more even now?” he drawled.