Love On The Line (6 page)

“Yeah, but it won’t hurt you. Most of them go stale instead of rotten.”

“You might want to steer clear of the red pepper flakes in the cabinet, then. Ditto for the Tabasco.”

Violet grabbed a wooden spoon from the drawer where she’d left it yesterday and pressed it into Noah’s unhurt hand. “Duly noted.” She unwound the butcher paper from the package of ground beef, nudging it into the pot with a hiss that told her the temperature was perfect, and she added the onions and some salt and pepper before stepping back to make room for Noah.

“You just want me to stir it?” A twinge of hesitation snuck across the
stubbled strength of his jaw, but Violet knew just how to counter it.

“Yup. The heat will break it down as it cooks, and you can use the edge of the spoon to kind of chunk it up as you stir. Easy.”

He fumbled a little, his movements jerky, but he got the hang of it well enough. Violet turned her attention to the tomatoes on the counter, and she went through the seamless motions of washing and dicing the plump, jewel-toned fruit before popping the fridge open to grab a beer. 

“Drinking a beer in front of a guy on painkillers is a little cruel and unusual, don’t you think?”

Violet’s gut twanged with something she couldn’t quite pin down, but she let the aromas sifting through the kitchen even her out. “I don’t drink on the job, detective. It’s for deglazing the pot.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Noah continued to stir while Violet continued to try and figure out if he was messing with her. When she came up empty, she simply said, “We’re going to use it to remove all the browned bits stuck to the bottom and build our sauce off of that. The alcohol will burn off while we cook, so you’re safe for the painkillers. It’s mostly for taste.”

“Right.” He shifted his weight against the sling, as if it were as comfortable as a pair of four-inch stilettos. “Are you going to call me that all night?”

Violet’s fingers slipped on the bottle opener, and the cap clattered to the floor with a loud ping. “Call you what?”

“Detective.” He kept his focus
lasered in on the pot, stirring in precise, measured strokes.

“But you are a detective.”

“Yeah.” Noah’s shoulders knotted so tightly beneath his navy blue T-shirt that his neck almost disappeared, and with the way he froze into place at the movement, Violet would bet her lunch money he was still really hurting.

Guilt prickled up her spine, and she hitched to a stop next to him. She hadn’t even thought twice about using his title as a sassy endearment— for as long as she’d known him, his being a cop was as much a part of him as his hair color or his height. It hadn’t occurred to her that it would point out the job he currently couldn’t do rather than the man he truly was.

One of those things was fleeting. The other…not so much.

Violet cleared her throat, holding up the beer bottle with a tiny smile. “Okay, Noah. You ready to deglaze?”

Nothing about his brusque, tightly-coiled demeanor changed, and for a second, Violet’s chest clenched. Maybe it had been wishful thinking to try and make Noah feel better with food. After all, his injury had been pretty major, and he still couldn’t remember anything about what had happened. As baffling it was to her, not everyone saw cooking like she did. Maybe, despite her deep-seated desire to let the food work its simple magic, it just wasn’t going to happen.

But then he edged back, just enough to make room for her to lean in, and surprised the hell out of her.

“Why not? Let’s make dinner.”

CHAPTER FIVE

One hour and lots of stirring later, Noah’s kitchen smelled like he had died and taken the bullet train straight to heaven. Although Violet had explained things every step of the way, Noah still had no frigging clue how she turned that bag full of ingredients on his dingy counter into the giant pot of oh-hell-yes sitting on his stove. Not to mention the steamy loaf of buttery-golden cornbread she’d just slid out of his creaky, ancient oven.

“There.” Violet nodded at the food as if to tell it
job well done
, keeping the expression intact as she turned to look at him. “We need to let it cool for a couple of minutes, unless you want to forfeit your relationship with the roof of your mouth. But it should be fine in five.”

Violet moved the pot from the active burner to the adjacent cold one, flipping the kitchen towel she’d used as a potholder back over her shoulder with a move he’d bet was as ingrained as breathing. She moved around the kitchen with so much ease and comfort, nothing like the cold, clipped demeanor he’d seen at the precinct when she’d meet Jason for lunch. The closest Noah had ever seen to this level of loose happiness was that New Year’s Eve party two years ago, when she’d wanted to go out on the balcony for the final countdown and he’d offered to help find her coat. She’d looked so pretty, with some kind of glittery scarf wrapped around her neck to frame her face, and before he knew it, he’d been kissing her in Jason’s hallway walk-in.

And dear God, Violet could kiss back.

“Hey. This might be just a swing in the dark, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need that anymore.”

Violet’s half-teasing, wholly sexy voice threaded into Noah’s thick brain, and he blinked back to reality just in time to see her pointing to the wooden spoon still locked in his grip.

“Oh. Right.” He passed her the spoon and took an immediate step back, as if she could somehow read his forbidden thoughts by sheer proximity. In spite of his cold, hard efforts to close himself off earlier so he could work on getting his memory back, she’d sure had his number. Ten mind-numbing hours poring over news articles and dodging get-well-soon texts from everyone in the department could make even the most even-keeled guy cranky as hell. But the way Violet had treated him without fuss had made him feel normal for the first time since he’d gone all Humpty Dumpty four days ago.

Christ, he missed normal.

“If you want to go ahead and take out your dinner portion now, I’ll get the rest into a storage container. You’ll have to let it cool to room temp before you put it in the fridge, but you should have enough for tomorrow’s lunch.” Violet started to gather the various dirty utensils from around the kitchen, and Noah’s brow pulled tight in confusion.

“You’re not staying?” There was more than enough in the pot for both of them, even with his slowly rebounding appetite. And God, the four days he’d been cooped up in here with nothing but old movies and a faulty memory felt more like four years. At least while they’d been in the kitchen together, he’d forgotten his craptastic situation for a little while.

At least if she stayed, he might forget it a little longer.

“Oh.” Her light blue eyes went round, her movements kicking into double-time. “I…I don’t normally eat with clients. Just cook.”

Idiot
. Of course this had been just work for her. It was probably all part of checking up on him. After all, the department was paying her to do just that, and it wasn’t like she’d stayed any other time she’d been here.

Noah took a plain white bowl from the cupboard that housed his dishes and scooped out a serving of chili. “Got it.” But as enticing as the meal smelled, he’d still be a jackass if he ate in front of her while she did the dishes, so he set the food aside on the pretense of letting it cool. “Just so you know, I think you’ve wrecked the whole chili-in-a-can thing for me.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Although she didn’t outwardly laugh, the intent hung low in her voice. “And anyway, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

Noah collected the thick plastic cutting board from the counter space adjacent to the sink, bringing it over to her along with his curiosity. “How’s that?”

“You cooked.”

“I stirred what was in the pot,” he corrected, but stubborn as she was, Violet wasn’t having it.

“Last I checked, that falls under the umbrella of cooking.” She flipped the pot they’d used under the faucet, her slender frame swaying back and forth with the motion of scrubbing it. Everything about her was so natural, even in the face of a mundane chore, that for one impulsive second, all he wanted to do was kiss her so long and so hard, he’d have to come up for air before diving right back in.

Heat streaked through him, and he dropped the cutting board to the counter with an abrupt
thunk. “If you say so.” What the hell was he thinking, wanting to kiss her like that? Aside from the obvious not-a-good-plan reasons, hello! She was his partner’s
sister
.

Violet paused, a tiny yet distinct V forming between her eyebrows as she moved her gaze from the cutting board to his face. “You don’t have to do that.”

Noah scraped in a breath, aiming to recalibrate. “It’s really the only part of being in the kitchen I know how to do,” he said, picking up the spent beer bottle and tossing it in the recycling bin by the trash. She opened her mouth, presumably to argue, and the tension he’d been able to temporarily banish crept right back into his muscles, drawing them up with a rigid burn. Dammit, he was tired of being treated like an invalid, tired of getting the runaround from Lieutenant Martin on the details of the shooting, and dead on his damned feet at not being able to remember any of it for himself. His arm might be in a sling, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t
do
anything.

But Violet just shrugged. “Okay then.” She turned back to the sink full of bubbles while Noah stood there with a whole lot of holy-shit bouncing through his bloodstream.

She’d let him off the you’re-too-hurt-for-that hook. Again.

Not wanting to give her a chance to change her mind, he kicked himself into gear, doing whatever small chores he could with one hand. They hadn’t made too much mess overall, and between his awkward efforts and her fluid motions, the kitchen was clean in less than ten minutes. Violet tucked the brightly patterned roll-thingy that kept her knives safe and snug into one of the grocery bags, turning to look at him as she slid her things from the counter.

“Thanks for all your help,” she said, and the way her eyes crinkled as she smiled told him she wasn’t just serving up pat niceties. “If you like the chili, we can work it into your meal plan. Just let me know.”

“Sure.” Noah raised his good hand to rub the side of his neck, and damn, this sling was getting to be a righteous pain. He tried to readjust the wide band that looped up from his chest to
his opposite shoulder, but the stupid thing was made of mercilessly rough material that managed to scrape at his skin even when he was sitting still.

“Oh my God, Noah. Your neck is all scratched up.” Violet skidded to a halt, the soft patter of her boots going quiet on the linoleum as she zeroed in on the spot he’d been rubbing.

“It’s not a big deal. The sling just bugs me, that’s all.” He dropped the strap back into place and moved to usher her down the hall, but she didn’t budge, so they ended up caught together in the entryway to the kitchen.

“You should’ve said something.” Before he could protest, or hell, even move, she’d whipped a clean kitchen towel from her bag, closing the space between them in one step.

“What are you doing?” he asked, but if Violet heard the edge in the question, she didn’t show it.

“I’m padding the strap. This thing is like sandpaper.” Nimble fingers slipped under the canvas, threading the much softer towel over the strap in a makeshift cushion. She pushed up on the balls of her feet to adjust the sling and gently move his arm with it, and the heat of her body combined with the lazy, sweet smell of coconuts, both of them filling his senses. Her fingers worked gently over the back of his neck, soothing the knot of locked-up muscles connecting down into his shoulder, and the sensation shivered all the way through him.

Noah’s head whipped up just in time for his brain to deliver a surgically sharp image, but it wasn’t of the woman standing in front of him. A set of concrete steps, mottled gray and crumbling in places, led up to the weathered security door of an apartment building. The number pad to enter a security code was broken, just a set of empty squares, jeering at him like a gap-toothed playground bully, and the sight of it sent him instinctively for his Glock…

   “Noah?” Violet’s voice curled around him, and he blinked back to the kitchen with an involuntary start. Jesus, his right hand was grasping at the waistband of his sweats, looking for a weapon he hadn’t holstered in nearly a week.

“Sorry, I…” Since there was really no good way to finish the sentence, Noah let it dangle while his heart thwacked away at his ribs. Had he really just remembered something about the day he’d been shot, or was the image just a product of his mind tapping out at the brain-drain of trying?

And more importantly, if it
was
an honest-to-God memory, where was the rest?