Hailey had left at five, but the store had stayed busy until six. Once Lily made her announcement about the easement, Paige thought, Hailey could buy some more balloons, and maybe they’d do a big event. A sort of Grand Re-Opening. That would be exciting to see. If Paige were still here, of course, because that sale would be Lily’s. Lily’s choice, Lily’s to work out. Lily’s shop.
She went through the closing routine, feeling a little melancholy. She was almost done here. It had been surprisingly fun. Not her life, but fun all the same. And maybe more.
When she heard a knock at the front door, she jumped.
You’re carrying a weapon, she thought, looking up at the same instant to see who was out there. Oh. Jace. Not dressed in jeans and a T-shirt this time. Instead, he was wearing dress pants and a collared shirt she hadn’t known he possessed. She went to the door, turned the lock, and said, “You’re early. Plainclothes, huh?”
Jace stepped inside and waited for her to lock the door. “No. Dressed to take a pretty lady out to dinner by the lake.”
She looked into that dark, intense face and thought, What the hell, then wrapped an arm around his neck and said, “The lady appreciates it. She’d like you to kiss her, too.”
He did it. Still gently, but very, very nicely. His lips brushing over hers first, then settling in and doing it a little better, his arm going around her. He smelled like pine soap and warmth, and she inhaled his scent, tingled all the way to her toes, and got a little lightheaded. When his lips strayed over her cheek, she murmured, “I think people are looking. We’re sort of lit up.”
She felt the curve of his smile against her skin, the rasp of the scruff he’d trimmed once again just for her, and shivered. “I am, anyway,” he said. Which was true. He had her pulled up tightly enough against his body that she could say that without any doubt. It felt great.
Her phone rang.
Jace said, “Ignore it.”
She said, “Lily,” and he stood back with a sigh and said, “Lily.”
When she picked it up, though, it wasn’t Lily. She saw the area code first, then the number, and had to put a hand on the counter.
It had gone to voicemail. She muttered something nasty and pushed the redial number. This time, she got his voicemail. She swore again, hung up, and stared at the phone.
Jace said, “What?”
“Just a… just a minute.” Thirty seconds, and she pushed redial again. This time, she heard it. “Hello, Hollander.”
She couldn’t tell. She said, “Hello, Lieutenant.” She wanted to say, “Sorry I missed your call.” She wanted to babble. She forced herself to shut up instead.
“I just got the unofficial word from somebody on the Commission,” Lieutenant Iverson said. “I hope you’re healing well.”
She couldn’t breathe, and her hand was on the counter as if she needed it to hold her up. “Because the word I’m getting,” the lieutenant said, his voice as deliberate as ever, and she wanted to scream at him to just tell her, “is that you’re cleared. We should get the official notice on Monday. Congratulations.”
Her legs had started to shake, and Jace was there, pulling a stool out from behind the counter and pushing her down onto it. “Thank you,” she said through lips that had gone numb. “Pat? What about him? Clearing his name?”
A little satisfaction may have crept into the lieutenant’s tone. “I don’t have details yet, but the word I got was that you’re both cleared. Which is very good to hear.”
“Jasmine.”
“I’ll be talking to Jasmine, yes.” He didn’t have to say, Above your pay grade. She knew it was. She cared anyway. “This would be a good time to ask you about your fitness,” he said. “And for you to get back here so we can have that evaluated. Assuming we do get the official word Monday, I’d like to see you Tuesday.”
“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Hollander,” he said. “Take a minute. Take a day. Talk it over. Mental fitness is real. Make sure you’re ready, because you won’t fool the doctor, and you won’t fool the psychologist.”
“I know. I am. I will be.”
“Good. You’ll hear from me Monday.”
She didn’t hang up the phone. Instead, she set it on the counter, put her palms on her thighs, and tried to breathe.
When Jace said, “Want to tell me?” she jumped. She’d forgotten he was there.
“Oh.” She tried to laugh, but it came out choked. “I’m back. I’m going to be…” Her voice was shaking. “I’m going to be cleared. And Pat.” His face was there, suddenly, just behind her eyes. His voice, deep and sonorous, and she had to blink back tears. “Pat is, too. His name. His badge. My badge.”
The sob ripped its way up through her chest, and then it was out, and she couldn’t help it. She put a hand over her face to keep it back, to keep it in, but she couldn’t do it. And Jace was in front of her, his arms around her. She dimly thought, View from the street, and didn’t care. She wrapped her arms around him, buried her face in his chest, and let the sobs come. She couldn’t have held them back.
She tried to tell him. She said, “I didn’t want to think… I didn’t want… I thought I’d…” and couldn’t go on.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s all right. No worries.”
Finally, she sat back, her chest still heaving, her breath still coming hard, put a hand over her face for a different reason this time, because she was a mess, and said, “I need… bathroom. I’ll be back.”
“Go on,” he said. “Do you want me to call Lily and tell her?”
“Oh. Yes. Please.” If she did it, she was going to cry again, and she needed some time. He helped her off the stool, and she headed to the back room. After five or ten minutes of blowing her nose and pressing cold paper towels to her face, she was breathing better. She looked terrible, but at least she wasn’t sobbing her brains out anymore. Again.
When she came out again, Jace was standing by the door, looking out into the street. He’d turned the lights off in the store, probably to present less of a target, and the light was dim inside with the big display window still boarded over. He was still thinking, even when she wasn’t. She went to him, slipped an arm around his waist, leaned her head against his shoulder, and said, “Thanks. Your shirt’s a mess.” His chest was, in fact, soaked with tears and makeup. That was lovely.
He put his arm around her and said, “Not going to say, ‘Sorry for crying?’ We’ll call that progress, hey.”
“Maybe I think you understand crying.”
“Maybe you’re right. I understand wanting your job back, too. And you’ve got it. You knew you didn’t do anything wrong, and your partner didn’t, either. Sometimes, a review board gets the answer right.”
“Yes.” The emotion was changing, now, fizzing up and over. Like champagne, or something more complicated than champagne. Something deeper. Something hard to grab hold of. “And you’re so… so wonderful. And I’m… I can’t.” She pressed her lips to his neck, breathed in the warm-cotton scent of him, and thought, I get to go back. And I have to go back. And… and something she didn’t want to look at too closely right now. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to know she was alive, and that he was here with her. Right now.
Her hand had somehow undone two of the lower buttons of his shirt, and she had her hand in there, stroking over the firm warmth of those abs. And he was closing his eyes and swearing, then saying, “Back room.” And then, “Oh, the hell with it.” He had his arms under her, was picking her up, going around the counter, and setting her down on it.
Behind the counter, but anybody would be able to tell what they were doing if they looked in through the door. She should care about that. She didn’t. She had both hands around his head, was kissing him with everything she had, and he was still being careful. She tore her mouth away and said, “I don’t care if it hurts. Kiss me.”
“Bloody hell,” he said. Then he was sweeping everything out of the way with an impatient arm. She heard a clatter as the credit-card machine hit the stapler, a fwump as a stack of catalogs hit the floor, and she didn’t care about that, either. Jace had both hands on her hips, was hauling her close, then forcing her mouth open beneath his, kissing her with all the power he’d held back before. Almost all. He still wasn’t doing it quite hard enough, but she wasn’t going to complain anymore. He had a hand under her tunic, was lifting her hips to yank it out from under her, then pulling it up over her body. He said, his voice taut, “Careful of your shoulder. Help me out here,” so she did. She flinched and gasped all the same, and he swore again, stood back, and dropped her tunic to the floor. She unfastened the thigh holster and set it and her weapon on the counter, and he looked at it, then back at her. “That’s a first,” he said. There was so much heat in those hard blue eyes. So much power in the hand on her hip. “If it hurts, we’re stopping and fixing it. I don’t want to hear, ‘I don’t care.’ I care. If it hurts, you’re telling me so I can fix it.”
“Yes,” she said, because he was waiting for her answer, and she needed to get to the good stuff. She was unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way, sliding her hands over his midriff, up his chest, then yanking the shirt off his shoulders. He let her do it, and when she pressed her lips to his neck, he groaned, and she got a powerful rush.
She murmured, between kisses, “The bra strap’s hard to get to. You could unfasten that for me.”
“Or you could shut up,” he said, and she gasped for a different reason. “And let me look at how pretty this is, and touch it, and feel you, and fuck you. We could do it my way.”
Oh, boy. She wanted to close her eyes, and she didn’t. Instead, she stroked her hands over his shoulders, pressed her lips to his throat, and said, “You going to talk? Or you going to do it?”
Half of his mind said, She’s leaving anyway. You know it. You know that that’s why you want it this way, too. The other half said, I need to. I have to. That half was winning. He was shimmying her leggings down her thighs, her calves, easing her boots and socks off, and taking the leggings with them. And then he stood up again, got a hand around each knee, pressed her thighs slowly apart, and looked at her.
Her shoulder was still bruised, showing dark blue, and so was her face, now that she’d washed the heavy makeup off. He lifted her face with a thumb under her chin and kissed her, keeping it softer now, but getting his tongue in there all the same. Her mouth was warm and soft, she smelled spicy-sweet as Christmas, and what could a man do? He kissed her some more. Finally, he kissed his way to her ear and murmured into it, “I like these undies. Did you wear these for me?”
“Ah… yeah,” she said on a breath. “They came in today. Ah… they’re… red.”
He had to smile. “I see that.” Cherry-red, deep and rich. The bra was nearly sheer, and that other scrap of fabric was surely a thong, only a coy pattern of lacy vines covering anything at all. He had a hand tracing around the top edges of the bra, skimming the full swell of her pretty breasts, and she had one hand behind her, the other one on his shoulder, like she needed to hang on. That was nice.
When he slipped his fingers under the edge of that fabric, she caught her breath. When he grazed that taut little nipple, she moaned. And when he had both hands under there, pulled the cups under her breasts so they were lifted for him? She was already rocking.
There was nothing like a woman, her upper body draped over your arm, her legs wrapped around you, making some noise while you licked and sucked and bit your way down her neck, finally got your mouth on one of those full breasts, and made her feel it. She was saying his name again, and when his hand stroked lightly over that pattern of vines between her legs, exploring every sinuous curve? She was saying it louder.
He went as slowly as he could manage. He needed to spend some time with his hands on those scraps of silk, and then he needed to drop to his knees. As he was doing it, she sat up a little, her hair tumbled around her shoulders, her breath coming in panting gasps, and said, “Jace. It’s still light.”
“Mm.” He got down there, got his hands and then his mouth on her, and she stopped complaining.
You could do heaps with a woman without taking off her thong. In fact, it made a nice little toy, and he played with it, and with her, as long as he could stand it.
And when you finally shoved it aside? That woman could go a little wild. There was nothing in the world like that, or like standing up again when she was shaking and still calling your name from that last orgasm. Nothing like getting both hands under the straps of that thong and pulling it down her legs and all the way off her, then taking off the bra. So she was naked. On the counter, in a shop on Main Street, and you were just about to fuck her.
When he drove into her, she called out loud. And when he had her ass in his hands and was rocking her good, she kept on doing it. The harder he went, the louder she got. Leaning all the way back on one elbow until her shoulder hit the counter’s edge, her legs wrapped around his hips, clasping him with everything she had.
She closed her eyes. She called his name. And when he got his hand down there and helped her out? She sobbed out some words he’d never heard her say. She tightened all the way around him, and then she let it go. Shuddering. Shaking. Rocking hard.
You could get the girl. You could get her good. You couldn’t always keep her.
He took what he could get.