Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set (20 page)

CHAPTER 10

S
he didn't have to be up at any certain time, but Chelle set her alarm anyway because if she didn't, she'd end up sleeping until ten or so, and then it felt as though she'd wasted too much of the day. Writing wasn't a nine-to-five job, of course. The good thing was that she could do it anytime she liked. It was just that she liked to get a start on her day like a normal person, not like some slug who didn't have the wherewithal to get out of bed.

Even if she
had
been up until four in the morning, she thought as she groaned and turned off the alarm. Maybe if she'd been working on something new and fantastic until that time, she'd have felt more justified about not getting up, but instead, she'd spent a lot of her time fiddling around with stuff she'd already written, cutting and pasting and revising, cobbling together bits and bobs of old things without really creating anything new. GOLEM was an awesome program, but it was also a huge time waster once you fell into the pit of character work sheets and plotting tools.

The zombie story had been promising, she thought as she considered a shower but couldn't quite rouse herself enough to get out of the warm blankets. If only because it had been so darned fun to write. A raging orgy of fluids and flying limbs. Basically the same thing as what she'd seen on Friday night at the club, she thought with a giggle, then felt another small pang of guilt about ducking out on the guy she'd been kissing.

Stretching, Chelle snuggled back into her pillow for a few more seconds. Her eyes felt gritty. The residual aches and pains from getting hit by the bike were always worse in the morning, although her bruises had faded. There was just some remaining soreness in her shoulder and neck, and that could be attributed as much to her terrible posture when she was on her laptop as anything else.

“Get up,” she told herself out loud, as though scolding were going to work. “Lazy ass.”

When her phone pinged, she twisted to check the message, which turned out to be a reminder that her meter was going to be read. Excitement, she thought and gave herself permission to also check her email while she was there.

“Holy...” Chelle sat straight up in bed, phone clutched in suddenly sweaty hands.

Someone wanted to buy her short story. It was for an anthology, small print press, but there was a nominal advance. Far from what she'd been earning with her nonfiction work, but...it was a sale.

An honest-to-goodness sale.

She was already turning in bed to tell him the good news when she remembered she was alone. Still. Always.

Chelle slid a fingertip across the phone's screen to close her mail and let her hands rest in her lap. She was not going to cry, she told herself. Grant would've been happy for her no matter what had happened between them, and she would remember that, not any of the other stuff. She closed her eyes, breathing in. Breathing out. She was not going to cry.

She'd go for a run instead.

She would run and run and work this out, and when she got back, she'd answer the editor's email, and then she would write more words and maybe even put together something for another submission. She was going to do this, make it happen. She was going to do this.

Up and dressed, she decided against running through the streets. It was light out, but that didn't mean she couldn't get hit by another drunk dude on a bike. Besides, she needed the ocean today. She needed the rush and crash of the salt and sea.

She needed a lot of things, Chelle thought, but she'd have to settle for this.

CHAPTER 11

J
ase had grown up so far from the ocean it had seemed like a myth. He'd been nearly thirty before he'd ever tasted that particular grit of salt water and sand you could get in your mouth only after being tumbled by a wave. Since then, he'd made it a point to get himself into the sea as often as he could.

He'd been up early this morning for a swim. The encounter behind the dance club had left him and Reg working overtime trying to put the pieces together, but though they'd interviewed a half dozen of the people who'd been in the parking lot that night, the ones they could find anyway, nobody else had seen anything except that first couple.

They'd been lucky, he thought as he stretched, bare chested, in the brisk early-morning air. Getting beaten up by King Kong would probably have been a walk in the park compared to fending off a pack of zombies, even if they'd turned out not to be real.

“I get it now,” Reg had told him after it happened, on the long, quiet and stinking car ride back to the condo. “I totally understand what you meant, about being inside it but looking back as though it had happened to someone else. We really need to figure this out and stop it, Jase. Someone's going to get more than banged up. Someone's going to get killed.”

Reg, for all his joking around, took his job with the Crew really seriously. Jase had never asked his partner what had brought him to the job, but whatever had happened to Reg had left a scar as deep as anything could.

They'd both been working all night but still hadn't been able to draw any lines. Eggy had been researching all kinds of explanations, including solar storms, which she said could cause insomnia and headaches but had never been known to lead to hallucinations with physical manifestations.

“Shit,” Jase muttered and scrubbed at his eyes.

He stretched again, feeling ill at ease and with nothing to do about it. This morning he'd already swum farther, ran faster than usual. The cup of joe he normally needed first thing in the morning to even consider feeling like a normal person? Nope. The mug on the railing in front of him had gone cold from lack of interest. He tossed it over the edge now.

And heard a scream.

Shit
—Jase looked over the edge to see a woman on the small path that led from the access road toward the beach. He'd completely drenched her, top to toe, with lukewarm coffee. At least it hadn't been boiling, he had time to think before she tipped her face up to see who'd done such an egregious thing to her.

It was the woman from the Cottage Cafe. The woman from the other night. Her dark hair had pressed down over her forehead, coffee running in rivulets over her cheeks. It had stained her white T-shirt and made the fabric cling to her in ways his libido definitely sat up and noticed.

“Sorry,” Jase called down to her. “Hey, c'mon up here—let me at least get you a towel.”

The woman hesitated, looking wary. “I'm okay.”

“If you're sure? Damn, I feel bad. Some paper towels, something. A napkin?” He paused, considering the situation. “You can stay out here on the deck if you're...worried.”

That she'd even have to take one second to fear for her safety pissed him off, but he understood it. You didn't need to believe in things that went bump in the night to understand the world was full of monsters. He watched her doubt cross her face, but then she nodded.

“Sure, okay. I could use something to dry off.” In half a minute, she'd made it up the wooden stairs to the deck.

Jase had grabbed one of the beach towels he'd hung over the railing to dry. Too late realizing it was still damp and cold from the late-spring air, he first handed it to her, then pulled it back before she could get a grip on it. He looked like an asshole.

The woman laughed. “Um?”

“Sorry, this one, it's... I used it earlier. Let me get you a dry one. You want to stay out here or...?” Now he sounded even more like an asshole.

At that moment, Reg took the opportunity to slide open the glass door and shake his naked ass all over the place.

“Looks like I'm not the only one who needs a towel,” the woman said.

* * *

The cute blond guy with the amazing green eyes was Jason. Jase, the other guy called him. Reg, he of the bare-booty shaking and wicked sense of humor. Also Jase's partner, which just figured, didn't it? Chelle thought with an internal sigh. Two superhot guys, of course they'd be together.

“Here, drink this.” Reg passed her a mug of blessedly hot coffee. “You sure you're all right?”

“It was cold, I told you that.” Jase sounded annoyed. “I already told her I was sorry.”

Chelle sipped the coffee with a sigh. “I'm fine. Really. I was more surprised than anything.”

Her shirt still clung to her, and the run she'd been looking forward to now seemed more of a chore. The coffee would help with the creeping exhaustion she'd known was going to hit her, but it wasn't going to be enough to get her motivated for a run any longer than it took to get her back home. She wrapped her hands around the mug, warming them.

She watched the two men move around the kitchen with an easy compatibility that made her envious. “I should get going. Thanks for the towel, and the coffee.”

Standing, she realized her mistake in sitting. She'd gone stiff and sore again. At the sight of her wincing, Jase moved forward.

“You're hurt?”

“Not from the coffee shower,” she assured him as she rotated her shoulder. “Just sore muscles. I'll be okay.”

“Let me give you a ride, at least. Shit, I feel like the biggest ass.” He shook his head. “At least let me drive you.”

She didn't want to say yes. It felt like too much of an imposition, especially after she'd needed to bum a ride from Eddie the other night. But Reg looked her over with a practiced eye and nodded.

“Yeah, let Jase give you a ride. You look like you feel like shit.”

She had to laugh at that, then again at Jase's expression. “Wow. Thank you.”

“Reg!”

“No, it's fine.” She waved a hand. “But I will take you up on the ride. Sure.”

“So...you're local?” Jase asked as she gave him directions to her house. The twenty-minute run was going to be a five-minute car ride.

Chelle nodded. “Yep. Grew up in Millville, then moved away for a while. Moved back down here from Wilmington about four years ago, after... Well, I quit my job to focus on some other things, and I figured the beach would be a great place to do that.”

“Other things?” He shot her a curious glance as he made the turn at the square.

“Yeah. I'm... Well, I'm trying to be a writer. I mean, I am a writer. I just am trying to be a different kind of writer.” It felt awkward to say it out loud, like admitting something shameful.

Jase looked impressed. “Yeah? What kind of writing?”

“I used to be a journalist. Now I'm focusing on fiction.” She pointed. “Turn here. Then the next left.”

“Wow. I don't think I've ever met a writer before. Have you had anything published?”

She smiled. “You know, that's the first thing anyone ever asks.”

“Yeah. I bet. Sorry.”

“No, it's a legit question. The answer is yes, tons of stuff in my old career. I wrote a lot of articles for different newspapers, a bunch of web content, stuff like that. My fiction has been taking a while to get off the ground, but...actually...” She paused. She hadn't told anyone else this, not her parents or sister, not Angie. The closest she'd come was that moment this morning in bed when she'd turned to a man who was no longer there. Taking in a breath, she blurted, “I just sold a story.”

Jase twisted a bit to look at her. “No kidding? Really?”

“Just a short story, nothing big. The money's not that great, but it's for a good small press, they're respected and...” She stopped herself from babbling more. “It feels good. Like maybe I'm going to make something of it.”

“Doing what you love—that's a real blessing,” he told her.

She smiled. “What do you do, Jase?”

“I'm a private investigator. Mostly insurance-fraud stuff,” he said casually. “Down here working on a couple different cases. I've never been to Bethany Beach before. It's a great little town.”

“Very quiet,” she said with a laugh. “If you want any kind of excitement, you really need to go to Ocean City or Rehoboth. Even Dewey.”

“Oh, I don't know about that.” He pulled smoothly into her driveway. “This the place?”

“Yep. Home, sweet home. Thanks for the ride.” Chelle put her hand on the door handle, then glanced at him over her shoulder. He was the guy from a few nights ago at the Cottage Cafe, she was sure of it. Which meant she'd written something sexy about him. And he'd dumped cold coffee on her over a balcony. “Do you believe in coincidence?”

“No,” Jase said firmly.

Fair enough. She did. There was proof of it, right there in the driver's seat. She didn't argue, though, just smiled and thanked him again. Right before she got out of the car, he stopped her with a question.

“Do you run up my way often? I mean, I like to get in a run in the mornings, do a few miles. Reg doesn't run. Sometimes it's good to have someone pushing you, though.”

She paused, then nodded. “Yeah. I run up that way, along the beach. I know some great trails through the parkland, too, and you can get to them really easily from your neighborhood. If you want to grab my number, you can text me if you—”

“I'd like that,” Jase said immediately.

They exchanged numbers. She got out of the car and watched him drive away with a small wave. It didn't mean...anything, she told herself. Just a running partner. Right? It wasn't more than that?

She didn't have much time to contemplate it further, though, because at that moment, her neighbors' pack of obnoxious dogs began their furious cacophony of barking. There were at least five of the tiny terrors, though sometimes in the summer, when the neighbors had guests, there'd been seven or more rowdy dogs creating havoc. They were supposed to stay in their fenced yard but often escaped to leave presents for her in her...

“Damn it,” Chelle muttered. She'd stepped in a pile of poo. She let out a long string of other curses as she scraped the bottom of her sneaker on the driveway stones, then toed off her shoes on the front deck and went inside.

The noise was barely quieter—her house was in the popular windjammer style, with sliding glass at the front and rear. Great for sunlight. Bad for soundproofing.

She'd spoken to the neighbors a few times, but Linda and Fred were the sorts of pet owners who referred to the dogs as their “fur babies” and who didn't seem to think letting the animals run wild and tear up the neighborhood, creating a noise disturbance in the process, was anything to worry about. She could've called the police. Made a complaint. That would lead to awkward interactions at the annual neighborhood picnic, of course, not to mention having to deal with them across the tiny backyards all summer long. Anytime she tried to cook out or use the outdoor shower or take a nap in her hammock. It wasn't worth it.

She could manage some kind of revenge, however, she thought as she went inside, stripping out of her dirty clothes and tossing them in the hamper. After a quick shower and some breakfast, she thought of her bed, but something else was more compelling.

She sat down at her computer and started to write.