Double Take (8 page)

Unfortunately, getting into a fight with a local cop was not the way she wanted to start off her tenure here on the island. She didn’t want to make any more of this than it already was.

Nor, however, did she want to let him off the hook right away. “Goodbye, Officer Dickinson.”

The junior officer shot a fiery glare at his boss, then an equally fiery one at her, and marched, stiff-legged, to his squad car. Mike stepped closer to Lindsey, putting a hand in the small of her back, as if steadying her, and they both watched as the other vehicle tore away up the street.

“Are you all right?” Mike’s voice was low, concerned, the anger still dripping from him but now equally balanced with worry.

“I’m fine. But he’s an asshole.”

“No kidding.”

“I can’t stand men who throw their weight around.”

“He’s got a lot of it to throw.”

She grinned, as he’d probably intended her to. “Please tell me you inherited him and didn’t hire him after you started?”

“Definitely inherited,” Mike said. “And he’s caused me nothing but grief since my first day.”

“Can’t you get rid of him?”

“Not only is he from a family who’s lived here forever, but his uncle was the last chief. He’s the one who gave good old Ollie the job.”

She groaned, and not because the guy had such a stupid name. Poor Mike—talk about a rock and a hard place. It was bad enough in an office environment to have a problem employee you couldn’t trust but also couldn’t get rid of. As a cop, it had to be a hundred times worse. She doubted there was much violent crime here on Wild Boar, but anything could happen. Not being certain your coworkers had your back would make it much more stressful to walk into a dangerous situation.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. This is entirely my fault—he’s my responsibility. I’ve been trying to work with him, get him to be at least somewhat competent. Obviously we have a lot more work to do.” He stared down the street in the direction the car had gone. “To be honest, he’s one reason I’d like to succeed in this job. I’m afraid if I left, he’d get it by default.”

“Poor Wild Boar Island.”

“Exactly.”

He thrust a hand through his hair, tousling the thick, brown locks. The sunlight caught glints of gold here and there in the strands and turned his dark brown eyes into something closer to amber. God, the man could be on magazine covers, yet instead here he was, standing on the side of the road, handling someone else’s screwup, taking the responsibility on his own broad shoulders.

One good thing—the situation with his officer had distracted him and he hadn’t mentioned what had happened yesterday at her place. She’d been half dreading running into him again, wondering how he’d behave and how she’d react. Considering all those carnal items he’d seen in her house and that kiss they’d shared, she’d feared he’d made some negative assumptions about her. Now, though, he didn’t appear at all judgmental, only worried and thoughtful.

“I’d better get back to the office. Again, I’m sorry, Lindsey. I’ll put the fear of God in him, but if he does anything at all, you let me know, okay?”

She nodded up at him and their stares met for a moment. He studied her face, his gaze lingering for a beat too long on her mouth. He swallowed, and she knew he’d finally allowed himself to remember yesterday.

That kiss. Oh, that kiss.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, his tone gruff, as if he were forcing himself to put up those barriers they’d both insisted they wanted.

“Sure.”

Getting in her car, she watched in the rearview mirror as he walked back to his SUV. She would never mistake it for Dickinson’s patrol car again, that was certain.

She only hoped that bastard got the message and left her alone. Though she had no doubt that if she had any problems with the other cop, Mike would take care of it. He was the caretaker type, a funny, smart, protective man wrapped up in a to-die-for sexy package.

“And you
are
going to stay away from him,” she reminded herself.

But somehow, she didn’t sound terribly convincing, not even to herself.

* * *

A
FTER
M
IKE
HAD
his blowout with Ollie Dickinson, which ended, as usual, with the other man threatening to “tattle” to his uncle—as if the former chief would come spank Mike and make him play nice—he went home to cool off.

It took a while to get over his anger at what had happened. Lindsey was a strong woman—he knew that. Still, she shouldn’t have to deal with being sexually harassed on the streets of Wild Boar. That such harassment had occurred on Mike’s watch was something he would not get over anytime soon.

Although it was technically his day off, he made a point of stopping by the station house every day, just to keep things running smoothly. He should head there now, not having anything else to do. It was one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. The church crowd would be filling the downtown eating establishments for their Sunday brunches. A whole townful of people would probably welcome him to join them at their tables, or in their homes, or at the station, or the shops.

But none of those options appealed. The only place that really appealed to him right now was a small cottage on the southern tip of the island. In that cottage lived the only other person who probably understood how he felt—like a fish out of water. He’d bet she was also spending a quiet Sunday alone, maybe reading a book.

Yeah, but what kind of book?

He pushed that thought away, not allowing himself to remember those wild moments he and Lindsey had shared yesterday. He’d spent enough time dreaming about them last night.

But maybe he should stop by and make sure she’d gotten something to eat. Plus, he was worried about the heat in the old place. And he also wanted to ensure she had a working phone, since she was so far from any neighbors and cell service on the island was notoriously spotty.

Hell, he wanted to take care of her. That probably wouldn’t surprise anybody who knew him well—Mike had always been the overprotective one in his family. Lindsey wouldn’t appreciate it, though. He’d already figured out she liked her independence, liked being in control at all times.

Interesting then, that she’d chosen teaching as a profession. He’d always associated teachers with traits such as being nurturing, patient and generous. Lindsey certainly had those qualities, but they were definitely outweighed by her determination, frankness, wit and sex appeal. It was an interesting combination.

Interesting? Hell. Try fascinating.

He’d begun to wonder if she might be exactly the type of woman he’d been looking for. Smart enough to keep up with him, but with a nice, normal job, not one that made her so ruthlessly ambitious she’d dump a guy still recovering from a slit throat.

Even putting Lindsey in the same thought as his ex seemed wrong, and he quickly shoved the whole subject out of his mind. He wasn’t going to see her without a good reason or an invitation. Period.

Instead, to cut through the silence, he got online and pulled up Skype. His parents had gotten their first computer recently and had become addicted to video chatting. Waiting for the connection, he forced a smile onto his face, knowing his intuitive mother would see something was wrong even with the expression.

“Little brother!”

It wasn’t his mother. Leo had responded, apparently at the folks’ house for a typical Sunday get-together. Since Leo and Madison had gotten married a few weeks ago, the two of them were really settling into the whole family routine. That was probably in preparation for the birth of their own little girl, due in three months.

His brother was going to be a father. It was hard to believe. Leo, a firefighter, had had a near miss with a real piranha of a woman that he’d been engaged to a while back. At first, Mike and their oldest brother, Rafe, had been worried Leo’s thing with Madison Reid might have been a rebound romance. They had met, after all, when Leo had gone for his prepaid honeymoon to Costa Rica. Alone.

The fact that Madison was the former fiancée of a Hollywood superstar had made them that much more nervous. At least until they’d met her. Seeing the love between the two had set everyone’s mind at ease.

Then, of course, Rafe had come home for Christmas with a woman they all remembered he’d dated years ago, but had believed was out of his life for good. Uh-uh. Rafe and Ellie were engaged, planning to wed when Rafe rotated stateside later this year.

His brothers were settling down as rapidly as his cousins had a few years ago, tipping over, one after another, like pins in a bowling alley.

“How’s it goin’?” he asked Leo through the screen, already knowing the answer to that question.

“Fantastic. Wanna see a picture of the baby?”

“Isn’t she still cooking?”

“Yeah, but these sonograms, you just can’t believe the detail!”

Mike’s instant message notifier dinged. He clicked over and opened the fuzzy image his brother had just sent him, with the vague shape of a kidney bean in the middle. Leaning closer, he was able to distinguish head from feet, but not much more than that.

“Nice,” he murmured, looking into the camera again.

“I know, right? So how’s life treating you?”

He shrugged. “Same.”

“Ready to bail and come home yet?”

“I’m not a quitter.”

“Never believed you were. I meant, have you booked your trip home the day after your six months are up?”

Laughing, Mike shook his head. “Don’t think so. I intend to make this work. Chicago P.D.’s not an option anymore.”

Leo nodded, his good humor fading as he frowned in concern. “Are you okay? Everything healed up?”

Mike rubbed his fingers against the scar on his neck. It was still red, but the tenderness had faded...physically, at least. Emotionally, he wasn’t sure it ever would. “Yeah. I’m fine. I guess I just haven’t quite figured out what I wanna do when I grow up.”

“Well, there are a couple of people who might have some options for you to consider.”

His interest piqued, Mike raised a curious brow. “Who?”

“The twins.”

“Mark and Nick?” His cousins were a little older, so growing up, he, Leo and Rafe had looked up to all five of the boys on that branch of the Santori family tree.

“Yeah. They called Mama the other day and got your contact info. Sounds like they want to talk to you about some kind of business idea.”

Hmm. Interesting.

Mark was a cop, so Mike had crossed paths with him a lot at work, though they’d been at different precincts. Nick was in security, having gotten out of the Marines and become a bouncer at a strip club where his wife, Izzie, had headlined. Weird. But they made it work.

“I’m open to hearing their idea,” he admitted.

“We’d love to have you back in Chi-town, man. It’s gonna suck doing the daddy thing without Uncle Mikey around to lend a hand. Who’s gonna scare off all the boys who start coming around when my baby girl hits puberty?”

“I think you’re more than capable of that,” he said with a dry chuckle.

“I’m a lover, not a fighter. Madison says I’m going to be the first human-shape marshmallow when the kid gets big enough to start wrapping me around her little finger.”

Probably true. With his huge heart, Leo was the nicest of the brothers, so generous and easygoing. Rafe...well, he was a bit of a hard-ass and sure didn’t have Leo’s breezy outlook on life. After so many years in Afghanistan, that was probably understandable. Ellie, however, seemed to have softened him some.

Then there was him, Mike. The youngest, the cop, the one who had never seen an abused animal he didn’t want to take in, or met a bully he hadn’t ended up punching out.

That was probably why he’d joined the force to begin with.

It was also probably why he’d left.

There was only so much head-banging-against-the-wall he could reasonably do. He’d never been able to
really
make a difference, and nearly losing his life while failing at his job just didn’t mesh with his genetic code.

He and Leo BS’d a little while longer, then his parents came into the room and waved from the background. His mom raised her voice to shouting level, as if she feared she wasn’t being picked up by the microphone, and Mike pushed his seat away from the speakers just to get a little relief.

Damn, how he missed his family. All of them. Parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. He had thought when he’d left Chicago that going to a place where there were no other Santoris would be good for him, a welcome change. He’d wanted to figure things out in a place where he had to stand completely on his own and would be by himself to think.

He just hadn’t realized that he wasn’t cut out to be a loner until recently.

For some reason, that brought Lindsey to his mind. He wondered if she had figured that out about herself yet. And if she had possibly considered the fact that maybe the two of them, as the outsiders, the loners, might in fact be a perfect match. If only it weren’t for their jobs.

5

A
LTHOUGH
L
INDSEY
HAD
never taught kids, she’d put in plenty of days as a teacher’s assistant throughout her academic career. That meant subbing for professors a lot of the time. Before starting this new job, she’d figured teaching college freshmen wouldn’t be that much different than teaching high school seniors. And really, it wasn’t.

These kindergartners, though? Oh, man. They were going to be the death of her.

“Miss Smiff, Maffew took all the gween cwayons so nobody else can color their twees.”

Blinking as she interpreted that rare dialect known as six-years-old-and-toothless, Lindsey sighed and swiped her hand through her hair. It was only first period, and she was a teacher, so a margarita was out of the question. But oh, could she use one.

After being on the job for only five days, she had already decided Callie should be canonized. Lindsey had no idea how her friend—or any of the teachers at the Wild Boar School—did it.

First off, she taught six classes a day and only had one brief planning period that wasn’t long enough to catch her breath, much less grade papers or prepare lessons. During the first period, this one, she taught all the K–3 kids. In the classroom, the kids were separated by grade into smaller work groups, and she spent the entire class period revolving between them, giving mini lectures to one while praying the others would stay on task with what she’d asked them to work on.

The kindergartners rarely did. And her classroom “assistant”—one of the moms—spent more time helping her own kid with his classwork than she did keeping things running smoothly when Lindsey’s back was turned.

After this period, she would move on to the fourth through sixth graders. Same setup. Then seventh and eighth. Ditto.

This afternoon, she’d get ninth grade biology, then tenth grade chemistry. Finally, at the very end of the day, advanced chemistry, which had eight students, all seniors, all vying to be valedictorian of their seventy-five-person graduating class.

Frankly, she’d rather have all seventy-five of those seniors in her physics class than try to have four eyes in her head to keep track of grades K-1-2-3.

“Miss Smiff, did you heaw me? Maffew’s not being vewy nice. Do
you
think it’s nice to keep all the gween cwayons?”

“No, it’s not very nice,” she admitted, turning away from the third graders. Again.

From the beginning, her strategy had been to connect all of her class lessons so that each group’s subject was somehow related to the others. Today, she’d been talking to the kids about plant life. Nothing along the lines of oxygenation and photosynthesis...strictly, why some trees have flowers and others don’t. But the blank expressions on the faces of the kindergartners this morning, and their fidgeting bodies, had made her give that up and go right to the old I’m-not-a-parent-and-have-no-idea-how-to-handle-little-kids standby: coloring. Specifically, coloring sheets printed with bushes, trees and flowers, most of which required green. It appeared Maffew hadn’t remembered that whole “sharing” thing.

“I’ll talk to him, Sarah.”

“I’m Emily.”

Oh. Right. She had only been on the job five days and hadn’t memorized all the kids’ names. That would have been impossible in so short a time, of course. But considering in this room alone there were four Sarahs and five Emilys, one of those two was usually a good bet if she was at a loss. For the boys? Jason and Michael.

Mike
.

Even during the day, there was one Mike who just wouldn’t get out of her head... The one who’d seen her sex-toy collection and then kissed her like he wanted to use every item in it with her. The encounter they’d shared—that embrace, that kiss—wouldn’t leave her mind. Nor would the memory of the expression on his face as he’d wondered what she did with those toys when she was alone.

She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him she wasn’t in the market for romance or relationships. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t imagine having fabulous sex with him.

It had gotten so bad that at night she’d been tempted to actually use one of those vibrators, to take the pressure off. She might have written about the Thinkgasm, might have interviewed women who could think themselves off, but she hadn’t mastered the art herself. Lying in bed fantasizing about that strong body of his, that great laugh, the amazing mouth and that hot, wonderful kiss, only made her more frustrated, and certainly didn’t do anything to relieve the tension.

She hadn’t ended up trying any of the toys, though. Despite what he’d assumed, she’d never used any of the things from that box.

She’d seen Mike around town this week, and had always stopped to say hello. He was usually putting out fires that seemed terribly important to the locals...like taking a report on somebody’s stolen trash can or coming to the school to do an anti-drinking talk with the older students. They hadn’t, however, been alone together since that unpleasant scene with his coworker Sunday morning.

She missed him. Crazy, since they’d only known each other a week, but it was true. Whenever she spotted him, her heart thumped and her pulse roared. She wanted nothing more than to find some excuse to be alone with him, even while her sensible side screamed at her not to be an idiot.

“Miss Smiff? Are you coming?”

Hearing the six-year-old’s impatience, she shook off the crazy thoughts and focused on her job. “Yes, I’m coming, Emily.”

Giving quick instructions to the third graders, she turned back to the little ones, sorted out the crayon catastrophe, and then moved through the rest of the class.

The remainder of the day was much the same. Just as she had on the previous four days, she found herself enjoying the older kids in her seventh period class. If she had an entire day of high school honors kids, she might actually choose to stick with this teaching gig for a while. It sure beat being ridiculed or made the butt of sexy jokes by the media. But the herding-cats feel of the younger groups was going to drive her nuts.

Fortunately, she’d become friendly with several of the other teachers, all of whom had been welcoming. They’d offered advice on everything from dealing with classroom misbehavior, to life on the island. Not at all to her surprise, two of them warned her about Officer Ollie Dickinson, who had a thing for pulling over single women.

At the end of the day, one of those teachers popped her head in. “You’ve survived another day!”

She smiled, remembering the pretty young woman’s name was Teresa and she taught elementary-age English. She and a few of the other teachers had taken Lindsey under their wing. “Five down.”

“Any hot plans for the weekend?”

“Did I miss a happening downtown club scene here?”

Teresa smirked. “Yeah, uh...no. You’ll have to take the ferry to the mainland for that.”

“Not a chance. I haven’t recovered from my trip over.” Even if it had allowed her to meet the amazingly sexy chief.

“Okay, well, have a great weekend!”

“Thanks,” she said, appreciating the brief check-in. It had been a nice thing to do.

For the most part, everybody on Wild Boar was just as friendly. Her landlady had made a point of stopping by with more cookies, the cashiers at the shops were always cheerful, the waitresses at the diner always laughed and chatted. It was all so very...nice.

She wished she could say she loved that, but she was too much of a big-city girl not to find it all just a little suspicious. Too much niceness made her teeth ache, and she really wished Callie were around to add a wee bit of snark to her day.

After school, wanting an injection of caffeine, she went to her favorite new haunt. The main street of the town, which bore the same name as the island, was about a mile long, and was lined mostly with walk-ups and small businesses. Mom-and-pop shops, a drugstore, a bakery, a hobby shop and a couple of restaurants operated year-round. She’d noticed signs on some of the craft and antiques businesses that said they would reopen in May, in time for tourist season.

The coffee shop, though, called The Daily Grind, was open all day, every day, and that’s where she headed. She pushed the door in, bringing a strong spring breeze with her, and the heads of everyone inside turned to watch her enter. From behind the counter, the owner, a happy-looking, middle-aged woman named Angie, smiled and called out a greeting. Nicely, of course. “Hi, Lindsey. Extra-large coffee with two creams and two sugars?”

She’d never lived in a place where the people not only knew their customers by their first names, but also remembered how they took their coffee. In Chicago, Lindsey had stopped at the same chain café near her apartment a couple of times a week for two years and had seldom seen the same barista twice.

“Sounds great.”

Angie got to work as Lindsey headed over. “How’s everything going over at the school?”

“Just fine.”

“What about Callie and the baby? Have you talked to her lately. Is he doing well?”

Nodding, Lindsey replied, “It sounds like baby William is doing much better. Callie has called me several times to give me lots of tips and advice about handling ‘her’ kids.”

“You tell her for me to stop worrying about anybody else’s little ones and just focus on her own precious angel.”

“I will,” Lindsey said, glad to hear the warmth and fondness in the older woman’s voice.

Whether Lindsey was comfortable with it or not, the niceness definitely benefited Callie. She hadn’t lived here long—two years, maybe—but the town had claimed Callie as one of their own after her marriage to Billy, a local boy. Everybody was concerned about her and the baby.

Lindsey hadn’t seen Billy since her arrival. He was either working or at the hospital, wanting to be there for his wife during these early, touch-and-go stages of their son’s life. But everywhere she went, people sang his praises, too, which made her feel more confident about her dearest friend’s life here.

“Here you go,” Angie said, pushing a white ceramic mug toward her. “T.G.I.C.”

“Huh?”

“Thank God It’s Caffeinated.”

She grinned, liking the woman, and replied, “You’ve got that right.”

Taking her coffee, she headed to an empty café table in the back. The shop had free wireless internet access, one of the few places on Wild Boar that did. Since she hadn’t had time to get anybody to come out to the cottage to wire her up, and the school’s wireless blocked a lot of sites to keep the kids off social media during the school day, she had to do her emailing and catching up on Facebook from here.

Opening her laptop, she booted it up, sipped the hot coffee and glanced around the shop. She recognized a few faces. There were two other teachers, at whom she smiled. A couple of strangers offered her cautious but friendly nods, obviously knowing who she was. A trio of her honors students sprawled in a circle of lounge chairs in the front window, chatting and using their laptops. They waved at her with enthusiasm.

“We’re doing our homework,” one of them, a pretty blond-haired girl, called from across the room.

“Sure you are,” she replied with a wry lift of a brow. “Just don’t rely on Twitter to help with next week’s exam.”

The kids laughed good-naturedly, going back to their conversation, and Lindsey began to flip through her email. She immediately deleted the dozen interview requests that had come in since yesterday. Also deleted were the obligatory penis-enlarging, Russian bride and overseas finance minister scams.

That left her with two emails, one of which was from Callie. Attached to it was a picture of the baby, so tiny in his incubator. At least she could see him now, unlike when she’d gone to visit at the hospital ten days ago. His precious face had been covered with a mask, his body frail and weak-looking. He appeared much stronger now, bigger, too, and judging by the tone of her friend’s email, was growing beautifully. That made Lindsey’s whole Wild Boar ordeal worthwhile, in her opinion.

Surfing onto Facebook, she checked her private page, accessible only to real friends. She’d deleted her professional one when the comments had gotten absolutely unbearable.

Once she’d finished her online stuff, she slowly sipped her coffee, somehow loath to leave this little slice of society and return to her quiet, empty house. After living in Chicago for several years, she just wasn’t used to silence. She had never felt more alone than she had since this move, not having had one visitor since Mike left on Saturday.

By four, she realized she couldn’t take up a table while continuing to nurse one cup of coffee, so she began to pack up her stuff to leave. She unzipped her laptop case and slid her computer into it, paying no attention to the ringing of the bell over the coffee shop door.

At least, not at first.

Then she heard Angie greet the newcomer. And she could do nothing else
but
pay attention as the dark-haired, dark-eyed man in khaki walked in and headed to the counter.

“Howya doin’, Chief?” asked Angie.

It was the very person she’d been unable to stop thinking about. The very one she’d had those wild and wicked dreams about.

The very one she needed to avoid.

“Good, thanks.” Mike Santori offered the woman a slight smile and a nod, looking around and giving the same casual greeting to everyone else.

Until his eyes landed on Lindsey. With her he didn’t smile, nod and move on. Instead, his eyes widened and his mouth parted on a quick inhalation that she could almost hear.

Her heart thudded and her stomach churned. She realized her hand was shaking when her nearly empty coffee mug rattled enough to splash a small amount of lukewarm coffee against her fingers. Lowering it, she forced herself to take a steadying breath. She was going to be here for weeks; she needed to get used to running into him. She simply couldn’t afford to be embarrassed about what had happened between them on Saturday.

It’s not embarrassment.

She tried to hush the voice in her head, even as she acknowledged it was right. Yes, there was some embarrassment about the things he’d witnessed, and the fact that she’d fallen into his arms so soon after they’d met. But mostly what she felt when she saw Mike Santori was this strange, urgent tension. Currently her blood was gushing and a sort of electric energy surged through her, making the hairs on her arms stand up. Her foot was tapping on the floor, her fingers doing the same on the table, as if she just needed to move.