Love On The Line (13 page)

              Noah’s gut doubled down, his breath going tight at the idea that he might never have spent the last few weeks with Violet, and even tighter at the thought of her leaving. It slapped into him with such thick emotion that instinct had him instantly tamping it down, but the look on her face stopped him cold.

             
He’d asked her to talk to him, and she’d done it without thinking twice. Violet put herself on the line, and it was time to return the favor.

             
“I was raised in a house full of men, and every last one of us joined the force. My dad and brothers taught me to be street-smart and tough, and it made me a good cop. But it also made other things hard.” The admission sounded rusty, like it had been locked in his chest for far too long, but Noah didn’t rein it in. “I’m not very good at letting people see how I feel because of that. Don’t get me wrong— my family took great care of me, but it wasn’t like any of us really knew how to talk about our feelings, especially after my mom died. So that’s why I ask a lot of questions, but I don’t really say much. I don’t know how.”

“Oh.” Violet stared at him, her expression brimming with sudden understanding, and she took a step back toward the counter to return his offer of space to talk, and Noah couldn’t help but take it.

“But then you showed up on my doorstep with all your feelings right out in the open, and it blew me away. You were so willing to let me be who I am, even all banged up and not able to remember anything, and I just…I don’t know. It felt like trust.”

             
“I can’t just trust that you’ll be fine. It’s not that easy,” she whispered, but he erased what little space existed between them with one step.

             
“It is.” Noah surrounded her face with his palms, and God, saying what he felt had never made so much sense. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you. I can’t promise nothing will ever happen to me. I do what I do to keep people like the guy who shot your father— and the guy who shot me— off the street, and yeah. It’s a risk. But I want this. I want you.”

             
Her blue eyes flickered with honesty. “I want you, too. But…”

             
“No.” Noah leaned down, pressing his lips to hers. “No buts. No what-might-happens. Just you and me.” He kissed her again, want flooding through him. “Stay with me, Violet. Take the risk. Be with me.”

             
Violet kissed him back, and he pulled her even closer, his want funneling into full-blown need. He traced her lips with his tongue, tasting the familiar sweetness of summer as he dropped his mouth to the delicate angle of her jaw, the spot where her neck met the soft fall of her hair, the juncture of her shoulder and collarbone. Without speaking and without letting her go, Noah led Violet to his bedroom. He might not be good at words, but he could show her exactly how he felt.

             
Her hands echoed his need as she ran them over his body, first over his clothes, then lifting those away to find bare skin. The flat of her palms found his chest, stroking downward to linger at his waist, his hips, his back as she discarded his clothes. Violet stood in front of him, her fully-dressed silhouette emphasizing his nakedness, and it made him rock-hard in less than a breath. He slid her clothing from her, one piece at a time, reveling not just in what he discovered underneath, but in the unabashed openness of her sighs and moans in reply. Noah touched her as if he were memorizing her body, learning and then re-learning every inch with his hands until he replaced them with his mouth, and oh
Christ
he wanted to be inside of her more than he wanted the ability to breathe. 

             
As if she’d heard the thought, Violet pulled him to the cradle of her body, never breaking eye contact with Noah in the waning evening shadows. With only the slightest pause for a condom, he eased her to the bed, sinking his mouth over hers as he filled her in one hot, needy thrust. The sound that spilled from her lips dared him past niceties, and he gripped her hips to hold her fast, pressing into her heat again and again until she tightened beneath him in release.

Violet locked her arms around the small of his back, surrounding him with her body and her breath as she came, and Noah never had a chance. He buried himself inside of her, losing himself to the intensity of her climax as he quickened and unraveled all at once. His orgasm flashed up from the deepest part of his body, base pleasure mixing in with something he couldn’t identify, and Noah called her name as he finally gave in.

He held Violet, skin on skin, until the shadows shifted from the wall to the ceiling, pushed by rising moonlight and passing time. They made love again, more slowly but just as intense, before he fitted his body to hers to pull her beneath the blankets. In the slow slice of time between waking and sleep, Noah’s muscles unwound with his breath, the steady rise and fall of the woman in his arms the closest he’d ever been to perfection.

When he woke, Violet was gone, and every last memory of the day he’d been shot slammed into him with gut-wrenching clarity.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

             
Violet’s eyes burned to watering as she blinked against the mid-morning sunshine streaming through her windows, but she welcomed the sting. She’d lost track of how long she’d been sitting on her kitchen floor, her back propped against the cabinets and still wearing yesterday’s time-rumpled clothes that smelled like Noah.

             
Noah. Who she’d left sleeping in his bed after sharing the most intense experience of her life with him.

             
Oh, God, every last fiber of her body had wanted to stay. The way he’d looked at her with such pared-down emotion as he admitted his feelings and asked her to be with him had been enough to loosen the fingers of the fearful grip of the last seven years. She’d tasted the hope on his mouth when he’d kissed her, and in that moment, she believed him.

I want this. I want you.

But despite resisting it with all she had, Violet had fallen in love with him, and the intensity of it found her in the shadows of Noah’s room, pinching her back to reality with sharp reason as he drifted off to sleep.

He risked his life at his job every day. And every day, Violet could lose him without warning. Leaving Noah now was the only way to ensure she wouldn’t lose him later, when it would hurt so much more.

Not that she could imagine feeling worse than she did right now.

Wiping her face with the back of her hand, Violet forced herself to her feet, swaying a little as she stood. Noah was back at work by now, exactly where he belonged, and she was in her bright, sun-filled kitchen. As much as it hurt, getting on with things was truly for the best.

Except she couldn’t.

The copper-bottomed pots and pans that normally brought her solace felt sloppy in her hands, and Violet banged them around uselessly, even in the simplest tasks. Driven to distraction, she let a small pot of pasta boil over, spewing angry billows of bitter-smelling smoke over the burner. Chest knotting with irritation, she chucked the overcooked noodles into the sink, vowing to focus on a smaller task. But when the steely-sharp edge of her paring knife streaked cleanly through the pad of her thumb rather than the tomato in her grip, she abandoned hope with a clatter.

She didn’t want the kitchen. She wanted Noah.

Fumbling with the first aid kit in her cupboard, she wrapped a gauze pad around her throbbing thumb, taping the bandage into place with a tight frown. She had the first aid kit halfway back in place when the wail of a distant sound caught her attention, snagging hard.

Sirens. More than one. And they were getting closer.

Violet’s heart ricocheted in her chest as two unmarked police cars bolted past her second-story window, followed by a black-and-white, all in quick succession. The sound grated over her ears, and it lingered after they’d faded into the distance. God, she couldn’t even sit in her own apartment without being reminded of the police force.

With hands that trembled despite her best efforts to stay steady, she let the sheer white curtains fall back into place, crossing the kitchen to turn on the small TV perched on her counter. She’d been through the emotional shredder over the past fourteen hours, and the whole thing was really getting to her. What she really needed was to click on a cooking show to gather some ideas and then go drown her sadness in a nice, hot bath.

Only the person on her TV screen wasn’t a chef. It was a blond reporter wearing a very serious expression, and under her byline, the caption blazed:
Shots Fired in Battery Heights Investigation.

Cold sweat burst over Violet’s brow as she dropped the remote to the floor, all the breath leaving her lungs on a whoosh.
  

Noah had been shot in Battery Heights four weeks ago. He and Jason were still investigating the case.

Oh, God.

Violet snatched up her phone and dialed without looking, jamming the phone to her clammy ear.

“
Noah Blackwell. Leave a message.”

She cut the connection. It had gone right to voicemail, which meant his cell phone was off.

Which meant he could be in serious danger.

She dialed again, fear beginning to slide through her in earnest.

“
Hey, you’ve reached the voice mailbox of Jason Morgan. I can’t take your call right now…”

Violet barely paused long enough to swipe her keys from the counter, barreling out of her apartment and down the steps to the exit two at a time. It took three tries to actually start her Prius, but as soon as the engine purred to life, she threw the car into reverse and sped out of the parking lot. The telltale flash of red lights in the background of the newscast told Violet that
going to the Battery Park was a wasted effort, so she aimed her car up Eighth Street with the hospital dead in her sights.

The hospital where her father had died.

Take the risk. Be with me.

Realization crashed into her, so hard she gasped.

Violet had been so afraid of what
might
happen, she’d blinded herself to what could be.

And now it was too late.

No.
She gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak beneath her knuckles. It wasn’t too late. Violet had to find him.

Noah was worth the risk.

She swerved into the Brentsville Memorial parking lot for the second time in a month, barely putting the Prius in
park
before her feet hit the pavement in a dead run. Her footsteps slapped a rough staccato on the sidewalk, then the dove-gray linoleum as the sliding doors hissed back to allow her inside.

Noah stood, a little bit disheveled but a whole lot alive, right next to her brother by the doors to the emergency department, and Violet wasted no time launching herself at Noah with all her relief-stricken might.

“Oh my God, you scared the hell out of me!” She threw her arms around him, and despite the undiluted shock on his face, he caught her soundly in both arms.

“I’m fine. I promise I’m fine,” he said, and his gruff voice was easily the best thing she’d ever heard in her entire life. Violet squeezed him even tighter, and was rewarded by the unforgiving press of something hard against her chest.

She pulled back in confusion, only to catch full sight of the bulletproof vest strapped snugly to his frame. “I saw it on the news. They said there’d been a shooting, and I...”

“There was. But it’s all over now.” Noah’s steel-gray eyes flickered over hers with doubt, but Violet shook her head, firm.

“Whatever happened, I can handle it. I want to know.”

“Okay.” He dropped his voice, but his gaze on hers remained unwavering. “I remembered what happened last month. It all came back to me this morning.”

Violet’s lips parted on a rush of surprise. “What made you remember?”

“I don’t know. I saw the doc a few minutes ago, and he said it could’ve been time. It helped that I’d let go of some of the stress about it. I guess it’s like watching a pot on the stove, waiting for it to boil. My brain was just ready to remember.”

“So you were able to make a statement?”

Noah nodded, all business. “The guy who shot me blindsided me from around a corner, but I got a good look at his face. I was able to ID him this morning from leads Jason had worked while I recovered, and once we put everything together, we went to serve the guy with a warrant.”

“But you’re not even supposed to be on active duty,” she whispered, her pulse skittering. “You could’ve been hurt.”

“I went strictly to ID the guy after he’d been apprehended. Turns out, we have enough to link him to as many as six robberies and at least as many assaults. Not to mention taking a potshot at a police officer. So when we came to pick him up, he panicked. He fired an errant shot into his ceiling. Nobody was hurt, and Jason and the other guys brought him in clean.”