“Hi,” she said.
A chorus of hellos followed. Tom continued with, “I hardly recognized you. I thought I might need to remind Matt he already had a girlfriend.”
“Hey!” Matt snarled. “Ignore him,” he told her.
She looked in the cart and only saw vegetables. “What’s for dinner?”
“Nothing, at this rate.” Anton gestured toward Jessie.
“You like my cooking, right?”
The three of them nodded.
“Then put up with my selection process.”
Matt may not be able to kiss her in public, but that didn’t stop him from touching her. He pulled her close and talked loud enough for Jessie to hear. “The rookie always cooks, and we lucked out with this guy. Except he hasn’t caught on yet that we need to get in and out of the grocery store ASAP or risk a call.”
She tilted her head. “What do you do when that happens?”
“Sometimes the food is in the rig and it does okay, if it’s a short call,” Tom said.
“Other times it heats up and can’t be saved,” Matt added.
“Most of the time we leave it at the store and pick it up after the call. But it would be nice to get it back to the station and in the refrigerator.” Anton’s last words were directed at Jessie, who seemed to get the hint and put the food in the cart.
Erin walked along with them as they scrambled around the store picking out food. “Why not shop before coming to work?”
“Believe it or not, this is easier. Once in a while we’ll plan ahead and bring stuff in, but this way we pick out what we all want and split the cost.” Matt moved to the other side of her, grabbed freshly baked bread from the shelf, and dropped it in the cart. The whole time he managed to keep one hand on her.
Halfway through the store she noticed the number of people watching them as they walked around. Mainly women. “You guys create quite a stir in here.”
Tom laughed. “You get used to it after a while.”
“We’re the first responders that people like to see. After last year’s fire, we were hard pressed to pay for a meal in this part of town. Restaurants took care of our meals, grocery stores had managers giving us big discounts and customers paying the difference.”
“I know how thankful Parker was after the fire. I can only imagine that times hundreds of people,” she said as they moved to the meat department.
Before long, the cart had all they needed, and they turned to the cashier and got in line.
Matt turned to her just as their radios went off.
Collectively, they sighed.
Around them, customers watched.
Anton listened intently to the call, and Jessie pushed the cart off to the side.
“We gotta go,” Matt told her.
“The food?”
“The manager will hold it for us. We’ll come back.”
And risk another call? “Or I can take care of it and take it to the station.”
Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “That would be awesome.” He pushed them into her hand. “Leave the key on the counter and lock the door on your way out.”
“Thanks, Erin,” Tom called as they all fled the grocery store.
Matt blew her a kiss and walked away.
Alone with their food she realized that several people were now watching her.
She squared her shoulders and pushed the cart forward. It felt good helping them while they ran off to help someone else.
It felt better to know Matt trusted her with keys and responsibility for his crew.
And even his air kiss didn’t suck.
Desmond Brandt pushed down on the prescription pill bottle, removed one of the capsules, and swallowed it dry. He then leaned in his full-back leather chair and stared at the monitor on his desk. Beyond the door of his office, business ran as usual. With him in charge and people jumping to his every need.
But this bitch didn’t seem to understand her place.
For an entire year he waited out his undeserved sentence. A restraining order. From his own wife. All the times he’d pulled her back from the dead and that was how she repaid him.
He ran a hand over his chin and grazed the perfectly trimmed beard he’d grown out with her departure. It added to his character. The jilted husband who was mourning his wife’s absence.
For a solid year he employed three private investigators on two continents, one on the West Coast of the States and one on the East, and yet another in the UK. He was hours away from finding a fourth to search other portions of Europe when the image in front of him landed on his desk.
The small clip of video was an archived news feed from the winter.
Maci stood in the distance while a reporter was talking with a homeowner of a flooded property in California. This small taste of the original story was blipped on his PI’s radar because the one-year anniversary of the fire that preceded the flooding was coming up.
Desmond was thanking a slow news day that prompted using old coverage to sensationalize an otherwise normal twenty-four hours.
There she was. Standing in a coat he’d bought her while they were on vacation. She’d actually bought it herself, but with his money. Therefore it was his. Everything about her was his.
She owed her very life to him.
Wasn’t it he who pulled her out of their crumbled up car that could have caught fire? All while he himself had suffered a cut to the side of his face from the force of the crash?
He was by her bedside, bringing in specialists who worked with traumatic brain injury patients and the personality disorders that the accidents often caused. Or in her case, caused the accidents. They confirmed what Desmond had already learned. Maci wasn’t right in her head.
“Wires get crossed.” That’s what he’d been told. That’s what he made sure was written on her medical record.
So when she up and left him with nothing but divorce papers, a bitch of an attorney, and a goddamned restraining order, he took a long deep breath. A breath that resulted in the destruction of his stunningly beautiful living room. The pain he felt with her betrayal resulted in his demolishing everything. The whole house smelled of her. Reminded him of her.
The memory of that room once he’d finally felt like himself again flashed in his head like an old movie. Black and white with slashes on the film that made you squint at times to see what the videographer was trying to frame.
He blinked away the shattered image.
In its place was the reporter’s interview that was nothing but a flash of the woman all those months ago and a pan through the property that Maci was standing on.
If it wasn’t for the coat, he might not have recognized her. Long red hair. She looked like a whore.
Desmond pushed away from the desk before he was tempted to smash his monitor with his fist.
He crossed the room, opened a well-equipped office liquor cabinet, and poured two fingers of scotch.
Now that he had a lead, it was only a matter of time before he had a location.
He dropped half the contents down his throat in one swallow and absorbed the burn. Fighting the urge to wince fueled him.
Control fueled him. Much as he wanted to hire someone to take care of this for him, he questioned whether they would see his sick wife for who she was.
No, no . . . this was his to deal with.
Finishing his drink, he left the glass on the bar, crossed to the sleek, contemporary door of his office, and flung it open. “Keller,” he barked.
His secretary stiffened his spine before shooting to his feet. “Sir?”
A slight thrill shot through Desmond at the man’s response.
Desmond nodded inside his office and walked back to his desk.
At attention, Keller stood by with a pad of paper in his hand.
Desmond clicked the image of his wife off the computer monitor and sat. “I need you to clear my schedule.”
Keller wrote that down. “For how long?” The man di
dn’t look him in the eye.
“A month.”
Keller looked up with wide, questioning eyes.
One glare from Desmond and the man pulled his attention back to his notepad.
“Is that a problem?” Desmond asked.
“Of course not, sir. There is a shareholder meeting next week.”
He leaned his head back. “I am in control of fifty-one percent of this company. Tell the board to reschedule.”
“Sir?”
The man was questioning him. “Did I suggest something you disagree with, Keller?”
The man looked away. “No, sir. I’ll take care of it.”
“Good.”
“Would you like me to provide an explanation for your absence?”
He took a moment to think about what he wanted the public to hear. “Tell anyone who asks that I’m trying to find peace after losing my wife. And I have a sick family member in Greece I need to attend to.”
Keller wrote frantically in his notepad. You’d think Desmond had asked for a regurgitation of the Declaration of Independence with how much Keller was scribbling. “When are you leaving?”
He had a strong urge to say now, but decided a little time would feel less . . . desperate. “Monday.”
Keller sighed. “Got it.”
Desmond watched his own fingers tap on his desk for several seconds. When he looked up, he was surprised to see Keller standing there. “That’s all.”
His secretary snapped his attention away and marched out of the room.
A month.
He would make everything right within a month.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Wearing big sunglasses and twisting the curls her new hair afforded, Erin felt as if she were hiding in plain sight. Austin’s graduation was at the local community college’s outdoor stadium. She sat with Parker, Colin, and Mallory and cheered when they called Austin’s name. Afterward they drove to the mall so they could sit in the lobby of a popular restaurant for forty minutes before being seated.
Halfway through the meal it dawned on Erin that she hadn’t thought about hiding all day. She couldn’t remember a day in the past year when she’d been out in public and hadn’t ducked her head, sat in the back of a restaurant, or covered her face with sunglasses the entire time. Even a baseball cap did a fair job of changing her appearance. Sometimes her phone had a hard time recognizing her with the right eyewear and headwear covering her up.
It felt good.
Austin entertained them with how he would achieve world domination by the age of twenty-five. Which would start with a summer job, one Colin had helped him acquire with the county.
“The job is going to make you long for the days where Parker told you to clean the pool,” Colin told him.
“But it pays better.”
“So does this mean you’re Austin’s boss?” Erin asked.
“Only when he’s on my team. Which strangely enough will happen next winter when we need to clean out the wash again.” The winter had been nothing but a revolving door of dirt trucks and tractors scooping mud and moving it off the property.
Colin pulled his phone from his back pocket and looked at the screen.
The waitress arrived with their drinks and took their order.
“Matt is on his way. Says he has something for you, Austin,” Colin said before tucking his phone back where he retrieved it.
Just hearing Matt’s name put a smile on Erin’s face.
“We wanted to invite him to the graduation but we only had four tickets,” Parker told her.
Austin sat forward and rubbed his hands together. “That doesn’t mean he can’t stop by and drop some money on my graduating awesomeness.”
That had them laughing. “You’ll be thankful for whatever he gives you even if it’s a card without cash.”
Colin frowned. “What’s the point of a card without cash?”
Parker nudged his shoulder in protest.
Mallory reached in her purse, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to her brother. “I didn’t put cash in mine.”
Austin frowned as he tore into it. As he opened the greeting card a piece of plastic fell out. “Sweet!” He waved the gift card in the air.
Parker shook her head. “Read the card. It’s rude to just grab the money and not read the card.”
It was interesting to watch Parker parent her brother. And it was even more entertaining to see Austin accept her guidance. He stopped rolling his eyes to read the card to himself. Soon his smirk fell and his eyes watered up. They all stopped the teasing and watched him.
Erin glanced at Mallory and saw her eyes glistening.
“What does it say, Austin?” Parker asked.
He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. “Mallory told me I’m her favorite brother.”
Parker took the card Austin handed her to read. She glanced through it and went from grinning to swallowing hard. “Can I read this aloud?”
Austin nodded.
Parker cleared her throat. “‘To my favorite brother. I’m really glad you kept your shit together and graduated. Because it would have been a sucky day if you hadn’t. Losing Mom and Dad has been hard on all of us, but you most of all. You were robbed of time. I want to tell you today, a day where you have your entire future in front of you, that I will be with you during every special occasion, every milestone. And I will remind you of Mom’s smile and how your laugh is just like Dad’s. They loved you and would be so proud of you. I love you.’”
Emotion clogged the back of Erin’s throat. “That was lovely, Mallory,” Erin told her.
Parker reached out and placed a hand over Austin’s.
For a few breaths they all let the moment sink in.
Matt walked up to the table and broke the somber mood. “Why the long faces? This is a day of celebration.”
Erin scooted over in the booth to make room. “Mallory wrote an emotional message in her card to Austin.”
Matt reached into his back pocket and tossed a card in Austin’s direction. “Must be a girl thing. I just shoved money in mine.” He winked at Austin, who brushed away the last of the tears and tore open the envelope.
As Matt scooted in next to Erin, he turned his face toward hers and smiled. Without hesitation, he kissed her. The kind of kiss that said they did that kind of thing all the time. The kind that made her look forward to seeing him again, and often. Under the table he placed a hand on her thigh and squeezed. “You look amazing.”
“Aww, thanks, Matt. I didn’t think you’d notice,” Colin teased.
Matt laughed and started to lean across the table. “Do you want a kiss, too?” His kissy lips made plenty of noise and had all of them laughing.
Austin waved a hundred-dollar bill in the air. “Thanks!”
“Did you read the card?”
For some reason, Parker’s question made them all laugh except Matt. “Why do I feel like I’m late to the party?”
When they finished their meal, Austin was already texting a few of his friends and making plans for the night. Mallory drove separately, and Colin and Parker were slated to take Erin back to the house. That was until Matt suggested he play chauffeur.
All that was well and good until he walked up to his motorcycle and handed her a helmet.
“You’re kidding.”
“Are you telling me you’ve never been on the back of a motorcycle?”
She looked around and realized that Parker and Colin had already left in Colin’s car. “I have never gotten on the back of a motorcycle let alone dated anyone who owned one.”
He walked straight up to her, placed a hand under her chin. “Well, you’re dating someone who drives one now.”
She snapped out of her motorcycle trance and into Matt’s vortex. “Is that what we’re doing?”
He grinned. “Do you trust me?”
She didn’t have to think about it, but she hesitated nonetheless. “I do.”
He lowered his lips to hers and took advantage
a little bit more than he had while seated in the restaurant. When he drew back, his eyes traveled over her face, her hair. “I really like this new look.” Matt took the helmet he’d just handed to her and placed it over her head.
It felt exactly how she thought it would. Snug, warm, and it filtered away the outside noise.
“We’re really going to ride this?”
He adjusted the strap under her chin. “I’m going to drive, and you’re going to wrap your arms around me and hold on.”
Her stomach flipped. “Oh, God.”
Once the helmet was in place, Matt took the leather coat he had swung over his arm and opened it for her to put on. “My mother wouldn’t be happy if you weren’t wearing this.”
Erin positioned her cross-body purse before turning to let Matt tuck her into the coat.
It was a warm, late spring night, and the jacket was too hot.
“What are you going to wear?” she asked.
He winked and put his helmet on. “You.”
He swung a leg over the bike and flipped back the kickstand. A turn of a key and the bike roared to life.
Am I really doing this? She was probably too naive about the bad things that could happen, and what replaced that was excitement over something completely new.
“You coming?”
Blinking away the anticipation, she tossed her leg over the bike and butted up right behind Matt.
“Put your feet here,” he said, pointing to small foot holders on each side of the bike.
“Okay.” Once her feet were up she felt unsteady. “Now what?”
He reached for her hand that was resting on her thigh and placed it on his waist. Then he turned to the other one and repeated the action. Once her hands were where he wanted them, he tapped down the visor of her helmet and then his. “Ready?”
Erin shook her head, smiled, then nodded. “Don’t kill us.”
He winked. “I won’t.”
The second he put the bike in gear and it started to move, Erin pushed flush against Matt, and her arms around him tightened. All the years of driving in cars with seatbelts and doors with windows, and now she was on something that could go just as fast . . . no, faster than a normal car, without so much as a single airbag.
“This is crazy,” she said as they hummed through the parking lot.
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