by JoAnn Ross
“I had the same problem a few weeks ago.”
“And now?”
“It’s starting to feel like not such a bad fit. I brought you something.” He held the white oversize Cops and Coffee bag out to her.
She opened it, finding a cup of coffee, but instead of the doughnuts she was expecting, there were two small flowered boxes. She opened the first and drew in a breath.
“Oh, wow. You brought me chocolate croissants.”
“Yeah. I got one for you, and another for your mom when she gets out of her test.” He shrugged out of his jacket and sat down on the plastic chair beside her.
“That’s so sweet.” She took a bite. “Even though it’s probably got a bazillion calories that will go straight to my hips.”
“I’ve always liked your hips. And their sassy swing when you walk.”
“I am not sassy.”
“Yeah. You are.” He smiled and leaned over, giving her time to back away, before brushing a flyaway hair from her cheek to behind her ear. “And, for the record, I’ve always liked the rest of you, too.”
“I’d accuse you of coming on to me, but I know that even at your wickedest, you wouldn’t hit on a woman waiting for her mother to finish a breast cancer biopsy.”
“Just stating the facts, ma’am,” he said in his best Joe Friday voice. Although, admittedly he was hitting on her. She’d always proven irresistible. And it appeared time and distance hadn’t changed that. At. All.
“There are cookies in the other box. I didn’t know which kind to get because there were so many, but Desiree said your mom likes the lemon-glazed madeleines, so I figured they were the safest way to go for her. And I got coconut ones for you.”
“Damn you.” Her eyes were misting up again. He prepared to pull out the fresh handkerchief he’d put in his jacket pocket this morning, but she resolutely blinked the moisture away. “Stop being so nice. You’re making it harder and harder for me to keep my distance.”
“Any special reason why you should?” he asked before taking a drink of his own cup of coffee.
“More than a few. But Mom’s the main one.”
“Are you referring to that same mother who tried to fix us up in the freezer section of the market?”
She blew out a breath between those lips he’d tasted last night in a damn nice dream. “You don’t fight fair.”
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I don’t want to fight, Jolene. I never did.” He’d just wanted to love her. Even after he’d screwed everything up because he was young, impulsive and trying to do the right thing.
And how had that turned out? Aiden asked the question Bodhi probably would’ve asked if he’d been in the room. Apparently being true to his word, he was staying out of Aiden’s personal business.
“And just because I hadn’t seen you in years before Kylee and Mai’s wedding, I never stopped thinking of you.”
“Huh.” She bit into the croissant and moaned like a woman on the verge of an orgasm. Then her eyes cleared enough to shoot him a skeptical look. “Brianna never told me you’d joined a monastery.”
“I never claimed that. I just said that I hadn’t stopped thinking of you.” He paused. If there was one thing years of being a cop had taught him, it was that were times to talk. Times for silence. Then times to go in big with the exact words that nailed your point. “Ever.”
He watched her process that. First came surprise. Then cynicism. Then, an even deeper surprise as his words fully sank in. That even when he’d been with other women, there’d too often be a flash of Jolene’s expressive eyes, a taste of her lips, a touch of her hands that were the smoothest he’d ever felt. Hands that he wouldn’t mind feeling everywhere over his body.
She shook her head, causing more of those streaked strands to fall free of the band. “Once again, this is neither the time nor place to talk about this.”
She was right. But accustomed to listening to what people didn’t say, as much as they did, because omission was often the important parts, he was encouraged.
“You’ll want to be with Gloria today. And tonight.”
“Of course I will.”
“And however long it takes for results to get back.”
“I can’t even think beyond the moment right now, Aiden.” Her eyes darkened with concern and stress, and, he thought, the same need that appeared even stronger than it had been back when they were kids. Maybe, he thought, because now they were both adults who’d experienced enough to know that the feelings they’d shared weren’t merely teenage hormones. But something deep. Something more.
“I get that.” He reached out to touch her cheek again, then pulled back when she suddenly drew away and put a restraining hand on his chest.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “How did you know to bring me coconut madeleines?”
“You ate three at the reception. And snuck another two into in your purse.”
“Wow. You really are a cop. I cannot tell a lie, Officer,” she said, even as she appeared bemused that he’d been watching her that closely. Bemused and a bit unsettled. “I shoplifted madeleines from the dessert table.”
Because, although she might not have noticed, her fingers had started stroking the front of his shirt, he covered her hand with his own. And hot damn, it felt good. But only made him want a whole lot more. “Since it’s only petty larceny, I could let you off the hook.”
For a moment, the years spun backward, and they could have been back on the deck of his boat, struggling for control, discovering that pleasure, could indeed, also bring pain. They were, he’d thought at the time, probably the only couple in school who weren’t jumping each other’s bones every chance they got.
“So, no arrest?” She lowered her lashes. Paused a beat, making him wonder if, just maybe...
No. The same way he shouldn’t be hitting on a woman while her mother was in getting a vital test, there was no way she’d be flirting with him.
Then she looked up at him through thick lashes nearly the same dark red as her hair. “That seems like a waste of handcuffs.”
No. Make that hell, no. There was no way Jolene Wells would be suggesting they play policeman in this situation.
Their gazes held so long that Aiden wasn’t sure if he was still breathing. Not that he cared. Though he’d rather wait to die until he’d finally gotten to make love with her.
“All done,” a cheerful voice broken the tension that had strung between them like a taut electrical wire. They both looked up at the nurse who was returning Gloria back to the waiting room.
Surprisingly, Jolene’s mother didn’t look like a woman who’d just had a needle shoved deep into her breast. And yes, he had looked up the procedure last night when he’d gotten his mother to tell him what the scheduled test was.
“Mom.” Jolene jumped up. “That didn’t take long. How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly, just dandy,” her mother said. “Everyone was so nice, though my breast is still numb right here, which feels really strange. Like it’s asleep.” She rubbed the spot in question, then looked past Jolene to Aiden. “Well, hello, Aiden,” she said. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I’ve never been very good with drugs. That Xanax seemed to have made me feel a little tipsy. Or floaty.”
Both the nurse and Jolene caught her as she weaved like a drunk on a bender.
“There’s a wheelchair just through that door,” the nurse said. “It’s in an alcove on the left. Would you mind getting it, Chief Mannion?”
“Sure.” He helped the two women ease Gloria into the chair. “I’ll take her out,” he told the nurse, with whom he’d spent one hot date not watching the movie at the Rainshadow drive-in one summer night back in high school before he and Jolene had become a couple. Her smile suggested she wouldn’t turn down a repeat. “As a first responder, I’m the obvious choice.”
“Well, having someone on staff wheel a patient out is hospital protocol,” the nurse said. “But being as you’re the chief of police, and apparently a friend of the family...?” She glanced questioningly at Jolene.
“Aiden’s mother is a friend,” Gloria said. “And although that makes Aiden young enough to be my son, no way I’m going to turn down such a gallant offer.” Looking up at him, she fluttered her eyes in an even more exaggerated way than her daughter had. The Wells women were damn dangerous, Aiden decided, wondering how Jolene’s mother had managed to stay single so long after her small-time crook husband’s untimely death.
“Thank you,” Jolene said stiffly, with none of the flirtation she’d treated him to moments ago. She handed him the fob with the car door remote on it. “I’ll just get the discharge instructions and meet you outside.”
“Fast work. So, are you and Officer Hot Buns a thing?” he heard the nurse ask as he wheeled Gloria out of the waiting room.
He paused. Waiting for Jolene’s response. “He’s just an old friend of the family,” Jolene said. “His mother was going to come, but the high school had a lockdown drill. So, she sent him.”
“Meaning he’s free?”
“You’d have to ask him,” Jolene answered. “But I’m going back to LA after New Year’s unless my mother’s test shows problems. So my life’s too complicated for any holiday fling.”
“Good to know,” the nurse—Emily, Aiden remembered—said. “I hope everything turns out okay. With her test and with her plan for Officer Hot Buns’s uncle.”
“How did you know about that?”
The nurse laughed. “Your mom’s right. She’s a Xanax lightweight. She told everyone in the room that she couldn’t possibly have cancer because she’d decided to take Michael Mannion as her lover.”
It was good to hear Jolene laugh. The sound was like a clear glacial brook tumbling over rocks beneath a summer sun.
As Aiden wheeled Jolene’s mother, who’d dozed off, to the Miata, he decided that he was definitely going to change Jolene’s mind about a holiday fling. And more.
Gloria roused long enough for him to get her into the car. He’d just safely buckled her in when she’d dozed off again. After checking her pulse, he leaned against the car, watching the door. When Jolene finally came out, her hips weren’t sassy. In fact, she reminded him of a Marine marching on a drill field.
“I don’t know what we helpless little womenfolk would have done without you,” she said, not offering a single word along the lines of Gee, thanks, Officer Hot Buns—and okay, he was vain enough to kind of like that name.
Not that she’d ever been helpless. But he wasn’t the one who’d brought up the handcuffs, which he now was going to be thinking about all day, dammit.
“Officer Hot Buns?”
“You weren’t supposed to hear that. But, you’ll note, I wasn’t the one to come up with it. The nurse, who, by the way is interested if you are, did. Though it admittedly fits. You and your brothers were always the hottest guys in town. And your uncle’s not bad, either. At least Mom chose well this time.” She glanced past him. “How is she?”
“Conked out. Don’t worry, I checked her vitals after buckling her in. She wasn’t kidding when she said she doesn’t do drugs.”
“Her limit’s always been a glass of wine,” Jolene said. “Thanks. I do appreciate the help.”
“No problem. I’ll follow you home.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no way you’re going to be able to get her up the stairs into her apartment.”
“Good point. She can stay in the guesthouse today and tonight with me. That way I can keep an eye on her without her getting away and falling down those stairs.”
“You still need to get her into the house. That isn’t all that easy when the person you’re trying to move can’t stand up.”
Damn. He saw the flash of embarrassment and wondered if she’d thought he was referring to her dad’s drinking, which he wasn’t.
“Thanks,” she said again, with a slump of the shoulders that had him feeling like Officer Asshole for having caused. His only excuse for the lapse was that Jolene Wells had always messed with his mind the same way the Xanax had fogged her mother’s.
He followed her to the lighthouse in his SUV, then carried the still sleeping Gloria into the bedroom, where Jolene got her undressed and into a pair of pajamas while Aiden waited in the living room of the cozy cottage.
That Jolene’s mother had turned into an entrepreneur didn’t really surprise him all that much. She’d proven her strength and ingenuity by supporting her family all those years first when she’d been married, then widowed.
“Thanks again,” Jolene said when she returned from settling her mother in. “And about what I said...about the...you know...”
He lifted a brow. “The handcuffs?”
“I don’t know what came over me. It must’ve been nerves. And sugar overload.”
“I’m not letting you get off that easy,” he said. “It came from the same place we’ve always been. That’s why we’re going to talk about it. On Thanksgiving.”
“Your mother said you have to work,” she said, walking toward the door. Having been a hotshot detective until his life had blown up, he recognized that as a clue it was time for him to go.
“I’ll make time. For you.” Humoring her for now, he went along with her ploy, then stopped at the door and grinned down at her, flashing those God-given dimples he’d that discovered sometime before preschool seemed to work wonder on females of all ages. Who’d figure? “And that supercheesy corn-and-bacon side dish.”
She shook her head. Slowly. A bit regretfully, but Aiden figured he could get past that. “It can’t work...”
“You don’t know that. We’ll talk.”
“Everyone will be there. Your family is a crowd by itself. And now adding Seth’s means there isn’t going to be anyplace to talk privately.” Except one of the many upstairs bedrooms, that he noticed she didn’t mention.
“Then we’ll go somewhere. Someone always forgets something and has to go to the market. We’ll volunteer.” Because he couldn’t resist, he run his thumb along her lower lip that was turned down in a frown. “And then we’ll see where we go from here.”
“If Mom’s okay, I’m going back to LA right after New Year’s,” she reminded him.
He laughed. “If you think a few hundred miles is going to stop me this time, you’re got another think coming.” He bent his head. Waited a whisper away from those lips he’d been wanting to taste again. When she didn’t move away, he finally touched his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HIS LIPS WERE as silkily as thistledown. He tasted like coffee. And, as much as he kept the kiss tender, he skimmed the tip of his tongue around the arch of her upper lip, before nipping at the bottom one, the Aiden she remembered. The wild boy who was, in reality, all alpha male, but, at heart, a patient caretaker, rather than the hellion he’d tried so hard to portray. As she heard herself whimper for more, he drew back for an instant and she found herself drowning in those blue eyes that could always see inside of her, past the rumors, beyond her insecurity, her pain, deep down to her very essence, that teenage girl, who, looking back on it, had had a desperate need to be loved.
That almost X-ray vision must have served him well as a cop. She wondered if it was as unnerving for suspects as it was at this moment for her.
He blew out a breath. Lowered his forehead to hers. Surely he wasn’t going to stop? But wasn’t that what she wanted? No. Even as her head told her it would be better if they stopped now, her heart, and other vital parts that were being bombarded with lust, had different plans.
“Please, sir,” she said, deciding to play it cool, even as heat flooded through all those parts. “May I have some more?”
He lifted his head. His lips q
uirked as those all-seeing eyes let her know that he knew she was feeling it, too. That he hadn’t forgotten how they’d been together. His hands turned her around, his body pressing her up against the door, the winter wool of his uniform shirt rubbing against her achingly sensitive nipples.
He was gloriously hard. Everywhere. And she wanted to rip off that uniform, and do what she’d never allowed herself, or would have dared to do back then. Lick him all over.
A low sound escaped from deep in his throat as he captured her mouth, tangling her hair in one hand, pulling it free of the elastic tie she’d put on at the ungodly hour of five this morning, holding her head as he kissed her, deeper, harder, hotter, until her toes were curling in the high green boots she’d worn today. Knowing how flammable nail polish could be, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if her toes, polished in Unrepentantly Red, burst into flames.
His other hand was roaming everywhere, down her side, slipping between the wood door and her butt, squeezing her cheeks, pressing her up against that part of his body she’d never allowed herself to touch. But oh, how she’d looked at the way it was so temptingly cupped in those five-button Levi’s he’d worn back in the day.
She twined her arms around his neck, pressing tighter against him, as if she could imprint him forever on her own body. Between the kiss and all that male hardness, being bombarded with all those feels, Jolene was quickly losing her ability to think. Like her mother, who was hopefully sleeping, she was drunk. Not on any pills, but on pure—or, impure, more likely—unadulterated lust.
Did he feel it, too? His hard body and crushing mouth certainly suggested he did. As her tongue tangled with his and her hips swayed—definitely, purposefully sassily—she wanted Aiden, for once, to lose control. And take her with him.
Since she’d left Honeymoon Harbor, there had been other men. Many equally good-looking, because you couldn’t throw a stone on any LA beach without hitting some wannabe actor hunk. All with the same parts. But none had ever made her feel like Aiden made her feel. None had ever gotten past her emotional barricades enough to allow her to completely let herself go. But she knew, with a female knowledge as old as Eve, that Aiden could break through those carefully constructed walls. And take her there. To places she’d only ever gotten close to in her dreams.
