by Zoe Dawson
I’d wanted to kiss her with every cell. If I’d known it would be better than I could have imagined, I’m not sure I could have waited this long. It was a good thing I’d been ignorant, because I hadn’t known it would make wanting the rest of her right the fuck now so much more intense.
I should have expected it. She’d driven me hardcore crazy, and I needed this days ago, this heated, tender contact. The feel of her filled something empty inside me, something that had been hollow for a long, long time.
She made another soft, surrendering sound in her throat, her arms sliding up around my neck, the fingers of both hands now tunneling through my hair. I gathered her close and lifted her, spun around and settled her on my lap as I leaned against the side of the bed.
She couldn’t mistake how she affected me from the position she was in. But she didn’t pull away, holding onto me like her life depended on it. The next heated sound was my own, deep, low, gasping. I breathed her in and teased her, rubbing my lips over hers, licking the plump bottom’s fullness, biting her so very, very gently, and I whispered her name again.
“Samantha. Beautiful, sweet Sammy.”
She made a soft, distressed sound in the back of her throat, stiffening up. She bolted off my lap, kneeling on the floor and covering her face with her hands.
“Damn, Samantha. What’s wrong?” Everything inside me froze, except my heart, which plummeted into the pit of my stomach. A hundred emotions flooded me, and I knew then that I was hooked, and in deep, deep trouble. I had planned to take it slow with her, not move too fast and blow it. There were so many reasons to just get up and go, but I couldn’t seem to hang onto even one of them.
There was no going back, so I closed and bolted the door to my escape.
Chapter 4
SAMANTHA
This was happening. Had happened. I’d touched Chase the way I have longed to so for months. Touched him and kissed him, and wasn’t surprised by the feelings of guilt and betrayal. But I suspected that any change would have caused an upheaval, and it was time to decide how I was going to handle the adjustment. Transitions could sometimes be very volatile. And terrifying.
There was no doubt I wanted to kiss him some more, take him in great gulps and never look back, but out of the blue I’d been smashed to smithereens by one tenderly whispered nickname, reminding me that starting over had some pitfalls along the way.
“Samantha. I’m dying here. Talk to me. What’s wrong?” He probably didn’t know how to handle this any more than I did.
I looked at him, and my heart melted, even as it was scrambling to assimilate all the emotions I had been dealing with since the loss of Jeff and Scott, as well as the newfound feelings for this strong, gorgeous, but also damaged, local man.
I’d lived long enough in Suttontowne to know all about the Suttons. I’d been through enough of River Pearl’s love affair with Braxton to know that there were some major issues going on with her family and her brothers. Chase was the fallen son who had disappeared into the bayou. My own hang-ups aside, I was deeply interested in why the family brunch had been so strained. Why he hadn’t managed to work out his family differences.
Well, we’d been dancing around each other for a couple of years, so I supposed it was time I talked to him.
“Sammy is what my husband used to call me. His name was Jeff, and he was a firefighter.”
His eyes widened and he sat up straight, immediate conciliation washing over his face as he squeezed his eyes shut with a soft groan. When he opened them, they were filled with apology. “Sugar…I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said gruffly.
I pulled myself out of my own morass of pain and heartache to soothe him. “I know that, Chase. I knew you had no idea. It’s just that old memories have a way of socking you in the jaw when you least expect it. I’m attracted to you. I think that’s obvious, since we’ve been gravitating toward each other since we first met.”
He nodded. “Can’t deny that one after the kiss we just shared.” Letting his breath go in a ragged sigh, he said, “Even with all the gossip in this town, I know very little about you. So I had no idea you were married before.”
I took a breath. “Yes, for years. Chase, this will be hard to hear, so brace yourself.” As a former cop I had been on both sides of the coin, as law enforcer and victim, so I had an idea this would be genuinely upsetting for him. “My husband and two-year-old son were murdered in our apartment. Their deaths were never solved, and I couldn’t bear staying there after what happened.”
“Jesus!” He jerked back, absorbing the jolt of my words, the shock making his face go white, his eyes stark. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. That had to be so hard. Sorry I brought up something so personal, and that it hurt you.”
His reaction made my chest hurt even more, the pain blinding me for a moment. This dredged up everything, but I needed to put it all in perspective. I couldn’t go picking at emotional lint again. That would get me nowhere. And, at this point in my life, I was starting to want to get somewhere again. “Thank you.” We stared at each other for a moment, his face so earnest, his eyes so caring.
He reached out and dragged me against him, and I clung to him. It felt amazing. “I might as well tell you everything,” I muttered against his neck.
He tightened his hold, massaging the back of my neck, giving me the reassurance I needed. “I’m ready to listen.”
I looked at the clock. “Do you want to go to Imogene’s and get some pie and coffee, or did you already consume enough food today?”
“I’ll take you up on the coffee and pie. I didn’t eat much at the fish fry. Too tense, I guess. Do you have any of that leftover crab cheesecake?” he asked with a hopeful lift to his tone and a boyish tilt of his head that made me laugh. “I wouldn’t say no to that.”
“Aren’t you the charming one?”
He dropped his eyes, his outrageously thick lashes bronze over those silver blue eyes, and I was charmed all over again, barely managing not to give him the kind of hug I’d give a scruffy six-year-old….
“I do have some left over,” I conceded. We got into his car.
“I know we kissed, and that kiss was breathtaking and awesome, but can we just agree that we’ll be friends for now?”
“Friends?” The light from an oncoming car illuminated his pitying look. “I don’t think so. I’m beyond that right now, but we can agree to shake hands instead of kiss if that helps.”
“More charm?” My heart felt light, even with the weight of my lost family, and I smiled, then laughed. Chase intrigued me on so many levels…mental, emotional, and physical. Definitely physical, but I didn’t want body parts to cloud up the issue with him. I also didn’t want to lose this connection with him. “I’m sure that was a joke.”
“It was.” He shrugged. Inside Imogene’s, he paused when we came through the front door.
“I don’t remember that sign.”
I whirled to see it still on top of the beautiful pie safe. “Your Aunt Evie found it at an estate sale, along with the journal and Imogene’s voodoo handbook.”
I turned the lock and pocketed my keys. “I love the historical significance, and I’ve already had some customers mention it.” I reached out and adjusted it. “They….” Warmth tingled in my fingertips and I dropped my hand.
Chase had turned away and was heading toward the kitchen.
“They?” he prompted, and I realized my voice had trailed off. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I reached out again, but it felt cool to the touch now.
“Samantha?” I turned to find him framed in the kitchen door. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I was just thinking about something.” I gave the sign one last look and said, “Anyway, my customers think it’s cool. Even after two years, this Yank can use all the help she can get.”
“Maybe if you got a Dixie flag,” he suggested, with a straight face.
“Do you think that would help?” I asked, then caught the glint in his eyes. I gave hi
m a mock-ferocious scowl. “You’re no help at all.”
He chuckled and settled his hand on my lower back as we went into the kitchen. “I can see that teasing you about being a Yankee is going to give me hours of fun.”
“Oh, you think so?” I said, turning around and grabbed for his waist. And there it was, that fire between us. We stood there for a moment while Chase took a deep breath.
“Yeah, that hand-shaking thing isn’t going to cut it,” he said, his voice sexy and husky as hell.
I breathed around the sudden tension and need that ambushed me, and prudently kept my hands to myself as I let out a heated breath of my own. “Maybe we should keep our hands busy with less…fraught…activities, then.”
I went to the coffee maker and started it brewing. Chase backed up to the butcher block and his arms and shoulders bunched while he slid his well-formed backside up onto the table and watched me move around. It felt good to have his eyes on me. “What’s this?” he asked, picking up a long wooden cylinder with a knob at one end.
“It’s an old-fashioned rolling pin—only one knob instead of two. I love it, and use it to make all my pies.” I got the crab dish out of the fridge. “Could you grab two plates?”
He gave me another sultry look, replaced the rolling pin in a special stand I had made for it, and jumped down. Keeping his eyes on me, he backed to the dinnerware, selecting what we would need, then handed the plates to me, leaning his hip against the counter.
No matter how hard I concentrated on dishing up the crab, my hands trembled when he leaned closer and very deliberately nuzzled my neck. I also liked his closeness, and cupped his head for a second. “If you keep distracting me, we won’t get to eat.”
He pulled back and grinned. “All right. I’ll behave.”
I put the two full plates into the microwave, one after the other.
Outside on the dimly lit deck, we set the plates, coffee, and silverware down.
He forked up a bite and made a soft sound of satisfaction in his chest. “Damn, Samantha. You sure can cook.” He glanced at me and said, “So, tell me everything.”
Suddenly nervous, I wiped my hands on my jeans and picked up my own fork. “Before I was a small town restaurant owner, I was a cop in New York City.”
“Damn.” The fork suspended halfway to his mouth, this time from amazement instead of shock. “I didn’t see that coming. You were a cop? The uniform and everything?” He took the bite.
“Yup, even the gun, and I know how to use a nightstick in all the tender places.”
He swallowed and said, “I’m going to make sure I don’t get on your bad side.”
“I killed a man.” I hadn’t actually meant to say it so bluntly, but how do you work up to that kind of a declaration?
“Wow.”
I nodded. “Wow is right. I knew it was always a possibility, but when it happens, when you pull the trigger, and know you were responsible for taking another person’s life, it does something to you, Chase.”
He reached out and covered my hand, squeezing. “He was breaking the law? He threatened other people? You?”
“Yes. Darryl Mayhew. He’d been pulling off convenience store robberies with his brother Kyle. I also wounded Kyle, but he escaped. They were quite the pair—a couple of Alabama boys who had come to the Big Apple to take a bite out of it. They killed several people before we caught up to them, and Kyle shot my partner, but I chased them down, killed Darryl, and winged Kyle.”
“Kyle started sending me truly creepy hate email from jail. It continued to come the month after I laid Jeff and Scott to rest, so I changed my email address to something obscure, and didn’t leave a forwarding address when I left New York City. It was probably moot, since Kyle had shot a cop, as well as several other people during numerous robberies. It was unlikely he’d ever get bail.”
Chase’s eyes had gone hard. “Then isn’t using deadly force justified?”
It was true, the Mayhew brothers were murderers and there was something definitely off about Kyle, something that lurked just below the surface. I’d always thought he had dead eyes, and, as a cop, I took my instincts seriously. I still didn’t like having Darryl’s death on my conscience. “In law enforcement rules and regs, yes. Did I do my job? Did I do it well? Yes. It was a clean shooting. But you have to see a shrink after a line of duty shooting, and getting shot at is pretty stressful.” I gave him a wan smile. “At first I played it off like I wasn’t affected, but the department shrink was too good at his job.”
“And you questioned whether you could be a cop anymore?”
“I questioned whether I wanted to be a cop anymore. I had to be honest with myself. It shook me to my core, and I had a job crisis on my hands. Plus, I had Scott, and the very real chance of getting killed in the line of duty was driven home to me. And, even more important, Jeff was a firefighter, one of the most dangerous jobs there is. Even more dangerous than being a cop.” Even as I laid it out for Chase, deep down I noticed I wasn’t telling him the full truth, was leaving out something I didn’t even want to acknowledge to myself. The real reason I quit and left New York.
“So you wrestled with being there for your boy. How did your husband take it?”
“He totally understood. Jeff was like that. We hardly ever argued. We had discussion time instead. He wanted me to be happy. We even discussed leaving the city so I could stay home with Scottie. I’m not sure what we would have done if they hadn’t been murdered. I’ll never know. But it was a terrible two weeks for me. I’d shot my first two perps and killed one of them. I questioned my whole career path…and then I lost my family.”
“What brought you here?”
The wrenching agony from the memory of how utterly alone I’d been made tears burn in the back of my throat, my eyes filling. “I was devastated. I couldn’t stay in that house. I couldn’t stay in New York any longer. I saw an advertisement for this run-down, dilapidated place, and I fell in love.”
He clasped the back of my neck, the warmth of his hand bolstering me. I brushed away the tears. “I needed hard work and something to distract me. I bought it sight unseen, quit my job, packed up everything and came down here.”
“That was brave, Samantha.” His eyes were warm and honest. “Did you have any cooking experience?”
I shrugged and looked away, the feelings too intense. “Just in college. I was a cook in a diner, and I loved it. But it was the project and the history that intrigued me. I knew I wanted to preserve Imogene’s legacy. And I wanted the hard physical labor to rebuild it. I know that must sound crazy.”
“No,” he said quietly, and his expression faltered, a flash of something fleeting in his eyes, then a taut silence. He drew a deep breath and let it out. “It sounds like a woman who needed something to make sense in her life after the senselessness. After losing everything.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “I know a little about that.”
“I bet you do, being the black sheep of the Sutton family.”
The muscles in his throat contracted, and his eyes shuttered as he tried to smile. “I’m sure you’ve heard all the talk. I don’t need to rehash it.”
“If you ever want to talk about—”
“Not right now.” Then his voice softened. “I made a grand gesture, something I had to do for my sanity. It wasn’t well received.” He looked away, took a breath, and I realized he’d bottled up a lot of stuff. Like me. He looked back at me and gave me a wry smile. “I stopped trying to make them understand.”
“All right, but just for the record, I think you’re brave, too. We’ve both built something out of the rubble of our lives.” I leaned forward and slid my hand over his face, his delicious stubble prickly and silky in different places. “We have that in common.”
He nodded. I covered his hand, caressing his skin. “I want to be ready to move on.” I squeezed. “I do, Chase. It’s just that sometimes emotions can be complicated, and after loving Jeff so hard…losing him took a tremendous toll. I�
�m just not sure how this will go between us, but if we don’t take a step toward trying it on for size, we’re never going to know.” Jeff’s death had left a gaping hole, and losing a child? There are no words for that kind of pain, but I had mourned them for more than two years. The question of my happiness, of a full life, hung in the balance here. Would it work with Chase? I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.
“How about we take this slow and easy? No pressure for now. Does that sound like a good plan?”
“I think it’s the best plan we’ve got for now.” I didn’t want to get in too deep, then hurt Chase. Ha, that was like walking into quicksand and expecting to only sink a little. At this point, I didn’t even know what I was capable of. All I knew was that he was a special man. Warm and kind, sexy as hell, and someone I wanted to get to know better.
“Look, this is hard for me, too,” he said. “I’ve been isolated in the bayou for years. Ever since high school. I left home when I was a senior. There aren’t many women interested in a guy who lives in the backcountry and fishes for a living. At least not many with all their teeth.”
I chuckled, then gave his arm a soft punch and said, “Stop it.”
He sobered. “I’ve had a major crush on you for some time. Let’s see where we go.”
I rose at the same time as he did, as if we couldn’t stand up fast enough, get to each other quickly enough. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on. So many facets to this man. How hard his body was, how the scent of outdoors, sunshine, and spice was so much a part of him. How our bodies fused together, and how his strength and warmth wrapped around me, making me feel more protected than I had felt since I moved here. His breath was warm against my temple, the weight of his arms across my back, the press of his hips to mine…
