In the Line of Duty: First Responders, Book 2 (11 page)

She was halfway through her sandwich and on her third glass of water when there was a knock on her door.

She looked through the Judas hole and saw Jake standing there. She hadn’t seen him since that morning…the morning they’d left things friendly but ambiguous. She didn’t think being with Jake had been a mistake, but neither was she looking for a relationship. Apparently Jake wasn’t either, because he hadn’t put up any argument. If anything, they’d parted on relaxed terms.

Only she hadn’t felt all that relaxed. Because she couldn’t escape the memory of how it had felt to be curled up in his lap, to cry on his shoulder and to wake up with him surrounding her the next morning. Those things had nothing to do with sex…and that made her uneasy.

“Kendra, open up.”

She stepped back from the door as if he could see through the peephole on the other side. What a ninny she was. Letting out a breath, she snagged her T-shirt from a chair and pulled it over her head before she opened the door.

“Jake. What brings you by?”

It was casual and cool and she gave herself a mental pat on the back. He stepped inside and held out a piece of paper. “I thought you might be interested in this. It could be fun, if you’re not on shift.”

She took the yellow paper from his hands and read the black printing. “A golf tournament?”

“It’s a benefit on the Labor Day weekend for one of my parent’s neighbors. Their kid is really sick and my dad’s a member of the club. A bunch of them got together and organized it as a fundraiser. We’ve got corporate sponsors lined up and it’s forty dollars for the day. That gives you your green fees, a cart and a steak dinner at the end of the day.”

“I don’t know, Jake.”

“Gabe and Carly are with me. But we need a fourth to make a team.”

“I don’t golf.”

“I’ll teach you. It’s Texas Scramble anyway, best ball off the tee. You’ll be fine.”

She turned away, holding the paper tightly in her fingers. The damnable thing was that she wanted to go. She liked Gabe. He was a good paramedic and Carly seemed sweet and nice. But it would look like a couple’s outing.

“I’ll have to check my schedule.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Kendra Givens, you are a liar. You know your schedule from now until the end of September.”

He was right. She did. It irked her that he already knew her so well.

“If you don’t want to go, just say so.”

“It’s not that, it’s…” She handed the paper back to him. “It’s just that Gabe and Carly are engaged, and if I go with you it’ll look like…well, like we’re together.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

Would it? She wondered how it would appear to her coworkers, but if she were being honest with herself none of them had a problem with Jake. Hell, it wasn’t uncommon for the guys to stop off for an after-work drink and a basket of wings.

No, the problem was hers. And lately she was having a harder time coming up with excuses as to why Jake was so very bad. Especially now that she knew about Khaterah.

“I’ll think about it,” she prevaricated. “I was just having a sandwich. You want one?”

She turned her back and went to the counter to get her plate. Jake shut the door behind him. “I ate at the pub. It was Guinness Pie night.”

The dry turkey sandwich tasted bland next to the idea of beef smothered in gravy and topped with flaky pastry. She pushed the remaining pieces away.

He looked around her apartment. “Nice place. A little on the sparse side.”

She knew it wasn’t overly cozy. Even his place above the pub had some homey touches—a family picture on the coffee table, a homemade quilt on the arm of a chair. Kendra’s place was functional, she knew that. She’d never learned how to make a home even though she’d always wanted one. They had moved so often that it had seemed pointless. Besides, making it their own would have meant getting attached, and keeping things easy and bare had become a form of self-preservation.

“I work, I sleep,” she answered.

“And work out.” He nodded towards the corner of the living room that was set up with a weight bench, the racks of dumbbells against the wall. Her yoga mat was rolled up again.

“That too.” Uncomfortable with his assessment, she gave her shoulder a shrug. “Was the golf tournament all you wanted?”

He stared at her for such a long moment she started to squirm on the inside, even though she kept her outer body calm. “I thought we were going to keep this friendly,” he said, putting his hands in his jeans pockets.

This was friendly—for her. He probably didn’t realize she’d never entertained here, never had people over. She always kept to herself.

“I’m sorry,” she answered, going back into the kitchen and keeping her hands busy by scraping the rest of her sandwich into the compost bin. “You took me by surprise, Jake, and I’m not very good at this.”

“Good at what?”

Good at pretending. Good at trying to be blasé and all platonic when what she really wanted was to kiss him again and see if he tasted like she remembered. She dropped the plate into the sink a little loudly.

“Any of this, actually. The
after
stuff. I’ve never had to do it before.”

“Never?”

It was all coming out wrong. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

He laughed. “It’s kind of cute seeing you all flustered. You’re usually in control.”

Control. The very word sent her straight back to his bedroom, straddling his thighs. She swallowed the saliva that suddenly pooled in her mouth. That morning was supposed to be it. Supposed to get him out of her system, relieve her stress, move on. Instead he was standing in the middle of her colorless apartment making her want him simply by breathing in the same space she was.

“What do you want, Jake?”

“
Well
…” He drew out the word suggestively. “Other than the golf thing, I can’t stop thinking about cake in a cup. I was thinking you might offer me dessert. Since it only takes three minutes. Or so you claimed.”

Of course he would remember. “You want me to make you cake in a cup.”

“Come on, I’ve cooked for you twice now. You owe me.”

He was right, of course. Each time they’d been on his turf, at Jake’s. Even the day at the beach had been courtesy of a family friend of his. She went to the cupboard and took out two mugs. “Fine,” she said. “Cake in a cup coming up. Have a seat.”

She mixed the sugar, egg, oil, cocoa, milk, flour and vanilla in the cup and put it in the microwave to let it cook while she mixed up the next cake. While it was cooking, she took the first one out of the mug and put it on a plate. “Ice cream?”

“Of course. What’s warm cake without ice cream?”

The microwave beeped as she scooped out the ice cream—the premium kind with dark flecks of vanilla bean throughout. What the hell, she thought, reaching inside the fridge for the fudge sauce. She poured some in a small cup and heated it too, then poured it over both cakes. She took both into the living room and handed one to Jake, who was sitting on the couch.

“Hmm,” he said. “It looks like cake.”

Her lips twitched. “It is cake. Fast cake.” She aimed a significant look at him. “Emergency cake.”

He laughed, took his fork and cut off a piece. “Hmm,” he said again. “It tastes like cake. Kind of.”

“The texture isn’t very fine, it’s true,” she admitted, cutting into her own, adding some ice cream and sauce to the fork. “But it fits the major criteria. It’s chocolate, it’s fast and it’s warm.”

The atmosphere seemed to relax a bit as they ate, but once Jake put his plate down on the coffee table she felt his eyes on her again. She took the last bit of ice cream from her plate and savoured the vanilla flavor, but then put her plate down too, wondering what was going to happen next. What did she want to happen? For Jake to leave? Or for something more? It would be so much easier if she weren’t so confused about it all.

“You’ve got some chocolate sauce…” he murmured, sliding closer. She stared at him, mesmerized as his face came closer. She clasped her hands in her lap. She would not reach out for him. She would not touch him.

But he touched her. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then used his tongue to remove any trace of the hot fudge. Kendra’s body went into a slow meltdown. How was it he could do this every time? Did she have no willpower where he was concerned?

“Mmm,” he murmured. “Better than the cake.”

She expected him to take things to the next level, but instead he sat back and rested his hand on her knee. He didn’t touch her anywhere else.

She didn’t understand. If this was all about sex he would be touching her in a way that didn’t feel quite so…platonic. She’d be able to stop him and finally explain that she couldn’t do this. It had very little to do with the fact that he owned a bar anymore. It was easier to blame the bar owner than it was the individual who was responsible for their own choices. No one had held her mother down and forced her to drink. Kendra’s mom had made the choice and Kendra had paid the price for it.

And it had next to nothing to do with the fact that he’d run wild when he came back to town. It was all to do with her. She didn’t know
how
to do this. She wasn’t sure what to do with what she was feeling. Because it was more than physical. And if it was more than that for Jake too, they were in big trouble.

“Your mind is going a mile a minute,” Jake commented, squeezing her knee. “Don’t try so hard, Kendra.”

“I thought…” She couldn’t possibly say what was on her mind. It all sounded so stupid and conceited.
I thought you were going to seduce me. I thought you were going to touch me.
And the
I thought it was just sex
sounded so cold and calculating.

“You thought I wanted more than cake?”

She nodded.

His eyes lit and he pseudo-smiled, but he didn’t move any closer. “I do. But I’m not in any rush.”

She gripped her fingers together so tightly her knuckles turned white. “You’re not?”

He shook his head. “I’ve realized something the last few days. This thing with us…it’s not going away. I think about you. A lot. And it’s not just about wanting you. I mean we could do that. We could go at it like bunny rabbits in the hope that it would just burn itself out. But I can’t do that sort of thing anymore, Kendra.”

“You can’t?” Her heart seemed to be lodged inside her throat. She was terrified of what he was saying, both the holding back part and the bit about wanting her.

“It’s extreme behavior. The other night we needed each other and it was good.” His jade-green eyes held her captive while his strong fingers stroked the skin just above her knee. “But I realized I can’t use you to lose myself again, you know? I don’t want you to be a different kind of addiction. A different way for me to avoid dealing with things.”

“So the golf thing…”

“I just want to take a step back. Do something a little outside ourselves. Something normal, Kendra. I don’t remember the last time something felt normal.”

She couldn’t either, to be honest. “I’m not even sure what normal is.”

“I know. So let’s just…slow it down. See where it goes.”

She couldn’t believe he was backing off. She should be relieved, but instead she somehow felt like she was lacking in some way. That it had more to do with her than it did with him.

“Did I do something wrong? The other night…”

“Of course not.”

“I just mean…” Well, hell, it was go-for-broke time, wasn’t it? And she’d rather know the truth than some weird lame let-her-down-easy bit. “Look, I don’t have a lot of sexual experience. Because of my mom and the way I avoided relationships…” She took a deep breath. “I lost my virginity when I was twenty-two because I felt like a freak being the only woman I knew who hadn’t. It felt more like a liability than anything else. It was a relief to be honest. So if I…well, you know…”

His smile was so tender it seemed to put a little dent in her heart.

“You are so adorable.” He lifted his hand and touched her chin. “You can be tough as nails one moment and soft and unsure the next. I never quite know where I stand with you, Kendra.”

“I don’t want to be adorable.”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

He stroked her cheek. “I know you don’t. That’s why we shouldn’t rush into anything.”

Something warm and unusual stirred inside her, a feeling she wasn’t quite comfortable with. “I think I liked you better when you were a pain in my ass.”

“It was easier, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

“So…teammates?” he asked. “It’s a good place to start, right?”

It was the idea of starting anything that freaked her out so much. Because starting something pretty much presumed an ending too. And endings were what she’d been avoiding her whole life. They hurt way too much.

But it was just an afternoon of golf. He wasn’t really offering any more than that, and she was making a big deal over a little thing. She nodded. “Okay. Teammates.”

Satisfied, he put his hands on his knees and stood up. “Good. I should get going then. It’s been busy at the pub and I need to get back.”