by Elise Faber
My lips curved. “I’ve got them.”
“Doesn’t exist.”
“Hmm?”
“A man who does dishes . . .” She trailed off. “. . . doesn’t . . . ex . . .”
And with that, she fell asleep in my arms. I carried her down the hall, tucked her under the blankets, and returned to do the dishes. Then when I was done, I crammed myself back into that chair at the bedside and slipped into oblivion, studying the peaceful expression on her face.
It was the best night of my life.
Hands down.
Chapter Eighteen
Tammy
I woke up with sunlight blinding me through my closed eyes for the second time in as many days.
The man needed to invest in blackout shades.
With my ever-changing shifts at the sheriff’s office, they’d become an absolute lifesaver. I could sleep in, never worrying about the position of the sun in the sky, or the giant, gas bastard’s rays streaming into my eyelids.
Especially this California sunshine.
It never seemed to quit.
I stretched, my arm aching, but in a way that was much more manageable than the previous day. No heavy-duty painkillers would be needed today, that was for sure, but I might hit up Talbot for some ibuprofen.
Squinting against the sun, I slowly pushed up . . .
And saw Talbot, himself, sleeping in the chair next to the bed, his neck at an angle that had to be uncomfortable, his lips parted slightly, his breathing slow and steady. He hadn’t shaved since before the party, and his jaw was filled with stubble, a rough patch I’d felt beneath my fingertips several times the previous day. Now it was even longer, approaching more beard than not, and the man could definitely pull off a beard.
Something buzzed, and my gaze was drawn to the nightstand, where I was surprised to see my cell was plugged in.
Quietly picking it up and trying desperately to not think how far down the rabbit hole of Talbot I’d gone the previous day—straight past keeping distance and right into both feet in the fire—I unplugged my cell and looked at the screen.
Yesterday might have been stupid, but I couldn’t bring myself to regret it, not when the man was . . . well, a man I’d always dreamed of.
He’d been thoughtful and kind and . . . I was going to soak that up.
I was too addicted to the way he made me feel to do anything besides that. Who knew the next time I’d be shacked up with a movie star? I might as well live it up.
Now, however, my cell buzzed again.
I glanced down to see the sheriff himself had texted me.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
Rob was the one who’d hired me, and as a former detective and newly elected sheriff, I didn’t want to piss him off. Not only was he my boss, but he was also my mentor, and he’d taken me under his wing when I’d expressed interest in going for detective.
Not that there was any space on the payroll or in the department for hiring another full-time position, but Rob had still helped me with training and given me opportunities to learn.
He was another one of the good guys.
Too bad he was married.
Trepidation in my veins, my fingertips trembling, I unlocked my screen and read the message.
Report in.
Well, that didn’t give much for me to go on, did it?
I had no idea if he was pissed about my newfound media fame—and based on the news stories Mags had shown me the previous day, I would be delusional to think he hadn’t heard what happened—or if he was worried for my safety.
I hoped for the second one.
But . . . I worried it might be the first.
Usually, police departments preferred their officers to keep low social profiles.
And being everywhere online, in major newspapers, and on TV didn’t bode well for my future as a sheriff’s officer.
Kind of hard to prevent crime with a gaggle of cameramen at my back.
Or maybe . . . maybe it was the best way.
No one would dare step a toe out of line if it were going to get caught on camera, right? Snorting to myself, I slid quietly from the bed and padded my way across the bedroom, almost desperate for another shower, for another chance to use those yummy-smelling products . . . provide myself with another escape from this conversation.
But I wasn’t a coward.
Which was why I slipped through the French door leading out onto that small patio beyond the glass in the bedroom, full of lush greenery. A breeze hit my skin the moment I did, lazy swirls of air catching my hair, drifting along my nape, circling over my arms and legs. Clouds drifted across the sky, tiny puffs of cotton floating along the horizon, transforming from turtle to rabbit to alligator to no end of animal shapes. I spent a moment there, more delaying, but also soaking in this moment, in enjoying that it was quiet, and I was alive.
Then as elephant turned to dolphin, I dialed Rob’s number.
“Tammy?” he answered on the second ring, his voice filled with concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Look, about the stories. I’m sorry if this brings attention to the department. I wasn’t trying to do that. I just . . . I was there, and it happened, and I—”
“What exactly are you apologizing for?” he asked, his words partly obscured by loud talking in the background.
I heard him walking, the noise quieting as I sputtered, “I—um—I—”
“Let me help you out,” he said. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I wanted to make sure you were good, find out if you needed anything.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“Don’t say fine,” he interrupted. “Because you sure as shit can’t be fine. Not with your face plastered everywhere.” A beat. “I saw the video.”
My breath caught.
“You did good, captain.”
That breath slid out. “Thanks.” And strangely enough, I was close to tears, the backs of my eyes burning, my lungs feeling tight. “I really am fine,” I said when I could speak again. “I’m holed up with Talbot until the press calms down, and then I’ll be right back at work.” I thought about the number of cameras out front. “I might need to take a couple more vacation days before I can come back to my shifts.”
“Right. The whole face-plastered-all-over-the-place thing.”
I winced. “Yeah.”
“You sure you’re good?”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me, realized that then murmured. “Yeah, I am. Nothing to do but wait this out and let the powers that be work their magic—or so I’m told.”
“Seems wise.”
“Plus, it’s not a bad place to hide out.”
“Live-in butler and giant pool?”
I glanced around the patio, saw the small sunken hot tub tucked into the corner of the greenery, thought about Tal cooking breakfast for me yesterday morning, me cooking for him last night. “More like a hot tub and a fully-stocked fridge.”
Rob whistled slowly. “Living the dream, Conners. Living the dream.”
I laughed, felt that prickling in my eyes again, touched that he’d cared enough to check up on me. “Rob?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks—” I cleared my throat. “You know . . . for texting . . . no one else—”
I broke, stifling the rest of that before I admitted that my own flesh and blood hadn’t so much as sent a text. Not that radio silence was something out of the ordinary with Mark. There was always an impenetrable wall between my older brother and myself, no matter how hard I tried to get through it.
Silence, this time one not filled with peace, not full of me daydreaming about clouds turning into animals.
It was long and quiet . . . and chock-full of awkwardness and embarrassment.
At least on my end.
“Tammy,” Rob said eventually, not sounding the least bit discomfited. Instead, his words were tiny angry bullets, biting through the airwaves to reach my eardrums. “I don’t mean
to speak ill of the dead, but your dad was an asshole.”
My lungs seized, air sliding out from between my lips in a long, slow hiss.
“He was,” Rob added before I managed to summon anything further. “And your brother, I’m sorry to say, is taking a page right out of his book.”
More seizing. More embarrassment sinking into my spine.
“You’re a nice person, Tam. You always go the extra mile. You’re kind and compassionate and a good officer.” A beat. “They were and are too wound up in their own misery to see that.”
Heart thudding in my chest, I whispered . . . something. Because, frankly, I wasn’t even aware of the words coming out of my mouth.
“No, Tammy. It’s not your fault.”
I blinked, finally processed what I’d said.
It’s my fault.
Was it possible to die of mortification? To just melt into the floor like a complete and utter weakling who completely lost my spine and any semblance of myself?
Unfortunately not.
“Okay.” His voice took on a brisk tone. “So, I’m only going to say this once.”
I waited, braced myself.
“Fuck them, Tam. You deserved better.”
My fingertips were shaking, I realized obliquely, pressing them to my forehead and absorbing those words.
“You’re right,” I whispered.
Rob was quiet for a moment, and I heard the voices increasing in the background for a moment. “Glad you see it my way.”
I snorted. “You’re just loving that I said the male psyche’s favorite phrase.”
“You’re right?”
“Yes, that.”
We burst out laughing, and then Rob’s daughter shouted something, and I knew I had to let him go. “Enjoy your family.”
“Tammy?”
“Yeah?”
“Consider yourself on paid sick leave until otherwise cleared.”
I frowned. “But I’m not sick.” Media coverage couldn’t be considered sick, right? Unless it was sick in the head.
“You have a knife wound in your arm, do you not?”
Well, there was that.
“Come back when you feel it’s time,” he said over the sound of a child’s giggles. “We’ll hold your place for you.”
I thanked him, and we exchanged our goodbyes before hanging up, but I barely heard myself. Because all I could think was that Rob saying we’ll hold your place for you might be the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.
Because to have a place, somewhere I belonged . . .
It was what I’d always wanted.
“Why are you crying?”
I spun, not having heard Talbot come out.
“Why’d you sleep in the chair again?” I countered.
His lips twitched. “A question for a question?”
“Something like that,” I murmured, wiping the tears that had finally emerged after all the stinging.
“I slept in the chair because I wanted to sleep in the bed.”
I’d been studying the clouds again—a boa constrictor was floating over the hills—but his words brought my gaze back down. “What are you talking about?”
“I like you, Tammy,” he murmured, closing the distance between us and stroking a finger down my cheek. “A lot.”
“What does that have to do with you sleeping in a chair?”
“Everything.”
That made no sense, and yet, it made perfect sense.
“I’m crying because, like a stupid idiot, I’ve finally realized that spending my life trying to find my value in everyone else—hoping they would see something I couldn’t even see when I looked in the mirror—was a fucking waste of time.” I threw my hands up, paced across the enclosed space. “It’s so fucking lame because I’ve always wanted to belong, to be part of something, but I’ve never felt that I belonged, even to myself. And without that, how could I possibly hope to fit in anywhere else?”
More hot tears escaped, ones prompted by my past, my failures, my never finding what I wanted in other people. Because I had a giant hole inside me that would never be filled.
I was the key all along.
I lifted my chin, my gaze on the sky overhead. “It started with me,” I whispered. “And it had to end with me.”
I needed to fill that hole first.
I had to be the one, otherwise all the other pieces given to me by the wonderful people in my life—Maggie and Aaron, Rob and his wife, Melissa . . . Talbot—they would continue flowing out of me like sand flowing through an hourglass, drifting away into a useless pile that would then flow out all over again when the hourglass was turned over.
“My dad didn’t give me what I needed after my mom died,” I said, knowing Tal would hear it, knowing that he needed to hear it. “I searched for it in my brother, in other men, in my ex-husband, but it’s in me. I’m the one who needs to find it.”
A long stretch of quiet.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, standing beside me. “This isn’t me trying to take away from what you’re saying, not at all. I just . . . I spent a long time trying to find my worth in other people, and that never felt good. It never felt like I could be completely happy because I was trying to absorb everyone else’s feelings for me, instead of understanding my own.”
Yes.
That.
I turned my head, studied his profile. “How did you find it in yourself?”
“Truth?” he asked, gold eyes coming to mine.
“Yes.” I held his gaze. “Always the truth.”
Emotion flickered across his face. “I can do that.”
“Well?” I nudged his side with my elbow when he didn’t immediately tell me. “What’s that truth?” I asked.
“The truth is I’m still working on it,” he said.
Which made me feel a whole lot less like a failure. “Yeah?”
He smiled that Hollywood smile, only this one had a touch of something I hadn’t seen in his films, something that I was hoping very much was only for me. “Yeah.” My lips turned up, and I focused back on the clouds.
An anteater. Another elephant. Or maybe a goose with a few extra feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding animals in the clouds,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Well, that and trying to be happy and completely content with myself.”
“So, small things.”
I laughed.
“Come here.”
“Where’s here?” I asked suspiciously.
“What’s it with you glaring at me in gardens?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said innocently. “I’m just looking at four-footed geese transforming into adorable corgis.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” he said. “That isn’t a corgi. It’s a giraffe.”
I gasped. “No freaking way. Look, there’s her adorable heart-shaped butt and the long body with short legs.”
Teasing gold eyes on mine. “I don’t know what sky you’re looking at—”
“Excuse me—”
He kissed me, hard and fierce and laced with affection.
And then I was in Talbot’s arms, my back to his chest, his hands resting on my waist. “Tell me again where your mysterious corgi is,” he murmured, the words a gentle whisper in my ear, his voice a heating pad on my stomach, easing the heavy pains on my insides. “I promise I won’t be distracted looking at your ass again or be doing my level best to annoy you so you send those sexy, dark looks my way once more.”
“You what?”
He nipped my earlobe. “You’re glaring again.”
“You can’t even see my face.”
“But I see you, beautiful. I. See. You.” Another nip. “And your beautiful glares.”
I started laughing. He joined in.
And then I found a sense of belonging.
Only this time, it wasn’t just from him, from another person, from his hold and his words and his body.
This time
it was from me, too.
And that was pretty fucking great.
Chapter Nineteen
Talbot
“What’s a role you’ve taken that you wish you hadn’t?”
I glanced over at Tammy, her arms resting over the edge of the hot tub. She was wearing a sports bra and a pair of my boxer briefs, and it was sexier than any bikini I’d ever seen.
Her head was tipped up to the sky again, though it wasn’t bright and filled with clouds. It was clear, the temperature cool, and a multitude of stars twinkled overhead.
“Oof, that’s a heavy list,” I admitted.
Her gaze came to mine, amusement in the hazel depths. “I didn’t mean it to be.”
“I took any and every role I could when I was surviving on ramen noodles,” I said, my lips curving. “And there were some bad ones.”
“Including your role as the quintessential bad boy on the soap Into Dreams?”
I chuckled. “Including that one.”
“Okay,” she said, “so, which role since you’ve hit it big do you regret?”
“Antonio.”
Shock across her face, and I understood why. It was the first big film I’d shot, the one that had sent me into the world of celebrity. I’d had my pick of roles after that had come out, and I’d even gotten several awards shows honors.
“Why?” she asked, shifting on the built-in seat, and I noticed that the water was getting a little too close for comfort to her injury.
Sidling so that I was right next to her, I scooped her legs into my lap, propping her up so that her stitches were well out of the splash zone. “Because I was too new and insecure to do what I should have done with the role.” I smoothed her hair back. “Antonio was a great character. He was strong and sensitive. He was critically flawed but managed to overcome his own bullshit in a way that wasn’t contrite. If I’d known then what I do now about acting”—I shook my head—“I think it could have been so much better.”
“Probably.”
I blinked. “Ouch.”
She smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it then?”
“Just that it’s easy to look back and focus on all the ways we weren’t perfect.”
