Love On The Line (4 page)

             
Just like that, his expression slid back to neutral ground, and he served up his no-nonsense cop look the same way Violet slung around breakfast. “It scares me too. Which is why I want to help Noah.”

             
Slowly, Violet nodded. “Okay, but I still don’t understand what that has to do with me.”              

             
“The doctor said Noah’s going to be pretty limited in what he can do for the next couple of weeks. Medically, his injury isn’t severe enough to qualify him for a home health care worker, not that he’d let the department send him one anyway. But he’s still going to need someone to check in on him once a day, just to make sure he’s alert and taking his meds. Maybe…cook.”

             
The word hit her like an icy landslide, the implication freezing her in place in the bustling hallway. No way. He couldn’t possibly mean…“You want
me
to do it?”

“Yes,” Jason said, capping off the word with a nod that sent her gut sliding down to the hem of her vintage hip-hugging 501’s. “I talked to Lieutenant Martin, and he agreed it’s a good idea. We’d like to hire you for the next couple of weeks to check in on Noah and cook for him. What do you say?”

Violet opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She’d cooked for a handful of people who’d been homebound in the past, so it wasn’t totally foreign territory, and it wasn’t as if her current schedule was packed, or even terribly busy. A job was a job, and Violet could use any work she could get her hands on.

But this wasn’t any run of the mill job for any run of the mill homebound patient. If anyone embodied the work-yourself-into-the-grave police mentality she hated, it was Noah Blackwell. Not to mention that accidental yet oh-so-steamy kiss he’d laid on her in her brother’s hall closet two New Year’s Eves ago. The one that made spending time with him again, however perfunctory, a bad idea of the worst kind.

And yet in the same way her brother was her only family, Violet knew he relied on her too. As much as she hated the job that put him on the line and everything that went with it, no way was she going to let him down.

“Okay. But I’m only going to cook for him and make sure he’s essentially fine. If you want a nursemaid, you’ve got the wrong girl.” Violet knotted her arms over her chest, and relief flooded Jason’s face.

“Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

Violet arched a brow and tried on her best and-I-mean-it look. “
Mmm hmm. Just keep that thought front and center in your head. The department might be writing me a check for this, but you
owe
me.”

Jason shook his head, stepping in to hug her. “Deal. Thank you, Blue.”

Now all she had to do was figure out how to take the
personal
out of personal chef, and she’d be just fine.

#

Noah had been back in his apartment for exactly six hours and fourteen minutes before he knew this eight week thing wasn’t going to work out. He’d already watched both
Fists of Fury
and
Enter the Dragon
, and taken a painkiller-induced nap to try and clear the logjam in his head.

The only thing it did was reinforce the facts that A) Bruce Lee was indeed a badass, and B) Noah was going to lose every last one of his marbles if he couldn’t come up with something better to do than wonder what the hell had happened to him. But no matter how hard he tried, all Noah could remember was getting out of Jason’s Tahoe in Battery Heights, and checking, then re-checking the
Glock in his holster. After that, nothing but a series of blurry fragments bounced around in his head, and the harder he tried to grab onto them and force them into submission, the more the whole thing became like trying to nail Jell-O to a goddamn tree.

Virtually impossible, highly messy, and one hundred percent frustrating as shit.

Noah huffed out a breath, sitting back on his aging sofa with a wince. In a series of moves that took way too long and hurt way more than they should, he maneuvered his sling to prop his arm on top of the fat stack of pillows he’d hauled in from his bedroom. He might not be a doctor’s-orders kind of guy, but if elevating his arm like Dr. Fisher had told him to when he’d released Noah this morning would help him heal faster, then that’s what he’d do.

A crisp knock on his front door sent Noah’s right hand to his side out of instinct, and damn if you couldn’t take the cop out of the station and all that rot. He struggled to find his feet,
his arm pulsing with nasty streaks of pain as he readjusted his sling and finally hauled his frame from the cushions.

“Who is it?” he asked, purposely scratching up his voice around the edges. The muffled reply didn’t do much by way of clueing Noah in, and he pressed his face to the peep hole in his front door with a gut full of wariness.

Violet Morgan stood on his threshold, shifting her weight from side to side and looking for all the world like she’d rather be anywhere else.

Shock held him motionless for a split second before he blanked his expression and popped the lock on his front door to edge it open. “You’re not supposed to kick a guy when he’s down, you know,” he said, the attempt at humor thudding to a halt between them. It had been months since he’d last seen her, and that meeting had been so strained, he’d been certain it was their last. But it wasn’t Noah’s fault she had a chip on her shoulder for every cop in the universe. And he wasn’t about to apologize for who he was, not even to his partner’s sister.

Violet gave up a curt smile that got nowhere close to her eyes, and Jesus, even pissed, she was still pretty. “I’m not wild about this, either, Noah, but I promised Jason I’d do it.” She palmed the handles of two oversized reusable grocery bags, tipping her head at the doorframe. “So can I come in? I’m guessing you don’t want to eat in the hallway.”

“You brought me something to eat?” He stepped back to let her inside the cramped quarters of his apartment. Sure enough, the bags brimmed with assorted groceries, and Violet’s tawny brows knit together in confusion.

“That’s usually how the personal chef thing works.”

Noah put two and two together, arriving at the sum of
you’ve got to be kidding me
. “Jason set this up?”

“Every day for the next three weeks.” Her lips parted, just enough for a soft sound of frustration to make its escape. “He didn’t tell you, did he?”

“No.” His memory might be for shit lately, but Noah would’ve definitely remembered that. Dammit, he knew everyone had given up too easily on the home health care worker thing. “Look, I appreciate the effort, but you don’t need to be here. I’m fine.”

Of course, his stomach chose that exact moment to go all mutiny-on-the-bounty and let out a full-bodied growl. Noah clamped his right hand over his midsection in an effort to shut it up, but it was no use.

“Mmm. You sound like it.” Violet gripped the bags tighter, her knuckles flashing white over the silver rings marking each of her long fingers as she stepped over the threshold. “Which way is your kitchen?”

Noah’s
arm started to throb, and he so wasn’t in the mood for this. He reached around her to close the door and re-set the deadbolt before stepping back to level her with a scowl. “I’m serious, Violet. I don’t need a babysitter.”

She flipped back his scowl with one of her own, straightening as tall as she could without going up to her toes. “Then stop acting like a baby. Jason sent me out here to cook for you and make sure you’re still breathing. We’re already halfway there, so you might as well let me do the rest.”

For a split second, Noah couldn’t decide whether to be righteously indignant or really turned on. But then he remembered who he was dealing with. “You’re not leaving until you do this, are you?”

“It’s just dinner, detective. And I didn’t even bring donuts.”

Okay, so she was still as tenacious as he remembered. “Kitchen’s down the hall.” Noah jerked his chin over his shoulder, wincing at the trail of pain the move left behind.

“Thank you.” The corners of Violet’s mouth turned down in a quick frown, and if Noah didn’t know any better, he’d swear it was a look of concern rather than irritation.

But of course, he did know better, and anyway, as good as he was at reading them, he sucked at exchanging actual emotions.

“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen my kitchen.” He led the way down the hall, his stomach shifting in another series of borderline obnoxious growls.

Violet eyed the bare space before swinging the bags to the narrow stretch of Formica next to the pitiful, single-bowl sink. “I’ve cooked in worse.” She shrugged out of her olive drab Army jacket to reveal a snug-fitting striped T-shirt that snared way more of his attention than it should’ve.

Noah cleared his throat. “So the, uh, chef thing means you’re going to cook here?” He watched her wash her hands, her movements as fluid as the water coming from the tap.

One corner of her mouth kicked up. “You’re not getting rid of me, if that’s what you mean. But don’t worry, cleaning up everything I use is part of the deal, whether it’s yours or mine.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, and what was with the Cornflakes and the funny-looking wheel of cheese she was unloading? “Isn’t it easier to cook in your own place and just drop everything off?”

“No.” The box of dried pasta in her hand rattled loudly as she placed it on the counter, and huh. Who knew something so weird would be a hot button for her. But judging by how hard she’d sunk her teeth into the curve of her lower lip and the little crease shaping the middle of her forehead, it definitely was, and what the hell. He’d bite. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

“Is that another part of the deal, or is it more personal?” Noah leaned back against the scant expanse of counter space adjacent to the sink, and bingo. Violet’s slim shoulders hitched just slightly before she smoothed her movements out.

“It’s part of the deal,” she said, and he could hear the clack of her molars. “Speaking of which, if you have any food allergies, now’s the time to let me know so I can work around them.”

God, she really was all business. Too bad her emotions were slathered all over her sleeve. “You’re free and clear. But I’ve
gotta tell you, I don’t do anything weird.”

“Weird,” she repeated, turning to look at him. “Like?”

“Like tofu and bean curd, and…salad.”

“You think salad is weird? Seriously?”

Noah snorted, mostly just to give her a hard time. “That’s not food. It’s what food eats.”

She curled her fingers into fists over the dish towel she’d pulled from the bag in front of her. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Violet turned back toward the counter, orienting herself in his kitchen with relative ease. Not that it was too hard, given that the space was the size of a shoebox. “I brought you a few pantry items to tide you over. Where would you like them?”

A pang rippled through Noah’s gut, and man, he must be hungrier than he thought. He blinked back the haze starting to form over his eyes. “Cupboard’s fine. Either one.”

She reached up to pop open the amenity in question, but it only rattled in the frame. “Um…”

Ah, crap. He’d been meaning to fix that. Last year. “Oh, it sticks. You’ve got to—”

As soon as Noah got behind her, the smell of coconuts and warm sand filled his senses, delivering a crystal clear image to his brain. His heart slammed in his ribcage, and without thinking, he cupped Violet’s elbow and swung her around, so tight to his body that he felt her gasp as much as heard it.

“You were in my hospital room yesterday. Before I woke up.”

“I…I—”

But he barreled on, the memory as bright and vivid as if it had just happened a minute ago. “Your hair was braided, on your shoulders, and you were wearing a…a bracelet that sounded like wind chimes. You said the doctor was coming. It
was
you.”

The fan of her gold-tipped lashes fluttered wide, and the warm puff of her breath heated his cheek as she nodded. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I was looking for Jason, but I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

Noah shook his head to quell her apology. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his resolve locking into place, and Violet went utterly still against him.

“It doesn’t?”

“No. You’re the first thing I’ve been able to remember since I got shot in the first place. In fact, you’re the
only
thing I can remember since I got shot.”

CHAPTER FOUR

              Of all the things Violet had imagined happening in Noah Blackwell’s kitchen, a stare-down against the countertops and cabinetry had definitely not been on the list.

             
“You don’t remember what happened to you?” Violet’s pulse patterned an unsteady rhythm in her veins. Jason had said the anesthesia had made Noah a little forgetful, but that was a far cry from having no memory of the event whatsoever. Noah shifted, the rough canvas of his sling brushing across her bare arm, and the heat of his body so close to hers did nothing to slow down her heartbeat.