Chapter Eight
Nicki was as good as her word, much to Miah’s chagrin—three hours and two shots of whiskey hadn’t been enough to prepare him for the earbashing he had coming, but a sharp rap sounded at the front door at precisely ten fifteen.
“I got it,” Miah called down the hall to his mother, planted as always in the office. Normally he coaxed her out right about now with a glass of wine, sometimes a foot rub, sometimes a promise to watch some show or movie he had no interest in. But not tonight. Tonight he was in deep shit.
“You expecting someone?” she called back.
“Yeah. I am.” Ready or not.
Definitely not.
He downed the last sip of his drink as he walked to the front of the house. He opened the door and there she was, looking seven kinds of pissed off.
“We have a doorbell,” he said mildly.
“My knuckles were in the mood for knocking,” she returned, and Miah stepped aside to let her in. “Are you drunk?” she asked, eyeing the empty glass in his hand.
He shut the door behind her. “Buzzed, not drunk.”
Her eyes narrowed but she surprised him. “That sounds good. I’ll have the same.”
“All right. Whiskey okay?”
“What are my options?”
Miah jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen and she followed. He opened the fridge. “Same beer as the other night or . . .” He spun an open bottle of white wine around in the fridge door. “Sauvignon blanc.”
“Yes, please.”
He took the bottle out and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. “Not driving anyplace soon?”
“I’ll be sober by the time I’ve talked sense into you, I suspect.”
He was dosed enough to find that funny. “Touché.” He filled her glass and poured himself another shot.
“Where can we talk?”
“Front porch?” Unlike Sunday, she was dressed for the chilly evening in a caramel-colored leather jacket and a light scarf, jeans, boots. The jacket was pristine, stylish not rugged, her boots not impractical-looking but certainly meant for fashion and not recreation. Though the overall effect made him want to see her on the back of his bike all the same. He watched her butt as she preceded him up the front hall, not feeling especially deserving of the view.
She sat on the old porch swing and Miah leaned against the railing across from her, setting his glass aside and crossing his arms. “Go ahead. Lay it on me.”
“Have you come to your senses?”
“I was hoping the hangover might kick my ass back into reality. You’re welcome to give it a helping hand.”
“Don’t tempt me, Church.”
He couldn’t help it—he smiled. He was half drunk and he liked her calling him that. It felt strangely intimate, like they’d been friends a long time.
Longest six months of my life, to be precise.
“You gave me the gist out by the creek,” he said. “I know you’re pissed and I know I earned it, so feel free to say it however many ways you can think of.”
“I don’t want to lecture you. You’re a smart man, and I know behind the pain and confusion you realize exactly how stupid that was. You don’t need to hear it from me . . . I also think it’d mean jack squat, coming from me. What I really want to do is tell your mom what your fool-ass is up to—”
The thought erased at least one of the shots he’d taken; far more sobering than worries of personal harm or a reprimand from the authorities.
“But I’m not going to,” she went on, slowing Miah’s jackhammering heart. “I just want to know what’s going on in that head that you’re thinking about doing something so. Goddamn. Stupid.”
He swallowed, all at once uncomfortable. He hadn’t been expecting that. Hadn’t been composing justifications in his head for the past couple hours to counter this line of interrogation. And it wasn’t just vitriol burning in her eyes, but something else. Something tired and desperate and aching to understand.
He took a sip, considering it. “I just can’t take it, not doing anything. I hit this wall, like, if I don’t try to do something, I’m gonna go crazy, or start drinking in a way I’ve never wanted to before.”
She grimaced, then seemed to soften. “I know what grief does to a person. No bottle’s deep enough to fix it.”
Miah found a dark sliver of solace in those words. He nodded.
“I’m also not going to forbid you to do whatever it is you’re thinking of. You know why?”
He felt his brow gathering and reached for his glass. “No, I can’t say I do . . . Because you think I’d deserve whatever came of it for being so goddamn stupid?”
She shook her head. “It’s because I’ve been there myself. I had ideas just as reckless as yours. Maybe even worse, since I contemplated abusing my power, if I’m honest.”
Shocked, Miah felt his head give an involuntary shake.
“It was all fantasy,” she went on. “Ugly, bitter fantasies that would’ve gotten me thrown off the force if I’d been dumb enough to pursue them, but at the time it did seem a small price to pay. At least in dark moments here and there.”
Miah felt a shift, a bookend to the one he’d felt when she’d caught him out by Dead Creek. They were back on the same page once more. The simplicity was gone, but the bond they shared had returned. It washed over him in a cool, quenching wave.
She opened her mouth but no words came out, not even a breath. Her brow wrinkled and she pursed those lips tight.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Just say it. If it’s more earbashing, I no doubt deserve it.”
“It’s not that.” Finally, she took a taste of her neglected wine. “I was going to ask . . .”
He sipped his own drink, watching her over the tumbler’s rim.
“What did you find out?” she blurted.
He blinked, nearly choked on that searing gulp of whiskey. “Pardon?”
“What’d you find out from that creep, Dancer? Just names of dealers?”
He nodded. “Two names. I wrote them down. And doubtless you’re gonna order me to burn the paper, so what on earth do you want to know for?” He was baiting her now, intrigued. A crack had formed in her scolding veneer, and behind it shone curiosity. Unmistakable.
“If you tell me,” she said, “I could run them past the detectives. Tell them I overheard about some dealers who might’ve been acquainted with Bean. See if they’ve already chased those leads down.”
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll text them to you.” Then Vince’s paranoid voice cut across Miah’s thoughts—how the detectives might be on somebody’s payroll, rewarded for making the murder seem like the perfect crime.
Knock it off.
“I’m not sure how loose the lips are in Fortuity,” Nicki said. “Back in Chicago it was next to impossible to get dealers to rat on each other, but folks are struggling here in different ways. Money might trump loyalty or fear of retaliation. Sounds like it does with John Dancer, anyhow.”
Miah smirked.
“What?”
“When you first saw me out there, what did you think? Your gut reaction. You think I was scoring myself some drugs or something?”
She looked grim. “The man sells more than drugs, Miah.”
He frowned, then his brows rose with comprehension. “What, a gun? We’re not short on those at the ranch.”
“Yeah, but I know you. Every single one of those rifles and whatever else you’ve got is registered.”
“You seem awful sure.”
Her turn to smirk. “And you seem awful predictable.”
Miah scowled.
“Don’t take it the wrong way. A man as good and steady as you is refreshing in a town like this one. In fact, I’d say you’re a bit of a rebel, Jeremiah Church.”
He shrugged, unsure why the compliment didn’t sit right. He wanted to be a good man, after all. Perhaps it was that he could never be as good a man as his father. Or perhaps it was because these days, it really did feel as though nice guys finished last. He wasn’t angling to become the third Grossier brother, but he did envy Vince’s and Casey’s disregard for rules when there was something they wanted and only ethics standing in the way.
He held her stare. “I can’t promise you I’ll stand by while the detectives do fuck-all. I want to promise I won’t do anything to make matters worse. I want to.”
“But you won’t,” she translated.
“My father told me never to make a promise I can’t keep. And that one I’m just not sure about.”
She nodded, the gesture weary and full of surrender, and she sipped her wine. “Just be careful. For your mom’s sake, be smart, you dear, sweet, handsome idiot.”
His lips twitched. After too long a pause he echoed, “Handsome?”
“Oh, surely that’s not news to you. I have it on good authority that you’re the most eligible bachelor in Brush County.”
Now his cheeks were heating, hot as if he’d earned himself a pair of slaps. “I’m thirty-five and no one’s deigned to date my ass in three years, and I’m maybe one season away from bankruptcy. Plus I’m not entirely impressed with how much I’ve been drinking lately.” Among other things.
“The first couple parts are up for argument, I suspect. And the last bit is yours to fix.”
He considered that, eyeing the glass in his hand. He set it back on the rail, wishing those few inches’ distance and Nicki’s presence were enough to curb his craving to empty it. He really needed to slow down with that shit. It’d be an insult to Alex’s memory to go making those same ugly mistakes. Cooled by the thought, he tipped the last of the whiskey onto the parched lawn.
Nicki smiled. “That’s a start. Forgive me if I don’t join you, though—I’ve had a long-ass day.” With that, she took a drink of wine.
“Is that all to blame on me?” he asked.
She shook her head, attention on her glass. “No, today was a shit show from the second my alarm went off.”
“Work? Home?”
“Both. Work’s no big deal—it’s a full moon, so every single traffic stop and house call was some persuasion of batshit. That’s easy enough to set aside when I take off my badge and holster. But Matty . . .” She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Puberty must be nigh, because he’s being such a pill.”
“Ah.”
“He’s usually a sweet kid, but I dunno.” She was back—the Nicki he knew and likely had a crush on. The deputy was off duty, officially. “Maybe that trip back home was a mistake,” she said. “A week with his dad and his old friends, and probably no rules, then coming back here just in time to start school . . .”
“Not feeling too popular, huh?”
“About as appreciated as an unflushed turd.”
Miah snorted. “Vividly put.”
“I can’t blame him. I mean, I brought us here. Nobody but me.”
“There must be something he likes about it. About Fortuity.”
She screwed her face up. “Not lately. At first he kind of liked it, if only because it solved his problems with a bully back in his old school, but I’m worried that issue’s only going to rear its ugly head again. Were you ever bullied?”
“A little.”
“Did you tell your folks?”
“Sure.”
“What was their course of action?”
“Action? They didn’t do jack. I mean, maybe my mom was tempted to butt in, but my dad was very much of the man-up-and-deal-with-it school of conflict resolution.”
“And did you?”
“I remember standing up to one bully,” Miah said, “challenging him to a fight. He didn’t kick my ass but I definitely lost—got my eye blackened and ripped my good jeans.”
“Did it work at all?”
He considered it. “Yeah, I’d say it did. He seemed to get bored of me after that.”
She sighed. “It’s so hard to imagine telling Matty to hit anybody. Hell, it’s assault. But I also can’t imagine that marching in there all shrill and crazy would do him any favors.”
“Probably not. Plus it’s all speculation at this point, right? Save your worries up for when they actually count.”
She nodded. “Very wise. Where was all that common sense earlier this evening?”
He rolled his eyes. “Figures you weren’t done reading me the riot act yet.”
“What’s this bull about anyhow, Miah? Revenge?”
“No, it’s not about revenge. It’s about justice.”
“I just . . . I thought I knew you, I guess. I thought you knew better.”
He squinted off across the yard. “I’m not the man I was before. Not before my dad’s murder, and not before yesterday, come to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno. I just hit some wall. Like I can’t just sit around here and grieve anymore.”
“Did something happen, to make you hit that wall?”
He took an almighty breath and stared skyward, finding a hundred thousand stars and no good answers. When his chin dropped he found Nicki wearing an expression that surprised him—not annoyance, not pity or concern. Interest. Or something one step beyond interest, something fiery and fierce. Passion? Whatever it was, it drew him across the porch to sit beside her on the swing.
“It was the night Lorna Bean came around,” Miah said, clutching the chain in one fist and feeling the seat sway, not unlike his entire world had come to shift beneath him since the close of winter. “Or the day after, at any rate. It was thinking for a second that something was going to happen, that the case was going to open back up, then realizing it’d probably all come to nothing. I’m gonna trust you know what I mean when I say that hope is a cruel fucking bitch, when it comes to circumstances like these.”
She nodded solemnly.
“I know what I was planning was stupid, and reckless. But I hope you have some clue how I felt when I made that dumb-ass decision.”
“Desperate,” she said.
“Fucking castrated, more like.”
Another nod.
“Tell me what the fuck else I’m supposed to do here, Nicki. Give me one concrete thing I can do, and don’t say wait by the phone, because I’d rather hack my goddamn nuts off for how good waiting feels.”
She huffed a breath, those brown eyes retreating to her lap. He realized then how rare that was—for her to look away. It shamed him in some small way to know he’d frustrated her bad enough to leave her wishing she was miles from here. He didn’t want her miles away. He wanted her as close as she sat now, not even two feet between their hips.
He wanted her far closer, in fact, though he resented the part of him that craved those things.
“Christ,” he muttered, propping his elbows on his thighs, head dropping, heavy as an anvil. “I hate feeling this way. And I hate being this way with you. With the only goddamn person in town who gets me, aside from my mom.”
“I’m not a fan myself,” she said, and he could hear in her voice that she was facing away from him, her attention on the lot or the yard or the stars.
He sat up straight, seeking her gaze. “We’ve never argued before tonight, have we?”
“No,” she said, something flashing in her gaze. “I’m enjoying it. How about you?”
He cracked a smile at that. “A little, maybe.”
Two pairs of eyes met and darted, met and darted, and a silence drew out long between them.
“It feels like we’re about to kiss,” Miah said, no doubt spoiling the tension but unable to take the uncertainty. “Doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“Okay. Just checking.”
She smiled. “You as rusty at this as I am?”
“Possibly. How long since you . . .”
“What? Kissed a man? Messed around? Dated?”
“Let’s say dated.” He’d messed around with Denny after all, but it didn’t feel a thing like this. This felt like two people coming together, not some loveless, lopsided affair.
She said, “I’ve been on one date since my divorce, and I didn’t even kiss the guy good night.”
“I guess you win, then.”
“Well . . . you want to find out if either of us remembers how the heck this works, maybe?”
He swallowed. Nodded. “Yeah. I’d like that very much.”
Miah was a whole different sort of flustered suddenly, eager and hungry. Sex had become a joyless escape these past few months, but he could feel true passion returning to his body just being so close to this woman. He could feel desire where there had been only loneliness, heat after so much cold disconnection. He leaned close and she did the same.
In the milliseconds before their lips met, he smelled her—that clean, womanly scent of her soap or shampoo or lotion, plus a citrusy whiff of her wine. She smelled like luxury to man used only to the perfume of sage and dust and leather.
Their noses touched, their cheeks, and finally their mouths.
Her lips were the softest thing he’d ever felt, her breath the warmest caress on his skin. He put a hand to her silken cheek, praying it didn’t rasp like burlap from his job, but to hell with it, anyway. He held her jaw tight and angled his mouth, needing more. Needing to taste her.
Taste her. Like this, but in other ways as well. To taste things he’d all but forgotten these past few years.
Shit, it’d been way too long since he’d done way too many things with a woman.
The kiss deepened, their tongues seeking, meeting, flirting, the dance at first nervous, but growing bold in seconds flat. More than bold—hungry.
He felt her hands on his shoulder and his neck, felt the swing sway beneath them. One of her palms was cool from the night, the other cold from her glass. Where that glass had got to Miah couldn’t guess. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except for the faint bite of her short nails, the smooth stroke of her fingers.
She broke away just as Miah was poised to drown in her, leaving him gasping and ready and reeling.
He pulled himself together, their eyes darting and meeting in the low light. She licked her lips, and Miah knew precisely what they tasted like now. Their knees were touching, the swing feeling smaller than he remembered.
“For what it’s worth,” she whispered, “that didn’t feel rusty at all.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“And at the risk of showing my hand, I’ve been wondering for a while if I was just imagining it—that there’s something between us. Did you feel anything before tonight? Before just now? Be honest.”
“Honestly, yeah. I have.”
Her shoulders slumped, almost imperceptibly. A gesture he’d normally equate with disappointment, but it was relief he read in her body.
“I like you a lot,” he said. “I respect you. I want you, if it’s still honesty you’re after.”
She pursed her lips.
“But my life’s also a fucking wreck,” he added. “I work sixteen-, eighteen-hour days. I’m the kind of man who makes promises and keeps them, but I don’t have much to give right now. I’m not sure I have the nerve to even offer, if I’m being truthful. If I did have something worth promising, you’d be the one I’d be wanting to give it to, though. That much I know.”
She smiled, a tiny tweak of her lips that told him she was tempering her emotions, that she was maybe a little let down by his answer. “That’s nice. And I appreciate you not dressing it all up in bows and sequins.”
“What about you? What are you after?”
“Passion,” she said plainly, and leaned to move her wine from the swing’s arm to the porch.
Miah’s sweater felt tight. Hell, the whole damn range felt tight. “Like, a fling, you mean? Just sex?”
“Yes and no. I’m not sure. All I do know for sure is that my marriage tanked because I missed that feeling. You know, like you catch fire with somebody?”
He nodded, blushing. “I do know that feeling.” He’d known it so well it had taken him two-plus years to get over a two-month fling.
“I miss that,” she said, “and I’m not willing to live without it the next time I get serious. I want it with you, I think, whether it lasts a night or a week or longer. Does that make sense?”
“It does.” And that fire did indeed seem to flare between them. He felt it licking at his skin, pumping through his veins as whiskey never could.
“You want to see where this goes?” she asked. “No expectations about how often we see each other, no labels about what this is or isn’t . . . ?”
He felt dizzy, amazed this was actually on offer. With Raina he’d known brazenness, but not this naked honesty. He’d never quite known where he stood with his ex, but Nicki spelled it out in the simplest of terms.
“I think I can handle that . . . though I do have one request. It’s not a deal-breaker but it’s important to me all the same.”
“Shoot.”
“While we’re . . . whatever we are. You okay if it’s just you and me?” he asked. “I mean, if we’re the only person the other is messing around with?” He frowned. “Jesus, that sounds weird.”
She laughed. “You want no-strings-attached and monogamy?”
Miah cracked a smile. “I guess I do. I’d prefer it, anyhow. Does that make me some kind of controlling dick?”
“No. I think it’s romantic. And since I loathe complications and you’re the only man I seem to be attracted to in this dusty county, it’s a deal.”
“Well. All right then.” Just like that? Can things really be that simple?
Nicki sat up straight, expression turning serious. “Though this doesn’t change the fact that I’m pissed at you for the bull you were thinking of pulling.”
His smile deepened. “Understood.”
“Good. Now do I get a turn to make a prudish request?”
“Shoot,” he echoed.
“Can we keep this quiet? Fortuity’s a small town, and you’re probably its hottest property, as single males go—”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“And I’m probably the only black woman for a hundred miles,” she went on. “This gets out and my son’ll hear about it, and if it’s not serious, I’m not ready to go there.”
“I can handle that.”
She smiled. “Too weird if we shake on it?”
“I shake hands with feed suppliers and beef processors. I’d rather we find some better way to mark the occasion.”
“I bet we can come up with something.”
No doubt.
Nicki smirked then, looking smug. “Wow, my very first secret affair.”
Miah wished he could say the same, but Denny’s face flashed across his battered conscience, unbidden. “So where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure, Miah.” Her gaze dropped to his throat before seeking his eyes once more. “But I’m dying to find out.”