“Tom,” I said, closing my eyes.

“Come closer,” he said, inching my way.

“If I was any closer, I’d be on your lap.”

“I have no qualms with that.”

“Tom, stop it.”

“I’m tired of pretending I don’t find you the sexiest girl I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

“Your entire life.”

“I’m serious, January. You want to know why I moved to Austin?” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I moved to get away from a girl I was in love with but she belonged to someone else.” I gulped, my stomach twisted in knots. “But when we kissed, that burning need to have her vanished in an instant.”

I took another deep breath. “Then why treat me like a disease?”

“I’m afraid of you.”

“Afraid.”

“I’m a coward, January. I’m not sure if I can handle another heartbreak and I know if I fell for you, I’d fall so hard there’d be no coming back from it. You’re extraordinary.”

I felt my body go still and my heart beat into my throat at his confession. My breaths got deeper and my chest began to pant. “Tom,” I whispered. “Sometimes the risk can be worth the reward.”

We leaned into one another and closed our eyes. He languidly kissed the side of my red throat. His mouth following up, up, up until he reached my jaw and my breath hitched in my throat.

“I think you may be right, MacLochlainn.” He kissed down my jaw line until he came to the hollow beneath my ear. “Do you know how many times I’ve imagined doing this for the past six months?”

“Oh, God,” I panted. “Probably not as many times as I’ve imagined.” I needed my hands free! If they hadn’t been tied so well behind my back, they would have been interlaced in his hair, clutching his mouth to mine.

He followed farther up my jaw and across my cheek. I closed my eyes in anticipation as I felt his lips at the corner of my mouth.

“’Ey, lovebirds! Ready for jail?” Officer One teased, settling into the driver’s seat. Tom and I broke eye and skin contact to glance his direction. He leaned over his seat toward us. “You really are a strange lot,” he said as Officer David opened the passenger side door and sat down.

Tom took a complete one-eighty. “What’s the charge, officer?”

“Attempted burglary.”

“Ah, I see, and what were we supposedly attempting to steal?”

“Uh,” Officer One said, looking over at Officer David. “When we look at the tapes...”

“Oh! They have tapes! Thank God!” I interjected, earning a silencing look from Officer David.

“We should get you attempting to open the register.”

“You won’t get that at all,” Tom said. “And when you find out that we were just innocent in all this, our car stolen, etc. How quickly can we be released?”

“Assuming you’re right, which we’re not, you’d be out in, oh, say, twelve hours?”

“Twelve hours!” I said. “But we have to be in London by ten!”

“Yeah, London by ten, you say? For what? Probably secret drug meetin’s and such.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” I said. “We just had use for the phone is all!”

“January,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Do we get a phone call at the station?” he asked Officer One.

“One, yes.”

At the station, they processed us both by taking our prints followed by a round of mug shots. I glanced at the computer and saw the pic they’d taken and almost burst out laughing. I looked like a frightened rabbit. Truthfully, I was a little frightened, but not enough to deprive myself of the laugh that was my mug shot. Does anyone take a good mug shot?

Tom rang Jason and let him know everything that’d went down. I stood beside him, waiting for my turn to call...someone. Jason would have been my call but Tom took care of that, so I called July.

“Hello?” I heard July’s voice and it sounded so good to hear.

“July!”

“January! Oh my God! How are you?”

“Oh, you know, just hangin’ out,” I said, contorting my face at Tom. He shrugged his shoulders, physically approving of my choice of words. Nice. “Well, I mean, I’m in the slamma here in some little town an hour outside of London, but...”

“What! Why! Oh my God, January! What is going on? Do I need to call the Embassy?”

“July, we’re in the U.K., not Nicaragua, calm down.” Tom laughed.

“Who was that?” July asked.

“Oh, that’s Tom,” I said, without making eye contact.

“May I speak with him?”

“No.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because it’s unnecessary. I’m calling you because I’ve got a free call and you’re the only person I could think of to waste it on while they prove we are innocent of all our menacing charges.”

“What were you charged with?”

“Murder one.”

“Shut up, January,” she said, making me smile.

Officer David gave me the sign for "wrap it up." Apparently that signal is universal.

“Uh, I gotta go, buttercup. I love you, okay? I’ll call you when I break out. Tell Mom I love her and let her know I’m getting lots and lots of prison tattoos with the name ‘Bubba,’ or whatever the English equivalent to Bubba is, on my chest and arms.”

“Love you too,” she said and I hung up.

I walked over to Tom and sat next to him in one of the dirty plastic chairs that lay in several lines, to accommodate the staggering number of men and women, no doubt. I’m being sarcastic. There was one other gentleman in there and he was drunk as a skunk and so far off we could barely see him.

“I take it your sister is well?”

“Very.”

“Embassy?”

“Yes, she’s a bit...dramatic.”

“You don’t say?” he said, with a gentle smirk on his face.

“Good news!” We heard behind us. We both stood and faced Officer David. “You’ve been cleared of all charges. They found ya’ car right where you left it. I hadn’t looked far enough it seems.”

“Oh thank God!” I said, grasping at my chest.

“What can we expect from here?” Tom asked.

“You’re free to go, but I’d wait ’ere if I was you. Night’s cooled things off a bit. You can use that phone to ring your friend.”

“Thank you,” Tom said, walking back to the wall phone. He dialed Jason and I waited impatiently beside him, desperate to leave the place. My first impressions of England weren’t impressing. “Jason?” I heard. “Yeah, we’re good, bro. Thanks.” Laughing. “Yeah, okay, that’s fine, dude. Oh, good, good. All right,” he said, glancing at his watch, “cool. Talk to you later.”

He hung up.

“What’d he say?” I asked.

“The rental company will deliver a new car here in the next half hour.”

“What about our belongings?”

“They’ll transfer them into the new vehicle. Apparently they were very apologetic.”

“Shall we wait in the lobby near the doors so we can watch for them?”

“That’s a great idea,” he said with a wink. That wink told me two things. One, he was freaking adorable and did things like wink. The only other person I knew who winked was my grandpa. Two, that he was excited about privacy with...Lil’. Ol’. Me.

He took my hand and guided me through the doors. The officers waved and saluted after apologizing for the misunderstanding. We exited through the heavy double doors with the tiny pocket window, letting it slam against our backs.

“God, I would never want to go to prison,” I said.

For some reason, this made Tom laugh. He was doing a lot of that lately. “First off, that was not prison. That wasn’t even jail. That was a processing area. And secondly, you could never go to prison because you’re too good of a person to go to prison.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you know that, huh? The only thing we seem to exchange is saliva.” My face literally melted into my neck at that statement, but I pretended it did no such thing.

“I know you’re embarrassed, you know.”

“Yes, it’s a curse.”

He stopped me short and swung me in front of him, “It’s lovely.” Well, if that didn’t make me blush harder. Dang it. His smile got deeper and he brought his hand up to my face, guiding his hand across my cheek. I sank my face into his palm. “You’re lovely, January.”

His other hand swept my falling hair off my shoulder. “I should probably take my braid out,” I said, fingering the mess it’d become. I broke away for a moment and sat on a bench near the station’s glass doors. Tom sat next to me and just watched, seemingly mesmerized.

I pulled the chopstick holding my messy bun up and put it between my teeth so I could unbraid my hair. Once I’d worked out all the kinks with my fingers, I let it all fall to my shoulders. “That feels so much better,” I said around the chopstick as I twisted the length around my hand and held it away from my face for a moment.

Tom removed the chopstick from my teeth and stuck it within an inside pocket of his leather jacket before dragging my body closer to his and making me face him. “I’ll watch the doors,” he said softly, his eyes roaming my head as he laced his big, warm hands through my hair. My eyes became heavy.

“Stop making me sleepy, Thomas Eriksson.”

“I can’t help it. It’s like I need to run my fingers through your hair.”

“It’s my favorite thing in the world,” I said lazily before opening my eyes to the most handsome face I’d ever seen in my entire life.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing, I just...”

There was a knock on the station’s glass doors and a young woman in the rental company’s uniform waved. We walked over to her and met her on the sidewalk.

“Mister Eriksson?” she asked and he nodded. “I’m so sorry about all this. We’ve upgraded your vehicle for you for the inconvenience and taken care of your bill. Is there anything else we can do for you?” she asked, handing over the keys.

“None, thank you,” Tom answered.

“Just give us a ring, love, if there is,” she said with a sweet smile.

“Will do. Again, thank you.”

The woman ran to an awaiting car behind us and we climbed into our new rental. It was definitely an upgrade. Like, mega upgrade. It was a giant SUV, the likes of which I’d yet to see in Ireland or England thus far. Land Rover. Score! Jason had done this, I’d known it as soon as I saw it.

Thomas

We reached London in just under an hour. The GPS came in handy, taking us right to The Chesterfield in Mayfair. As we drove up to the hotel, or palace, depending how you looked at it, I was stumped. We both stared in fascination.

“Why would Jason put us here?” I asked no one in particular.