Double Take (3 page)

“Whoa,” she murmured, either because of the stumbling or the fact that so much of her was now touching so much of him.

“I’ve got you,” he said, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. He turned his back to the wind, staying close, but giving her some distance and disengaging the more vulnerable parts of their bodies. As nice as she had felt pressed against him, he didn’t want her to know that his lower half was ignoring his brain’s order to be a polite protector and was instead going straight for horny man. Their new position removed the danger of sensual overload, but also kept her blocked from the worst of the wind. “I won’t let you fall overboard. Now glove up.”

Not taking no for an answer, he lifted one of her small, cold hands and shoved a glove on it. He forced himself to focus only on the fact that her lips now had a bluish tint, not that they were pretty damned kissable. And that her expression was pure misery, not that her face was shaped like a perfect heart, with high cheekbones and a pointy, stubborn little chin.

Once her hands were adequately protected, she stepped the tiniest bit closer, as if welcoming the shelter of his body. Mike heaved in a deep breath of cold lake air, but found it tasted of spicy-fragranced woman.

Nice. Very nice.

“So, how long have you lived on Wild Boar?” she asked.

“A few months.”

“And how’s island life?”

He considered it, mentally comparing the insanely quiet nights he’d spent on Wild Boar to the lifetime of noise, energy, grime and vibrancy in Chicago.

“It’s...different.”

“Obviously you’re getting to know people if they’re already gossiping to you about the new substitute teacher.”

“Maybe. It could also be because we’re two new unmarried people and they’re trying to set us up.”

Her mouth fell open. “They’re
what?
”

“Apparently your friend—the one you’re substituting for—has let it be known that you are single and available.”

“Remind me to smack her, would you?”

“You bet.”

She licked her lips. “So you’re single, too?”

He noticed she didn’t add
and
available,
maybe because she didn’t want to sound interested, though he could tell she was. Oh, she might not be looking at him, instead taking every chance she had to study her gloved hands, but he recognized desire when he saw it. During those few moments when she’d landed hard against him, heat had flared between them, instinctive and powerful.

“I’m
very
single,” he admitted, not sure why he’d emphasized it. After all, he should be backing away from flirtation or even the tiniest hint of romantic interest. He had no business indulging in either right now.

“And everybody is aware you’re single?”

“Yep. Just like they know your relationship status. Or lack thereof.”

“I can’t believe Callie told everyone that.”

“Well, to be fair, I suspect she told one person and the other eighteen-hundred residents found out by osmosis.”

Because that’s how news traveled in a small town. When he’d come to Wild Boar for his job interview, he certainly hadn’t gone around saying he was unattached. By the time he’d moved there to start the job, however, it had been common knowledge to every person he met.

Of all the things he disliked about his new life, the utter lack of privacy ranked number one. In fact, he hated feeling as if he lived under a microscope, and wasn’t about to give the gossipers any more ammunition if he could possibly help it. He needed to keep his life quiet, sedate and boring. Meaning no leaping off ferries to save gorgeous, impetuous redheads. So she’d better not jump.

“You’re an expert on osmosis, huh? Why aren’t
you
the substitute science teacher?”

He chuckled. “I have a rough idea of what the word means, but ask me to explain the difference between oxygen and iron and I’m in deep trouble.”

“One you breathe and one you make stuff out of.”

Another chuckle. “My point is, you’re not getting off so easily.”

She nodded slowly, and he couldn’t tell if she was relieved by that, or bothered by it.

“And if it’s any consolation, you’re not alone in the gossip pool. I’m treading water right there with you.”

She rolled her eyes and gestured toward the waves. “Could we please use another analogy?”

Damn, he enjoyed her wit. “Okay, let’s say I’m just as big a grape dangling from that huge, gossipy vine. Every day since I arrived, I’ve had cakes, cookies and casseroles brought to my doorstep by the population of single women on the island, ranging in age from eighteen to eighty.”

“Has it worked?”

“I haven’t taken the bait yet.”

Her cheeks puffed out as she feigned sickness. “No fish references, either, please.”

“Fish aren’t the only ones who eat bait.”

“But single men often do. Have you? Eaten the food, I mean? There could be secret love potions hidden inside.”

“That’s possible. There’s one widow, Mrs. Cranston—gotta be seventy if she’s a day—who makes the best lemon meringue pie I’ve ever tasted. I might propose to her even without the love potion.”

They laughed together, both of them distracted, for a little while, anyway, from the misery of their journey.

“I wonder what they’ll bring me. I don’t suppose I’ll be inundated with cakes and pies from the single men.”

“Maybe you’ll get cans of baked beans. Or motor oil.”

“Small-town hell. Check.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it hell. More like a really claustrophobic closet in the middle of an island.”

“With eighteen-hundred people in it.”

“Exactly.” And didn’t that sound appealing?

You decided to come here. You wanted a total do-over.

Yeah. Right. He had.

He’d been the one who wanted a change, the one so anxious to get out of Chicago—to escape from the darkness, the blood, the anger and the nonstop violence. It had been nobody’s choice but his own to quit his job of eight years with the Chicago P.D., to leave his upwardly mobile career as a detective.

He’d seen the ad for a Chief of Police of Tiny Island, Nowhere, and jumped on it, not really sure what he wanted or where he was going, just sure that after near misses with at least three bullets and a direct hit with a switchblade, he had to get away for his own sanity. And for his parents’, who’d pleaded with him to find another—safer—career.

Of course, they hadn’t intended for it to be so far away from them. He wasn’t sure if they’d call Wild Boar an improvement, considering he was the first Santori of his generation to actually move out of Illinois. But considering his parents had their first grandbaby to look forward to, courtesy of his brother Leo and his new wife, he supposed he wasn’t on their minds 24/7.

Besides, he couldn’t say if this would be a long-term change or not. He was well into his probationary period, having agreed to stay on the job for a minimum of six months. At the end of that time, either he, or the island’s authorities, could make a change, no harm, no foul. No matter how often he’d wondered if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life, he would keep his word on that. He’d see how he felt at the end of the six months, and then make some decisions for his future.

Mike wanted it to work out. He couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the Chicago P.D. An optimist like him could only stick it out for so long in a job where he couldn’t make a difference before it became agony to go to work every day. Maybe on Wild Boar he wasn’t saving lives, but he made a difference in little ways. In Chicago, the only life he’d managed to save was his own, and that had been a struggle every Goddamn day of the week.

His spirit had been crushed by it. Day after day he’d seen the same brutal crimes, the same utter disregard for other people’s lives and property, the same hopelessness and despair. It had become an agony to go to work every day.

Wild Boar was the complete opposite. Peaceful, tranquil, a place where neighbors helped neighbors and everybody knew every other person on the island.

True, he didn’t love it yet, or even like it that much. He was too much of a Chicagoan for that. He was hopeful, though, that one day he’d wake up and realize he’d become a true islander and want to stick around for a few years. Or twenty.

Sometimes he even pictured himself asking one of those nice, pie-making women out, giving this life a real shot. Maybe he’d get married, do the whole family thing with the picket fence and pot-roast dinners on Sunday. The matchmakers on Wild Boar certainly seemed to want that future for him. And, unlike his last girlfriend, a nice, small-town woman from Wild Boar Island would probably be happy with that kind of life. He couldn’t deny, part of him found that idea very appealing, too.

Of course, another part wanted to jump off this ferry right now and swim back to the mainland.

No. You’re sticking this out
.

He just had to keep his head down, do his job, and focus on figuring out what he
really
wanted before someone else decided for him. He definitely didn’t need complications—like romantic entanglements—to interfere with the decision-making process.

“So the matchmakers are a powerful force, I take it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Listen, Mike, I’m only going to be on the island for a short time and I’m not looking for...”

He assumed she was about to let him down easy and he put a hand up, palm out, heading her off at the rejection. Not that he’d tried to, er, lift himself up. “Say no more. I said the gossipers are pairing us up, not that I wanted them to. You are perfectly safe from me.”

Her spine might have stiffened the tiniest bit. Hard to tell beneath her coat, and he realized he might have insulted her. Damn, he was so not used to this, though he should be. When it came to matchmaking, the entire population of Wild Boar Island had nothing on the Santori family. Whenever he was between relationships, his mother, aunts and cousins were always pushing females in his direction—blond, brunette, divorcées, partying singles—if she had a pulse but not a ring, they sent her his way.

But he couldn’t recall them ever introducing him to one with hair that vivid shade of red or eyes that brilliant, glittering green, or one with such luscious—if blue-tinged—lips.

He tried to explain himself. “Look, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just, you’re...”

“It’s okay,” she said with a shrug and an understanding nod. “You’re gay, no problem.”

His mouth unhinged. “I’m
what?
”

She nibbled on her bottom lip. “Uh, you’re not gay?”

“Definitely not,” he said, torn between amusement and horror. “And if you tell me I give off a gay vibe, I might go ahead and leap, new boots be damned.”

Then he frowned. Worrying about his boots... That was a pretty metrosexual thing to do, wasn’t it? Shit. How was a guy to know?

“You don’t give off a vibe,” she insisted. “I just made an assumption based on what you said.”

“You think just because a guy’s not interested in you, he likes dudes?” He was baiting her; she didn’t come across as the vain type, but then one never knew.

“That did sound conceited, didn’t it?” she asked, visibly embarrassed. “I’m really sorry. I’m not thinking straight. It’s just that you said I was ‘safe’ from you, that you were single, completely available and that every unattached woman in town has come on to you. I just figured...”

“You figured wrong. I’m simply not in the market. New job, new town, new home. No privacy on this postage stamp of an island. There’s just too much on my plate right now and I can’t afford any distractions while I try to negotiate myself through this new life I’ve chosen for myself.”

Although, if he did have an empty plate, he could picture this woman sitting right in the middle of it, all sweet and succulent, just waiting to be devoured.

Forget it. Not happening.
He was burned out on romance these days. Well, he’d had it burned
out
of him, and by a woman he’d believed he could get serious with. She’d chosen her big-league banking job over him even
before
he’d decided to leave Chicago. She had made it pretty clear that her ritzy cocktail parties and corporate events weren’t the place for a guy who carried a gun and had a fresh razor-blade scar across his neck. Nice news for somebody lying in a hospital bed.

He was also not in the market for a new girlfriend because he lived under a microscope. “Hate to break it to you, Red, but if you and I so much as went out on an ice-cream date, the word would be all over the Wild Boar grapevine before I got in one good lick of my Rocky Road.”

Or your Cookies ’n Cream
.

He didn’t add that, wishing the more flirtatious voice in his head would back off and leave the driving to his more reasonable side.

“I understand. And ditto. Definitely not in the market for any complications.”

“Good. Then there’s no problem.”

They understood each other. Which was fine. Perfect. They’d be neighborly, friendly. Nothing else.

Something deep inside him tried to throw up a penalty flag at that prospect, but he shoved it away and focused on doing what was smart, not what was desirable.

They were close to the island now, and, as he’d expected, the rickety old ferry suddenly got caught in the surging current that swirled around it. The craft lunged up, and then slammed back down. Despite the steadying presence of his hand on her shoulder, Lindsey couldn’t keep her feet totally grounded. She stumbled forward, falling against him with a startled cry.

Thank heaven he was there, or she might actually have tumbled over the railing into the drink. Instead, Mike caught her in his arms, holding her close, not content with a hand on her shoulder while the chop was this rough.

They both gasped, startled by the close call, the crazy weather, the sway of the boat. And, for Mike, by her nearness.

This wasn’t just the lining-up of certain body parts, he was actually holding her in his arms. One was wrapped around her waist, a hand cupping her hip, the other encircling her shoulders. Every inch of her touched every inch of him. Each cell in his body reacted, parts of him awakening that he’d thought would remain in hibernation at least until he’d made a place for himself on Wild Boar Island.