Chapter 23
Bodie
I’d killed the overheads on purpose and shut the blinds against the morning sun so only a few narrow bars of light striped the battered wood of my desk and the scuffed floor.
My lamp—a brass monstrosity with a fringed shade that looked like it belonged in a bordello instead of a police station—had been donated by the Sasspatch Society upon my promotion to chief, and I’d kept it because it made me grin every time I looked at it.
Just now I was grateful for the low, honey-colored light it threw over the paperwork I’d been pretending to conquer since I’d dragged in before eight.
I was running on maybe three hours of sleep and a bad decision’s worth of coffee equal to approximately half the pot of sludge from the break room.
I might need my stomach scoped for ulcers later.
The bruise along my jaw had gone from inconvenient to insistent, a hot tide that woke up every time I forgot to move slowly or did anything so radical as yawn.
I’d delegated anything and everything I didn’t need to lay hands on myself—traffic complaints, license verifications, the dog that kept touring Main Street without its leash.
Today was for forms and signatures and the thousand little administrative bites I could take sitting down.
I preferred the kind of work I could stand up to do. Today, I’d take what I could get.
The clock on the wall marched steadily toward ten.
The minute hand nudged at my temple like the annoying thump of a younger sibling flicking tap, tap, tap.
A stack of blue forms waited for me to decide if I was going to stop glaring at them.
I rubbed the edge of the desk where the varnish had worn smooth and read the same paragraph for the third time, words refusing to line up into meaning.
A soft knock sounded on my door. Not a cop knock. Polite, almost apologetic.
“Come on.” I set the pen down and rolled my shoulders.
The door edged in just enough for my wife to slip through. She’d taken off her bakery apron, but flour still dusted her sleeves and a little spot on her right cheek. Seeing her felt like easing into warm water. A whole body sigh without moving a thing.
“Hey.” My voice betrayed that sigh by sounding a whole lot like relief.
“Hi.” She hesitated a half step inside. “Am I interrupting?”
“I will pay you to keep doing exactly that for the rest of the day.”
When she continued to hesitate just inside the door, I straightened in my chair as my brain caught up to the possibilities of why she might be here.
“Is everything okay? Did something happen?” I dragged my gaze over her, looking for signs of injury—visible or invisible.
God knew her mama always went for the latter.
Emmaline’s cheeks flushed a little. She lifted a paper bag. “Everything’s fine. I just… I brought you something.”
It was proof of my impaired state that only then did I notice the spicy sweet scent of cinnamon, butter, and yeast filling the room.
The bag sagged enough in the middle to promise heft.
I held out a hand in a “gimme” gesture, and she crossed the three steps to my desk, close enough for me to see the tiny nick healed at the base of her thumb, a pale half-moon.
I had an unreasonable urge to bring her hand to my mouth and kiss it like a fool.
“Cinnamon roll with extra icing. I figured sugar might stand in for sleep. Or at least bribe your brain into pretending.”
“I’ll take bribery.” I meant every syllable. The bag was warm where my palm wrapped around it. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to.” A quick, simple correction. Then, with a grimace that apologized for all of it at once, “I meant to get here sooner, but we were slammed, and I couldn’t get away until now. It’s not quite as fresh as I meant it to be.”
“It’s perfect,” I told her, because it was and because some things you say straight. “Thank you.”
She didn’t move back. Her eyes slid from mine to the side of my face, and the little crease between her brows deepened.
Up close, you can’t pretend a bruise isn’t there.
It announces itself, ugly and loud and deep purple at the edges.
She lifted her hand, slow enough I could veto it if I wanted.
I didn’t. The pad of her finger skimmed along the tender line under my cheekbone, barely there pressure that somehow lit up every nerve in its path.
“It looks worse than it did when you came in this morning,” she said in a voice like a secret.
I lifted a shoulder—carefully, because the motion tugged everywhere I’d forgotten I hurt. “I’ve had worse.” Old habit. Mostly true. Not particularly helpful.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, and there was a thread of something in it—care, yes, but also that quiet braced-up-ness I recognized in her. You ask, even if the answer is obvious, because asking is what you can do.
“Yeah,” I admitted, honest and softer than I meant to be. “It’d be worse if you hadn’t tended me this morning.” Thinking of the tension that had filled the kitchen in those dark hours, something impish rose up in me, the piece that showed up when I was running on fumes and good company.
“There is one thing you forgot, though,” I added, casual as I could make it, eyes on her because mine had never done subtle well.
Her brow arched. “Oh? What’s that?”
“Kiss it.” I pointed to my injured cheek. “Make it better.”
I waited with a ready joke if I saw any sign that the request made her uncomfortable. Instead, the corners of her lips quirked, and her eyes sparked.
“I expect that’s an oversight we need to rectify.”
She stepped in close enough her warmth soaked into me. Her left hand came up to cradle the uninjured side of my face. She leaned in and set a careful kiss at the highest edge of the bruise. Light as breath. Another, lower. A third along the curve of bone. Heat followed each touch in ripples.
A sound loosened in me, low and from the chest, like someone had thumbed a bass string. Not loud. Not for anyone but us. It made her pause for a soft check-in, eyes searching mine for any sign she’d mis-stepped.
“I—” I started, apology loaded and dumb. Old instincts have good aim.
She didn’t take it. Instead, she closed the last inch and brushed her mouth to mine.
If the bruise-kisses had been care, this was question and answer both.
Tentative at first, a grazing of lips that tasted like sugar and something floral I couldn’t name.
I wanted to haul her in, anchor her at my hips, kiss her the way a drowning man drinks in air.
Every bit of me that was raised on restraint stood up and put a palm on my chest. Instead, I let her set the pace.
I let the wanting simmer instead of scorch.
I reached up and slid my fingers into her hair, careful, mirror to the hold she had on my face.
Her hair was softer than I’d let myself imagine—silk with a little grit where flour had dusted it, a line of static where our fingers met.
Her breath hitched against my mouth, the smallest sound, and I felt it like a hand on the back of my neck.
I don’t know how long it lasted. Long enough for the printer in the hall to stutter and the AC to cycle. Long enough for me to memorize the particular curve of her top lip, and the way she fit the space between me and the desk like she belonged there.
When she eased back, I stilled, sending every signal I had that said: you get to take the space; I’m not going to chase you if you’re not ready to be caught. Her thumb returned to the bruise and drew a soft line, feather-light. I didn’t feel a twinge; pain had pulled up a chair and shut up.
“Better?” Laughter and nerves were braided through the question.
I swallowed the ridiculous answer—since you walked in, sweetheart—and let out a low rumble instead. “Yeah.” I grinned. “I expect I might need another dose later, though.”
Her laugh filled my small office and made it bigger. It wasn’t loud, but it was bright, touching all the places the lamplight didn’t reach.
“I expect that could probably be arranged.”
Half of me heard teasing, and half of me heard a promise. Both halves were grinning idiots.
We let the quiet settle. I remembered the bag in my hand when my fingers registered butter and warmth.
I set it on the blotter and opened it one-handed.
The roll inside was obscene in the best way—spiral generous, icing swirled thick enough to drip into the center like it had opinions.
I broke off a piece with my fingers, and the crumb was tender, still a little warm at its heart.
Sugar hit first, then cinnamon, then the butter under everything.
“You like it?” She asked it like we hadn’t spent years of my life proving I’d eat anything she put in front of me and thank her twice.
“I’m considering filing an official complaint,” I said around a swallow, deadpan because I couldn’t help myself.
“Oh, are you?” Dry as good gin.
“Indecent deliciousness.” I reached for a napkin—of course she’d tucked one in. “Premeditated.”
“You can’t arrest a pastry, Chief.”
“I can arrest whoever incited it. Accessory before the fact.”
“There’s a line out the door at the bakery who will swear I’m innocent,” she said, and there it was—that glint under her words that meant she was okay, here, with me, even if we were standing on a different map than the one we used out in the world.
“Jury of your peers would be compromised,” I said, and then shut up because the joke had done its job and the rest of it was just me trying to keep her laughing.
She shifted like she remembered time was a thing. “I’ve got to get back.” I heard regret in her tone, but not the heavy kind. “Lunch rush started early. I just—” She looked at the side of my face again, then back to my eyes. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I am.” For once the answer slid out easily. “Thanks to you.”
Color touched the high points of her cheekbones. She ducked a little, smile threatening to break free and doing its best impression of restraint. “I’ll see you at home.”
Home. Not my house. Not your place. Not the neutral ground we’d been pretending to inhabit for the sake of sense. Home. Hearing her say it made the floor under my feet feel steadier.
“Yeah. See you at home.” I shot for casual and landed somewhere in the neighborhood.
She reached for the doorknob, then glanced back with that spark in her I’d always called trouble and had learned to translate as brave. “Try to stay out of trouble today, Chief.”
I propped my forearms on the desk like I was a man who had not just been kissed stupid and made new. I tried on a straight face and failed. “I’ll do my best.”
Her smile sharpened, fond and knowing. “Uh-huh.” She slipped out, pulling the door softly shut behind her. The latch seated with a click like punctuation—end of sentence, but definitely not end of story.
Hot damn.