So he threw some sweats on and drove her home, both of them content to listen to the purr of the Mustang’s engine. She almost nodded off a couple of times, so instead of going inside with her, he kissed her good-night in the driveway.
“I feel like a teenager being dropped off after a date,” she said, amusement coloring the weariness in her voice.
“I’ll call you when I get out of work tomorrow and see what you’re up to. Enjoy your day off.”
After another long, slow kiss good-night, he watched her until she was inside and had closed the door behind her. Then he got in his SUV and drove home alone.
Chapter Nineteen
On Saturday, Drew woke disoriented, not quite sure where he was until Liz stirred next to him and the pale blue walls of her bedroom came into focus. He didn’t like waking up that way, but it had been happening more often in the week and a half since their frozen burger date. They usually stayed at her house because she was already finished at work when his shift ended, so she was home, but sometimes when she didn’t work the next day, they’d stay at his house.
She made some mumbling noise he couldn’t decipher, but which he assumed was her verbalizing a wish to go back to sleep.
If that was the case, he felt the same way. It wasn’t four-thirty, but they hadn’t gone to sleep for quite a while after they’d gone to bed and he wasn’t ready to face the day. “I don’t want to get up.”
Liz’s naked body snuggled tighter against his, playing hell on his resolve. “Then don’t.”
“And miss the Old Home Day parade?”
“It’s a big parade. They’ll be fine without you for one year.”
He laughed and tried nudging her away. “I’m the chief of police, so I’m first in line. Not only would they notice I wasn’t there, but I’m not sure they’d ever leave the staging area if I didn’t tell them when to go. Besides, you have to work, too.”
“I intend to sneak out and get fried dough. It was always my favorite part of Old Home Day, and I’m hoping the owner being my sister-in-law will keep me from getting fired.” She rolled onto her back and stretched. The sheet started sliding downward.
Drew took the opportunity to get out of the bed so he wouldn’t see the treasures the slipping sheet offered up to tempt him. He still had to get home and take a shower. And he couldn’t remember if he’d ironed his dress uniform or not, dammit. It was too hot for it, but it was a parade and people expected him to look like a police chief.
By the time he had a coffee with Liz, drove home and then got ready, he’d be lucky if he got any breakfast. The parade kicked off at ten and he was usually at the lot they used as a staging area by nine at the latest to help keep the chaos level down. He was already rushed and running late, and he’d been awake maybe three minutes.
“This would be so much easier if you just moved into my house,” he mumbled.
The silky sound of bedding shifting stopped. “What did you say?”
Nothing he’d really meant to say out loud. Or maybe he had meant to. It was the truth. “If you lived in my house, we could have stayed in bed another hour, at least.”
He pulled on the spare pair of sleep pants he’d started leaving there so he’d have an excuse not to turn and see her face. Whatever came out of her mouth next would tell him everything. He knew her well enough to know she’d either agree it was a good plan, or she’d pretend she thought he was joking around.
She gave a small laugh, but it didn’t sound very genuine. “Pretty sure you have to buy a woman dinner before you ask her to move in so you can sleep an extra hour.”
He had his answer. “I paid when we were driving home from the campground.”
“Because it was a drive-through and you were in the driver’s seat.”
Forcing himself to swallow his disappointment—which was dumb to feel anyway because it was too soon for that kind of move—he kept his tone light. “What time do you have to be in?”
“Ten. With the parade and all the events going on, Paige says breakfast is always light, but there’s an extended lunch rush, plus a lot of people wanting ice cream in the air-conditioning instead of from vendors. So Paige is opening and Tori and I will go in at ten and I’ll probably work with Ava until closing unless it really drops off for dinner.”
Drew rushed through his first cup of coffee, trying not to look at the clock a million times while Liz made small talk about the day. Finally, when he didn’t have another minute to spare, he kissed her goodbye and did his best not to go too much over the speed limit on his way home.
By the time ten o’clock rolled around, he felt like his head was ready to explode. Whitford had been throwing Old Home Day parades since 1823. It didn’t seem too much to ask that somebody in all those years write down the order the floats went in. And, in a first for the parade, they had almost forty four-wheelers show up in support of the ATV club, which was good. Many of the businesses in Whitford, but especially the Northern Star Lodge, the Trailside Diner and the Whitford General Store & Service Station, were seeing increased profits since they’d connected the trails to the town, so it was important to Drew there be a show of goodwill. It was even more important, however, he correct the dumbass who’d put the forty machines behind the 4-H kids and their calves.
Finally it was time to hit the sirens and mark the start of the parade. Moving at a crawl so slow it barely moved the speedometer, he pulled out onto the main street. His gaze was constantly bouncing from the road to the crowd to his mirrors and back to the road. People cheered and whistled while he smiled and waved. These were the moments, staging-area headaches aside, when he was damn proud to be their police chief.
When he got to the Trailside Diner, he couldn’t help but look over. Liz and Tori were outside, along with the cook and a couple of what were probably customers, waving. He hit his horn and waved, waiting for her to blow him a kiss before turning his attention back to the road. If you were first in line for the town’s big parade, with flashing lights and a siren, and you drove into something because you were checking out a woman, people noticed.
He spotted his dad, Rose and the Kowalskis, all sitting together on the hill by the library’s monument. Hailey was with them, too, and they all waved and cheered when he rolled by.
It took nearly an hour to get everybody from one end of the town to the other and then, finally, it was time for the parade to disperse and for everybody to enjoy the festivities.
The first thing Drew enjoyed was a sausage from the first vendor he came to. He was starving because, just as he’d feared, he hadn’t had time for breakfast. It wasn’t exactly the breakfast of champions, but it filled the hole. Then he made his way through the town, talking to almost everybody and soaking in the good mood that everybody seemed to share.
When he figured any lunch rush Liz might have had was over, he found a vendor and bought two fried doughs. He sprinkled powdered sugar over both, then walked to the diner. There were still quite a few people inside, but most of them seemed to be having cold drinks and ice cream, just as Paige had predicted.
Liz’s face lit up when she saw him and he held up the fried dough. “I didn’t want you sneaking out and getting in trouble.”
“You’re the best boyfriend ever.” She gave him a big kiss before taking the fried dough and biting into it.
Her facial expression seemed to imply she was enjoying the fried dough almost as much as she enjoyed sex with him, which made him shake his head. He wasn’t a huge fan of fried dough himself, so he gestured at Tori, the other waitress.
“I was hoping that was for me,” she told him, taking it and then making almost the same face as Liz after the first bite. “Thanks, Chief.”
“No problem. I hope your customers don’t mind you guys taking a few minutes to eat them.”
“I don’t think we really care,” Liz said. �
��Do you care, Tori?”
She mumbled something with a mouthful of fried dough, then gave up and emphatically shook her head.
He helped himself to a cup of coffee since the servers were covered with melted butter and powdered sugar and needed to wash up. Once they’d done that and made a round of the tables, Liz joined him at the counter.
“Thank you for the fried dough. It was delicious.”
“You’re welcome. We had a bigger crowd than usual this year, so I was afraid they’d run out before you got some.” He finished the last of his coffee. “Do you think you’ll have to stay until closing? I’m wondering when I’ll get to see you tonight.”
He was surprised to see a guarded look come into her eyes. “I’m not sure. I’m probably going to work until closing and then I’m still opening in the morning, so...I’ll probably go home, shower and go to bed.”
“So I won’t see you until tomorrow night?”
She was looking everywhere but at his face and he didn’t need to be a police officer to know she was holding back. “Probably not. I’ll call you at least, though I might be beat after this kind of two-day schedule.”
Drew could take a hint. He dropped a dollar on the counter for the coffee and then kissed her cheek. “Just give me a call when you’re ready to get together.”
He walked back out into the sunshine, where his entire town sounded like a big, old party, and sighed. This morning, when he’d said something about her moving in with him, had been a big mistake. He’d pushed too hard, too soon, and she’d pulled back.
The question was how much.
* * *
Liz knew there was a crossroads coming in her relationship with Drew. And she had the unfortunate feeling she was going to stand in the middle of the crossroad and spin around, not sure which way to go, until she got dizzy, crashed and burned.
And he knew it, too, she realized as soon as he walked through her front door the day after the parade. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes and his hello kiss landed on the corner of her mouth. “How was work today?”
“Quiet. Everybody expended all their desire to be out and about in town yesterday, I guess. How was your day off?”
He shrugged. “Mowed the lawn, stuff like that.”
For the first time, she felt really awkward. “Do you want something to drink?”
“What are we doing, Liz?”
She gave one last attempt to avoid stepping into that big intersection. “Standing in my living room while you tell me if you want a drink or not?”
“We’ve fallen into a routine, but it’s not a comfortable one for me. And I’m not sure how much of what we have comes from the way everybody else has assumed we’re a couple.”
“I...assumed we’re a couple. Aren’t we? We talked about spending time together. You’re up to three uniforms in my closet now.” She wasn’t sure she’d breathe again until he answered.
“Of course we are. But we live in a place that doesn’t offer a lot of options for dating, so we hang out here or at my house and it reinforces the routine.”
“What routine?” He was losing her. “I know my getting up at four-thirty has been hard on you. It’s an adjustment, I know.”
He shook his head. “It’s more than that. We’re almost like a married couple who lives in two different houses. But when I mentioned you moving in with me, it threw you and you pulled away a bit.”
“It took me off guard. I wasn’t expecting that so soon.”
“But is it too soon? Sometimes it’s just right, Liz. The only thing living together would change between us is not having to rush through mornings.”
“It would change me,” she said quietly. “The only thing that would change for you is that you don’t have to rush home in the morning. I would be giving up my house and my stuff and whatever I was going to do with my life because we both know you want children right away.”
He ran a hand over his hair, sighing. “But what is it you’re going to do with your life? Why is something you don’t even know you want more important than our future?”
“Because it wouldn’t be fair for me to have kids if that’s not what I really want.”
“You keep telling everybody you came home to be close to your family and figure out what you want to do with your life. I spent too many years married to a woman who didn’t want the same things in life that I did, to risk being with a woman who doesn’t even know what she wants.”
She wasn’t paying for what another woman had done. “What the hell am I supposed to do? Do you want a ten-year plan? Maybe I could do some spreadsheets and projection graphs.”
“There’s a big difference between projection graphs and basic signs of stability. You have inflatable pool toys in your living room, for God’s sake.”
“Hey, I like my furniture. It’s funky and my friends gave it to me.”
“It’s not furniture. What it is, is temporary. You won’t even commit to real chairs, but I’m supposed to think you’re ready for a commitment to me?”
Temper flared through her. “I saw an old, plaid recliner sitting on the side of the road the other day with a Free sign on it. So if I go drag that into my living room, does that mean I’m good enough for you?”
“This is the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Feel free to end it at any time.”
“Is that what you want?” He locked gazes with her, his eyes sad. “For me to end it?”
An ache started in her chest and she had to resist rubbing at the spot. “I meant ending this conversation and you know that. I feel like you’re looking to pick a fight and you’re going to keep picking until I throw you out.”
“And I feel like you’re coming up with excuses not to address what I’m actually trying to say.”
“Because what you’re trying to say isn’t something I want to hear,” she admitted. “You’re talking about a level of commitment that scares me. I’m not stupid, Drew. I know inflatable pool floats are not furniture. I accumulated a bunch of stuff that meant nothing to me over my life and I tossed it out. You saw for yourself that everything I owned fit in my car. I let everything else go, but those blow-up chairs are bright and fun and, most importantly, they were from new friends—Paige and Hailey—to celebrate a fun night in my new house to start my new life.”
“I know you’re not stupid.”
“They make me smile. I’ve never owned anything before that made me happy just to look at them. I want the freedom to explore what else is waiting in my new life.”
“I don’t understand why a child with me can’t be a part of your new life.”
His single-mindedness was the match that lit her temper. “Does it even matter that it’s me or am I just convenient? Hey, Liz had sex with me once, so she’ll do it again and I’ll have a baby.”
Some of the color drained from his face and his jaw clenched. “Is that what you think? You think I’m just looking for...what, an incubator? That any woman will do?”
“That’s how it feels right now.”
He shook his head, staring off at a space over her shoulder. “I knew getting involved with you was a mistake right from the beginning.”
That hurt more than she could ever have imagined, even though she understood what he meant. She’d known it, too. She wasn’t ready to be involved with a man who wanted to be on the fast track to a wife and family, but she couldn’t resist him and she’d done it anyway.
And now they’d both pay.
“You should go,” she said quietly.
“Liz, I—”
“You should go now before anything else gets said that can’t be taken back. We’re going to have to be around each other for a long time, so the less ugly this gets, the sooner we can maybe be friends again.”
�
��I don’t want to be your friend. I want to be your husband.”
She hadn’t thought she could feel any worse than when he’d said she was a mistake. “No, Drew. You want to be the father of my children first and everything else after. I may not know what I want in life, but I know I don’t want that.”
He stared at her for what seemed like forever, sadness so heavy on his face. She knew he cared about her. He might even love her. But she also knew he was going to turn and walk out her door because she wasn’t what he needed.
Knowing it was coming didn’t make it hurt any less when he did.
* * *
Drew spent the night sitting on his couch, staring at the empty fireplace and wondering how his life had gone totally to shit in such a short time.
It was his own damn fault. Once he’d brought up their living together and she’d pulled away, he felt compelled to clarify their relationship. Where they were and where they were going. But he’d screwed it up so badly, it would never be fixed.
When his alarm went off, he got up off the couch, showered and got dressed for work. He thought about calling in sick, but the idea of sitting alone in his house all day made his skin crawl. Then he went to work.
“You okay, Chief?” Bob Durgin asked when he walked by the officer’s desk.
Drew didn’t stop walking. “Yeah. Just Monday blues, I guess.”
He forced himself to offer Barbara a smile and a wave so she wouldn’t follow him into his office to cluck over him. Being fussed over would just make him feel worse because he didn’t deserve sympathy. He’d been a jerk and then, instead of trying to figure out the right thing to say to de-escalate the conversation, he’d walked out on her.
He put his bad mood to work, plowing through paperwork, making calls and getting results. Anything to keep his mind busy so he would stop replaying the nightmare of last night over and over in his mind. Everything he shouldn’t have said. And everything he should have.
Love a Little Sideways Page 22
