Love On The Line (12 page)

“I
am
happy to see you, Morgan. Every time I lay eyes on you. So sue me if I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”  

             
Shock dominated her chest, leaving her with a paltry
oh
as her response, but Noah just held her tighter. They walked the rest of the way to the diner in silence, but it was far from uncomfortable since they stopped to kiss at least twice. Only when he’d seen her all the way to the double glass doors did Noah give her one final, toe-curling kiss goodbye, and thank God she had a little time before her brother arrived to get rid of the blush and grin combo spreading out on her face.

             
Violet waved to the waitress behind the counter before heading to her and Jason’s usual booth, with its fabulous view of the street. Maybe she’d stop by the market on her way back to Noah’s later and pick up the ingredients for lasagna. Then while it cooked, they could—

             
“Would you mind please telling me what the hell is going on?”

             
Jason’s voice ripped her right from her sexy reverie and tossed her headfirst onto the hot seat.

             
“Wh-what are you doing here so early?” she stammered, uncut surprise cementing her to the black and white checkerboard tiles. The post-lunchtime crowd bustled past on the other side of the huge window, and shit. Jason was facing the direction from which she and Noah had come up Fourth Street. Still, it was possible he hadn’t seen
everything
.

             
“What are you doing kissing my partner?” he asked her right back, and so much for him not seeing everything.              

             
Violet let out a breath and slid into the opposite side of the red leather banquette, fidgeting with her place setting. “We’re sort of…seeing each other.”

             
“You’re seeing each other,” Jason echoed, brows lifted in disbelief. “How long has this been going on?”

             
She flipped her coffee cup in a deliberately calm motion, although whether it was for her brother’s benefit or her own, she wasn’t quite sure. “A couple of weeks.”

             
Jason knotted his arms over his crisp white dress shirt, the disbelief on his face tripling. “And were either of you going to, oh, I don’t know, tell me about it?”

             
Exasperation snapped at Violet’s calm like a junkyard dog in need of a good meal, and she white-knuckled her cup even though it was empty. “Well I would have, but I had this crazy notion you might be a little weird about it. Go figure.”

             
She put just enough frost on her words to get her brother’s attention, and he sat back in the booth, turning his attention to the people passing by outside.

             
“Look, you’re my sister, and he’s my partner. You’re taking me by surprise here. How am I supposed to react?” Jason’s expression softened even though his voice didn’t, and damn, she had to give him the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t like she never worried about
his
well-being.

             
“You’re supposed to react like we’re all adults,” Violet said, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “I didn’t plan for any of this to happen, and it’s kind of taking me by surprise too. But for now, Noah and I are seeing each other. Can you be okay with that?”

             
Jason sat in silence for a long minute before answering with a resigned sigh. “Does it matter if I’m not?”

             
Relief coursed through Violet, giving her permission to exhale all the way. “You answered my question with a question. I have it on good authority that that could be construed as evasive.”

             
“Oh Jesus, you really like him.” Her brother pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger with a groan, and Violet’s head whipped to attention.

             
“We’re just seeing each other. It’s not a big deal.”

             
“You think it’s that easy?” Jason paused while the waitress swung by to fill their coffee cups before he continued. “Come on, Blue. You hate the job. Noah
is
the job. It’s in his family, just like it’s in ours. He’s a cop, through and through.”

             
Her pulse skipped a steady beat in her veins. It had been all too easy to put the idea of Noah going back to active duty out of her head in favor of the time they’d spent together. “It’s not in my part of our family. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

             
“You’re at that bridge now, aren’t you?” Rather than arriving with an accusatory edge, Jason lowered his words with care, and her palm went damp on the handle of her cup.

             
“What are you talking about?”

             
“It’s just a matter of paperwork. Noah’s coming back to limited duty starting tomorrow.”

             
Violet’s brain tumbled back to the waiting room at the medical center, when Noah had nonchalantly tucked the forms under his arm like nothing-doing, and dammit. How could she have not seen this coming? “I’m glad he’s healing,” she said, but the words shook in her throat, a tiny earthquake in each syllable.

             
“He didn’t tell you, did he?” Jason’s eyes flashed, but she shook her head to cut the rest of his response short.

             
“It doesn’t matter, Jay. Noah’s going back to work has nothing to do with me. And it’s not like I didn’t know it was going to happen.” On the surface, this was the absolute truth, and she’d no more try to keep Noah from his job than she’d expect him to keep her from hers.

             
Under the surface, right next to her heart, though? The whole thing stung. A lot.

             
Jason leaned forward, this time squeezing her hand. “You want me to kill him?”

             
Violet barked out a laugh, the tension of the conversation shattering and falling away. “That might be a teensy bit over-protective, don’t you think?”

             
“Well, I am your older brother.” He waited out her requisite snort before serving her a more serious expression. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

             
“Don’t worry,” she said, pasting on a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

             
But the lie tasted as bitter as it felt.

CHAPTER TEN

              Noah flexed his shoulders against the steady stream of hot water, doing his best to let the spray from the shower relax his over-tight muscles. His stomach knotted up with a lurch, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but for the first time since Violet Morgan had bullied her way into his apartment nearly a month ago, Noah wasn’t hungry for a thing.

He’d flat-out lost his appetite the minute his physical therapist told him the surgeon had signed off on her assessment that Noah’s progress had been remarkable, and he could return to limited duty immediately. Even though Noah had known it was a possibility, he’d refused to let himself believe he could really go back this soon.

And now that he finally had it, the whole thing just felt wrong.

             
He didn’t have jitters about being back on the job— Noah had understood the risks of being a cop from his very first day at the academy. Putting his life on the line had never once scared him.

             
Putting his heart on the line? Hell if that wasn’t a whole different ballgame.

             
Noah cranked the shower handle as hot as it would go, bracing his hands on the tile to let his chin drop to his chest. The time he’d spent with Violet had seemed to stretch out and go by in a blink, like when they were alone, it didn’t matter that he was terrible at expressing his emotions or that he still couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to him when he’d been shot. Violet just seemed to get him in a way that no one ever had before, and he got her right back.

             
Which would be great if she didn’t have an extreme aversion to the profession that not only paid his bills, but had pretty much made up the fabric of his existence for the last eight years.

              Noah cut the water with a snap of his wrist, stuffing the thought all the way down into his chest, where he managed to keep it as the afternoon coasted into evening. By the time Violet arrived on his doorstep at dinnertime, he was so hungry to see her that he hauled her into the apartment, wrapping his arms around her for a deep kiss without the pretense of a hello.

             
“You really weren’t kidding about being happy to see me,” she said on a sigh as they finally parted, her cheeks warmed over with the sexy hint of a blush.

             
“Nope.” He led her all the way inside, making his way toward the kitchen on auto-pilot. Violet had technically stopped cooking for him as a client, but they still spent their evenings cooking, and damn if he didn’t find it kind of relaxing, in its own weird way.

             
“So how was your afternoon?” Something hitched in Violet’s voice, so tiny that he’d have missed it if he wasn’t so in tune with her, and the unease that had been poking around in his chest earlier made a repeat performance against his sternum.

             
“Good. Listen…” He reached forward, catching her by the elbow in the archway to the kitchen and man, he was bad at this. But he owed her the truth, even if his words lacked finesse. “I didn’t want to tell you this until I knew it was going to happen for sure, but I, ah, got my official reinstatement for limited duty. Starting tomorrow.”

              “Congratulations,” she said, but her manufactured smile gave her away.

             
“You knew.” Noah narrowed his gaze on her, all confusion and no heat. Violet rocked her weight from side to side, and while the sway of her hips beneath those time-faded jeans might normally tempt him, the presence of her telltale fidget sent Noah’s hackles sky-high. “Did Jason tell you?”

             
She nodded. “He saw us kissing earlier, and he said something about it. He thought I knew.”

             
A streak of oh-holy-shit burst through Noah’s veins. “He saw us outside the diner?”

             
“Don’t worry.” A faint smile popped at the edges of her mouth. “I talked him down from the ledge pretty easily. He’s my brother, not my keeper.”

             
Yeah, that so didn’t mean Noah was going to be off the hook with this when he walked into the precinct tomorrow morning. But he’d deal with that when he got there. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about going back,” he said, but Violet waved him off, hands moving fast enough to blur in Noah’s line of sight as she moved through the kitchen.

“It’s what you wanted. I’m glad you’re healing.”

              It would’ve been decent enough evasion if her pretty face wasn’t so damned easy to read. “Violet, stop.” Of course, she picked up her pace, whipping cupboards open at warp speed, but Noah anticipated her movements and stepped into her path as she turned to the fridge. “Talk to me.”

             
Her blue eyes went perfectly round, but she didn’t hesitate. “I’m scared,” she blurted, the simple words packed so tightly with emotion that Noah didn’t so much hear them as felt them all the way in his marrow.

             
But Violet didn’t stop. “I really
am
happy you’re making progress, and I get that my fear is a gut reaction, but it’s real and I can’t help it. I’m scared, Noah. Not a morning passes that I don’t remember every detail of the day my father was killed. How he always used to tell us he was smarter than the bad guys, that he’d come home to us just fine. And then, just like that, one day he didn’t, and Jason and I had to bury him. I believed my father when he said those things, but he was wrong.”

             
She broke off, and even though the fat, silvery tears sliding down her face tore at him, Noah gave her space to keep talking.

“I know why you and Jason do what you do. It’s part of you, just like cooking is part of me, and I understand that. But I’m not going to lie and say I don’t hate it. I hate everything about it.” Violet reached out, the pads of her fingers soft on his upper arm as she lifted the sleeve of his T-shirt. “What if you’d been eight inches closer, Noah? Then what?”

              He lifted a hand to thumb the tears from her face. “I wasn’t.”

“But you could’ve been. And then we never would’ve had the chance to have any of this. And as much as that scares me, it’s nothing compared to the thought of what could happen down the line.” She stopped, fumbling in a shaky breath. “I want to be with you, but I don’t know if I can.”