Next Comes Love

by Helen Brenna

  “I promise you this,” one of the detectives who’d been standing next to Billy said to the reporter. “We’re going to find them. You can count on that.”

  The detective looked angry, as if he’d shoot first and ask questions later. Now there was no way Erica could go back to Chicago to look for Marie. Not when every cop in the city was looking for her and thinking she’d wronged one of their own. For the first time in a very long time, Erica felt frightened. Of Billy. Of his cop friends.

  She was alone on this one.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GARRETT KEPT STEP WITH Hannah as they walked to her house, a pale blue Cape Cod a block off Main. She talked a mile a minute about her teaching career. Turned out this apparently shy and reserved daisy of a woman became a chatterbox once she was away from Sarah and Missy. By the time they reached the steps to her house, he was all small-talked out.

  “Do you want to come in?” She put her hand on the step rail and moonlight twinkled in her eyes. “I’ve got a bottle of wine, and we could make a fire.”

  The intent behind her suggestion was clear, and Garrett hesitated. Hannah’s backyard was adjacent to Sarah’s, and he wouldn’t have put it past the wedding planner to be peeking out the back windows of her apartment over her floral shop.

  “Hannah, I don’t want to rush things.” They had all the time in the world for what she had in mind. Neither one of them was going anywhere.

  “I get it. I do. It’s just…”

  Just that she wanted to force the issue because she could sense he might not be interested in her sexually? She might be right. Her mouth was a short dip of his head away, but he felt not one urge to kiss her pink, glossy lips.

  What the hell was wrong with him? She was everything he wanted. Sweet, beautiful, a homebody, like him. She talked a lot, but was easy to be around. Comfortable. Best of all, she was an innocent. Nothing at all like him. When Hannah smiled, the world smiled with her. Chipper. That’s what she was.

  Unfortunately, even formulating the word chipper in his mind made his teeth hurt from the sweetness. Still, being around all that sunshine had to eventually rub off on him. When he was around her, he could be the man he wanted to be. An upstanding cop. A man filled with integrity and goodness.

  A man whose mind was filled with visions of a certain dark-haired woman with intense brown eyes. He thought of how Erica had looked behind Duffy’s bar tonight, slinging bottles of booze around and filling up beer mugs like a pro. Any woman that comfortable around a beer tap couldn’t possibly be the woman for him.

  It was a lot to ask, a fairy-tale life, but people made their dreams come true every day. Why not him? “I want to do things right between us,” he said. “Okay?”

  Her eyes softened. “Okay.” She put a hand on his chest. “Good night, Garrett.”

  He and Hannah were new to each other. It’d come. “Night, Hannah.”

  She went through her front door, the interior lights flicked on, and Garrett turned toward the lake for a quick walk by the shore before heading home. He walked slowly so as not to disturb the silence of the night. One of his favorite things about Mirabelle was the quiet, no chatter from crowds, no honking horns and, best of all, no police sirens.

  The air felt cold and the sky was clear. A quarter moon was already partway through its trek across the sky. He kept his head up and his gaze out toward open water, focusing on the way the light flickered off the turbulent surface of the black water.

  The muted sound of laughter and music rolled down the shore from Duffy’s Pub. Garrett glanced upward. He could imagine Erica tending the bar as she had when he and Hannah had been eating dinner. She’d loosened up as the evening had worn on and by now she might even be laughing with the patrons. She was a complete unknown, possibly even a criminal, and that woman could very well have the entire town wrapped around her pinky in no time.

  Dammit to hell. He might as well head home. A short jaunt all the way up the hill, past the stables and into the woods at the outskirts of town would take him to his house and its secluded ten acres or so of forest. He climbed the steps leading toward the street level and headed down the alley toward Main.

  When the silhouette of a woman—a very curvy woman—took shape, head down and leaning against the outside brick wall of Duffy’s Pub, he stopped. “What are you doing out here?” the cop in him asked.

  Erica started as if she hadn’t heard him approach, then gathered herself. “Why do you care?”

  Two feet away and he could still smell her. “I think it’s time we settle a few things between us.”

  “There’s nothing between us to settle.” She pushed away from the wall and walked toward the door to Duffy’s.

  Against his better judgment, he followed. “What do you got against cops, anyway?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What about you?” she said, turning on him. “You’ve had it in for me from the moment we first met on the sidewalk outside the Bayside Café.”

  “It was the badge. And you know it.”

  “Maybe there’s just something about you that rubs me the wrong way.”

  At the moment, all that seemed to matter was that he got to rub her at all, and that was the problem. She made him lose control, messed with his balance, threw a buzz saw at his plans. There was only one solution. “I want you off my island.”

  A look of surprise and something else flashed in her eyes. She backed up and hit the brick behind her. “You want me off your island?”

  “Tomorrow isn’t soon enough.”

  “Your island?” The angry bite edging into her voice said more than anything that she’d recovered from her initial shock. Now on the offensive, she stepped toward him. “That’s funny ’cause I heard you haven’t even been here a year. This isn’t your island any more than it’s mine.”

  “I’ve got a badge that says it’s mine.” He closed the short distance between them, trying like hell to intimidate. Maybe if he upset her enough, she’d spill something, anything, giving him reason to put her on the next ferry off Mirabelle.

  When she thrust her chin out, something told him it wasn’t going to happen. “You think I’m not good enough for Mirabelle, don’t you?” she whispered.

  “I didn’t say that. I just don’t trust you.”

  “You know what? You’re right. I’m not good enough. Even I know it. This place is all lollypops, tiaras and fairy tales. Me?” She shook her head and chuckled. “I sure as hell am not a princess.” Her smile disappeared. “You and me, Garrett, we’re two peas in a pod. I may not be a princess, but you’re not even close to being a knight in shining armor—”

  “Don’t—”

  “Garrett Taylor, a cop from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “Don’t do this—”

  “One foot in the gutter—”

  “Stop it!” He grabbed her wrists and pressed her back against the brick wall.

  “You think if you stay here long enough,” she whispered, “this place, these people will clean you off. Don’t you? All I do is remind you that it’s not going to be that easy.”

  She was right. She’d hit the nail on the head. Hard. She stirred something low and deep inside him, something he’d long ago tried to put away. She brought out the worst in him, lit his fuse and make him feel like a bomb hot to explode.

  “Every time you look in my eyes,” she said, as if she could read his mind, “you see yourself.”

  Somehow, some way, as if she’d cast a spell on him, he forgot about Hannah, forgot about the kind of woman he was trying to convince himself he needed and moved toward her. He pressed against her, from her knees to her breasts, pulsed his hips against her and instantly went rigid with need.

  He wanted inside her. Here. Now. “Who are you?” he growled.

  “What you see is what you get,” she whispered.

  He wanted to see, all right, and feel every part of her. He lifted her shirt and splayed his hand over her stomach, los
t himself in the feel of her, all soft and firm at the same time, under his hands. Her lips parted and her warm breath mingled with his in the cold night air. His mouth hovered a hairsbreadth from hers. One of them moved and their lips touched, softly, then harder and harder still. Their teeth clicked and their tongues clashed.

  Then he scraped his knee against the rough brick, piercing his awareness. In a back alley, he was pressing a woman up against a wall like no more than a rutting deer. She had his number, all right.

  He jumped away and threw his hands up in the air. She fell back, looking as dazed as he felt. He would’ve expected her to smile, to leer at him, triumphant in her victory. Instead, she wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  He took a deep breath of cold night air, clearing what felt like a fog from his brain. “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t!” She turned away and, before slamming the back door to Duffy’s in his face, whispered, “You’re like every cop I’ve ever known. Taking what you want without giving a shit who gets hurt.”

  “WELL, THAT SHOULD about do it.” Lynn put her hands on her hips and glanced around. “Let’s call it a night.”

  Erica had done her best for the remainder of her shift to put what had happened between her and Garrett out of her mind, but now that everyone had left the bar, it all came back to her in a rush. Lust. That’s all it was. Two hot bodies. Close quarters. It was bound to happen.

  She hung the washrag she’d been using to wipe down the bar stools over a rod in the utility room off the kitchen and switched off the light. She’d been helping Lynn close down the bar and restaurant for the night, and the last step was walking up the steps to Erica’s apartment so that Lynn could bolt the door from inside the restaurant and then head home herself.

  “Do you think you’d ever feel comfortable locking up by yourself?” Lynn asked as she followed Erica up the steps.

  “Sure.” She’d closed up at several of her previous restaurants and bars. She could do it here.

  They reached the top and Erica went into her apartment. The light above the sink and a night-light in the bathroom lent a soft glow to the apartment.

  “You okay?” Lynn asked. “You’ve been awfully quiet for the past couple of hours.”

  I want you off my island.

  Though Erica was past doubting Lynn’s concern as genuine, she wasn’t ready to confide in a stranger. “Just tired, I guess.”

  “I’ve been thinking…let’s list a couple of your Italian dishes as specials this next week. See how they go over.”

  “You sure?”

  Lynn nodded. “All the businesses on the island are gearing up for a busy summer. I’m afraid Duffy’s without some changes will get lost in the shuffle.”

  “How ’bout one red and one white dish?” Erica asked. “I mean, one tomato and one cream base.”

  “Sounds good to me. Order what you need from Dan Newman and have him put it on my account.”

  “Can I use your computer to type up some menu inserts?”

  “You know how to do that?”

  Erica nodded. “Good night, Lynn.”

  “Night, Erica.”

  Erica closed the door, listened to Lynn turn the dead bolt, then she attached the chain Garrett had installed. She leaned back and, immediately, the remembered feel of Garrett assaulted her senses. His lips. His taste. The hard feel of his muscles pressing against her. His work roughened hands stroking her stomach. The sound of his voice.

  I want you off my island.

  She never would’ve believed anything a stranger said would hurt so much, but with one sentence this man had managed to cut a swath so deeply through her that she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She’d let her guard down. Tonight, in the bar, she’d started wanting to fit in, almost yearned to find a place with these people.

  Pipe dreams. Garrett was right. She didn’t fit on Mirabelle, and the way she’d reacted to him, like an animal in heat, proved it.

  Hurt turned to anger, an emotion that had never let her down. So what if she didn’t fit in this fantasyland? She didn’t have a choice. There was no place else to go. No place to run. Not yet. Unless they were discovered sooner, the day she had enough cash she and Jason would be gone. Then Garrett Taylor would have his precious island all to himself again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GARRETT PARKED THE brand-new boy’s bike at the bottom of the steps leading to Erica’s apartment. Regardless of the truth behind Erica’s situation, he felt like a heel for what he’d said—and done—last night and could think of no other way to make it right. He taped a note for Erica to the handlebar with a simple I’m sorry written inside and headed for the police station.

  While the building itself was an old white clapboard structure built around the turn of the century and on the state’s historic registry, his corner office with a new computer, plush carpeting and a fresh coat of paint could’ve been in any business building in the suburbs of Chicago.

  He greeted the receptionist, went back to his office and immediately flipped on his computer and TV, hoping for some news about Zach. And Erica. Half an hour later, he sat back in his chair, the pictures flashing across the TV screen of Marie and Jason Samson and Erica Corelli burning into his brain.

  Corelli. He had to admit that name fit her better than Jackson. So now what? Arrest her? For what? The warrant issued by the CPD had been for Marie Samson, not Erica Corelli. Bring her in for questioning? Something told him that could be a bad move. There was more going on here than he was going to get from the news.

  But you’re a cop, Garrett. Act like one. He picked up the phone and was dialing when Lynn came into his office.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Can it wait a few minutes?”

  She glanced at the TV on his credenza where photos of Zach and Erica were splashing across the screen and closed the door behind her. “No, it can’t. You know why I’m here.”

  He hung up the phone and glared at her.

  “Arlo and I both saw the news this morning,” she said. “I want to know what you’re planning on doing about it.”

  He sat back in his chair. “There’s only one thing I can do. Your Erica may have kidnapped a child.”

  “He’s her nephew. Not a stranger. And chances are she’s here for a damned good reason.”

  There was no doubt Zach wasn’t afraid of Erica. Garrett couldn’t help but remember the look of fear on the kid’s face that morning he’d thought Garrett was going to hit Erica. “Lynn—”

  “You don’t know what’s happened to Erica’s sister. That boy’s real mother. What harm is there in waiting to see how these chips fall? Those two aren’t going anywhere unless she gets spooked.”

  “I’ve got a duty as a police officer.”

  “Your first duty is to the residents of this island. She’s one of us now. Hardworking and a good person. And she loves that little boy. She would never, ever hurt him.”

  “That’s not the point—”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never broken any rules.” Lynn flattened her hands on his desk and leveled her gaze at him. “Jim said one of the reasons he hired you was because you never let anyone else tell you right from wrong.”

  Did he?

  “So help me, Garrett, if you turn her in, I’ll never forgive you. And neither will Doc, Dan or Bob.”

  “They know, too?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “You’re threatening a police officer, Lynn.”

  “So what are you going to do? Arrest me, too?”

  They glared at each other.

  “You’ve seen Erica with that boy. Does it look like she’s kidnapped him?”

  No. Not even close. “Does she have any clue you know the truth?”

  Lynn shook her head. “And I don’t intend on telling her.”

  “All right.” He took a deep breath. “For now I’ll hold off on making that call. But no one says anything to anyone. I don’t want her running scared. You got me?”r />
  She nodded.

  “Why?” he asked. “Why are you sticking your neck out for her?”

  Lynn looked away and didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I lost a daughter many years ago. She was five. She got pneumonia one winter and like that she was gone. My youngest.” She took a deep breath. “Every once in a while, I see something in Erica’s eyes. Something stubborn and full of fire that reminds me of my Charlotte. Even Arlo noticed it that first day she came into the bar.”

  “I’m not promising anything, Lynn, but she tries to leave this island and I’ll crack down on her so fast heads will spin.”

  “Fine by me.” She patted his hand. “I have a feeling you won’t regret this.”

  As she left his office, Garrett had a feeling he most certainly would, but there was one thing he could do to make sure this wasn’t going to be the biggest mistake of his career. He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Wilmes here.”

  “John, it’s G.T.”

  “Hey. I was reaching for the phone to call you.”

  Garrett leaned back and let the picturesque view of the marina calm him. “So you found something, huh?” Before he gave up anything, he wanted what John knew.

  “Nothing under the name of Erica Jackson,” John said. “But then we had a missing persons report filed for a six-year-old kid. The dad’s claiming the mother abducted his son. There’s a connection to a woman named Erica Corelli. The half sister of the missing mother.”

  “So what’s the story?” Garrett asked.

  “A kid and his mom disappeared within a few hours of each other last week. The dad is claiming the wife was going to file for a divorce and when he threatened to get full custody she and her sister ran off with his kid. He’s a detective in CPD. Our precinct. Billy Samson. Did you know him?”

  “No. You?”

  “I know of him. Checked him out. Grew up here. Made detective a year ago. By all accounts he’s an okay cop, but on the hotheaded side.”