Officer in Pursuit (9 page)

“I just didn’t think you’d be
interested in coming back, after what happened.”

He snorted. “Well, now I know what you
really think of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think I’m too scared to come back
just because I got a face full of someone’s nasty foot? I face
danger daily, you know. In fact, I’m what some might call a
badass.”

It worked – she smiled. A little, for
about a split second. He’d take what he could get.

“You do those things because you have
to. Jiu-jitsu is strictly voluntary – for fun. I didn’t know if
eating someone’s foot and winding up with a concussion was your
idea of a good time.”

“Hey, this is a small town – you have
to take fun where you can find it, sometimes.”

Her smile flickered to life again, and
she shifted, stretching out on her towel. Every tight little muscle
in her body rippled, holding him spellbound.

“Wanna get in the water?”

Her eyebrows plunged down below the
lenses of her big sunglasses. “You’re supposed to be relaxing,
remember? No strenuous activities.”

“Come on. It’s roasting out here.
Because I’m a badass, I didn’t want to complain, but the heat is
making my head ache. We’ll just wade in and cool down, nice and
easy.”

“If your head hurts, I should take you
back to the hospital.”

A minute later, he’d convinced her to
wade into the water with him. The waves weren’t very rough unless
you were too close to shore. So he went past the breakers, stopping
in calmer, waist-deep water.

“Wading, huh?” She shot him a
challenging look.

He looked right back, letting his gaze
linger where her swimsuit top was molded to her breasts, thoroughly
soaked. Normally he wouldn’t have been so obnoxious, but it wasn’t
like she’d be able to see that he was looking – sunglasses were
possibly mankind’s greatest invention, for that very
reason.

God, he wanted to touch her. The fact
that that wasn’t even remotely within the realm of possibility yet
wasn’t lost on him, but he still longed for the day when it would
be. Like the rest of her, her breasts were small and shapely,
tight-looking and almost unbearably appealing. After just a few
seconds of staring, it was certain: no way would he be able to get
out of the water anytime soon.

As she plunged in a little deeper and
swam for a few yards, he adjusted his swim shorts. He’d be aching
for days after this, and he had no one to blame but himself. He
wasn’t a masochist – not really – he just couldn’t get enough of
her. He craved her presence like a drug, and the fact that they
were finally spending time alone together seemed like a
breakthrough.

Over the summer, he’d watched Liam and
Henry fall almost instantly for Kerry’s friends, and vice-versa.
He’d hoped for something similar with him and Kerry – it had been
an instant attraction, at least on his part – but he knew deep down
that she was different.

She wasn’t impulsive, didn’t seem to
warm up to people easily. So the fact that he’d gotten to the point
where they did things like go out to breakfast and the beach
together was kind of a big deal.

“Hey Grey.” Water dripped from her
fingers as she motioned out to sea.

“What?”

“Look. A dolphin.”

He had to squint to see it, but sure
enough, she was right. “Two of them. No, three – four.”

A small pod was leaping in and out of
the water, their grey bodies like shadows cast on distant
waves.

She was smiling – a big, brilliant
smile unlike any he’d ever seen on her face before.

“I remember the first time I ever saw
dolphins, after I first moved here. It felt magical.”

Grey had been raised on the southern
NC coast and could remember riding the ferry to Southport as a
little kid, watching dolphins swim alongside the boat. “Where’d you
move from?”

It struck him, suddenly, that he had
no clue about her life before Riley County. She never talked about
herself.

“Kentucky.”

“I’ve never been.”

For a second she said nothing, and
then she shrugged, treading water as she did so. “You’re not
missing much. It’s a lot prettier here.”

“You don’t miss it?”

“No.”

“So is that why you moved here –
because you liked the area so much?”

“Actually, I’d never seen the ocean
before I moved here. I just needed a change, and this is where I
ended up. It was sort of an accidentally good decision.”

As a wave rolled over him and left a
strand of seaweed plastered to his side, he tried to imagine never
having seen the sea. It was a weird thing to think
about.

“So Kentucky – that’s race horse
country, right?” When he thought of the state, one thing came to
mind: the Kentucky Derby. Other than that, he drew a
blank.

“Not where I lived, which was in a
little coal mining town in the eastern part of the
state.”

He had a sudden vision of hard hats
and lights in darkness, rough hands and black dirt against skin.
They were visions from movies, which was where his virtually
non-existent knowledge about coal mining came from.

Kerry was swimming away from him,
farther out to sea.

She went out way past where she could
touch, apparently fearless. For someone who’d never seen the ocean
until a few years ago, she was a great swimmer.

Watching her, Grey thought about
riptides and jellyfish and all the things he normally didn’t waste
time worrying about. He wasn’t sure why those dangers seemed so
real now, in a way they never had before. Maybe because Kerry
looked so small and alone out at sea.

He swam to her.

When he reached her side, she seemed
surprised. “You shouldn’t be swimming,” she said, and turned back
without another word.

She didn’t reprimand him any further,
but he still felt like a jackass as they headed toward shore. When
she started to wade back in, he did too. He might as well head in:
he’d managed to cool down, and obviously being in the water with
her today lacked the magic it’d been so full of last
time.

When they got back to their towels,
she pulled a couple of bottled waters out of a soft cooler and
handed one to him.

For the longest time, they were both
silent. Silent and virtually alone. There was an old man with a
metal detector inching his way across the beach, and a woman
jogging with a golden retriever on a leash. But they were far away
and it was like he and Kerry were in their own quiet little
bubble.

“I’m sorry if I seem bitchy,” Kerry
eventually said. “It’s just that I feel guilty.”

He frowned. “Hey, stop beating
yourself up. It’s just a little concussion. I’m fine, and it’s not
your fault anyway.”

“It’s not just that.” She turned to
look at him, and he could feel her making eye contact, even through
her glasses’ enormous lenses. “There’s something else I should tell
you. I’ve been holding back, and I can’t take the guilt
anymore.”

* * * * *

Kerry’s stomach balled up into
something that felt like a mass of barbed wire and broken glass.
She was infinitely grateful for her sunglasses. Should she feel
guilty over that too?

She dropped her gaze as she wracked
her mind for a way to say what she had to without sounding
fantastically egotistical.

“I really like spending time with
you,” she finally said, “even if I’m not good at showing it. But
the truth is that I don’t have any business flirting with you or
anyone else, and I feel like maybe I’ve been … well, leading you
on.”

For a split second, Grey looked like
he’d been sucker-punched. He recovered quickly, though – so quickly
that Kerry wondered whether she’d imagined his reaction just to
boost her own ego.

“I thought…” He unscrewed the cap to
his water bottle, held it open but didn’t take a drink. “I thought
we went on a date the other day, at the café. Figured maybe if I
could lay on the charm thick enough, you’d eventually fall for me
the way your friends did for Liam and Henry.”

He flashed her a grin that was gone as
soon as it’d appeared.

Inside, she was cringing all the way
to the moon and back. A part of her wanted to scream that yes, it
had been a date, and that they should go on another one. But she
knew what she had to do, and this would ultimately be less awkward
and painful if she got it over with quickly. “I’m
sorry.”

He looked like he was about to say
something else, but didn’t. And then his expression changed. “Hey,
what do you mean you don’t have any business with me or anyone
else? Do you have a secret husband locked away in an attic or
something?”

His words hit her like a ton of
bricks, and she felt suddenly and absurdly exposed, even though
what he’d said was just as ridiculous as he’d obviously meant it to
be. “No, of course not. My house is way too small to hold someone
prisoner in without getting caught.”

“Right. No attic, and no basement.
What’s the deal, then – are you a nun on the lam?”

“Ha, no.” She might as well have been.
Her date at the café with Grey, complete with shark cookies, had
been the most romance she’d experienced in years.

“Then what is it – you can’t just
break my heart, crush my dreams and leave me hanging.”

He was exaggerating, but he was still
right. He deserved a clear explanation. She hated – absolutely
hated – not being able to give him one. If she maintained her
silence or gave him some vague bullshit answer, he’d probably think
she was trying to be coy, like a 12 year old girl instead of the 27
year old woman she was.

A tiny, insane part of her wanted to
tell him everything. But her tongue was like stone in her mouth and
in her mind’s eye, she could see her world crumbling around her if
she spoke the words. If she let her past come to life, even in a
story, the confession would act as a spell – dark magic – and
destroy the appearance of normalcy she was able to
maintain.

She had to shut out who she’d been,
because that person couldn’t coexist with who she was now. She
wasn’t strong enough to face the past. Not yet. She’d made a little
progress, but she still had miles to go.

She might make it there someday, if
she didn’t screw up along the way, trying to fake a level of
normalcy, of happiness, that she wasn’t equipped to deal
with.

“I’m not trying to be coy or
mysterious,” she forced herself to say. “But I’m not looking to
date anyone. Not even someone I really like. It’s just not in the
cards for me right now.”

God, she sounded like an
idiot.

Even though he would’ve been within
his rights to be irritated, she was terrified that he’d be pissed,
maybe even walk away. Though she’d just rejected him, she hoped –
pathetically, she knew – that he’d still maintain a casual
friendliness with her. That she’d still get to see him during group
outings, where she could secretly lust after him like a penniless
person window-shopping.

For a moment he just sat there
examining his water bottle like it was the eighth wonder of the
world.

She waited for the explosion of
annoyance, the exclamation of disgust.

“No explanation, no dice,” he finally
said.

“What?”

“If you won’t tell me why you won’t
date me, even though the attraction is mutual, I’m not giving
up.”

She sat in stunned silence. Then, a
sense of horror dawned on her. She’d pushed herself to say what she
had to – to reject him. And he wasn’t buying it. A few defiant
words from him, and she already felt her resolve
wavering.

“Now you’re just teasing me.” She
tried to sound like her heart wasn’t in her throat.

“I’m completely serious. If you think
I’m joking, you overestimated me.”

“Over
estimated?”

“Yup. You clearly thought I could be a
mature adult about this and respect your mysterious reasons why you
have to be alone. Well, you don’t know who you’re dealing
with.”

Her mouth was dry now. “Don’t
I?”

He peeled off his sunglasses and
looked her directly in the eye. Even through her own lenses, she
felt his gaze, intense and searing. “You’ll have to be on guard
from now on if you really want to resist me, because I’m going to
charm the hell out of you. Prepare to fall in love.”

She wanted to laugh. And run before
she could do something stupid, like melt into a puddle of wishful
thinking fantasies. Instead she said: “Oh, come on. Don’t waste
your time on me. You could have women falling at your feet if you
wanted.”

His grin was brighter than the sun.
“Thanks, but the only woman I want falling at my feet is
you.”

“Why?”

“You have the best triceps in Riley
County. Female ones, anyway. And Liam and Henry have been laughing
at me all summer because you keep turning me down. I need to regain
my dignity.”