Chapter one
Play It by Ear
Jake Whitton shouldn’t care.
He’d spent thirteen years getting pretty fucking good at not doing it.
Whatever clawed its way up inside him got beaten into a drum kit, worked into slate and timber, driven into a fist when things got bad enough, or lost in bodies that didn’t ask questions and he didn’t stick around long enough to answer.
Mostly, it worked.
Until DI Harrison Black.
Now Jake was driving across Hartswick on a Monday morning with some pathetic little flutter in his stomach because today might be…what? Different? A step closer? Another chance to find out what the fuck they were doing?
Mondays weren’t supposed to feel like this.
He scrubbed a hand over his face as the van bounced over a pothole, the town slowly easing itself awake around him.
He’d been up since six, partly because the spring sun didn’t give a shit about the crappy blinds in his bedsit.
And partly because the sun wasn’t the only thing rising in the mornings.
Jake, too, woke fully erect and rock fucking hard.
Which wouldn’t have been nearly as irritating if Jake hadn’t apparently imposed a fucking dry spell on himself.
Harrison hadn’t asked him to. They hadn’t discussed exclusivity, or waiting, or whatever people were supposed to discuss when they were doing whatever the fuck Jake and Harrison were doing.
Jake could still go out, find someone, fuck the frustration out of his system and be home before he had to think too hard about it.
He just didn’t want to.
For the first time in longer than he cared to examine, nobody else held much appeal when the person he actually wanted was unavailable.
So until Harrison decided to take this thing beyond kissing, touching and leaving Jake permanently half out of his fucking mind, his sex life apparently consisted of his own right hand and getting up stupid early for an increasingly efficient morning shower.
Bloody Harrison.
Which was another reason Jake was heading where he was now. To find out if this whole self-imposed abstinence bollocks was still worth it.
He’d taken a quick patch job up near the estate first thing, sorting a leaking valley where a slipped bit of lead flashing was letting water track where it shouldn’t.
Easy fix. Up the ladder, flashing back where it belonged, job done before the owner had even finished boiling the kettle.
She’d still caught him on his way down, though, pressing a brew into one hand and a folded couple of notes into the other.
Easy hundred quid before most people had dragged themselves out of bed.
And now he had fuck all else on for the day.
He could’ve picked up another job. There was always another gutter to clear, tile to replace or roof somebody had ignored until water started coming through the bedroom ceiling.
And normally, Jake would’ve gone looking.
Work was work, and a hundred quid in his pocket didn’t mean there wouldn’t be bills waiting to swallow it.
But he’d already earned today.
Which meant he could give himself the rest of it.
Go do the one job he actually wanted to do.
Tapping his thumbs over the steering wheel, Jake mumbled a few lyrics under his breath. New ones, from the track he’d been building all weekend. Still half-finished. Rough in places. Working on it gave his brain something to chew on besides where he was going.
Who he was going there to see.
Hartswick rolled past in its usual early-morning lethargy. Shopfronts opening, a couple of punters outside the King’s Arms, someone hosing down the pavement. Same faces. Same rhythm. Same place Jake had never left.
It didn’t feel quite as suffocating lately.
That was new, too.
He could’ve stopped at the caff. Got a bacon butty, killed an hour, turned up at a more reasonable time.
Instead, he kept driving. Told himself he wanted a head start on the roof, but there was something else beneath that.
He wanted Harrison to know he turned up.
That if Jake said he’d do something, he fucking did it.
Then he turned onto Larkspur Lane, the cottage coming into view and Jake smiled before he could stop himself.
Until he saw the empty drive.
His stomach dropped, which was exactly the sort of thing he was trying not to fucking care about.
Ironically, Jake had spent more time at Harrison’s cottage over the past couple of weeks than he had with Harrison himself.
He’d been back and forth for weeks, fitting the roof around other jobs and the weather, slowly stripping it back and putting right the damage he’d found the first time.
Harrison had insisted on paying, but Jake was only taking the cost of materials. Anything more didn’t sit right.
Which had become the problem.
They’d barely managed to see each other since Emily Fisher.
Harrison had missed Jake’s gig that weekend.
The last time they’d got properly alone had been one drink at a pub in the next town, a quick kiss outside, then Harrison’s phone going and some domestic dragging him back to work.
Since then, it had been messages at the wrong time and plans that never quite became plans.
Jake free when Harrison was working; Harrison free when Jake wasn’t.
Funny, really.
Jake was a drummer. Keeping time was the one thing he was supposed to be good at. But this thing with Harrison felt like playing to a track he couldn’t quite hear, always half a beat off, reaching for something just as it shifted away.
Hence, he was here.
To fix his bloody roof.
So he parked, got out and hauled the ladder free from the top of the van, metal clanging as he dropped it down, the sound carrying a little too far in the morning quiet.
He checked the footing, angled it beneath the gutter line and adjusted it before looking up at where he’d left off.
Last Thursday’s stopping point was sealed against the inevitable Yorkshire rain, the temporary covering strapped down tight over the unfinished section.
He set his tool belt on, then climbed and hauled himself onto the pitch.
Up there, the world opened out. Low rooftops, thin lines of smoke curling from chimneys, the town easing into the day.
Beyond it, the land rolled away in green and gold, hedgerows splitting fields into neat, uneven shapes.
Further still, the moors sat heavy on the horizon, dark and quiet, holding on to the last of the morning mist.
It was the sort of view most people stopped for.
Jake didn’t.
He crouched with his back to it and got to work. Then as the sun climbed higher, he remembered there were perks to working outside. Occasionally, Yorkshire even remembered it wasn’t supposed to rain every fucking day.
“Ah, sod this.” He hooked his fingers into the hem of his T-shirt and hauled it up over his head, tossing it back behind him onto the ridge.
Better.
He rolled his shoulders, the chain at his neck shifting with the movement, swallow pendant tapping lightly against his chest as he bent back to the job.
Then the front door below opened.
Voices drifted up, muffled at first beneath the scrape of his tools and the breeze moving over the roof, then clearer as whoever it was stepped outside. Jake straightened and moved carefully towards the edge, boots finding their grip on the pitch before he glanced down.
Shit.
Harrison.
Not DI Black in one of those immaculate suits, though. No crisp white collar buttoned around his throat. No tie. No polished shoes or professional armour that made him look like touching required prior authorisation.
No.
This was Harrison in jeans.
Those jeans. The ones Jake already knew fitted far too fucking well.
A loose T-shirt ruffled in the breeze around a body that was leaner than Jake’s but still taut in all the places Jake had become painfully familiar with wanting to get his hands on.
His usually immaculate blond-grey hair was mussed, as if he’d shoved a hand through it after getting out of bed and decided that was good enough.
And on his feet were those Adidas Gazelles Jake had only seen a handful of times.
The ones that somehow made a forty-three-year-old detective inspector look less like the man who could have him arrested and more like the man Jake desperately wanted to drag back inside.
His stomach gave a stupid little flip.
Until Jake noticed Harrison wasn’t alone.
A woman stepped out beside him, and that stupid little flip dropped somewhere considerably lower.
She looked around Harrison’s age. Forties, maybe.
Pretty. Dark hair, make-up, denim jacket thrown over a floaty dress.
Comfortable beside him, too. Familiar enough that neither of them seemed to need the careful politeness of people who didn’t know each other well.
Jake gripped his hammer in a balled fist.
Because apparently weeks of voluntarily not fucking anyone else had somehow made him forget Harrison had an entire life Jake knew fuck all about.
And he watched them walk together to the end of the drive until the woman’s phone rang and she slowed to answer it.
Harrison took another couple of steps before his attention snagged on Jake’s van.
He stopped.
Looked back at the cottage.
Then up.
Their gazes met.
And there it was again. That immediate, ridiculous surge low in Jake’s gut that didn’t give a shit who the woman was, where Harrison had been all weekend or how spectacularly stupid Jake might be for caring about either.
“Hey,” Harrison called up.
Jake dragged a hand back through his hair, buying himself a second. “I, uh… thought you’d be at work.”
“Took some time off in lieu.” Harrison gestured to the woman talking on her phone. “Nell’s heading back to London.”
“Right.” Jake nodded, pointing vaguely at the empty stretch of road. “Had nowt else on today, so thought I’d carry on with this. Would’ve knocked, but… no car.”
Harrison winced, rubbing his forehead. “We went out last night for dinner and had one too many. Left it in town.”
“Right.”