“But I won’t because I like you.”
“You don’t really like me that much.”
She laughed. “I actually do, and I’m not altogether settled tonight, so it wouldn’t be what it should be. But I’ll take this.”
She rose to walk around the table. And slid into his lap. She grazed her teeth over his bottom lip, then soothed it with her tongue before sinking them both into the kiss.
Comfort and fire, she thought, promise and threat. The hard body and thick, soft hair, the rough stubble and smooth lips.
She sighed into it, retreated, then locked her eyes on his.
“A little more,” she murmured, and took his mouth again.
This time his hands slid up her sides, skimmed her breasts. Possessed. Small and firm, with her heart thudding under his palms.
“Fiona.”
She broke the kiss to lay her cheek to his. “You could convince me; we both know it. Please don’t. It’s so unfair, but please don’t.”
Some women, he thought, had the power to turn a man in the opposite direction from what he wanted. It seemed his fate to run up against them. And, damn it, to care.
“I need to go.”
“Yeah.” She drew back again, this time cupping his face in her hands. “You do. But thanks, because when I’m restless tonight it won’t be over some damned article in the paper.”
“Just call me Samaritan.”
For a moment, she rested her brow to his. “I’ll give you a container of soup. And a bigger collar for Jaws. He’s outgrown that one.”
He didn’t argue as she gave him time to settle.
And still, all the way home while the pup snored in the seat beside him, he could taste her, smell her.
He glanced at the dog. “This is your fault,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t be in this situation except for you.”
As he turned into his own drive, he reminded himself to go buy a damn tree and plant it.
A deal was a deal.
Ten
She got through it, got past it. Work and routine pushed her hour to hour. She channeled excess nerves into workouts, shedding tension with sweat until an article rehashing her ordeal, her loss no longer mattered.
Her classes, her blog, the daily care and interactions with her dogs filled her days. And since a casual dinner over soup and bread, she had the idea of a relationship—however far it went—with Simon to entertain her mind.
She enjoyed him, quite a bit. Maybe, she considered, because he wasn’t as protective and easy as her circle of friends or the two women who made up her family. He was a little hard, a lot blunt and, she thought, a great deal more complicated than most people she knew.
In many ways, since Greg’s murder, the island had become her sanctuary, her safe place where no one looked at her with pity, or particular interest, and where she’d been able to restart her life.
Not on bare ground, she thought. She was who she was, at the core. But like an island, she’d broken off from the mainland and allowed herself to change direction, to grow, even to re-form.
Not so many years before, she’d imagined herself raising a family— three-kid plan—in a pretty suburb. She’d have learned to cook good, interesting meals and would love her part-time job (to be determined). There would have been dogs in the house and a swing set in the yard, dance lessons and soccer games.
She’d have been a steady and supportive cop’s wife, a devoted mother and a contented woman.
She’d have been good at it, Fiona thought as she sat on the porch taking in the quiet morning. Maybe she’d been young to have been planning marriage and family, but it had all unfolded so seamlessly.
Until.
Until there was nothing left of that pretty picture but shattered glass and a broken frame.
But.
But now she was good at this. Content and fulfilled. And she understood she’d come to this place, to this life, to these skills because all those lovely, sweet plans had shattered.
The core might be the same, but everything around it had changed. And she was, because of or despite that, a happy, successful woman.
Bogart came over to bump his head under her arm. Automatically, she shifted, draped her arm over him to rub his side.
“I don’t think everything happens for a reason. That’s just the way we cope with the worst that happens to us. But I can be glad I’m here.”
And not feel disloyal, she thought, to Greg, to all those pretty plans and the girl who made them.
“New day, Bogart. I wonder what it’ll bring.”
As if in answer, he came to alert. And she saw Simon’s truck rolling down her drive.
“Could be interesting,” she murmured as the other dogs raced over to join her and sit, tails drumming.
She smiled at Jaws’s happy face peering out from the windshield on the passenger’s side, and Simon’s unreadable one behind the wheel.
She rose and, when the truck stopped, gave her dogs the release signal. “A little early for class,” she called when Simon stepped out, and Jaws leaped into the reunion with his buddies.
“I’ve got your damn tree.”
“And so cheerful, too.” She wandered over as he waded through the dogs.
“Give me the coffee.” He didn’t wait for the offer but took her mug, downed the rest of the contents.
“Well, help yourself.”
“I ran out.”
Because he looked surly, unshaven and sexy, she fluttered her lashes at him. “And still, here you are bright and early with a tree, just for me.”
“I’m here bright and fucking early because that dog chewed open five pounds of dog food somewhere before dawn, then opted to puke it up, bag and all, on my bed. While I was in it.”
“Awww.”
Simon scowled as the concern and attention went straight to the dog. “I’m the injured party.”
Ignoring him, Fiona rubbed the puppy, checked his eyes, his nose, his belly. “Poor baby. You’re okay now. That’s all right.”
“I had to throw out the sheets.”
From her crouch, Fiona rolled her eyes. “No, you clean off the puke, then you wash the sheets.”
“Not those sheets. He heaved like a drunk frat boy.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“I didn’t eat the damn kibble.”
“No, but you didn’t have it stowed where he couldn’t get to it, or better yet in a lidded container. Plus, he’s probably not ready to have free rein in the house. You should put up a baby gate.”
His scowl only deepened. “I’m not putting up a baby gate.”
“Then don’t complain when he gets into something he shouldn’t while you’re sleeping or otherwise occupied.”
“If I’m getting a lecture, I want more coffee.”
“In the kitchen.” Once he’d stomped out of earshot, she let the wheezing laugh escape. “He’s mad at you, isn’t he? Yes, he’s very mad. He’ll get over it. Anyway”—she gave Jaws a kiss on his cool, wet nose—“it was his own fault.”
Rising, she walked to the back of the truck to get a look at her tree.
She stood there, grinning still, when Simon strode out with his own mug of coffee.
