Accidentally in Love (18 page)

“I’m sure he appreciates it.” At his end of the couch, with his legs straight out and his arm thrown over the back of the cushion, his eyes softened and his mouth slowly curled up into a small grin. “Want another beer?”

“What time is…Eleven? Oh, wow, no, I should get going.”

“You sure? We could binge
Sons of Anarchy
next.”

“Tempting,” she said. “But my mother has apparently discovered online dating, so I need to get home and make sure she hasn’t given out my address to every ax murderer she’s hooked up with tonight.”

“Good idea. Ax murderers are a dime a dozen these days; make her wait for someone with a bit more imagination.”

“Exactly.” She followed him to the kitchen and set the three remaining beers in his fridge. “See, aside from the whole pizza debacle, we’re like one brain. Crazy, right?”

“Yeah. Crazy.” He leaned back against the sink, his hands wrapped around the edge of the counter. “Guess you need a ride home, huh?”

“Well, yeah,” she sighed dramatically. “It’s the whole ‘no license’ thing again, and apparently my new boyfriend is a real stickler for things like that.”

“Go figure.” He stared back at her for a few seconds, then nodded slowly. “Okay, let’s go before the ax murderers start lining up at your door.”

They made it back to her place in about five minutes but spent a hell of a lot longer than that sitting in the driveway talking about anything that came to mind, from Brett’s training with the RCMP to how Regan had managed to strike her deal with Griffin Carr and how Ellie had gone from thinking her mom was crazy for marrying Buck in the first place to actually admiring her devotion to him.

It was everything and nothing all at the same time, but one thing was for certain: neither one of them was ready for the night to end.

“Okay,” Ellie said over a laugh. “What is this, like the fifth time I’ve said it? I’m really going in this time. Thanks for the ride.”

She meant to leave it there, only he got out of the truck, too, and followed her up to the door.

“Just making sure,” he said. “I’ll wait here till you check on your mom.”

Ellie unlocked the door, turned off the alarm, and made room for him to follow her in until they both saw pajama-clad Gail walking out of the kitchen and heading for the stairs, a glass of water in one hand, her iPad in the other.

“Oh hi, sweetheart, how was your night?”

“Good. You okay?”

“Yes, just needed some water; it’s so hot upstairs.”

“It’s called a hot flash, Mom. You better get used to them.”

“Don’t be cheeky. Hello, Brett.”

“Mrs. Palmer.”

“Call me Gail,” she said, flapping her hand in a half-wave as she disappeared into her room.

“Uh, yeah, sure, okay.” He cleared his throat quietly, then made Ellie laugh when he mumbled, “Never gonna happen.”

“See,” Ellie said, holding her hands up. “Everyone’s safe and sound, so your duty here is done.”

He took a slow step back, then stopped.

“Thanks for coming over tonight, Ell. That was, uh—well, thanks.”

“Least I could do,” she said, trying to sound bright and ending up sounding chirpy instead. “Thanks for letting me get my Holder fix.”

He started to say something, then changed his mind and nodded instead. Such a guy.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Give your super-awesome fake girlfriend a hug. It’s the least you can do now that you’re making me marry Dickie.”

She was only half-teasing, holding her arms open like that, but all teasing stopped when he stepped up and gathered her against him. With her arms wrapped around his neck, and his arms tightening around her lower back, he lifted her so she was off the floor and he was the only thing she touched.

He didn’t swing her around; he didn’t even move. He simply stood there, holding her for a few short electricity-filled seconds, his fingers curling tight into the fabric of her sweater, his breath warm against her neck. Ellie clung to him, not because she was afraid of falling but because she was afraid she already had.

How could that be? A month ago, she couldn’t get far enough away from him, but tonight, she’d give almost anything to stay right where she was, with her fingers playing against the back of his neck, breathing in his easy clean scent, and being warmed by the heat of his skin through his shirt.

“Brett?” She’d barely whispered his name, but it pulled a long, low growl out of him. “Do you want to stay?”

As he lowered her to the floor, Ellie thought he was going to let her go, but he didn’t. Instead, he slid his hands up her spine until he had her head cradled in the warmth of his palms.

“Yeah.” He exhaled slowly, his voice strained and pinched. “I want to stay.”

Her eyes fluttered closed for a second and her breath hitched slightly. “But you’re not going to, are you?”

“No.”

God, when he looked at her like that, his eyes so clear, so blue, and that mouth…
wow, that mouth
…it was all she could do not to throw herself back into his arms and stay there.

“Right.” Her head was nodding, but it took her a hell of a long time to do anything other than look up at him, and the awkward laugh she finally managed to get out was nothing more than a harsh rasp. “Okay.”

He dragged his hands away, scrubbed them over the top of his head, then laced his fingers behind his neck, all the while stumbling back a couple of steps. “Jeezus.”

Oh sweet Lord, what had she done? He was there to do a job, to look after her, not to have her jump him every time they said good night. He’d told her right from the start that they should downplay the whole “togetherness” part of this charade, and he’d done that. She’d been the one to reach for his hand—he never reached for hers—and she’d been the one who kissed him; he didn’t kiss her. Well, okay, he did, but only because she basically forced him to.

Those other times she’d kissed him had been for a purpose in this whole crazy plan, but tonight…tonight she wanted to kiss him simply because she wanted to feel his lips on hers, to taste his warmth and lose herself in him, knowing that this one was for them, not anyone else.

She thought he wanted that, too, but judging by the way he was backing up, she was obviously wrong. And now what? It couldn’t get much more awkward than it already was, so gathering herself a little, she took a step back and forced a smile she didn’t feel and he clearly didn’t believe.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said brightly, blinking so many times that everything looked jerky, like one of those old movies. “We’ll, uh, be in touch, yeah?”

She reached for the door handle, but Brett’s fingers wrapped around her wrist and held her frozen in his gentle grip.

Oh no, she was
not
going to cry. She was a grown woman, for crap’s sake, not some overly dramatic teenager who’d just had her heart stomped on for the first time.

Suck it up, buttercup.

“Tory said they’d bring Kurt in for questioning as soon as they found him, so with any luck, we’ll all be free of this soon.”

The storm brewing in his eyes blustered deeper as he released her wrist and nodded.

“Lock it behind me.”

Brett made it about a block and a half away before he jerked the truck to a stop and threw it into park.

“Fuck!”

If he hadn’t let her go when he did, he’d be back there right now kissing her, pulling her soft curves up against him, breathing in her sweet scent, which made him so fuckin’ dizzy all the time. Her fingers would still be dancing across the back of his neck, her breath would still be tickling his ear, and her eyes would have that same dazed look they’d had the first time they kissed, only this time he would’ve made damn good and sure it took her a lot longer to recover.

It didn’t matter if he closed his eyes or kept them open—all he could see right then was the way the blush on her cheeks trailed down the side of her neck, the way her breasts rose and fell with each rapid breath, and the way her tongue slid across her bottom lip, slowly driving him around the freakin’ bend.

Gripping the steering wheel, he slammed his forehead down on his hands.

If he hadn’t let go of her when he did, he would have jeopardized the whole case against Kurt, and they were still struggling to put that together. They couldn’t afford to screw this up; they needed to get the job done, and then maybe they could…

They could what? He wasn’t going to be around much longer, so what the hell was he doing letting this thing—whatever the hell it was—between them develop into anything besides a working relationship? He shouldn’t have told her about Rosie, and he shouldn’t have let her tell him anything personal—nothing more than the facts of the case.

But damn if he didn’t like listening to her talk: the soft lilt of her voice, the way her lips moved, slowly, smiling so easily, and the way her brown eyes softened when she forgot he was a cop.

He liked the way she moved, the way she set her jaw when she knew her honesty was about to get her into trouble, and he really liked the way she looked—and not just when she was wearing her armor. That’s what he’d come to think of it as: armor. Everyone else wore sweats or something like that once in a while, but not Ellie. She was always done up to the nines, and it wasn’t until he’d spent the night at her place that he’d figured it out.

The coffee had just started to brew when he caught sight of her at the top of the stairs, scurrying from her bedroom to the bathroom, head down, glasses on, hair knotted on the top of her head.

Half an hour later, she came downstairs fully dressed, makeup applied perfectly, with her long, thick hair falling straight down her back. The hunched-over woman he’d watch scamper down the hall was not the same one who came down the stairs. She’d put on her armor, and aside from almost scalding him with coffee, she was ready to take on whatever needed to be dealt with.

The other night at Maya’s, though, she hadn’t been dressed, her hair was a mess, and she had her glasses on. Not counting that morning at her house, it was the first time he’d ever seen her in glasses, and…
whew
…he’d almost wished he’d let her go upstairs to get dressed. It didn’t seem possible that someone as beautiful as Ell could look even better in a pair of plain black horn-rimmed specs.

No fancy clothes, no makeup, and no matching boots and bag—it was just Ellie, guard down, wrapped in that ugly old gray blanket and making him wish he were anything but a cop right then.

But he was. It didn’t matter what he felt for her or what she thought she felt for him. At the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was keeping her safe, and if he lost his badge because he couldn’t stay focused on the job, how the hell was he supposed to do that?

He couldn’t afford to fuck this up by doing something stupid like falling for her, and the best way to prevent that would be to stop looking at her the way he’d been doing, to stop getting personal, and to stop thinking about her every fuckin’ second of the day.

“Now that’s how you supposed to drive! From now on, that’s how you drive!”

—Detective Mike Lowrey,
Bad Boys

Kurt’s phone calls continued to come in daily, and Ellie continued to hang up on him daily. She didn’t shake quite as much as she had the first few times, but each one still seemed to add another layer of anxiety to the growing pile that she was having more and more trouble tamping down.

And it got worse when the emails started.

She’d thought the first message was from Maya, and it wasn’t until she’d opened the attached photo of herself at their ball game last week that she’d realized what was going on. Kurt hadn’t hacked Maya’s account; he’d simply set up a new one with an almost identical address and was using it to send his emails.

Every day there was a new one, each with another photo attached. There was one of her in her store, one of her riding her bike, another of her talking with Pastor Pete, and so on. Like the phone calls, Ellie logged every email, forwarded each one to Tory, and saved a copy in a separate folder in her mail system.

Tory had immediately put the IT guys on it, but no surprise that this wasn’t leading anywhere. They traced the first email to one of the public-use computers at the library, and none of them were too surprised when the surveillance footage showed nothing more than someone in a dark hoodie walking backward into the library and then hunching down over the keyboard, making sure he never faced the camera.

The next two had come from homes that had reported B&Es the nights the emails had been sent, and the cops were now doing their thing with fingerprints at both places. Ellie didn’t expect them to find anything.

She couldn’t have cared less where the emails came from; she just wished he’d show his stupid face so Tory could put an end to it and Ellie could get her old life back.

The thing was, though, she didn’t want her old life back. She wanted her new life back: the one where she got to see Brett on a regular basis, the one where, with a little work, she could get him to smile, and the one where just having him around made her world so much more beautiful.

Eight days: that’s how long it had been since Brett had all but bolted out of her house. Eight days: that’s how long it had been since they’d spent any time alone, and that’s how long it had been since she’d seen him smile.

Eight days. It was a freakin’ eternity.

When he picked her up for her lesson on Wednesday afternoon, she climbed behind the wheel and completely ignored his instruction to head out to the highway, choosing instead to drive down past the yacht club, where the road led to the gravel lot near the waterfront docks.

“What are you doing?” Brett asked. “The highway’s that way.”

Eyes forward, hands at ten and two, she maneuvered his truck around the potholes while still giving the cyclists a wide berth—much like Brett had been giving her this last week. He didn’t say another word the whole way, which was fine because it gave her more time to think about what she was going to say. Not enough time, as it turned out, but they couldn’t just sit there staring out at the water forever, and there was no way in hell he could be any more mortified than she was, so…

“I’m sorry. I guess I got caught up in the whole thing and forgot this is nothing but a show.”

He didn’t even look at her, just kept his gaze focused straight out the front window. “You don’t understand, Ellie. If I screw this up…”

There wasn’t even a hint of humor in the laugh she released.

“Oh, Poncherello, that’s where you’re wrong. I understand just fine.” She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin a little, and kicked herself mentally for not applying a second layer of lipstick before heading out of the house. “We both knew from the start that this was a job, that you were here to help keep me safe, and all we had to do was keep up the pretense until Kurt made a mistake. Well, he doesn’t seem to making any, and I’m sure you never thought this would go on as long as it has, so maybe it’s time to reassess things.”

She’d expected him to be happy, to jump at the chance to end this charade they’d been playing at for the last three weeks, but the muscles in his jaw just clenched tighter.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the emails?”

“The emails? Because you’re not the lead investigator; Tory is. All contact, all information, all everything is supposed to go through her or the watch command—”

“This isn’t a goddamn game, Ellie!”

His sudden burst made her jump; then it just pissed her off.

“That’s exactly what it is! It’s Kurt’s game, and we’re all playing along. The only difference is, he doesn’t give a shit about the rule book, and we do—we have to! I’m the one who screwed up, I’m the one who ignored the rules, and I’m sorry, okay? All I’m trying to do now is make it right and follow the playbook you laid out for me when this started.”

“Oh, I get it.” He snorted quietly and shook his head. “So I’m the asshole again?”

“What? No!” This wasn’t going the way she’d hoped. Not even close. “None of this is on you; I’m just trying to make it right again. Tory has her job, you have your job, and I have mine. So far as I can tell, the two of you have managed your parts perfectly, but I didn’t. This is what happens when you live a lie for too long: you start to believe it’s real.”

She wasn’t going to sit there waiting for him to say something, because that would only make it worse, so she fired up the truck again and headed back toward town.

“North or south on the highway?” she asked, doing a damn fine job of keeping her voice even, despite the fact that her throat burned and her jaw kept wanting to quiver. Oh no, she wasn’t having any of that shit. At least not while she was anywhere near him.

None of this had been his doing, and she wasn’t about to have him feeling guilty about any of it.

“Ell.”

“Please don’t call me that. Call me Ellie, Elleanor if you must, or Miss Palmer like Tory does, but not Ell.”

“Seriously?”

“Damn right.” Ell was way too personal. No one else had ever called her that, only him. “Now, which way are we going?”

With his elbow resting on the armrest, he lifted his hand in surrender. “I don’t care. South.”

Of course, she mused. Everything else seemed to be heading that way.

For the next hour she did everything she was instructed to do, signaled, made her way through two four-way stops, a roundabout, and an obstacle course of bright orange cones. She even parallel parked on Main Street without using his backup camera.

And not once in the entire time they were out did he have to mention her speed. She kept a very close eye on that speedometer, and even though it almost drove her crazy on the straight stretches down the highway, she maintained the speed limits everywhere she went.

When they got back to her house, she hopped out and rounded the front of the truck as he came around from the passenger side.

She didn’t touch him, didn’t so much as kiss him on the cheek as she moved past him, but she smiled. Oh yes, she smiled. Because if there was one thing she was getting really good at, it was lying, and that smile was the biggest lie yet.

“See you at the game tomorrow. Field five, remember.”

She didn’t wait to hear what he had to say to that, if anything at all; she had one goal, and that was to get to the pint of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Ellie!”

“What are you…
ohmygod,
is that Buck?!”

Spinning back around, Ellie squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she possibly could and slapped her hands over her ears, desperate to unsee what she had already seen and to unhear the sounds still hanging in her living room.

Her mom’s iPad crashed to the floor as Gail made a frantic grab for her discarded bathrobe while Buck’s startled shouts kept coming from the speaker on the now upside-down tablet.

“Gail, honey, what happened? Are you okay? Should I call 911? Oh Jesus, where are my pants?”

“Oh my God!” Ellie cried. “Shut it off! Hang up!
Do something!
”

“I’m trying,” Gail yelled back. “If you’d stop screaming and let me think for two seconds.”

“Gail?” Buck’s voice grew louder when Gail finally managed to retrieve him from the floor. “What the hell was that? Why are you dressed?”

“Ellie’s here, Buck. I have to go.”

“What? Hang on, I need to find my hearing aid.”

“I swear to God, Mom, make him stop!”

“Give me a second! Buck? Buck!”

Gail’s voice and footsteps got farther and farther away, but Ellie kept her eyes shut until she was sure both her parents and the tablet were all upstairs. There wasn’t enough therapy or pizza in the world to get her through what she’d just witnessed. No child wants to even think that her parents might have ever had sex, but to see them…
like
that
…over Skype…with Gail on the couch and…and…what the hell kind of noises had Buck been making anyway?

When she finally dared open her eyes, she kept them to narrow slits—just enough to see her way to the kitchen, where she guzzled a full two glasses of water and got halfway through the pint of ice cream before draping a wet dishcloth over her face.

It was while she was sitting at the table, head thrown back, the cloth dripping down her cheeks, that Gail came back downstairs and cleared her throat.

“Obviously, we weren’t expecting you to be home so soon.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Even under the cloth, Ellie closed her eyes again, as though that would help. It didn’t.

“It’s just so hot upstairs…”

“It’s not the house, Mom.”

“I don’t think I broke my tablet, but maybe next time I’ll…”

“Mom!”

Gail clicked her tongue and yanked the cloth off Ellie’s face with one quick whoosh. “For goodness sake, it’s just sex.”

“Ugh.” How was it even possible that Ellie was part of this family? “Gabbie told me you were using the tablet for online dating sites.”

“I know, I told her to tell you that.” Gail bobbed her head in one sharp indignant nod. “We lied, because I knew this is how you’d react. And you can save that holier-than-thou look, young lady, because you’ve been lying to me since the day I arrived on your doorstep.”

That brought Ellie upright in a hurry.

“That’s right,” Gail went on. “I know all about you and Brett.”

“What?” Ellie tried to look at Gail, but she just couldn’t do it. “What do you know?”

“I know you’re in love with him. I knew it from the first day I got here and you came dragging in all covered with mud, all blushing and nervous, and then you left that poor boy standing out there in the rain like that.”

“Mom, I wasn’t…I’m not—” She grabbed for the ice cream, but Gail snapped it up first and put it back in the freezer.

“And I know you’re going to deny it because he’s leaving soon, but distance doesn’t matter anymore, honey. Gabbie and I can show you how you can still enjoy each other even when you’re far apart. Did you know there are apps for this kind of thing now?”

“I’ll give you ten billion dollars if you stop talking right now.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, are you going to pretend you’ve never enjoyed sex before?”

“No, but any more of this and I might never enjoy it again.” Slumping over the table, she ran one finger along the edge and sighed. “Without giving me any more nightmares than I’m already going to have, would you mind clueing me in on when this all started?”

“Honestly, it started the day I arrived here. He just kept calling, like five or six times a day. This time away has been awful for him; now he understands what I’ve been feeling, and he’s bending over backward—almost literally—to make things better between us, if you know what I mean.”

“Really, Mom? Like I don’t have enough trauma going on in my head right now? The last thing I need is you stacking more visuals in front of me.”

Gail’s grin wasn’t the least bit embarrassed; it was actually giddy.

“When I left, Ellie, I fully expected your father to contact a lawyer, to hire a cleaning lady, and yes, to be honest, to find someone for companionship, but he didn’t do any of those things.”

“It’s only been a month, Mom. Give him time.”

Gail ignored her. “Do you want to know what he did in that month?”

“Not particularly.”

“He cleared the rest of the garden space to get it ready for this coming season, he painted the upstairs bathroom, and he took a cake up to the hospital.”

“Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah! You do that stuff all the time.”

“Oh, Ellie, sweetheart. I thought you of all people would understand.” She reached across the table and took Ellie’s hands in hers. “We’re a team, Buck and I. I wasn’t there to do those things, the things I would normally have done, you’re right, so he did them, because that’s how a team works. When one player slips, the other picks up the slack.”

“I don’t know, Mom…”

“There’s more,” Gail said, her grin widening.

“Oh, God, if you tell me you’re pregnant—”

“Honestly.” Gail clicked her tongue as though the idea was preposterous. “Buck came out to see me.”

“He what? When?”

“Last week. He flew in to surprise me when I was at Gabbie’s.”

“Wait,
what?
Buck flew? In an airplane? Up in the air?”

“Mm-hmm.” Her mom’s eyes sparkled. “He could only get away for a few days, so he couldn’t drive.”

“But he doesn’t fly.”

“He flew for me. Took me out to a fancy restaurant, we walked by the lake for hours and talked like we haven’t talked in years, and then he took me back to his hotel and, well…”

“Yeah, okay,” Ellie groaned. “I get it.”

“Are you angry?”

“No. Mom, come on, why would I be angry?” When Gail tipped her head, Ellie laughed. “If you’re happy—and I mean
really
happy—then I’m happy.”

“I am.” She didn’t even have to say it; it was in the way her eyes danced, the way she couldn’t stop smiling, and the way her skin seemed to glow with new life, new energy. “I hope you don’t mind that I came back here after leaving Gabbie’s, but I wanted to spend a little more time with you before I went home.”