Love Hime or Leave Him

by Sara Daniel

Unfortunately, the swaggering bare-chested man her mind conjured couldn’t be found near the Mediterranean or any other beach. He lived in his Kortville police uniform…unless he was answering his front door wearing only a towel.

  She shook off the image and went back to counting reps. “Nine—ten—and relax.”

  “Now I won’t have to feel guilty about all the calories and sugar I’ll be consuming when the cocoa contest starts on Tuesday,” Veronica said, collapsing into a chair next to Agatha, who’d done the warm-up exercises with them and a modified strength training before observing the intense cardio portion.

  Becca turned down the music to a background noise level and stowed her weights. As she returned the living room to its normal state, she half listened to the chatter surrounding the cocoa contest.

  “My grandfather doesn’t think getting your name and creation in the menu is a big enough prize. He’s considering donating tickets to some exotic foreign destination to the winner,” Veronica said.

  “He’s eccentric enough to do it,” Pauline acknowledged. “And he won’t hurt my feelings if he does. Becca, has Simon talked to you?”

  “About what?” The manager at the grocery store was always tasking her with something more she needed to do. Having fallen in the dead-end job trap she worried her brother was headed for, Becca dreamed about the day she could tell Simon to shove it.

  “To show their partnership with the diner, aside from the special sale on ingredients, he’s going to enter a grocery store employee in the contest.”

  Becca stifled a groan. As senior cashier and the person the town most associated as the face of the store, she didn’t doubt Simon had pegged her for the slot. Although not opposed to entering the contest, she’d prefer to lead a post-cocoa exercise class instead. “I’m sure he’ll mention it before Tuesday.”

  “Speaking of involvement,” Agatha said. “We need to convince Connor to become more involved, maybe sign him up for the cocoa contest too.”

  “He’s the police chief. He’s plenty involved,” Becca pointed out, trying to keep her voice casual. She’d stayed awake half the night analyzing what he could have been thinking when he ripped her shirt while she lay on the ground. He certainly hadn’t been himself. He hadn’t even recognized her, calling her Kevin instead. Still, her body tingled every time she remembered the frenzied ripping coupled with his gentle touch.

  That type of attention from a man happened exactly never, unless she counted her dreams, and even taking into account the muddy ditch and the awkward interruption of the former chief, her dreams didn’t compare.

  “Connor watches everything, but he doesn’t participate. Larry, on the other hand, participates,” Agatha said.

  “He certainly does,” Pauline chimed in. “He signed up for the cocoa contest first thing when he got into town.”

  “Just because Connor has a different approach doesn’t make it wrong,” Veronica said. “He’s committed to this town. It’s been obvious to me since the first day I came here—when he welcomed me with two traffic tickets—that he’d do anything for you guys.”

  “He’s not committed to settling down with anyone here. He hasn’t gone on a single date with a Kortville woman since he returned two years ago,” Rochelle said. “Believe me, I spent three months trying to wrangle a date out of him.”

  “You cougar!” Pauline gasped.

  “Hey, I’m only thirty-seven. I’m not much older,” Rochelle huffed.

  “You’re single and his age, Becca,” Pauline said with a significant look at Rochelle. “Does he ever flirt with you?”

  “I’m not a good person to ask. We dated in high school. It didn’t end well,” she muttered, suddenly wishing the women would leave her alone.

  Agatha, Pauline, and Rochelle all scrunched up their foreheads as if trying to remember the escapades they normally wouldn’t have paid attention to. “What happened?” Veronica asked.

  “Teenage drama.” Becca tried to blow it off, as if he hadn’t devastated her entire world at the time. Even now his lack of trust stung. How could he have believed she’d slept with his best friend? And after all these years, did he still believe she did?

  She focused on her fitness class. “No class tomorrow, so you can sleep in. Be back here on Monday, five a.m. sharp.”

  “If you have drama, you have passion fueling it,” Pauline crowed. “I think you should take another go at him. He’s a hottie, and I bet he has great abs. You could compare six-packs, if you know what I mean.”

  Becca didn’t have to bet to get a detailed image of his abs. If the gossips hadn’t spread the word, far be it from her to bring it up. She’d be hard pressed to find a Greek tycoon whose physique held a candle to his, but she had every intention of searching.

  …

  Connor transitioned into the last leg of his jog from the outer residential areas through the sleepy downtown, past the Laundromat where Wilbur and Agatha were emptying the coin repositories. Across the street, next to the darkened hardware store, Becca strode toward the supermarket entrance to open for the day.

  Annoyed for unconsciously timing his run to catch a glimpse of her, he picked up the running pace. But he couldn’t turn off his brain from noting abnormalities in the landscape. Subtle changes meant the difference between life and death in the world he desperately tried to outrun. The grocery store entrance sported one like a giant red flag.

  He veered across the street and up the sidewalk, reaching the front of the store at the same time as Becca. A metal bicycle rack in front of the doors blocked their entrance. Someone had taken a thick chain and woven it around the spokes of the rack and through the metal handles of the doors. The doors wouldn’t open without moving the rack, and the rack couldn’t be moved until someone removed the padlock from the ends of the chain.

  Becca turned to him, looking thoroughly confused. “Why is a bike rack here?”

  “I take it you or Simon didn’t suddenly decide the store needed to install convenient bike parking.”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, if you had, this seems a little too convenient,” he tried to joke.

  She didn’t crack a smile.

  Right. He needed to get his head into police investigation mode, not act like her friend or, worse, a man who found her attractive. “This has all the markings of a prank. Of course, I can’t rule out anything more sinister until I’ve examined the whole scene.”

  “Sinister,” she repeated. “Nothing sinister happens in Kortville.”

  Precisely. He lived in the single unsullied place on earth. He intended to keep it that way. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Knowing he had a job to do helped keep his focus from wandering too far into the murky pool of awareness he always seemed to stumble in around Becca.

  “I’ve never seen a bike rack appear out of thin air before, and I don’t know anyone who keeps a spare one in his house,” she said. “Where would it have come from?”

  “The park, I would guess.”

  “Three blocks away?”

  “Yep.” He considered telling her who he’d seen in the park at midnight last night but decided not to. An investigator didn’t jump to conclusions and certainly wouldn’t make what Becca would consider an accusation. As her brother’s mentor, he would probably get accused of encouraging town vandalism and teen pranks.

  “Simon should know about this,” Becca said. “I’ll go in the back door and call him from there.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Thanks, but I can handle a phone call.” She looked as if he’d offended her.

  “I’d like to make sure nothing’s been tampered with inside.” Best to clarify he had only the investigation on his mind. If she believed it, maybe his traitorous body would get the message, too.

  She nodded and led the way around the building.

  The message delivered by her swaying hips short-circuited his defenses, leaving him aching at the sight of her, at the mere thought. “Do you have your s
tore key?”

  Her fingers brushed his as she handed it over. Despite trying not to notice, he felt the tingling all the way to his toes, just like he used to when she’d held his hand in the school hallway. He’d been doing such a good job of seeing her as an anonymous town citizen, but yesterday’s dual encounters had awakened a monster of longing and frustration.

  He entered the store ahead of her, and his professionalism stepped up. A different set of bad memories encompassed him now. As an inner city cop, responding to a call at a store often meant putting his life at risk. Only this time he risked putting Becca in jeopardy, and he’d left his gun at home with his bulletproof vest.

  The lights flipped on without warning. He shoved Becca to the floor, shielding her with his body.

  She pushed his hands off her. “What are you doing?”

  “The lights,” he muttered through gritted teeth, straining his ears for signs of movement. Someone else must be in here. He drew himself up slowly, quartering the store with his gaze, checking for signs of movement.

  “We triggered the motion sensor, and they turned on,” she replied. “Besides, how else am I going to see if anything’s out of place?”

  Of course. She herself had said that nothing sinister happened in Kortville, but she’d never lived anywhere else. She had no idea the kind of bad things that could happen. He sure as hell wanted to do everything he could to let her keep those illusions. “This is my investigation. If you don’t let me take the lead, you’ll have to wait outside.”

  “You said you suspected a prank. Why are you acting like a murderer’s lurking around the corner?”

  “Because if one is, he won’t introduce himself and give us warning before he makes his move,” Connor said. Considering they were still alive, though, he felt like he could rule out any serious threat to life.

  He stalked through the store, ignoring Becca as she rolled her eyes at him and called her manager. He talked to Simon next. By the time he hung up, he was back in charge—of the investigation and his emotions. “May I borrow your car to swing by home, change into my uniform, and get back here before anyone else arrives? While I’m gone, you can call Kortville Construction to cut the chain. You’ll be fine alone. The store’s just as safe as always.”

  “I know. I’m not worried.” She dug her car keys from her pocket and handed them over, her fingertips grazing his palm.

  Connor let the heat and electricity from her touch work its way through his blood stream until he’d lost his control on strictly professional communication. He’d spent more time in Becca’s company in the past twenty-four hours than he had in the past two—actually twelve—years combined. “Thank you for trusting me.”

  She met his gaze directly, her hazel eyes unflinching. “I always trusted you. You just didn’t trust me.”

  He froze, paralyzed between the past and the present, the once elusive truth suddenly clear. “You really didn’t sleep with Dennis, did you?”

  “Of course not. I was in love with you. If I wouldn’t sleep with you, why would I decide to have a fling with someone I didn’t even like?”

  He swallowed. She’d loved him. She’d told him so many times. He hated how easily the guy who’d supposedly been his best friend had duped him. Worse, he remembered the awful gossip in the school, how it rendered her an outcast. Meanwhile, Dennis had milked his stud status, and Connor had skulked in the shadows, nursing his bitterness while believing she’d gotten what she deserved. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s in the past. We’ve both moved on.” She turned away and swiped her timecard.

  Had they? Neither of them had forgotten what went down from their own points of view. “Maybe we should set up a time to talk.” As much as he wanted to right now, he had a police report to file and an investigation to gear up before the rest of the town awoke and gave him an earful of rampant speculation about any number of suspected culprits.

  “How about we go back to pretending we don’t live in the same town and don’t know each other.”

  He studied her energetic compact body, shiny brown hair pulled up in her signature ponytail, and guarded hazel eyes. “No way.”

  …

  Becca wanted to kick herself. What was she thinking, delving into the past by challenging him about trust? Whether he believed the malicious rumors that she’d cheated on him long ago hardly mattered. What had seemed devastating and humiliating at the time turned out to not even be the defining moment of her teenage life.

  She watched Connor leave, trying to figure out where they stood. They weren’t going back to ignoring each other, she had no intention of picking up with their broken relationship, and he seemed to have completely let go of the hatred he’d held for her assumed betrayal. Was she supposed to pretend they were friends? Her acting skills weren’t that good, not by a long shot.

  Turning to her normal opening routine, she powered up the cash registers, so the store would be ready as soon as the front door became accessible. After a half hour, with nothing else to keep her occupied, she left through the back entrance.

  A crowd of onlookers had gathered in front of the store. Matt Shaw pulled up in his pickup emblazoned with the words Kortville Construction on the sides. Toby jumped out of the passenger seat.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. Toby worked for Matt every chance he got. Last year, he’d even tried skipping school to work. But seeing him awake and dressed this early in the morning still came as a shock. The handful of times she’d called him on weekend mornings, he never answered the phone, always claiming he’d slept through it. Apparently, she needed to ask him to give her the same ringtone he’d assigned to Matt’s number.

  Connor, dressed in his crisp police uniform, walked through the crowd toward Matt. A quick glance at the parking lot confirmed he’d traded her car for his police vehicle. Hopefully, the weather would hold out, so she wouldn’t have to walk home in the rain after work.

  “I took a midnight drive through town for a safety check,” Larry said, standing next to Wilbur, some six feet away, his voice carrying in the wind. “And I ran across a group of teenage boys hanging out in the park.”

  Becca frowned. Harmless enough. Yet, she wasn’t so naïve she believed no trouble would come from a midnight gathering. Whether Toby had been part of the pack, she didn’t know. She’d never made him account for every minute apart from her. Maybe if she had, he could have avoided the at-risk label, but considering his eighteenth birthday loomed in a few weeks, the idea of starting now wouldn’t go over well.

  “Of course, I stopped to chat with them, told them to get a move on and go home,” Larry continued. “I thought they listened, but I did a little detour on the way here, and what do you know but the bike rack is no longer anywhere to be seen in the park. In my day as chief, I’d be hunting down every last one of those boys and putting the fear of God in them and their parents.”

  “A prank, from the sound of it,” Wilbur said, adjusting his hearing aid as the whine of Matt’s saw cut into the chain. “Your witness account will provide a good lead on the investigation.”

  Becca moved away from the two men toward her brother and Matt working by the store entrance. “Did you have breakfast this morning?” she asked Toby.

  He barely glanced at her as he unwound the chain from the rack and pulled it through the door handles.

  “I can grab something for you from inside the store if you’re hungry,” she offered, unable to interpret his look as meaning anything more than he resented her presence.

  Connor stepped forward and took the chain from Toby. “Your sister asked you a question.”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, I ate the bowl of applesauce Jell-O in the fridge.”

  He’d eaten her Welcome-Back-to-Town gift she’d planned to deliver to Larry and Harriet, but he didn’t know that, of course. “I’m glad you found something. I made a big container of sloppy Joes last night. You can take it out of the fridge and help yourself for lunch.”

  “I’ll probably w
ork through lunch,” he said, lifting one end of the bike rack while Matt took the other. Together they began shuffling the apparatus down the sidewalk.

  Becca sighed as he walked away, well aware his mentor standing over him was the reason she’d elicited any response at all. Which meant Connor had witnessed her sucky job getting through to him.

  “Don’t worry. If he’s hungry, I guarantee he’s resourceful enough to find food. Toby won’t starve.” Connor’s reassuring voice came from directly behind her, pitched as a low rumble in her ear.

  She turned part way toward him before stopping, her cheek millimeters from brushing his broad shoulder. If she’d been worried about gossip before, nearly two dozen nosy citizens gathered just out of earshot behind them.

  “Can I open for business before we’re stampeded by a mob that can’t wait to buy their milk and eggs?” she asked as casually as she could manage, as if the residents had really congregated to restock their pantries. A throng of overeager shoppers she could handle; a renewal of the feelings for the man who’d stood back and let an entire school maul her reputation, she could not.

  He stepped between her and the entrance. “I’ll do a quick inspection for any damage to put in my report, and then you’ll have free reign of the place again.”

  While he jotted a couple of notes, she surveyed the entrance. If the metal frame around the glass had been scratched at all, it blended so well with the normal marks from daily use she couldn’t discern a difference.

  She glanced at Connor to see if he had a different reaction. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d like to beat the crap out of Dennis,” he said, not looking up from his notes.

  Her heart jolted, and warmth seeped through her skin. Really? It might be too late for him to be her knight in shining armor, but she couldn’t deny how much she treasured the sentiment. “Karma’s doing it for you. He’s been divorced twice so far, and his wives took him to the cleaners both times.”

  Connor grinned at her. “Good. I hope you enjoyed the gossip.”

  “I put those dear ladies on my holiday card list.” The scoop on Dennis had been worth an entire two week’s monotony of sliding items along the belt. She didn’t expect as much from today’s gossip, but the bike rack speculation would pass the time with relative ease, and reliving Connor’s support would keep her spirits high.