Noah completed the turn into his driveway and parked, starting a useless debate with himself whether it was neighborhood kids goofing off or a petty crime about to take place. Had he still been in the city, the adrenaline would’ve pumped through his system because he could be walking into something worse than a potential break-in or act of vandalism in an empty house. Petty stuff made up ninety percent of his job in Oban, and Noah bloody well liked it that way.
He covered the distance between his house and Mary’s with an unhurried gait. A fat kākā perched on his direct neighbor’s fence, preening its khaki-colored feathers and pausing only to give him a got any food, mate? beady-eyed stare. Some days the Stewart Island wildlife gave him more headaches than the locals.
Stopping on the sidewalk outside Southern Seas, Noah scanned the neatly mown lawns that he and some of the other neighbors had been maintaining. Nothing seemed out of place. He continued down the driveway, along the side of the house to the back of the property where the three rentable rooms were located. He cupped a hand to the glass sliding door of the first one and looked inside. A neatly made queen bed had a seal-print duvet cover, and the rest of the room was decorated with every imaginable type of seal/sea lion-themed decor. Mary’s diabolical sense of humor in action. He moved on to the second room—shark themed—and third room—whale themed—to check. Empty and undisturbed.
“Where are you, you stinking douchenozzle of a key?” a feminine voice said from around the corner of the house.
Noah’s heart didn’t exactly leap into his throat, but it gave a jolt and caused him to freeze for a beat or two.
Female. Sounded mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Pissed off was a given. Looking for Mary’s spare house key, likely. Reasons, unknown.
Treading quietly along the concrete path, he edged toward the corner and eased his weight sideways, peering around it. He froze, still in an awkward bent angle, trying to process everything in front of him instantly.
Definitely female. Bent at the waist, picking up rocks and looking under them. Continuing to curse. Long, dark-brown hair hanging over her face. Shapely butt cheeks dotted in goose bumps, with a pair of panties that only just covered the essentials.
And she wore a pale blue towel.
Not the usual lowlife type that would attempt a B&E, if one were to judge a book by its cover. Or in this case, if the cover was showing the sexy-as-hell rear view of a woman. Since the odds of a blue towel concealing a weapon were pretty slim, Noah stepped around the corner, his black leather boots scuffing on the path.
A shrill, cat-caught-in-a-sliding-door shriek split the air. She whirled in a half crouch, one hand holding the towel in place, the other angled in a kung-fu position. Her face scrunched in fight-or-flight mode, the curves of her breasts pushed up against her white-knuckled fist, and the tangle of hair around her bare shoulders made her look both fierce and fragile at the same time.
Aware of the availability of a number of loose rocks nearby that could be used to brain him, Noah held out a palm and set his facial expression to good cop. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
The woman did a quick traverse of him from his boots to his standard blue uniform pants and light-blue shirt with the New Zealand Police insignia on the sleeve. She straightened, dropping the kung-fu hand to rejoin her other keeping the towel in place.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” she said.
Her gaze skipped upward from his chest level. Bold, curious, and clear hazel eyes met his. She had a girl-next-door prettiness with a fringe of long lashes framing her eyes and the kind of naturally fuller lower lip that gave her mouth a just-kissed pout. Her nose crinkled again.
“Actually, it is what it looks like.” She tipped her head to the side, in the direction of Mary’s back door. “I got locked out.”
He followed her head tip with a nod of his own. “Of this house?”
As opposed to some guy’s house in an evening walk of shame. But as much as she didn’t seem to fit the profile of opportunist thief, neither would any sane male kick her out of his bed.
“Yes, this house,” she enunciated slowly. “It’s my great-aunt’s.”
Was it a criminal’s lucky guess that the house was owned by a woman, or was she telling the truth? He folded his arms, planted his feet hip distance apart and gave her the bad-cop eyeball. “State your full name and current address. Please,” he added as an afterthought.
Two long beats passed in which the woman’s neatly shaped eyebrows rose and her shoulders straightened. “Matilda Rose Montgomery,” she said, then rattled off an Auckland address. “I can’t show you my driver’s license at the moment as it’s inside, but you can frisk me if you like.”
Laughter lines creasing her eyes gave away her amusement.
“That won’t be necessary.” But it was tempting. “I think it’s safe to assume you’re not a hardened criminal.”
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Noah’s jaw ached with the effort of keeping a straight face. “Are you trying to get arrested, Matilda?”
“No. Sorry, Officer! But if we’re going to continue this conversation while I’m standing here freezing my boobs off, you should probably call me Tilly. And if you’re going to arrest anyone, it should be those stinkin’ birds that locked me out of Mary’s kitchen.”
“Birds locked you out?”
She narrowed her pretty hazel eyes at the house. “Yes, birds. I caught a flock or gang or whatever a group of them are called of those big greenish birds ripping into my groceries after I’d had a shower.”
“Ah. They’d be kākā.” The open windows of Mary’s kitchen above him caught his eye. “You can’t leave windows open around here without screens covering them. They’ll take any opportunity to stage a raid.”
“I chased a bunch of them outside and the door blew shut. I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes looking for my aunt’s spare key.” She huffed out a sigh and her breasts wobbled dangerously.
Noah averted his gaze even though his attractive-female-cleavage alarm was going nuts, took a wide sidestep around Tilly, and headed up the path toward the back door. He reminded himself with an internal face-shove away from her that although he was off duty, he wasn’t Officer Douchebag about to hit on what he’d begun to believe was a genuine ‘oops’ moment.
“Mary’s your great-aunt?” he asked, climbing the steps onto the landing.
“Yes. On my dad’s side.”
The sound of her soft padding footsteps on the wood right behind him prickled down his spine. He flicked a glance through Mary’s kitchen window, and sure enough, there were groceries scattered all over the dining table.
“I only met her a handful of times growing up because she and my mum didn’t get along,” Tilly continued. “But when I was older, we saw each other a little more. Once she came up to Auckland and took me to a theme park. We went on all the scariest roller coasters together.”
Noah rattled the door handle and gave the door a testing shove with his shoulder. Nope, it didn’t budge. She really had locked herself out.
“I already tried that.”
Noah allowed himself a quick grin since the woman huffing indignantly behind him couldn’t see it.
“Sometimes Mary’s back door sticks. I was just checking to make sure it was really locked.”
“It’s really, really locked,” she said. “And you knew Mary?”
“I did.” He crouched down and lifted the sea-lion-themed welcome mat. No key.
“First place I looked, and a pretty dangerous spot to stash a spare key.”
“Not in Oban. Knowing Mary, it could be hidden anywhere now.” He stood and half turned to find her leaning against the deck rail, her arms wrapped around her upper body.
“Perfect.” She gave a full-body shiver and grimaced. “Well, thanks for trying. Any other ideas?”
“Yeah. But you’re not going to like it much.” He chuckled, the first laugh he’d had that day.
Who said
life here was boring?
Chapter 3
From Mary Duncan’s secret journal:
You can tell a lot about a man by how he handles the unexpected. You can also tell a lot about a man by his position on whether the toilet seat should be left up or down.
* * *
“Where are we going?” Tilly picked her away along the gravel-strewn sidewalk, a half dozen steps behind Officer Stud’s broad back.
“My place,” he said, interrupting her musing. “Two doors down.”
Oh myyyy. Make that New Neighbor Stud. Listen to her, blurting out all sorts of flirtatious statements like, “Frisk me,” and checking out the man’s butt.
But if one had to be confronted by the law in only a towel, this guy was in a waaaay different class than some of the local constables she’d seen on the beat near her apartment. She pursed her lips. Maybe she’d watched too many TV dramas. Did cops even call it a beat? Did they even refer to themselves as ‘cops’? Cliché much?
She quickened her steps, wincing when a gravel chip dug into the soft flesh of her heel. “Slow down. You’ll make me lose my towel.”
Stopping on a dime, he spun around. Tilly lurched backward in an effort not to face-plant into his official-looking vest. Stab-proof, and probably ditzy-woman proof. She righted herself before her nose smacked into the radio thingy clipped to one side of the vest’s neckline, and got a firmer grip on the towel.
“Um. Couldn’t you have picked the lock back there?”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?”
“It wouldn’t be breaking and entering since I would’ve given you permission.”
“Not gonna happen.”
Jeez, he did the strong silent type like nobody’s business.
“You do know how to, though, right? Know thy enemy and all that.”
He closed one eye at a time in a God give me patience gesture. “I must’ve missed the lock-picking seminar at police college.”
“Pity. So do you have a spare key at your place?”
“Nope.”
“A crowbar?”
He merely lifted his eyebrow again.
Man of few words. Luckily, she had more than enough for both of them. She sent him her very best a stranger is a friend you don’t know yet smile, which earned her another eyebrow twitch preceding an eye roll, before he turned and continued down the road.
“But will you help get me back into Aunt Mary’s house?” she asked as he stopped outside a carport with a four-wheel-drive police ute parked in it.
“Yep.”
And then he said nothing. Gah!
“Do you have a handy-dandy teleporter, Officer Friendly?”
He dug into his pants pocket and withdrew a set of keys. “It’s Constable Daniels, but Noah works fine, too.”
Noah, huh?
Tilly rolled his name around her tongue and found it kinda sweet and suitable. “I’d pegged you for a Blake or a Chase, maybe a Jack—but then, Jack Daniels, not really a name for a cop. Am I right?”
“Right.” Noah shot her a hooded glance and hit the remote, the vehicle beeping as it unlocked. “Hop in.”
“Like this?” Okay, that came out a little screechy, but still. Was he taking her down to the police station in only a towel and panties? “I could, ah, catch a chill.”
“It’s not that cold.”
“It’s the beginning of autumn.” To emphasize how unsummerlike her body felt this far south, she held out a goose-bump-covered arm for his inspection.
He sighed. “Wait here.”
He strode down his garden path and disappeared behind the single-story house. It was a plain sort of house, functional and a little worn. The clapboards were almost, but not quite, at the point of needing a new coat of paint. His lawns were neatly maintained, but there wasn’t a single decorative plant anywhere around the small garden.
She craned her neck to one side, spotting windows with utilitarian gray drapes and through them plain white walls on which a huge TV was mounted. That was a single guy who indulged in a lot of screen time sized TV, if ever she saw one. There’d be a few empty beer cans on his coffee table, maybe next to one of those fancy remotes that controlled everything electronic on one indecipherable gadget. And a dying potted plant that someone had given him but he kept forgetting to water.
Continuing to amuse her muse—as she like to call it—she mentally inventoried the rest of his living room and moved onto his bedroom. White painted walls would be her guess, or maybe a beige or light gray if whoever chose the decor for the living room had continued their theme of bland despair. A simple wooden chest of drawers against the wall that matched the nightstand beside the bed. A plain-colored comforter—probably dark green or navy—with a no more than absolutely necessary for comfort amount of pillows. Single bed? She smirked. Maybe when he was twelve. Men like Noah needed a little more, er, room to maneuver between the sheets.
Her imagination then went off on a tangent, and it wasn’t headed down the familiar Cop Drama Road or Sci-fi Avenue. Ooooh no. Tilly’s muse—obviously a dirty little minx at heart—took the onramp onto Hookup Highway and suddenly Tilly wasn’t complaining about the nip in the air as her internal engine cranked into overdrive.
Noah appeared around the corner of his house, his long legs eating up the short distance to the carport in measured strides. Tilly got her first real opportunity to study him. He was at least six foot tall and insanely ripped, if the way his biceps bulged below his short-sleeved shirt were any indication. A handsome man, no denying that, but in a rugged sort of way that a city girl like her probably wouldn’t look twice at in out on the town circumstances. His hair was the color of a good espresso, and though too far away from him to see, she’d bet her next paycheck that she’d caught a hint of his dimples peeking out beneath a few days’ growth of whiskers.
And Lord help her, if she hadn’t been looking in his direction, she’d never have heard him approach. He moved like a tiger she’d seen once at an Australian theme park, the big cat’s keepers walking it through the grounds between them on a sturdy chain. Watching the powerful animal prowl—there wasn’t really any other word for it—Tilly had wondered who was really walking whom.
She only realized she’d been staring—possibly drooling—when Noah held up a zippered fleece. “Don’t worry, it’s clean. Straight off the line.”
For a moment she couldn’t connect the dots between clean and line. Was that like an assembly line? Front of the line? Line of fire?
Then—Tilly, you’re such a goof. “Oh, you mean a washing line. I only use a dryer at home. Tiny apartment, you see, and nobody wants my underwear hanging out to dry on the balcony.”
She gave a little laugh that sounded squeakily high. Like the one she sometimes let slip when her peers were reading her latest script and she was about to pee with nerves, and, oh God, she actually did have to pee. But she’d rather fill up to her eyebrows than ask to borrow Noah Daniels’s bathroom. At the very least, whatever dark and dank prison cell he was about to toss her into would have a toilet.
Maybe even one with a seat.
“Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” She shuddered, then took the fleece off him and slipped it on over the towel. Because Officer Friendly was like, huge, the hem of it well and truly covered her butt and the sleeves drooped past her fingertips. But it was warm, smelled like lemons and sunshine, and it gave her a brief semblance of dignity. Although, catching a glimpse of herself in the ute’s shiny paint job, she looked like a kid playing dress up in her daddy’s clothes.
Noah slid behind the wheel and started the engine.
Left with no alternative other than standing around in her towel and borrowed fleece, Tilly climbed into the cab next to him. She slammed the door shut, gaze fixed on the windshield, hands busy keeping the towel’s lower edges together. If she didn’t breathe too deeply the towel wouldn’t slip off her boobs.
Noah cleared his throat, one tanned hand resting on the shift change but not movin
g it out of park. “Seat belt.”
Was he for real? On this teeny-tiny island with no traffic lights and very few stop signs, according to the Google gods? Tilly’s gaze cut to Noah’s inflexible granite jaw and firm-lipped frown. Yup, the big guy appeared to take the road code very seriously.
“Okeydokey.” Tilly twisted in her seat to grab the seat belt, and the lower edge of her towel split open, showing a helluva lot of goose-pimpled thigh and pink-lace edged panty—should anyone be looking. Since the man beside her inhaled like he’d been plunged into the icy waters of Foveaux Strait, she suspected he had been looking.
Surely that was worth a written warning instead of a night in the slammer?
When Tilly finally clipped the safety belt in place, Noah reversed out into the street; a testament to his defensive driver training that he didn’t peel rubber doing so. Focus on the road ahead, not the glimpse of creamy thigh and hot pink panties. Tilly was a traffic accident waiting to happen.
A quick glimpse in the rearview mirror—kind of a inane move now since he’d completely forgotten to check for oncoming traffic before backing out—then he slotted the truck into drive, pointing its nose downhill toward town. He shot a glance sideways to where Tilly shifted around on the passenger seat, trying to hold the edges of her towel together over her legs. Fine lines appeared on her forehead as she returned his sideways glance.
“When do I get to make my one phone call?” she asked as he braked for the intersection.
“At the station.”
“You’re really taking me to the station?”
“No.” He signaled to turn, then waited while a group of kids on bicycles pedaled along the sidewalk toward the road.
Flicking a hand at them to indicate they could cross in front of him, he counted four local kids—Zoe and Jade Harland, his mate Ben’s girls; Madison Douglas; and George Philips, Helena and Sara’s son—but only three cycle helmets. George hunkered down over his bike, unsuccessfully trying to hide the fact that his helmet was hooked over the handlebar and not on his head.
Bending The Rules: Stewart Island Book 10 Page 3
