At his encouraging, she’d picked the gun back up and shot again.
And when, half an hour later, the other five guys in the range had been standing behind them, hooting at her shooting the ace off a playing card? That was a moment he was going to have to work on accepting. Owen was a crack shot. Had been training for years. He was good.
She was better.
And she was hot. A damn gunslinger. She’d known just how to hold the weapon, just how to gaze down the sights, exactly how to line them up and acquire the target without getting rattled, the whole time, her ass looking so perfect in those black pants that he could barely look up to see if she’d made her shots. He’d been hard-pressed to keep his hands to himself in front of all those guys, and now, if he wasn’t careful, he was going to get all stupid out here in the beach moonlight, seagulls wheeling overhead.
That’s what it took? A little gunpowder?
Well, okay. Nothing wrong with that. He wouldn’t think about that whole firefighter thing. Not right now.
He mentally shook himself and took another plastic spoonful of the chowder. Sitting on top of the table next to her, his feet perched on the bench below, Owen said, “I can’t believe you stole the bottle of Tabasco. I should arrest you.”
She stuck out her tongue at him. “You’re not a cop.”
“Citizen’s arrest.”
“We’ll just put it back as we walk past on our way to the car. It’s what I always do.”
Owen pretended to make a note. “Chronic offender.”
She balanced the bread bowl on her knee. “You miss it?”
He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. “Every minute of every day.”
Two boys skimmed by on skateboards, both texting while they kicked with their right legs, their phones glowing in the dimness. A woman walking a white mutt smiled in their direction. The air was cool and damp.
Lucy looked at him, and the space she left between them felt so open, so . . .
So exactly what he’d been waiting for.
What he’d been wanting. And what he hadn’t even known existed.
With all that was holy, he didn’t want to have to tell the story. Not to her. She’d look at him with those dark, liquid eyes and his heart would break all over again. But without knowing what he would say, without any planning at all, Owen put his bread bowl on top of the picnic table.
“Is it very bad?” Lucy asked.
“It’s not good.”
“For the love of wool, just tell me. You can’t bottle it up, you’ll make yourself sick.”
“You don’t happen to have any acupuncture needles concealed on your person I need to know about, do you?”
“Come on, tell me.”
Owen nodded. “When I got hurt, someone else did, too. Worse.”
Her eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t say anything.
“My best friend was a guy named Rob Marlowe. We were hired at the same time, and we did everything together. From rookies, to graveyard shift, to days. Moved up to detectives at the same time. He was local. His mom loved me. Fed me lasagna and enchiladas twice a week, whether I needed it or not.” Owen picked up his plastic spoon and bent the tip of it. “She always said that Rob hadn’t appreciated her the right way, that he’d been too stringy as a kid, and stayed too skinny. Never filled out. Me, I lifted weights and had filled out, so I ate a metric crapload of her spaghetti and pasta carbonara and garlic bread. Ate anything she put on my plate, and then I’d eat Rob’s leftovers, too. It got so that on our weekends I’d stay at his place, and we’d both go to his mom’s for dinner every night. The guys teased us about being a couple. I guess, in a way, we were.”
Lucy grinned, her eyes gentle.
“Then Rob worked vice, undercover, with a cop named Scotty Tucker. Rob starting using.”
Lucy looked shocked. “Drugs?”
“I wish it was that unusual, but it’s not. It’s tricky—you’re undercover working dope, and if you’re selling, buyers want you to use with them, to prove you’re not a cop. There’s a bunch of ways to get around it, to fake it, but you’re in dangerous situations all the time, and no one trusts anyone else, and if you just take one real taste, they’ll get off your back and believe who you say you are. A lot of guys go down that way.”
“Wow,” Lucy said softly.
“So Rob got hooked, and his partner, Scotty Tucker, knew it. He milked Rob, threatening to go to the brass if he didn’t pay him off. Rob started dealing from the evidence locker, and got more on the street on his own. He was losing weight and tweaking.” Owen paused and took a breath. “And me, I didn’t notice. He said he was on a new diet, and he’d always been so skinny. I just thought he was working too hard, too many hours. Scotty started hanging out at Rob’s house more and more. I’d never liked the guy, but I was doing overtime on dogwatch patrol, so I didn’t get over there for months. I’ll . . .” He cleared his throat. This was harder than he thought. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
Lucy just looked at him, her eyes full of something he didn’t recognize. His heart thumped in a way that was almost physically painful.
“Then what happened?” Lucy’s voice was gentle.
Owen twisted the spoon in his fingers. He would not rub the scar on his hip, which suddenly burned. “One of my narcs rolled, told me about a major deal that was going to happen at Rob’s house one night. It involved everyone—Rob’s biggest dealer, buyers, distribution, all at his house.”
God, it was harder than he thought, to tell her all this. “There’s nothing like setting up one of your own. I ran point, since I knew him the best. My lieutenant, I remember, told me that if I could enforce the law and bring down someone I loved, then I was worthy of serving that law. I believed it at the time.”
Owen stopped.
Lucy scooted over so that her knee pressed into his. She rested her hands on top of his thighs, a light, warm weight.
“Go on,” she said.
The astonishing thing was that he thought he could.
“We got to the house, a routine SWAT alignment. We were in the right shape, but we were amped to the maximum: these were our guys. All of us hated every fucking second of it. Then, at the exact moment that we had the house surrounded, when we were about to make entry, he came out. We didn’t think he’d do that, we thought we’d have to extract. No one saw that coming. Then everything went to hell.”
Lucy took the now mangled plastic spoon out of his hand and then threaded her fingers through his.
Owen cleared his throat. He had never had to say this part out loud—anyone he’d ever had to talk to about it already knew the lay of the land.
Lucy’s hand stilled in his.
“Rob came out, his arms up. When he realized we were really going through with it, really going to take him in, he pulled a gun. I shouted at him, warning him, but he wouldn’t drop it. Then he cocked it and put his finger on the trigger. He pointed it at the lieutenant.”
Owen’s voice ground to a stop, and it was almost impossible to start it up again.
“Five of us shot. Rob got Steve Moss in the stomach, and me in the hip and knee. We kept shooting until he stopped.”
“Holy shit,” Lucy whispered.
Dropping his eyes from hers, Owen watched Lucy’s pulse flicker rapidly in the hollow at her throat. For a moment there was no sound but the crash of the waves below.
Then she said, “Do you know . . .”
“They don’t release ballistics in officer deaths like that. No one knows who killed him.”
“Good.”
Owen nodded. “The look in his eyes . . . When we were shooting, when he was hit, it was the same wide-eyed, scared, betrayed look I’ve seen in kids’ eyes, kids who’ve had their arms broken by their parents for the first time.”
Lucy scooted farther forward and pressed her cheek into his, and he could feel her tears. “You loved him.”
“To have him die like that—in that kind of terror and pain—
” Owen gasped. “I fucked up. It was my own shortsightedness. I was too close to him. He was lying to me, and I never noticed.”
He laughed and the sound of it was like ash in his throat. “My job was to catch liars. The one thing I know is lying. And he was so close to me. . . .”
“Owen,” said Lucy. The tears he couldn’t shed were in her voice, and then her mouth was on his, and she was somehow tangled on his lap, his hands in her hair, her arms around his neck.
Murmuring something he couldn’t quite hear, she spoke something into his mouth, words that made him regret the fact that they were in full public display. If they weren’t, if there was anything they could possibly hide behind, he’d have his hands up her shirt, under her bra—he’d suck on her mouth until she bit his lip even harder than she was now. And if they were behind a door, her pants would be a ball on the floor, and he’d be inside her within thirty seconds.
It took the two teens on skateboards shattering the air with ear-piercing whistles to break them apart. Gasping, Lucy pulled back first. Her lips were swollen, and Owen was astonished to find that he loved that fact. Good God, for the first time in seventeen years, he felt like marking someone with a hickey. Just a small one, on the side of her neck. A barely-there red mark.
Maybe he’d get a chance to leave her one later. She could give him one if she wanted to.
What the hell was this feeling in his chest? A lightness, like a damn hummingbird got loose in there? He wasn’t altogether unconvinced he didn’t need a medic. No, no left-arm pain, nothing like that.
He’d talked about Rob. Out loud.
To someone who mattered.
And she’d kissed him anyway.
Chapter Nineteen
Knit in public. Show them what they’re missing, and then put the yarn in their hands. Be the doorway to our world.
—E. C.
Owen’s grin was so big it looked like it was going to split his face. It was one of the cutest, sexiest things Lucy had ever seen.
But Lucy knew if she didn’t get off this damn picnic table in about a second, she was going to fly apart.
“Want to get a drink?” she asked. She couldn’t ask him back to her place. Not this second. She knew he’d say yes. He wouldn’t even have to say anything—he could just look at her one more time like he had a second ago, and she knew that they’d run to his car and they’d be in her bed within eight minutes. She didn’t live far away, and she’d take any bet that he’d break every speed limit to get there.
Deal ’em out slow. Whitney’s voice rang in her head. If she took Owen home, there would be no slow—there would be hot, and fast, and hard.
Lucy didn’t know if she was ready. She didn’t know if she was brave enough. She needed a minute to clear her head.
And that minute should probably be in public, where other people in direct view would keep her from removing first his clothes and then her own.
Or at least she hoped they would.
Owen held her hand on the walk to the Rite Spot, only releasing it as she darted inside Clamtacular to drop off the Tabasco bottle. He even held it as she pushed open the door of the bar.
She hadn’t held someone’s hand in here since . . .
Lucy couldn’t remember the last time. Stephen, maybe, although he’d been a bit shy about public displays of affection. He’d had rosacea and PDAs always made him blush. That was before he left her for his aesthetician.
Jonas. Oh, God. She hoped Silas wasn’t inside the bar, too.
But of course everyone was there.
Her father was playing checkers with Elbert Romo at the corner of the bar. They were both drinking frothy concoctions with pineapple toppers and pink umbrellas.
“Hey, Pop! Pretty drink you got there,” said Lucy. It was futile to try to slip under the radar.
“Honey!” said Bart. “Have you ever had a hurricane? Elbert here said he invented them when he was stationed in the Pacific.”
Lucy shook her head. “You have no shame at all, do you?”
“Nope,” said Elbert, as he jumped three of Bart’s pieces.
Bart nodded politely at Owen and Owen nodded back. Lucy was glad. Her father had been well trained by his wife—no matter what her brothers might think of Owen, Toots was a force to be reckoned with, and she’d embraced the idea of Owen Bancroft, so Bart would do the same.
“Perhaps you’d like to play the loser, son?”
Owen’s eyebrows shot up. “I’d like that very much another night, sir. Tonight I’m spending time with your daughter.”
Bart inclined his head and sipped his umbrella drink. “Well, I suppose that’s all right, then.”
Silas was in a booth with his iPod cords trailing out from under his red earflap hat, reading his Kindle in the dim light of the pool table. A plate of what looked like mini-cupcakes was at his right hand, and he moved them to his mouth automatically, one after another.
Whitney flitted from table to table, seemingly the ambassador of goodwill, doling out smiles and light kisses, along with more mini-cupcakes. No one seemed immune to her charm, and even Lucy found herself craving the chocolate, to her deep dismay. She was relieved when Whitney moved toward the dartboards.
Mildred and Greta were in the back of the bar in front of the karaoke machine, singing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” Each held a mike, each trying to drown the other out. Luckily, the volume had been turned low.
Molly and Jonas were both behind the bar. Lucy did a double-take. Jonas, sure. But Molly?
And even stranger: they were locked in prime flirt position. Lucy had seen Molly like this a million times before—when Molly cocked her hip at that angle, thrust her ample chest just a little higher than natural, dropped her chin to the right, lifted her eyes to the left, and looked dreamily angelic yet devilishly suggestive, all at the same time, she never failed to get her man. And yes, there it was, the patented sweep of the long black hair over the shoulder, leaving her fingertips to trail over her clavicle.
And Lucy’s brother Jonas was falling for it, hook, line, and swizzle stick.
Of course he was. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since his wife, Aggie, chewed him up and spat him out two years ago. And Molly was gorgeous.
Well, sure. Jonas and Molly were really good friends. They got along great. Lucy loved that her best friend was so close to her older brother.
But friends didn’t look at each other like that. Uh-uh.
Molly licked her lips in the way that had once garnered her a trip to the Caribbean, and then looked across the bar to meet Lucy’s eyes. Her posture straightened suddenly, and she reached for a bar towel.
A bar towel?
Lucy dropped Owen’s hand and sat on a stool.
“What’s going on?”
Molly leaned forward on the bar as if she belonged behind it. “Lucy! Hey! What’s up? You want a drink? I can fix you one! How about a gimlet? Totally the rage. Your Manhattan is très over.”
Confused, Lucy nodded.
While Molly—Molly!—fixed her drink, Lucy had no idea where to look. There wasn’t a single comfortable place for her eyes to rest. Her mother had arrived, and was showing off various nipple clamps to her knitting group. Jonas and Molly were touching each other completely inappropriately behind the bar, bumping into each other while reaching for bottles, and laughing every time they did.
And each time she ventured a glance at Owen, the heat in the room seemed to rise so high she thought she might spontaneously self-combust. Just the side of his jaw, the stubble along his cheek, was almost enough to make her lose all impulse control. What would that feel like under her tongue? What about that soft spot right under his ear?
Why couldn’t she stop thinking like this? When had her hormones started raging like this?
As soon as she’d seen him enter her bookstore almost three weeks ago, that’s when.
Molly slid her gimlet to her, and Lucy took a sip of it. Too sour. She should have stuck to her tried-and-true Manhattan, two cherries
, no ice. But Molly wasn’t paying attention to Lucy’s reaction; she was too busy winking at Jonas.
Winking. What the hell was going on?
Owen gestured to Silas, still sitting alone at his booth. Whitney walked up to him and said something, moving the emptying plate of mini-cupcakes closer to him, but he barely looked up. “He seems pretty solitary.”
“He’s always been that way.” Lucy smiled. “Even in grade school, he sat alone at tables and talked to trees. He’s the smartest one in the family, and has no interest in anything but fixing things and reading his books. I wish he’d get a girlfriend, though.”
“Being alone doesn’t mean being lonely.”
“I know.”
“Sorry,” said Owen.
“But when you lost Rob—”
“Could we not talk about that?” Owen’s voice was sharp.
It felt as if she’d been slapped. Lucy stared at her drink, suddenly uninterested in it. She wanted to be home, in her bed. Alone.
“Sorry,” Owen said. “It’s just that . . .”
“Owen, it’s fine.”
He had told her the awful story of his own volition. She hadn’t wheedled it out of him. She hadn’t begged him to tell it. Lucy’d thought it had meant something to him—she’d felt special that he’d chosen her to talk to.
She tried to speak without betraying the wobble she felt rising. “I’ve had a great time tonight, but I’m pretty tired. I’m thinking we should wrap it up?”
“Lucy, I didn’t mean—” Owen’s cell this time, jangled over the jukebox noise of the karaoke in the back corner. Mildred and Greta were still back there, now launching into a rousing rendition of “Walking After Midnight.”
Owen looked at the caller ID. “It’s Willow Rock. I’m sorry, I have to take this.”
Lucy nodded and then watched as Molly dodged a playful tap Jonas directed at her rear.
Molly would use men to line a birdcage. Jonas thought women were something breakable to place on a shelf. They had no common ground. They would never, ever work. She hated to think of how hurt they could get.
How to Knit a Heart Back Home Page 17
