The Time In Between
Coert
Present day . . .
COERT TORE HIS MOUTH FROM Cady’s, pulled her ass off the basin where he’d planted it and put her feet to the ground.
He barely got her there before he turned her to face the sink, put his hands to her belt and started to undo it.
His cock jerked when he heard her sharp gasp.
Being quick in getting them undone, he yanked her jeans down to her thighs before he reached for his wallet.
He’d tossed it in the basin and was pulling his own pants down when he heard Cady ask breathily, “Is it legal to have sex in the bathroom of a bar, Sheriff?”
His eyes went to hers in the mirror and his hand went to his dick.
She looked turned on, hot, bothered, and sexy as all hell with her face like that and her pants yanked down.
“Anything’s legal if you don’t get caught, honey,” he answered. “So be quiet.”
“I think it’s doubtful you’re going to say that at the next sheriff convention.”
He fought a grin as he rolled the condom on and warned, “You’re not being quiet.”
“Are there sheriff conventions?” she asked in a way he knew she was screwing with him because it was even breathier and her face was getting hotter and a lot more bothered.
She wasn’t going to shut up.
So he dipped his knees, slanted one arm across her chest, hand curling around her jaw, thumb gliding across her lower lip.
Her tongue came out to touch it.
He felt that touch drive through his balls, and he watched as he guided himself to her and drove inside at the same time he slid his thumb in her mouth.
Her head fell back.
And then Coert watched himself fuck her, gliding his other hand around her hip and honing in.
She whimpered against his thumb when he hit his target.
Jesus, she was spectacular.
He fucked her harder while his finger circled her clit.
Her eyes found his in the mirror and Cady sucked his thumb deeper.
“Christ,” he bit out low, going faster.
She got way up on her toes, angling her ass to get more of him and Coert gave more to her, staring at her taking him, front and back, in the mirror.
He flattened his thumb against her tongue then slid it out, raking it across her bottom teeth, forcing her mouth open so he could hear her rasping breaths.
She brought her top teeth down and nipped the pad of his thumb.
“Christ,” he grunted, and watched as Cady took one of the hands she had braced against the basin and wound it behind them, grabbing on to his bared ass and holding tight.
She turned her head and he lost the look on her face as she tucked it in his neck so he dropped his head and listened to her beg, “Fuck me, Coert.”
“Again,” he growled.
“Fuck me, honey.”
He bowed his knees further and powered up, taking her off her toes and getting off on her abrupt gasp.
“Yes, Coert, I’m . . . Coert.”
He used his jaw and chin to force her head back and took her mouth right when she came. The whimper sounded soft and muted in the room but it tasted fucking phenomenal.
She returned the favor, grasping his ass, taking his thrusts, wrapping her other arm around his head to hold his lips to hers. Pumping her tongue into his mouth in tandem with his drives, she muffled his grunts and swallowed his deep groan when everything disintegrated and his world became nothing but Cady’s hand at his ass, her tongue in his mouth, his cock buried in her pussy.
Coming down he glided inside awhile before he pulled out and away, steadying her as he did. When she had hold of the basin and was firm on her feet, he yanked his jeans up, helped her right hers and she finished doing them while he dealt with the condom and grabbed his wallet out of the sink.
She leaned against the basin as Coert was washing his hands and she did it sharing, “That was the hottest thing we’ve ever done.”
She was not wrong.
They’d always run hot.
But bathroom-in-a-bar sex?
Nothing was that hot.
Having squirted soap in his hands, he turned his head to her and grinned.
She must have liked the way he did because her gaze dropped to his mouth and her face gentled but her eyes flared with heat.
But her mouth kept moving.
“Except, maybe, me attacking you on my couch.”
Coert shook his head, and still grinning, he turned his attention to his hands.
“Or when you dragged me up to your bed after I gave you a pie.”
Coert continued grinning as he rinsed his soapy hands.
“Or when you dragged me back to your bed not letting me finish my wine.”
He turned off the faucet, leaned into her, and she didn’t move as he reached for some paper towel.
“Then there was that time on the kitchen floor at Casey’s house,” she carried on. “And the time we didn’t make it up the stairs after we came home from that party at Lonnie and Maria’s. And that time we found that waterbed at, what were their names?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She said, “We need to find another water bed.”
He twisted at the waist, brushing her with an arm, they were that close, and tossed the spent paper towels to the bin, refusing to burn brain cells thinking about how great it was they were at a place where these memories were hot and sweet and not hard and painful.
Cady kept talking.
“And under the Christmas tree. And in the bed of your truck. It was cold that night, but you kept me warm. And—”
He hooked her with an arm and yanked her to his body, dropping his head and saying, “Baby, you want a drink?”
“I think we should celebrate Sheriff Coert Yeager’s first unlawful act, so yes.”
That was when he started laughing.
But he’d barely started doing it before he dropped his head farther and kissed her right through it.
“Uh, just to say, although I’m beyond thrilled you were so impatient to get in my pants, Sheriff Yeager, I’ve been released from family duty for the evening primarily because Mike and Pam want to sleep in a real bed, not in the back of an RV. So they essentially kicked me out.”
They were out of the bathroom sitting at a high table on tall barstools at the Adam and Eve, the oldest bar in Magdalene, claimed as such even though it was a couple miles outside the city limits, inland from the sea.
It was popular with the townies, who kept quiet about it so they’d have a place to go that the tourists wouldn’t find. It was mostly a dive, but only in a been-around-awhile-and-the-owners-didn’t-feel-like-redecorating kind of way.
And fortunately the bathrooms were clean, there were four of them, and all of them were single occupancy.
Coert had bought Cady a glass of wine and he had a bottle of beer in front of him.
“So I have my overnight bag in my car,” she finished.
“Am I gonna get that until I get Janie back Monday night?” he asked, hoping he would because it was Friday and he’d be freaking thrilled to bed down with Cady and wake up with her the next two days.
“Do you want it?” she asked back.
He shot her a look and didn’t bother to answer a question that stupid.
She smiled at him. “Then you’re getting it.” She reached out a hand to his and the second she touched him, he turned his wrist and curled his fingers around hers. “And can you spend some time with us this weekend?”
He shook his head but said, “I can but not much. To give my guys time with their families on a weekend after a holiday, I’m in the office both days and on call all weekend. You’d think things would slow down around the holidays because they’re the holidays and because it’s frickin’ cold outside. But it’s the opposite, mostly because people drink a lot, and drunk people do stupid shit. Stupid drunk people do really stupid shit. And both kinds get really drunk around Christmas.”
“Ah,” she murmured.
“So maybe if you want me for dinner, I can do that. But if I get a call, I gotta roll.”
She nodded.
“I’ll give you a key to my house so you can get in.”
At that, she smiled again and her fingers curled tighter around his.
“And I’ll give you one to the lighthouse too and order another remote for the gate,” she told him.
And at that, Coert tightened his fingers around hers.
He then gave her hand a tug and leaned in. “By the way, when your family is gone, we have a command performance meal at The Eaves with Jake and Josie, Amelia and Mick and Alyssa and Junior.”
For a second she looked confused then it dawned on her and she looked sheepish.
“I meant to tell you that I met Josie and Alyssa at a shop on the jetty.”
“I know. Alyssa had a break at the salon today and took it to stroll to the station. Apparently we should have picked something other than the town’s beauty salon to have a drama right outside their window.”
Her eyes got big.
Coert leaned in and gave her a quick kiss before he pulled away.
“It’s okay,” he said softly.
“You’re the sheriff.”
“Baby, I fucked you in the bathroom of the Adam and Eve. You didn’t have sex hair when you walked out but you sure had sex face. We’re sitting here holding hands. We’re not a secret. We’re also human and shit happens. It’s against the law to have sex in a public place. It isn’t against the law to shout at someone on the street.”
She looked alarmed.
“I had sex face?” she asked.
She still kinda did.
He didn’t tell her that.
Through his chuckle, he answered, “Trust me, it’s a good look.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
He kept chuckling, and to move her past that, told her, “They have a reservation. And Alyssa says she’s waiting for your call to make an appointment at the salon so she’s not only nosing into our business, she’s recruiting a new client. She’s crazy, but she’s a really good person. Great wife. Great mother. Far’s I can tell, great friend. She’s on a bent of adopting all the new women around her age that come to town, and there’s been a few of them recently, Josie and Amelia namely. My impression is she’s done that because they needed a girl close to get them through some rough times. She’s making it clear they want to take you on, and I’ll say, you could do worse but not sure you could do better.”
“So you know all of these people?” she asked.
“Jake’s one of my closest buds. Mickey’s the same. So yeah. Josie and Jake didn’t get married too long ago and Josie adopted Jake’s youngest, his two older kids have a different mom. Amelia’s newer but she and Mick have been together for a while now. I say that because you won’t feel new or like you’re coming into a group that’s established and you’re the odd man out. Except for Alyssa, all the women are all new to Magdalene and they’re all mostly just starting out together with their men. So in a way, we’ll both fit right in.”
“I know I shouldn’t share, about us, I mean, with you being a public figure. An elected figure. But I have to tell you that I might have let slip—”
“Honey,” he whispered, leaning closer to her. “I know what you said. Alyssa alluded to it. I don’t care. It happened. What happened with us happened. You didn’t do anything wrong, now or then. I didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t go on a killing spree. We got caught up in something extreme that we were too young to cope with. I’ve got nothing to hide. Neither do you.” He grinned. “And if it gets out, which with Alyssa is a crapshoot, it’ll wrap up the female vote for me. Long lost loves reunited. They’ll all swoon.”
She leaned back, took hold of her wine in her free hand, but even pulling away, she kept hold of his hand.
And she did all of this stating, “Women do vote for people for more reasons than they’re attractive or they’re heading toward the happily ever after, living a real-life, mostly tragic, finally brightening romance novel, Coert.” She took a sip with her eyes directed away and slanted them back before concluding, “And it’s been some time since women regularly swooned and they did it before mostly because they had to wear corsets.”
Coert busted out laughing.
Cady rolled her eyes.
He erased the distance she’d put between them by kissing her lightly again, tasting wine and Cady, before he shifted away and grabbed his bottle of beer.
After taking a swig, he said, “So we’re on for the fourth of January at The Eaves. It’s dressy. Is that cool?”
“The guys and the kids are leaving the second but the girls are staying until that weekend for some girl time. Do you think they could come?” she asked.
“I think Jake and Mick are my best buds but if we put Alyssa together with Kath, Pam and Shannon, and they have to sit through that, they might not think the same way about me.”
She blinked at him.
“Kath, particularly, is nuts,” he told her. “But in a good way,” he added.
“They’re lovely,” she retorted.
“They are,” Coert agreed. “But I haven’t lived forty-six years of life not figuring out what kind of women should not be thrown together when there are people with penises in the mix.”
Her upper body started shaking, and her voice was too when she replied, “Alyssa struck me as someone who would be Kath’s best friend in the entire world in about two seconds, and that world should watch out when that happens.”
As she spoke, something struck Coert and the smile he had on his face died.
“Was she the one who was with you when you went to see Caylen?”
Cady had watched his smile die and her face grew concerned. “Yes, but honestly, Coert, he was being—”
“I’m glad.”
She shut up.
“Don’t go see him again,” he ordered.
She shook her head. “I already told you I won’t.”
“When I told you before you shouldn’t, I didn’t mean it the way I mean how I’m telling you now you just won’t.”
Cady stared at him.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re your own woman. Got your own money. Your own home. Your own car. Your own life. Your own mind. And it may seem the way I’m saying all that that I’m patronizing you. But I promise, I really do get it. But back then, Cady, I was not in a place to put a stop to that asshole being an asshole to you. Now I am. He called the fucking sheriff to warn his sister off just to make trouble for you. Your parents are dead. As far as he knows, he’s all you’ve got and that’s his response?” Coert shook his head. “No. You have a family now. One that’s growing with me and Janie and then maybe Jake and Josie, Mick, Amelia, Alyssa, Junior, and all that may come from that. You don’t need him. You have all you need.”
She stroked the side of his hand with her thumb. “I already gave up on him, Coert.”
“Good,” he bit out.
“Kath called him a fool to his face.”
“Good,” he repeated.
“And, well, also a dick.”
“Good,” he clipped.
She stopped talking but continued studying him.
Coert took another swig of beer.
When he put the bottle back down, she noted softly, “You wanted to protect me back then.”
“I thought I made that clear,” he reminded her.
“You did, I just . . .” She looked away and grabbed her glass again. “You did.”
He waited for her to take a sip and then squeezed her hand to get her attention.
She looked at him.
“What?” he pushed because he knew she’d left something unsaid.
She didn’t make him push harder.
“I was so young, even with all these years, so much pain was covering it that I didn’t see underneath it to see that you kept your promise.”
Coert felt something twisting in his gut. “What promise?”
“That I’d never be safer with anyone than I was with you.”
It was then Coert looked away as that twist in his gut made him feel suddenly sick.
She jerked his hand but Coert just took another swig of his beer to keep down the bile threatening and kept his eyes unseeing across the bar.
“Coert,” she called gently.
“I didn’t keep you safe, Cady.”
“At dinner, both times with my parents and Caylen, you can’t know. I’m glad you’ll never know. But I used to lose it, lose my temper, or get beaten down. But when I was with you, I just endured it because I knew I’d be going home with you. I knew my life was just us and they didn’t matter anymore. If my mom said something or Caylen said something, all I did was look at you and I could handle it.”
That got her Coert’s eyes.
“And when we were out with Lars’s crew,” she continued. “I didn’t like it but I knew you knew it and I wasn’t there for them. I was there with you. So I didn’t care. I didn’t feel unsafe. It was the same thing. I could handle it because you were there with me and in the end, always in the end, Coert, we’d be together and just be . . . us.”
“And that ended not as an always,” he returned.
“And now it’s begun again and it’ll forever be an always.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that because he hoped to God she was right.
She leaned closer to him. “You bought all the food and you took out the trash and you helped me do the dishes, and you got out of bed early to take me to work that time my car wouldn’t start because it was so cold. I loved that. I loved everything about you. Which means I loved how you took care of me and you didn’t make a big deal of it. You just did it like you just breathed.”
“And the time in between I didn’t.”
“Stop it,” she hissed.
Her sudden change of tone made Coert’s head jerk.
“You told me not to go back there, but you keep going back there, Coert. So stop it. We’re not there. We’re here.”
She shook his hand hard and kept speaking.
“And we’re never going to get from here to wherever we’re going if you stay back there. You gave me my diamond and all you could think about was that you wanted to give it to me before. But that doesn’t matter.” She lifted her free hand to her throat where his diamond lay. “I have my diamond. I have you. If you stay in a place where we didn’t have each other, what we have now is going to get bitter and twisted and ugly when, if you were right here with me, in a bar in a beautiful town with a beautiful person you love, you’d see that all we have left of the time in between is just that. Beautiful.”
He took his fingers from around his beer and cupped the side of her face.
And again he had nothing to say because she again was absolutely right.
Though he had something to say about something else.
“That time in between made you wise,” he murmured.
“That time in between made you more handsome, which I find annoying since it just made me older.”
He felt his face get soft. “You’re beautiful, Cady. You’ve always been beautiful. And you always will be.”
She slid her eyes to his ear, muttering, “Right.”
“I miss the freckles though.”
She slid her eyes back.
And when she did, they were wet.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He dropped his forehead to hers.
“Now you know that I wasn’t happy because I didn’t have you,” she told him. “But I was taken care of and I was loved and there were a lot of really good times and you left me to that. You left me with Patrick. It wasn’t your choice and it wasn’t the way it should be, but it was the way it was and what came of that is beautiful. And you got your job and this Jake person and Mickey, and you got Janie. We both suffered but neither of us stopped living our lives and we got so much out of them, so, so much. And now we have each other. So we have it all. If we believe that we can have it all. And I believe. Now, are you with me on that?”
“I’m with you, Cady,” he told her quietly.
“Good, because I’m going to have to get angry if you slip back there again.”
He felt his eyes get lazy with his smile and he adjusted so he could touch his mouth to hers.
But he didn’t separate the connection of their foreheads when he pulled his lips away.
“I’ll try not to make you angry,” he promised.
“See to that,” she ordered, being irritable, he knew, to fight another emotion still in her eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.
He watched from close as her eyes narrowed. “Are you patronizing me now?”
Coert slid his hand to curl it around her neck. “Baby, chill. I’m good. We’re good. We’re having a drink, and then we’re going to my place and sleeping together and waking up together, two days straight, so we got a lot to look forward to.”
“Right,” she said, disconnecting them to the point he removed his hand, and reaching for her wine. “So drink up. I want to get home because I get the top when we have sex in your bed again. You’ve only let me have the top when I attacked you on the couch. I like the top. You go too fast. If I’m in charge, we’ll take it slow.”
He couldn’t believe it, but his dick was getting hard.
However.
“Cady, you’re so not gonna take it slow.”
She swallowed her wine and turned to him. “You do things that escalate things. I’ll do things that elongate things.”
If she didn’t quit talking about sex, something was going to elongate to the point he couldn’t walk out of the bar.
“Cady, stop talking about sex.”
She ignored him. “And you don’t get to touch me.”
Christ.
“Cady, stop talking about sex.”
“Maybe I’ll make you hold on to the headboard.”
Jesus.
“Cady, stop talking about sex.”
She gulped back some wine and looked at him again.
“Do you have handkerchiefs?” she asked. “I’m thinking I’ll tie you up.”
Coert looked to the ceiling and puffed out a breath.
“Oh, right, so it’s only the woman who’s supposed to be tied up,” she declared.
He took hold of her again, this time with his fingers curled around the back of her scalp, and when he pulled her to him it was more of a yank.
“No. It isn’t. But I can talk to you about how I’m down with you tyin’ me up and ridin’ my face and then ridin’ my cock and taking yourself there as often as you want usin’ me to do it, and I can see that look in your eyes, baby. You like that. And you can walk outta here likin’ that, gettin’ wet for me, your panties drenched you want that so bad, and no one will know, but me. But I like that too and I can’t just walk outta here with a drop of pre-cum on my dick and no one will know. You hear what I’m sayin’?”
She got closer, sliding a hand up the top of his thigh which was not helping.
She did this saying breathily, “Wow, dirty talk is fun.”
“You are not getting me.”
She gave him a hooded-eyes, sexy-as-fuck grin and leaned back, dislodging his hand and removing her own, going again to her wine, murmuring, “Oh, I’m getting you, Coert.”
He hated his name. All his life he’d hated his name. No one knew how to pronounce it. No one knew how to spell it.
On Cady’s lips, which were curved up in that hot way, he loved it.
She’d played him.
Got him hard on purpose.
A new discovery from Cady.
He liked it.
“Hurry up with that wine,” he ordered.
She looked at him again. “You can’t chug wine, Coert.”
He lifted a brow.
She grinned and took another sip.
He lifted his beer and didn’t take a swig, he took a glug.
He also managed to control his erection by the time they walked out of the bar.
But just barely.
Cady flew over the edge.
Coert kept bucking up into her as she did and he continued to do it, digging his heels in the bed, his head in the pillows, his fingers curled so tight around the slats in the headboard, it was a miracle they didn’t snap, as he shot inside her.
His grunts mingled with her moans, the sounds of their flesh connecting and Cady whimpering, “Coert.”
So he kept exploding.
Finally, his hips settled. His muscles relaxed. She collapsed on top of him, her hair all over his face and neck, and Coert didn’t care.
The room smelled of sex and Cady, her perfume, the scent of her hair. Her warm, soft body was heavy on top of him, her breaths harsh against his neck. Her slick pussy was tight around his dick, the taste of her still in his mouth, the vision of her lost in it, lost in him, so focused on what they had it was unreal as she rode him. With all that, he could be suspended in that moment for an eternity and he wouldn’t have cared.
He could rub it in she went fast. She rode his face for about five minutes before she got so excited, she had to move down, fumbling maddeningly (but that was in a good way) in her excitement with the condom, and then climbing on his cock in order to ride him rough and hard, like they both had only minutes to reach orgasm before the earth careened into the sun.
But he wasn’t going to rub it in.
At least not now.
Because now he was riding the high of learning there was something hotter than bathroom-in-a-bar sex.
Explosive.
And through it he got to watch her ride him, her beautiful body naked.
All except his diamond.
He turned his head and kissed whatever his lips encountered, which was her hair over her temple.
Then he muttered, “You get your way. You can have the top more often.”
She took her time lifting her head like she didn’t have the energy to do it (and this wasn’t surprising, she’d gone gung ho, especially when she was riding his cock) and looked down at him.
“Well, thank you.”
He knew she meant it snotty but it came out wispy so he smiled.
She shook her head then pushed up slightly, coming away from him. He felt her undo her wool scarf that bound his hands to his headboard.
When it went slack, he slid them free and rounded her with his arms but didn’t move them any other way.
Cady settled back down, flicking her hair away from his face, which was too bad, but burying her face in his neck, which he liked.
“We need to do that again,” she murmured.
“You get tied up next time,” he replied.
She said nothing but she didn’t have to since she also shivered and he knew it wasn’t because she was cold.
He kept one arm wrapped around her waist and used his other hand to smooth over her back, trail through her hair, just touching her, taking her in, before he curved it around her upper back and stroked his knuckles against the side of her breast.
“We should probably not have so much sex and talk more, baby,” he murmured. “There’s a lot to talk about.”
“Mm, but I like having sex,” she murmured back.
He smiled at the ceiling.
She kissed his neck but otherwise didn’t move. “We’ll talk. Maybe I can meet you for lunch tomorrow. We’ll go somewhere like Weatherby’s where it would be terribly inappropriate for Sheriff Yeager to have an erection so I’ll be certain not to make that happen. Instead, I’ll share such important tidbits as, the lighthouse is beginning its tours in February but I’m beginning to volunteer at the Historical Society mid-January. And I still want a French bulldog, or a mastiff, or a Newfoundland. And since Janie has clearly stolen Midnight from me, I now have an excuse.”
Coert heard all she said but it was only one thing that made him stop stroking her to twist his fist gently in her hair and give it a soft tug as he turned his head to the side.
She lifted hers and caught his eyes.
“Tours?” he asked.
“Yes. Two days a month. A Saturday and a Sunday, not the same weekend. Ticketed only. Small groups. And they’ll be guided.”
This wasn’t getting better.
“Guided how?”
“Guided . . . guided. An attendant will be in the lighthouse with the people on tour.”
Nope.
It wasn’t getting better.
“You mean you’re not opening the gate, you’re opening your home?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she answered.
“I don’t like that, Cady.”
She looked perplexed. “Why?”
“That’s your home,” he said again.
“Yes,” she unnecessarily agreed.
“And people do stupid shit.”
She didn’t have a reply to that.
“You have things,” he stated. “Nice things. Things sticky fingers can grab. Or they’ll come there to case the joint. And you just invested a lot to make that joint a really nice joint. They see that they’ll think you have more. Cash. Jewelry. Whatever. You live alone. And that lighthouse is not close to town or really anything.”
“I have Midnight and I have Elijah, and when you don’t have Janie, I’ll have you, and I have an alarm and again, there will be a volunteer doing the tours,” she reminded him.
“Cady, it’s not smart to open your home to strangers.”
“And I have a gate and a fence, Coert,” she went on like he didn’t say anything.
“You’ve unfortunately been touched by it but it was in your life and then it was out. It’s been my life, my career, since I graduated college and the academy so I know people can suck, Cady. I know there are some of them that, if they can’t find ways to suck, they’ll invent them. And it isn’t rare they can do all that.”
“You graduated college?”
Christ, he forgot how cute she could be all the time.
“University of Colorado, criminal justice and poli sci,” he said shortly so he could get back to the matter at hand. “You need to ditch these tours.”
“Coert, Jackie at the Historical Society is over the moon to be able to give tours. Not only that, I’m donating the proceeds of the tickets to the Society. She’s already had her yearly budget approved with her estimate of revenue from this and it’s substantial. I can’t back out now.”
“It isn’t wise.”
“It isn’t foolish either. People in England give tours of private homes and they wouldn’t do that if everyone was robbing them blind.”
“This isn’t England.”
“I know. It’s Magdalene, which is New England.”
“Cady,” he growled.
“Coert,” she snapped.
They fell silent, and as Coert kept his silence, he remembered something else. This being that way back when, he and Cady had disagreed very little.
But regardless of the fact she didn’t hold a degree she was sharp as a whip. No one with that quick a sense of humor wasn’t highly intelligent.
The bad part about that was, she didn’t use that intelligence just to be funny.
She was killer with a comeback in an argument.
Coert broke the silence.
“Am I gonna be able to talk you out of this?”
Cady responded immediately. “No.”
“Then there’ll be a sheriff’s presence at the lighthouse on tour days.”
Her eyes got huge. “That’s not necessary.”
“I’m the sheriff, Cady. So it’s me who gets to say what’s necessary.”
“That’s a personal abuse of resources. Which is an abuse of power. And it’s a conflict of interest.”
“It isn’t a conflict of interest.”
He had her there and he knew she knew it when her reply was, “Well, it’s the other two.”
It absolutely was.
That said . . .
“It’s Magdalene’s lighthouse, Cady, now being open to the public. And as Magdalene doesn’t have its own police force, in these new circumstances, it’s up to me to make certain it remains secure. To add to that, the land outside the lighthouse is officially unincorporated Derby County land, not within the Magdalene city limits, so it’s not only in my jurisdiction, I think it’s well within the purview of the county’s sheriff department to see, with increased traffic, that that area is safe.”
“That’s ridiculous and extreme and I’m uncertain your voters will feel the same way you do.”
“You gonna produce a campaign video to share it with the world?”
“No,” she bit off. “But we had a drama in front of the beauty salon. I came out of a bathroom in a bar, a bathroom that I was in with you, with sex face, and we held hands and kissed through a drink. We’re having lunch together at Weatherby’s tomorrow where I’m not going to make you get hard. People will learn I’m your woman and they’ll hear you’re assigning deputies to guard my home. They’ll question it and I don’t think they’ll like the answers they come up with.”
“Your home happens to be the lighthouse open to the public and I’m not assigning deputies to give the tours, Cady. I said there’ll be a sheriff’s presence. My boys might do drive-bys. They might park and remain. It’s two days a month, not three hundred, sixty-five days a year. If there’s a murder, obviously, they won’t hang at a lighthouse staring down tourists. They’ll roll out.”
“There’s murders in this county?” she whispered.
“There’s murders everywhere,” he replied.
“Oh my God, how many murders have you investigated?”
He didn’t know whether to growl with frustration or bark with laughter.
So he just squeezed her tight and reminded her, “We’re talking about you opening your home to strangers.”
“I brought the old girl back to life, Coert. That needs to be shared. That’s Magdalene’s history. It’s beautiful. Honestly, how selfish would it be to keep those views from the observation room just for us and our friends and family?”
They were getting into sticky territory here not only because she was making sense but also because the lighthouse wasn’t his. It wouldn’t ever be his. Maybe in nineteen, twenty years when their kid graduated from high school and they were empty-nesters, they could move in there.
But in the meantime, it wouldn’t even really be hers because she’d be in the bed she was in right now.
“I’ll share with Jackie you have concerns and that she or the other volunteers might see deputies around until you feel better about the situation,” she carried on. “But except the winter months where weather can be extreme, she’s expecting full tours for each day and she’s doing that because quite a bit of them are already booked. She’s been advertising this is coming for months. I can’t let her down now. I just can’t, Coert. And if you feel your sheriff’s deputies have to stare them down in case a master burglar or a meth head looking to score some glassware and knickknacks he can pawn to pay for his next stash comes calling, then all right.”
“All right?” he asked to confirm.
“All right,” she confirmed.
“Can I be amused instead of annoyed at you now?” he asked to tease.
She narrowed her eyes.
He’d lost her between their legs so he rolled her to her back, stretching down her side, and all through this he was grinning at her.
“I can’t imagine how you’d find it annoying that I would say what I’m going to do with my own home,” she remarked.
“I can’t imagine how you’d find it surprising that anything I think might cause you harm, or upset or aggravation, I’d want to do something to stop.”
When she shut her mouth, she did it so hard he could swear he heard her teeth clack together.
Finally, he got her.
That was when he started laughing.
He just didn’t do it out loud.
“Do you not have any women deputies?” she rapped out suddenly.
“Why do you ask that?” he returned, still chuckling.
“You call them your ‘men’ and your ‘boys’ and they aren’t that if there are females among them.”
“I wouldn’t call them that if there were women, which there aren’t,” he answered.
“Why not?” she demanded to know.
“Because Liz moved to Annapolis with her husband a coupla years ago. He got the offer of a job at a firm that he couldn’t turn down. He’s a defense attorney, by the way, so you can imagine what it was like at their house. But she loved him and she managed not to kill him the five years I knew them while they were married, or the two years they’ve been gone, so go figure. And Jillian took leave to have a baby and decided not to come back, and,” he stressed when she opened her mouth, “that was her decision. She was a loss. The guys still invite her to anything we have going on and she’s still on the softball team. So now that I laid that out, maybe you can give Gloria Steinem a rest and I can have Cady back.”
“Oh my God,” she hissed. “You didn’t just say that.”
Coert dipped his face to hers. “Baby, you are just too easy to tease. You don’t want your buttons pushed, your best bet isn’t to turn on those blinking arrows pointing to them.”
“I’m not enjoying discovering annoying, button-pushing Coert Yeager,” she declared.
He moved in, burying his face in her neck. “Too late, honey. You’re never getting rid of me now.”
She lay tense under him only a second before she turned into him and wrapped her arms around him.
He kissed her neck.
She kissed his throat.
Coert guessed that meant they were done bickering.
“Gotta hit the bathroom, baby,” he muttered in her ear.
“’Kay. I’ll be in in a bit. Need to wash my face and brush my teeth.”
He gave her neck another kiss before he slid away from her, out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
After he turned the water on to wash his hands, she came in wearing a nightie, and Coert wished she’d nabbed his sweater.
He dried his hands as she moved to the sink beside his that he never used and set her stuff down, lifting her hands to bind her hair back.
He reached for his toothbrush. “Lunch is good tomorrow. I’ll text when I know I’ve got an hour free. Is that cool?”
“Yeah, honey,” she replied.
He loaded toothpaste on his toothbrush but before he started brushing, he looked at her in the mirror and said, “I think Janie would like to see everyone again before they go so can you talk to the family? Set something up?”
She turned off the faucet and reached for the towel to dry her face, answering, “Of course. I’ll tell you at lunch tomorrow.”
Toothbrush to his lips, he didn’t brush, he said, “She needs alone time with just you and me too. And I’d rather not wait until after your family leaves,” and then he stuck the brush in his mouth.
She tossed the towel aside and grabbed her brush. “Whenever you’re ready for that but I think the family night first. And also, you should be around the day before the men and kids leave. We’ll probably do something up big. I’m not sure of the schedule. Do you have Janie on New Year’s Day?”
He spit, rinsed, and told her, “Half day. The evening. Kim has her New Year’s Eve this year. So you’ll have me.”
She pulled the brush out of her mouth, turned to him, and garbled, “Eggzelent.”
Coert moved to her, hooked her around the waist, bent and touched her nose with his lips.
When he lifted, she went back to brushing but didn’t move out of his hold.
“But you need to know, I’ll be on call and just to say, New Year’s is crazy town so I might be in and out or I might be in for the beginning and then gone until whenever I come home to you.”
She kept brushing and nodded.
Coert kissed her nose again.
When he lifted away the second time, he murmured, “Meet you in bed.”
She nodded again, grinning at the same time she was brushing.
Yeah, forty-one years old and his Cady was still cute.
He gave her a quick squeeze, let her go and left the room.
He’d pulled on pajama bottoms, walked the house, checked the doors, turned out the lights, and by the time he hit his bedroom, Cady was done in the bathroom and was under the covers in his bed.
It was the most beautiful vision he’d seen since his daughter waved goodbye to him at preschool that morning.
So Coert took it in as he moved across the room.
And met her there.