Carolina Man
Page 28
“Guess you don’t worry about stereotypes, either,” he said.
What? She followed his gaze toward her table before understanding clicked. The latte. The laptop. Her lips eased into an answering smile. “The whole coffee shop scene is kind of cliché,” she admitted.
Jane looked up. “We’re a bakery. We’re not a coffee shop.”
Jack Rossi angled his body, shifting his attention to the woman behind the counter. His smile softened, making his strong features even more attractive. “I don’t come for the coffee, Jane.”
Oh. Oh. Lauren glanced from his hard, dark face to Jane. The baker blushed. If he didn’t want donuts . . . and he didn’t come for the coffee . . . He wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Clearly he was after whatever else the pretty blond baker had to offer.
Lauren’s lungs deflated. So did her ego.
Which was stupid. Even before the hostage incident, she didn’t date blue-collar cops with Italian-sounding last names. No, she attracted musicians, losers, and weirdos.
Anyway, she was here to write. She had a deadline. She didn’t have time for a fling or even a flirtation. It was just that her defenses were low, her confidence shaken, her energy depleted. Was it any wonder she wanted to borrow someone else’s for a while?
Don’t overthink it, her publicist, Meg, had urged. Everything will be fine. You’ll be fine. Just move on.
It was good advice. Lauren sighed. If only she could figure out how.
• • •
IT WAS A beautiful day. Too bad his job was to ruin it for somebody.
Jack sat in his cruiser, running the AC and the driver’s license and registration of the seventeen year old who’d just blown through a stop sign on her way to the beach.
The ID checked out. The BMW belonged to her daddy. Jack could have let her off with a warning. He might have, too—he’d been young and dumb once—if so many other kids without cars didn’t walk this road.
And if she hadn’t tried so hard to flirt her way out of a ticket.
The law existed to protect everybody. The sooner Miss Teenage BMW learned the consequences of her actions, the better.
For some reason—for no reason at all—he thought of that writer, Lauren Somebody, in the bakery this morning. I think she should go with whatever makes people feel good.
A dangerous philosophy. It used to make him feel good to get drunk and hit things. No more. These days he restricted himself to one beer and the heavy bag in the back room of the station house.
Her face slid into his memory, the wide, soft mouth, the gleaming, intelligent eyes, the tiny scar that pierced her left eyebrow.
After almost eleven months, he knew most of the residents on the island. Lauren No Last Name was no more from around here than he was. Still, she looked familiar. Something about the shape of those eyes or the tilt of her jaw. His body tightened. She interested him, and not just as a member of law enforcement keeping tabs on his beat.
He shook his head, disgusted with the direction of his thoughts. His dick obviously hadn’t learned the lessons of the past year.
He didn’t do interesting women anymore.