Chapter Ten
Shane should have known his request to his mother would bring questions. He just didn’t realize it was going to be a family affair.
All over some homemade éclairs.
“I don’t understand, honey,” his mother said. She stood in her sunny kitchen, an apron over her dress. She’d worn a dress every day for as long as he could remember. “Aren’t you off tomorrow?”
“Yes, he is.” His sister, Jess, gave him a measured, somewhat accusatory glare over a glass of orange juice. How anyone could drink orange juice with an éclair, he didn’t know. As far as he was concerned, that just ruined both flavors.
“Good to know you’ve grasped the concept of one day on, two off,” Shane told her. He gave her a warning glance he immediately regretted. She’d be all over that like a bloodhound. “Speaking of which, shouldn’t you be at work?” His sister taught English as a Second Language, floating between the local schools and community college. If she had a schedule, he’d never been able to grasp it, but early on a weekday seemed as good a time as any to be anywhere else.
She rolled her eyes and pushed her dark hair away from her face. “Just because you work twenty-four-hour shifts doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t have flexible schedules.”
“It’s eight in the morning.”
“So what? I’m working nine to five. Besides, Mom told me she was making éclairs. Which brings us back to your very special request. The one you never make for your days off.”
“It’s food. I eat.”
“It is an unusual request,” his mother said, trading glances with her lookalike daughter. How the woman hadn’t yet gone gray, he didn’t know. At sixty-three, she had the life and energy of someone half her age. Sometimes Shane wondered how losing her husband, his father, hadn’t broken her. He still didn’t know how she’d been able to move on, away from Denver and the family they’d once been, to start over. Even then, he’d wanted to stay in the shadow of his father’s footsteps, to grow up in the only place his family had ever been whole. When he was younger, he thought her ability to put one foot in front of the other meant her heart hadn’t been broken, and he’d been pissed. But as an adult, he saw past that. She hadn’t dated anyone since. Photos from their marriage adorned the new house as it had the old. His dad’s boots still sat by the nightstand, just as they always had. She’d moved on, but she hadn’t.
It was the one thing they never talked about.
In that moment, Shane wished those damned éclairs could be another point of avoidance.
“Heard you had another call on the bridge,” Jess said. She popped a torn-off bite of éclair in her mouth after she spoke, but it did nothing to hide the smirk.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he told her, unsure what information she thought she had, because there wasn’t anything to know. Still, she seemed to think she knew something. “A woman who overestimated her ability to cross on foot.”
Jess cocked an eyebrow. “How, exactly, does one overestimate one’s ability to walk the length of a sidewalk?”
“It happens when you’re afraid of rivers and have never crossed a bridge like that before.” Damn it, here he was defending Caitlin when he’d had to bite back the same teasing accusation more times than he could count.
Jess picked apart her éclair like she was trying to sell it on an infomercial, squishing the soft dough and dragging a manicured fingertip through the cream filling. “Is that why you took her to dinner?”
There it was. He sighed.
His mother beamed. “You’re seeing someone? Here?”
The implication irked him. Yep, met a woman a few days ago. I’ll just dead-end my career now. “No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, other than the fact that my vision is intact, I am not seeing anyone. Especially not here. As you both well know, I report to Denver in a little over a week.”
Two pairs of dark, troubled eyes settled on him, mirror images of each other. His mother was the one to speak. “I wish you’d reconsider.”
“It’s a done deal.” The words came out firmer than he’d intended. “And it’s my life. It’s past time I live it for me.” Those words had become his mantra—a go-to when someone questioned why he’d give up “everything” in Dry Rock for a bigger, less personal department. But he didn’t see himself wallowing in a bigger pond. He saw bigger opportunities. More room for advancement. Excitement. That was what he’d been giving up, and he’d done that long enough.
His mother blanched, but as quickly as she reacted, she shook it off. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, “I’ll just go get one of those bakery boxes for you.”
Shane didn’t watch her go.
If he wanted a knife to twist, he had his sister for that.
Jess’s eyes flashed. “You’re killing her.”
Generally speaking, he adored his little sister, but ever since his transfer had been approved, she’d taken a jab every chance she got. The underlying hurt…he just chose to ignore that. “I think you’re exaggerating,” he said, “and I cannot base my decisions on a radius someone else dictates. Besides, she said she supported me.”
“Of course she said that, you moron. But she already lost Dad. Can you imagine how hard it is for her to watch you go try to fill his shoes?”
He thought of all the times as a child he’d done exactly that, stepping into his father’s work boots, tripping on the laces while he walked wobbly circles around his parents’ bed. “I’m not trying to fill anything.”
“You’re leaving behind real people to chase a ghost,” she said.
He opened and closed his hand, but the exercise did nothing to alleviate the growing tension that clawed at him every time he walked through his mother’s door. “I’m getting a promotion.”
“At what cost?”
She was on his mom’s side, fighting a battle his mother never would. He got that. And he didn’t want to hurt either of them, but this was his life, his dream, and he wouldn’t be guilted out of it. “More of a profit, if you must know, but it’s not about that.”
She slid off the stool, giving him a brush with hope that she’d give up the fight. “If you’re so bent on being the hero Dad was, I think you’re forgetting something important.”
Wrong. Again. Warily, he asked, “Which is?”
“He didn’t leave us because he wanted to, and you won’t ever be able to say that.”
She slammed her glass in the sink—it was a fucking miracle the thing didn’t shatter on impact—then walked out of the small house that had been the family home for the better part of two decades, though he and Jess had long moved out. He was so lost in thought that he jumped when his mom touched his arm.
“She’ll be okay,” she said gently. Always gentle, ever the diplomat. Did the woman ever say what she really thought?
Guilt besieged him. “Are you?”
She shrugged, but the indifferent gesture didn’t keep the shadows from her face. She’d always seemed so happy, which was something else he’d never understood but had come to take for granted. “You love people for who they are,” she said. “You can’t put conditions on something like that.”
“Which is code for?”
This time her smile was genuine. “What is it the kids say now? You do you?”
He laughed. “Where did you hear that?”
“Flora picked it up from her grandchildren,” she said of her bedazzled tracksuit–wearing neighbor with Crayola-blue streaks in her hair.
“I can only imagine what she’s teaching them,” he joked, watching as his mom arranged four éclairs in one of the bakery boxes she purchased in bulk and folded the lid. “You know that’s overkill, right?”
“Presentation is everything, my boy, and I won’t have you taking my pastries out for the world to see in plastic wrap and stained GladWare.”
“The whole world, huh?” Actually, it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Steady demand for her baked goods allowed her to retire early from her decades-long job with a floral delivery service after a knee injury made a painful prospect out of getting in and out of the truck all day.
“Not the world,” she told him. “Not the fire station, and not that young lady you’re trying to impress.”
“I’m just returning a kindness,” he said, a little too quickly.
His mother hmphed but when she spoke, she’d switched gears. “Follow your dreams. Jess will come to understand a person can’t live any other way.”
He watched as she leaned down to pet the tabby cat that wound between her ankles. His mother must be having a good day, as far as days went. Sometimes he felt guilty asking her to bake anything, but she insisted it kept her young. Plus, she tended to do it whether or not anyone made a request. “And you?” he inquired. “Are you okay with it?” He hated to even ask. He wanted her to be okay, but what if she said she wasn’t? Would he give it up all over again? For so long, he’d let his conscience make decisions for him. He hadn’t pushed the transfer, but the time was finally right, and he needed to make his own way whether or not they liked it.
“I know how to buy a bus ticket to Denver,” she said.
“Or you could drive your car.”
She swatted at him. “I don’t drive on the interstate, and you know it.”
That, of course, made him think of Caitlin, not that she was far from his mind. He leaned down to kiss his mom’s cheek then tucked the box of éclairs under his arm. “I owe you one.”
“If I ever start collecting on all those points you claim you owe, you’re in trouble.”
He laughed, but it didn’t quite fill that void that seemed to grow every time the subject of Denver came up with either his mother or sister. But his mom was right. He could cross that bridge a million times and never get anywhere.
Except to Caitlin.
“I’ll see you later,” he told his mom.
He’d taken his truck. He could have stowed the pastry on the bike and gotten them all there in one piece, but he still hadn’t shaken the feel of Caitlin clinging to him. He’d have given just about anything to turn around, to face the other way while she wrapped her legs around his hips and held on, and that was the last thing he needed to think about.
In fact, it was about the only thing he really needed to forget, which did nothing to explain why he was headed over to her shop, pastries in hand, newly prevalent weird feeling in his chest.
He parallel parked in front of her building and caught himself checking his hair in the rearview. Idiot. Even if he had ever cared about anything like that, his hair was too short to look anything worse than slightly disheveled. Irritated with himself, he scrubbed his hand through the strands until he managed to make the barest mess of things, and then exited the truck with the éclairs.
He knocked, feeling extremely self-conscious as he waited for Caitlin to open the door. He didn’t know for sure she was there, though he couldn’t imagine where else she’d be mid-morning.
The door creaked open.
Caitlin blinked with surprise. “Hey.”
“Thought you might like to try the best éclairs in town, and I brought back the book.”
Her expression shifted to skepticism. “You finished it already?”
“I did.” Mostly to be a pain in her ass, but he’d been surprised to find it interesting, if dated. “If there’s ever the need for a conversation about what feminists in the nineteen-thirties thought of pornography, I’m your guy.”
One sculpted eyebrow rose. “And as a follow-up, you brought me cream-filled, phallic-shaped pastries?”
He snorted laughter. “My mom made those. I can assure you, she didn’t have a phallus in mind, let alone a cream-filled one.”
“But you do.” Her words were cautious. Guarded.
Which told him plenty about where her thoughts had gone, and he wondered if they’d lingered that way for days, as had his. “I do now,” he said.
And thus descended the most awkward of all silences. He swallowed. “So, Lexi says you have a lot of sex books here.”
Yep, the worst possible way to break an awkward silence.
She cleared her throat, only it was more of a cough. Probably even an excuse, but if he’d hoped to open a door, he was sorely disappointed, because rather than invite him to bed—or a lumpy sofa—she oh-so-helpfully said, “And there’s a whole section on kittens.”
Innocent enough statement, but way too tempting to let go. He waited until she’d taken her first bite before he spoke. “Pussy cats?”
She choked.
He moved closer, just in case he needed to perform the Heimlich maneuver—knowing Caitlin, he’d almost expect it—but she recovered. And glared. “Kittens are perfectly decent. I don’t know why you had to do that.”
“Yes you do,” he said. She had a dab of cream on the corner of her mouth, damn it all. He hadn’t considered pastries—even phallic-shaped ones—could turn his thoughts to sex, but there he stood, this beautiful, maddening woman proving that kiss wouldn’t be one he’d soon forget. That stupid bit of cream taunted him. Why couldn’t she lick it off? Yeah, like that would improve the direction of his thoughts.
Hell. Maybe he should lick it. A painful tightening of his groin seconded that idea. Before he could act on anything involving his mouth, he reached for her, smearing the cream with his finger.
Her eyes widened, and she turned her head slightly, more of an instinctive reaction than an invitation. After which his finger landed on the middle of her bottom lip. A moment passed, with nothing in the world between them but a few dusty inches of airspace and a really bad idea.
And Denver.
He took a slow, deliberate breath then smudged the cream across her lip. If she bit down on his finger, it was game on. But she found a new method of avoidance. Her eyes drifted closed at his touch, so he took full advantage, studying her face. The way her glasses rested on a smattering of freckles. The length of her lashes. The absolute perfection of her skin.
He tugged at her lip with his thumb.
Her eyes fluttered open.
Denver.
“You have something on your…here,” he eventually said, avoiding at all costs the word cream, while he coaxed the last little bit from her mouth. He dropped the contact, looked awkwardly at the remnants of her éclair, then gave up and sucked his finger clean, though his mind went elsewhere.
Caitlin watched, her gaze following his hand then shifting to his face. He wondered if she realized what she was doing when she tentatively traced her lips with her tongue, then if she knew what she did to him. He would have thought she’d revel in something like that, but she seemed dazed. Unfocused.
They hadn’t separated. Not really. He could still smell her shampoo. His finger still tingled with the softness of her lip. “Do you really have a lot of sex books?” he asked.
“Why?” she asked softly. “Do you have a lot to learn?”
He was…impressed. Her tone would have been perfectly at home across a battered pillow sitting cockeyed on a ravaged bed, but she’d landed a jab with expert precision. “I was a little more curious as to what I might learn about you.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, wrecking him. “I’ve got news for you, Lieutenant. A book isn’t the way to do it.”
He took a step back, needing the space. Was she flirting with him? It didn’t matter. If he had to report to his new job in the morning, he’d be on the interstate tonight, no matter what she thought of him or sex or anything cream-filled and phallic. Yet… “What about lunch? Tomorrow?”
She left him on edge for the longest time before answering. “I’m sure I’ll eat.”
“I’ll come by at noon,” he said, though she hadn’t agreed to eating with him. Nor did he give her the chance to say no. Instead, he let himself out of the store, clearing the stoop before he looked back to find her with her fingertips touching her lip and her gaze fixed on him.
He should have called it off right then. Maybe go home and pack a bag or two. Check up on that apartment he’d leased in Denver, even though he’d yet to receive a confirmation that it would be ready on schedule.
But for the first time since the opportunity opened for a transfer, Denver had lost some of its appeal.
And damned if Caitlin Tyler hadn’t found it.