Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
TANNER
T his is the first quiet night I’ve had at home in…I don’t remember when. It’s a gorgeous spring evening, and I have the accordion glass doors open to the outside, letting in the ocean breeze as I cook in the nearby kitchen.
The indoor/outdoor space is what sold me on this house a couple of years ago. Granted, I can’t use it year-round, but when the weather is nice enough to open it up, it’s damn satisfying.
Tonight, I have a steak on the grill, with veggies and potatoes. I like to cook. I just rarely get the chance.
Not to mention, it’s not ideal to cook just for one.
Maybe next time, I’ll invite Sarah to join me.
There’s a knock on the door that faces the driveway, and I wipe my hands on my towel as I walk over to answer it.
When I pull the door open, it’s as though I conjured Sarah out of my thoughts.
“Hey. I’m making dinner. Wanna share a steak?”
“Someone broke into my house, and I can’t find Petunia.”
Everything in me braces as I take Sarah’s shoulders in my hands. “What?”
Luna hurries up behind her, talking on her cell phone. “That’s right, the guest house behind Tanner’s house. Yes. No, we haven’t touched anything, but we can’t find the cat. Okay. Okay, great.”
Luna hangs up and joins us. “I just got off the phone with June’s brother, Cullen. He’s coming right over to check it out.”
“It’s so handy having a cop in the family,” Sarah murmurs and swallows hard. “It wasn’t you, right, Tanner? You didn’t happen to stop in for anything and accidentally leave the door ajar?”
“No, that crosses a lot of lines, Sarah. Come in for a second so I can turn off all of the fires I currently have going.”
“We’ll wait out here,” Sarah replies. “It’s okay.”
“I’ll be right back.” I hurry away, leaving the door open, and turn off the stove, then run outside and pull the steak off the flame and extinguish the burners on the grill.
I don’t need my house to burn down because I’m too busy figuring out what the hell is happening with Sarah.
When I hurry back outside, Cullen is just pulling up in his cruiser.
“Hi, ladies. Tanner,” he says with a wave as he and his partner, Hawk, walk our way. “What happened?”
“I just came home,” Sarah says and takes a deep breath to calm herself. “Luna was dropping me off. I walked up to the door and saw that it was ajar, and then I ran back to Luna’s car, panicked. While she called you, I poked my head in, just to see if I could see my cat, because she’s a rescue and gets scared.”
Her voice catches, and I slip my hand into hers, giving it a little squeeze.
“Did you touch the door handle?” Hawk asks.
“No, I just pushed the door part. I called for her, but she didn’t come. I didn’t want to go inside, in case someone was still in there.”
“Okay, you all stay here, and we’ll check it out,” Cullen says, then turns to his partner, and they speak too low for us to hear as they approach my guest house.
“Maybe the wind pushed it open,” Luna says as the three of us watch the police circle the outside of the building. “Maybe you didn’t latch it when you left, and it just drifted open.”
“I always latch it,” Sarah insists. “I don’t know what I’d do if Petunia got loose, and I couldn’t find her. I’m too careful for that.”
“It could be a million things,” I assure them both. “We’ll wait to see what they say.”
Sarah’s too nervous to stand still, so she paces around my deck. Luna rapidly taps the screen of her phone, I’m assuming, texting Wolfe.
“Wolfe and Zeke are on their way,” she says. “I also texted Apollo, but he’s on a job site where there isn’t any cell service.”
“You don’t have to alert everyone,” Sarah says softly. “Chances are, it’s nothing at all.”
But when Cullen and Hawk come out the front door of the house, I can see by the look on their faces that they’re not super concerned .
Still, I’m suddenly filled with white-hot rage, and mentally make a list of everything I have to do in the next twenty-four hours, just to make sure that I keep Sarah safe.
“Found the cat,” Cullen says cheerfully. “She’s under the bed, hiding.”
“Oh, thank God,” Sarah says on a sigh. “That’s the most important thing.”
“There’s no one in there,” Hawk continues. “And we can’t tell if anything is out of place until you come in with us.”
“Let’s go.” Sarah immediately sets off for her place, marching with purpose.
Luna and I hang back. “It’s already kind of cramped in there,” she says. “They don’t need us getting in the way.”
“I’m installing security first thing in the morning, and until then, they’ll stay with me.”
Luna cocks an eyebrow. “You might want to ask her if that’s what she wants to do.”
I wipe my hand over my mouth in frustration. “She’ll damn well do it, Luna.”
Before she can argue with me, the three of them come out of the house, Sarah holding the cat firmly in her arms.
“Well?” I ask. “Is anything gone?”
“I don’t think so,” Sarah replies. “There’s nothing out of place. They didn’t toss my stuff around or anything.”
“We got some prints,” Cullen adds. “We’ll run them, see if they belong to anyone that wasn’t supposed to be here, but it looks to me like the wind pushed the door open.”
“Impossible,” Sarah murmurs, shaking her head. “I know I closed it tightly.”
“Without a camera set up, we can’t know for sure.” Cullen turns to me. “Do you have cameras out here on this building? It might have caught something.”
“Actually, I do. I haven’t done the same for the guesthouse because I didn’t want to infringe on the tenant’s privacy, but there are about to be some changes there.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and bring up the security app. We spend the next twenty minutes combing through footage, and then we see it.
“There,” Hawk says, pointing at the screen. “They tried to stay out of camera range, but those are tires.”
“And feet,” I agree grimly, and watch as feet walk around the car but then disappear.
“They’re in there for about ten minutes,” Cullen says when we see the feet return, get into the car, and drive away.
“Do you recognize the shoes?” I ask Sarah, but she’s already shaking her head no.
“They could be on a man or a woman,” she says slowly, leaning in to get a better look. “It’s kind of grainy.”
“It’s just sneakers and jeans,” I mutter in disgust. “She’s right. I can’t tell if it’s a man or woman.”
“Well, at least we know that it was a person and not the wind,” Luna says brightly, and then deflates when we all glance her way. “I’m trying to look on the bright side.”
“We have the prints,” Cullen says. “And we’ll monitor the area closely. It was probably random. You’re tucked back in here, where no one can really see what’s happening from the street, so it doesn’t surprise me that you’d be a target, but we don’t usually have much B&E in Huckleberry Bay.”
“Just call us if you need anything else, or if you think of something that might help,” Hawk adds before the officers walk to their cruiser and leave.
Just then, Wolfe and Zeke drive up and hurry out of their vehicle toward us.
“What did they say?” Wolfe demands as he pulls his fiancée into his arms. “Just the wind?”
“No,” I reply, my jaw set in grim lines. “There was someone here. Right before I got home from work.”
“But you caught them on camera, right?” Zeke asks. He’s Wolfe’s business partner and best friend, and has quickly become a friend to all of us.
I simply shake my head. “Not a clear shot, no. I’ll have security installed tomorrow, including cameras. In the mean time, you and Petunia will stay with me.”
Sarah’s gaze whips up to mine. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’m sure we’ll be just fine.”
“I wasn’t asking,” I interrupt. “Someone broke into your house , on my property, Sarah. You won’t stay another night in there until I have the proper security in place. I won’t risk you.”
“I’m sure that I could stay with Luna.”
I narrow my eyes, and without looking away from her, say to the rest, “Give us a minute, will you?”
“Sure.” Wolfe leads the others away, and I lean into Sarah, speaking low.
“I won’t touch you or do anything that you don’t want me to do, Sarah. But I’ll be damned if you’re going to stay anywhere but with me. I have plenty of space for you and the cat. You’re safe with me. And damn it, I want you here.”
Her lips tremble, but she firms them and nods her head once. “Thank you. We’d love to take you up on that.”
“Thank you ,” I reply softly, and turn to the others who are in a small group at the end of the patio. “Thanks for coming to help, everyone. Do you want to come in for dinner? I can order something.”
“Starving,” Zeke says with a nod, only to be hit on the back of the head by Wolfe. “What? I am starving.”
“Please stay,” Sarah says. “And will someone please go into my house to get Petunia’s food and dishes? Her litter box?”
“Done,” Wolfe says, and he and Zeke walk to the house.
“I’ll text Apollo and June, let them know we’re here,” Luna says, her phone already in her hands. “Hopefully, Apollo has service now.”
“This is great,” Sarah says as she and Petunia follow me into the house. “It’ll help me keep my mind off of it. I know you didn’t plan to have a houseful tonight, so I’m sorry about that.”
“Friends are always welcome here,” I reply and get to work putting away the food I’d drug out to cook.
The steak, I discover, sat in the heat too long, and is a lost cause, so it goes in the trash.
“Let’s order burgers from Gordy’s,” Luna suggests as she and the guys join us. “We’ve had a lot of pizza lately.”
“That’s the bad thing about living in such a small town,” Zeke says. “We don’t have a lot of food options. Also, holy shit, Tanner, this place is stellar. ”
“I’ve never been in here,” Sarah says and sets Petunia on the couch before walking to the open wall of windows.
“The deck is totally closed in with a glass railing, so the cat can’t escape,” I inform her.
“This is something out of a movie,” Sarah says as she turns to me with wide eyes. “It’s so pretty. Of course, I’ve seen it from the sand, but I didn’t realize that these windows were doors that open.”
“We’re going to have to have something like this when we build our house,” Wolfe says to Luna. “We have to have it.”
“I highly recommend it,” I agree, and pull my phone out to place our food order just as Luna’s phone pings with a text. “I’m going to order food.”
“Awesome,” Luna says. “Apollo just said he’ll pick up the food on the way over.”
“You guys are the best,” Sarah says, watching us all with tears in her eyes. “I have excellent friends.”
“We have to eat,” Wolfe says, but winks at her. “And we love you, kiddo.”
“I know. I love you, too.” She swipes at a tear. “I want extra pickles on my burger.”
“Extra pickles coming right up.”
“You don’t think this is extreme?”
Sarah watches as I screw a flood light into place above her front door.
“It’s just this light, the camera on the front and rear, and the keypad with the alarm. Trust me, I could have gone really overboard.”
“It was probably just random, and now that they see that I don’t have anything worth stealing, they won’t be back.”
I stow away my drill and climb down the ladder.
“I won’t take chances with your safety.” I cup her cheek in my palm and lean in to kiss her forehead. “I should have done all of this before now. There’s an app that you’ll download onto your phone so you can monitor the cameras any time you want to. When you’re at work, or even if you’re in bed and think you hear a noise, you can look.”
“Well, that’s handy,” she mutters. “Petunia might not want to come back here, though. She fell in love with that loveseat you have by the windows. She stared at the ocean all morning. Not that I can blame her, it’s totally mesmerizing.”
“I wish you had more ocean view out here.” I want to suggest that they just move in with me, and call it a day, but I know she’s not ready for that.
Someday, I’ll have her in my house, and in my bed, all the time.
For now, she’s just steps away from me, and that has to be good enough.
“I love my place. Someday, I’ll have a full ocean view. But in the meantime, this is more than perfect for Petunia and me. Thank you for making me feel safer.”
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s get the app installed on your phone.”
“Right now?”
I stare down at her. “Of course, right now.”
“You know, I’m not terribly technologically advanced. I should probably just muddle through it by myself later. It’ll be far less embarrassing. This is my first smartphone.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, give me your phone.” My voice isn’t brusque or on edge. She knows I’m teasing her.
She bites that delectable bottom lip and passes her phone to me, and within seconds, I have the app downloaded.
“Okay, just put in your email and password here.”
“But this is your house and your security. Shouldn’t you have the account?”
“Absolutely not. It’s your privacy, Sarah. If you move out, and another renter comes in, we’ll delete your account, and the new tenant can set up a new one, using the same equipment. It’s no big deal.”
She scrunches up her nose for a heartbeat, and then, with her tongue between her teeth, she punches the information into her phone.
“Okay, now we’re going to name the cameras, and make sure they’re positioned the way you want them.”
For the next thirty minutes, we get the entire system set up exactly the way she wants it to be, and then I decide that I’m not ready to walk away from her for the day.
“How about dinner at my place?” I suggest.
“I’ve imposed on you for almost twenty-four hours, Tanner.”
“This isn’t an imposition.” I rub a lock of her blonde hair between my thumb and forefinger. “Let’s call it a date.”
Her eyes dilate, and she swallows hard. “I don’t even know how to date anymore. I don’t remember the last time I was on one.”
“It’s not hard. You see, I invite you over, you accept, and then we hang out together for a good amount of time. Then, before you go home, I kiss you. Sometimes, there’s sex involved, but there doesn’t have to be. Also, this way, Petunia can spend some more time at my house, watching the water.”
“Oh, my cat is invited on this date, too?”
“Sure. It’s a casual date.” I smile at her. “What do you say?”
“That sounds nice. What can I bring?”
“I have it covered. You can help me cook.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “That’s one skill I never learned, Tanner. I burn boiled water. I’m horrific in the kitchen.”
“You never cooked?”
“We had a chef.” She shrugs a shoulder. “I was good at going over a weekly menu with him. And now, I take orders and deliver food, but I do not cook.”
I nod slowly. “Okay, so we’re adding cooking lessons to tonight’s agenda, then. Do you still like salmon with asparagus? Maybe some pasta in a nice cream sauce?”
“Who doesn’t like that?”
“Excellent. Let’s go.”
I gesture for her to walk ahead of me, and when she does, my eyes can’t stay off of her ass. She always had a fucking incredible backside. It fit perfectly in my hands as she rode me, and that’s absolutely not what I should be thinking about right now.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing. Why?”
“You just cleared your throat, like, three times. Are you getting sick?”
“No, of course not.” I lead her inside the house and point to her cat. “Looks like she hasn’t moved.”
“I told you, she loves that spot.” Sarah turns to me and tilts her head to the side. “But really, what’s wrong?”
“I’m great. You’re here, and I get to eat delicious food.”
Her eyes narrow. “Uh-uh. I don’t buy it.”
“You.” I lick my lips and then lean against the kitchen counter, staring at her. “I’m thinking about you in ways that don’t involve a simple dinner or me keeping my manners in check when I kiss you goodnight. I’m thinking about the way your butt feels in my hands when we’re naked and the little sounds you make when you come, and how much I’ve wanted you for more than a decade.”
I take a deep breath and watch as her eyes glass over.
“But that’s not what we’re here for. Not yet. So, let’s drop it and have a nice dinner because I’m starving.”
I turn to the refrigerator, open the door, and stare blindly inside.
“Tanner.” Sarah’s hand glides up my arm, to my shoulder, and over to my neck. When it’s halfway down my back, I turn to her.
“What?”
“There’s absolutely no reason that we can’t have dinner and sex. In whatever order you’d like.”
Fucking hell, my system can’t take it. I cup her cheeks in my hands and stare into her eyes intently, searching to make sure that she means it and isn’t just saying the words because she wants to pay me back for my hospitality.
Not that Sarah would ever do that.
“Make sure you mean it.”