Drawing The Line (8 page)

“That’s pretty hardcore.” Not that he couldn’t see it. Jeez, even her crease was doing double-time. “What, do you go to the walk-in for vac
ation? Or does the pantry have better nightlife?”

No hiding her smile on that one. “Funny. Look, I know it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, but Mac’s is the only home I’v
e ever had. I have everything I need there, and I don’t need to be anywhere else.”

The family thing made sense, but still…“Swiss Alps?”

“I don’t ski.”

“Black beaches in Hawaii?”

“I’d be antsy in five minutes. Plus, I’ve been there. Twice.”

He buckled down in thought. “Space shuttle to the moon?”

“Full marks for creativity. But no thanks. I like my food from the earth, not a tin foil packet.”

“Ugh, you win on that one.” Jason hit the bottom of his bowl, and Serenity reached out to take it, her bare feet swishing over the floorboards as she
moved to scoop up seconds. “Thanks, but I could’ve gotten that. You really should take it easy.”

“Oh.” She blinked down at the bowl in h
er hands, returning it to the table with a shrug. “I guess I’m just really used to feeding people. To be honest, it comforts me as much as the cooking.”

“Is
that why you chose Mac’s?” He took another bite, his stomach rumbling with happy approval.

Serenity smiled, not one of those restraine
d pleasantries, but a start-to-finish stunner that made a bulls-eye of Jason’s sternum. “I might own the place, but Mac’s definitely chose me. My mother and I restored the diner four years ago—she bought it on a whim, naturally. But something about being there made me feel just right. So when we were done, instead of going with her to San Francisco, I took out a whopping loan and bought it. I haven’t left since.”

“It must’ve taken a lot of hard work to get the place back in the black.” Jason remembered when it had been a greasy little spoon of a place, way back before he’d made detective and had worked patrol. The place had been one giant health code violation.

“Yeah. But starting from scratch had its benefits. I got to build the place from the bricks in. It was a blood, sweat and tears endeavor, but it was all mine and my staff’s. Most of them have been with me since the beginning. I always wanted a place to belong, and I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else.”

Serenity leaned back in her kitchen chair, all the tension magically gone from her normally-serious features. The worried V between her brows had been replaced by an easy softness, and the dimple in her cheek flashed as she paused to dip her spoon into the pint-sized blue
bowl in front of her. She looked so honest and pretty, all lit up with the thought of the place she called home, and for just a brief sliver of a moment, Jason wanted nothing more than to get up and fold her against him again, to inhale the fresh-laundry scent of her shampoo and do whatever it took to keep that purely happy look on her face.

Was he out of his
mind
? Yes, keeping her calm was important, and okay, even though he was a cop, of course he was human and he didn’t want her disgruntled. But the fact of the matter—the fact he’d forgotten—was that he
was
a cop.

And Serenity was his witness.

“Thanks again for lunch,” Jason said, throwing all his effort into a polite wrap-up. “I know the location isn’t ideal. But it’s necessary.”

“
The location’s not so bad, although the ventilation makes it pretty hot in here. That, and I haven’t seen appliances like this since my mom and I restored a one-room burger dive built in 1962.” She looked at the vintage-style refrigerator and the timeworn enamel farmhouse sink, pausing thoughtfully before tacking on, “Are all the places you guys use for stuff like this out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Every safe house
is different.” He fought the urge to bolt from his chair to put some professional distance between them, weaving just enough ho-hum around his reply to be both casual and vague.

B
ut rather than letting the conversation peter out, Serenity dug in. “So if this Brody guy has to stay in prison until the trial, I might not have to stay here, right? He can’t hurt me if he’s locked up.”

“The DA is going to do all she can to have Brody remanded.” Jason’s brain clicked over to detective mode, although he still tread with caution. Between
Brody’s high-priced lawyers and his frustrating-as-hell track record of avoiding serious trouble by way of bribes and threatening leverage, the DA had her work cut out for her and then some. But none of that boiled down to concrete fact, and giving air time to a bunch of what-ifs was pointless.

             
Serenity let out an audible breath, dropping her spoon into her mostly-empty bowl with a hard clink. “You know, if you and I are going to be stuck here together for a while, it might be easier if you were just straight with me.”

Despite the
ingrained instinct that usually kept him calm, cool and just slightly cocky, Jason pulled up to fill every inch of his six-foot frame beside her at the table and leveled her with a stare to match her austerity.

“
He’s
extremely
dangerous, and that’s just the point. I’m not keeping the details from you on purpose. But Dirk Brody’s got a nasty reputation, and I don’t think he’d hesitate to do whatever it takes to get away with the evil things he did yesterday. I know you’re asking for full disclosure, but trust me when I say you don’t want every gory detail. It’ll only scare the shit out of you.”

Serenity’s lips parted into a p
urely startled expression, and Christ, he really needed to keep his mouth shut if he couldn’t control what was going to come out of it. Keeping her calm was part of keeping her safe, and he’d do well to hammer that thought front and center instead of scaring her senseless. But something about Serenity’s unvarnished honesty had wound its way right past all his pre-loaded answers and work-related tactics, pushing his emotions right out of his mouth.

And letting those out would only screw with doing his job.

“I apologize, Ms. Gallagher. I didn’t mean to—”

“Thank you.”

Jason’s thoughts screeched into the mental equivalent of a six-car-pileup on the freeway. “For snapping at you?”

“No. For telling me the truth
.”

CHAPTER SIX

              Serenity mopped her brow as she shifted back from the sturdy Frigidaire Custom Imperial double oven, sliding a skillet of bacon to a dormant burner with a scrape and clang. She’d spent a disproportionate amount of the last two days sequestered inside the heated confines of the safe house kitchen, chopping, mixing, baking and frying. Somehow, when she had her hands on the food and her mind on the simple task of preparing an ingredient or putting a dish together, everything else seemed to recede.

             
Like the fact that a wily, cold-blooded criminal wanted her very, very dead. And first thing tomorrow morning, said criminal was standing up at his arraignment, with both his own freedom and her personal safety swinging around each other by very tenuous threads.

             
“You okay in here?” Jason poked his head into the kitchen, hands in the pockets of his jeans and his gun holstered firmly to his hip.

             
“Yes, thank you.” Serenity nodded, giving the huge stock pot full of boiling new potatoes a gentle nudge with one hand.

             
“Sorry about the heat,” he said, pointing up to the sad excuse for a downdraft over the oven. “The house is old, and while the ventilation system is safe, it’s not very efficient.”

             
She ignored the trickle of perspiration sneaking between her shoulder blades, just grateful that the stove was functional. “It’s okay.”

             
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that Detective Blackwell will be here tomorrow to relieve me so I can go to the arraignment. Brody’s first on the docket, so it’ll be kind of early.”

             
She hadn’t been shocked to discover that Jason was an integral part of this case; after all, not only was he stuck here with her, but he’d also been checking in with his Lieutenant at regular intervals, performing thorough security sweeps of the property, and poring over hours’ worth of case files on his laptop. In the same way she’d been living and breathing the kitchen, Jason had been one hundred percent absorbed in his job.

             
Which meant he’d been one hundred percent absorbed in her, even though they’d exchanged nothing but polite words and need-to-know information for the last two days.

             
“Are you hungry?” Serenity blurted, forcing herself back to the safe haven of the farmhouse kitchen. “I’m making BLTs and potato salad, and there’s plenty.”

Sure, as long as
plenty
translated to
enough to feed ten of you
. But she couldn’t help it she missed Mac’s. Getting her hands on the groceries the department had delivered was a decent enough substitute, but it was temporary. She had to hold out hope that the arraignment judge would see reason and leave Brody in jail until the trial. Then maybe it would be safe enough to work her way back to her diner and her life again.

Jason
paused, his blue eyes zeroing in on the cast iron skillet that was very likely older than both of them combined. “I don’t want to put you out.”

             
“It’s no trouble at all.” She reached for the golden-crusted loaf of white bread she’d pulled from the oven this morning, slicing off a handful of thick slabs before repeating the process with a fatly ripe tomato. “So is everything going okay at Mac’s?”

             
He nodded, just one economical lift of his chin. “Detective Blackwell was there last night.”

             
“That doesn’t really tell me if the place is still standing, you know.” Serenity clamped down on her lip just a breath too late. Two days ago, she’d chalked up his evasive maneuvering to another attempt at finessing his way through a tough situation. It had flat-out never occurred to her that he might have a
good
reason to dodge the truth.

Trust
me when I say you don’t want every gory detail. It’ll only scare the shit out of you.

             
“Sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I know you’re trying not to frighten me. It’s just hard to not know what’s going on all the time.”

             
“No worries.” A smile kicked one corner of Jason’s mouth up toward the clean-shaven angle of his jaw, but he rearranged his features quickly back to neutral. “Mac’s is just fine. He said your cook makes a great American burger.”

             
Serenity drained the potatoes into an enamel colander so heavy it might be bulletproof, breathing in the steam and letting it mix with the relief in her lungs. “I’m glad he enjoyed it. Nobody’s seen anything suspicious, have they?” God, she’d never forgive herself if another one of her employees got hurt.

“
So far, there’s been no sign of trouble. Your staff is really alert. It helps.”

             
“Thanks.” A sharp pang of homesickness corkscrewed through Serenity’s chest, and she covered the ache with her palm. She assembled the ingredients for the warm potato salad recipe she and Jules had come up with one night after too many margaritas, grabbing a wooden spoon from the deep-bottomed drawer next to the sink.

             
“Why don’t I set the table?” Jason asked, and her brain’s command to stay impassive fell victim to the spark of surprise winding through her.

             
“Sure.” Serenity plucked a handful of fresh parsley from the fridge, sending up yet another round of thanks to the powers in heaven that she’d had the foresight to grab her knife roll from her kitchen last week. Mac’s might not be fancy, but it was just stupid not to invest in high-quality cutlery.

             
Not that she could get there to use it.

             
“Wow, that’s pretty impressive.”

             
It took her a minute to realize that Jason had stopped setting the table, eyes fixed on the blur of her hands on the butcher block as she put an efficient chop to the herbs. “Thanks. But it’s actually more practice than skill.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he said
, but she shook her head to stand her ground.

“Do you go to the gun range? For practice on those paper target things?”

“Yeah.” Jason drew the word all the way out as if it were a question, and the mixture of confusion and curiosity stamped over his face was endearing to the point of distraction.