Chapter 24
Emmaline
The ovens were already roaring, heat rolling through the kitchen in waves that clung to the back of my neck and dampened my hairline under the faded red bandana I’d tied on.
The familiar weight of it against my skull should’ve been comforting.
This was my rhythm, my place. The hum and clang of trays and timers created a symphony I’d known since I was barely tall enough to see over the counter.
The steady scoop and fold of batter, the precise dance between measuring cups and mixing bowls, the way flour dust caught the morning light streaming through the high windows—normally, it kept my mind focused.
Centered. Grounded in the work that had been passed down through three generations of Maddox women.
Not this week.
Not since I’d kissed my husband in his office like it was the most natural thing in the world, like we were any other married couple stealing a moment between his cases and my baking schedule.
Everything had been off kilter for the past four days.
As if my entire focus had been tuned into Bodie and nothing but Bodie.
He seemed to occupy my every waking thought.
My dreams, too. The number of times I’d woken in the night, hot and aching, and considered slipping into his bed was bordering on ridiculous.
As I wasn’t brave enough for that, I’d made do with my own hands and fantasies that they were his—touching, exploring, sending me over that shuddering edge.
God, I wanted so much more than a kiss from my temporary husband. And I was pretty sure he did, too.
I dumped what I thought was sugar into the industrial mixer, my hand moving on autopilot while my mind replayed the way his fingers had slid into my hair, gentle but sure, how careful he’d been—always letting me lead, always giving me the space to pull back if I needed to.
He didn’t push. He didn’t demand explanations or promises I wasn’t ready to make.
He just took exactly what I gave him and looked at me like it was everything he’d ever wanted.
I leaned against the scarred wooden counter as the mixer churned, dragging my flour-dusted sleeve across my damp forehead, wishing desperately for air-conditioning that wasn’t two decades out of date and perpetually on the fritz.
It hadn’t been in the budget to replace when I needed ovens and refrigerators.
The ancient unit wheezed and rattled in the corner, providing little more than the illusion of coolness while the ovens pumped heat into every corner of the kitchen.
Bodie had been in three times already this week, each time leaning across the front counter with the cop face that looked deadly serious until he smiled, and then asking in a low rumble, So, Doc, when’s my next dose?
Always in that voice that did terrible things to my insides, made my hands shake when I tried to count change or box up pastries.
Always with heat in his blue eyes that made me forget I was supposed to be the sensible one, the one keeping us both grounded in reality.
The brass bell over the front door jingled, the sound faint through the kitchen door but familiar enough I could usually tell by the rhythm who was entering.
Quick, sharp rings meant the Haver twins racing in for their after-school brownie fix.
The slow, measured chime was Mrs. Hensley, picking up her weekly apple pie with careful, arthritic movements.
But this was something in between—confident, unhurried, deliberate.
I shoved back from the counter, wiping my hands on the apron that had once belonged to Gran, telling myself it was probably just another regular customer.
Maybe old Mr. Patterson coming for his Friday coffee cake, or one of the construction workers from the flood cleanup stopping by for a quick breakfast pastry.
It wasn’t. Because we were in that blessed twenty-minute window between the end of the morning rush and the start of the lunch crowd. Which meant it could only be one person.
The kitchen door swung open. Bodie looked unreasonably fine in his police uniform.
His badge caught the light from the overhead fluorescents, and his duty belt creaked leather-soft as he moved.
The bruise along his cheekbone was at that gross gray-yellow stage that meant it was healing, but I didn’t see it first.
What I saw was the grin—half tired from what I knew had already been a long morning of paperwork and phone calls, half wicked with an intent that made my pulse skip—that said he knew exactly what I’d been thinking about all morning. That he’d been thinking about it too.
“You here for a cinnamon roll, Chief?” I aimed for dry and professional, the same tone I used with every other customer, and missed by a mile. My voice came out too breathless, too aware, giving away every traitorous thought I’d been having.
“Nope.” He crossed the room like he owned it, all broad shoulders and deliberate steps, heat radiating off him like he’d brought the August sun in with him. The kitchen suddenly shrank, becoming more intimate, the familiar space transformed by his presence. “Here for my medicine.”
And then he had me backed up against the counter, not rough, not hurried, just inevitable as gravity.
His hand braced beside me on the stainless steel, close enough that I felt the warmth of his palm without touching.
The other ghosted along my jaw, fingertips tracing the line of my cheek with a gentleness that made my breath catch, before he dipped down and kissed me.
It wasn’t careful this time. Not the tentative brush of lips against bruised skin, not the feather-light reassurance we’d been trading all week.
This was a kiss that stole the heat from the ovens and replaced it with something molten in my veins, something that started in my chest and spread outward until my toes curled in my sensible work shoes.
My knees went weak, actually weak like something out of a romance novel.
My hands, completely traitorous, slid up into his hair, fingers threading through the dark strands that were softer than they looked.
He groaned low against my mouth, the kind of sound that reverberated straight through me and settled between my thighs.
With a little whimper, I pressed closer, feeling the bulge behind his fly.
His hands—those big, strong hands I’d been dreaming about—moved to my hips, digging in with a possessive grip that I loved. Then I was suddenly off the ground, my ass meeting the counter, and he was stepping between my thighs.
God, yes.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, pulling him closer to where I wanted him.
Bodie pulled back just enough to press another kiss, softer but no less devastating, at the edge of my jaw.
“Better?” he murmured against my skin, his warm breath creating goosebumps despite the heat.
I could barely form words, let alone coherent thoughts. “That’s… my line.”
He laughed, the sound rich and smug and delighted, and kissed me again before I could gather my scattered wits or remember why this was supposed to be a terrible idea.
Which was exactly when the kitchen door creaked open again.
“Good grief,” Blair’s familiar voice drawled from the doorway, dripping with amusement and not an ounce of surprise. “What are you doing, Chief?”
I jerked back so fast I knocked a mixing bowl to the floor, heat flooding my face in a way that had nothing to do with the ovens.
Bodie didn’t move more than an inch, his presence still solid and warm against me.
His hands stayed curled around my hips, possessive and sure, his eyes steady and burning into mine when he answered without looking away from my face.
“Kissing my wife. What’s it look like?”
My wife.
He'd called me that before, several times. But it was always in public. In front of people who didn't know the truth. But Blair did know. There was no show to put on here. No one to convince. If anything, he looked annoyed at the interruption.
God knew, I was.
Blair arched both perfectly sculpted brows, a grin spreading across her face that spelled trouble in capital letters.
She was dressed in one of her signature sparkly tops that caught the light, blonde hair perfectly styled despite the humidity that turned mine into a frizzy mess.
“Sure doesn’t look like paperwork. Or pastry making, for that matter. ”
“I—” My throat closed on the denial that wasn’t even true anyway, not when I still tasted him on my lips and felt the imprint of his hands on my skin.
I shoved at Bodie’s chest, but he’d turned into an immovable wall.
This was apparently a hill he was willing to die on.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” I demanded, directing the question at Blair, who was clearly enjoying this entertainment far too much.
“Just came to remind y’all about movie night,” Blair sing-songed, eyes flicking between us with the kind of wicked delight that meant she’d be texting her wife, Elena, about this before she even made it back to her car.
“Starts at six sharp, since it’s a double feature.
Don’t be late. You know how Elena gets when people miss the opening credits. ”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Bodie said smoothly, still not glancing away from me, like I was the most fascinating thing in the room despite the fact that I probably looked like I’d been hit by lightning.
“Same,” I added quickly, though I wasn’t entirely sure my voice sounded like it belonged to me anymore.
Blair smirked, muttered something under her breath about finally getting some entertainment around here, and slipped back out through the kitchen door. The brass bell jingled as the front door closed behind her, leaving us in sudden, charged silence.
The quiet that followed was thick enough to cut with a knife, heavy with unspoken things and the lingering heat of his kiss. I pressed lightly against Bodie’s chest, and he backed up, but only far enough that when I slid off the counter, I slid down the length of his body.
We both shuddered before I turned back to the counter with jerky, obvious movements, trying desperately to focus on the batter that had been mixing itself into what looked suspiciously like glue while I’d been otherwise occupied.
The consistency was all wrong—too thick and gummy, nothing like the light, fluffy texture it should have had.
I grabbed the bowl with shaking hands and stared down at the contents.
My pulse was still skittering like a rabbit’s, and Bodie watched my every movement with an intensity that made me hyperaware of everything from the way my apron strings had come loose to the flyaway strands of hair escaping my bandana.
I stuck a finger into the questionable dough and brought it to my mouth, cringing at the explosion of wrong as it hit my tongue.
Behind me, he chuckled, the sound low and rich with barely contained amusement. “Did you swap the bins?”
I spun around, horrified and already knowing what he was going to say before the words left his mouth. “What?”
He nodded toward the counter where the industrial-sized containers sat, their labels clearly visible now that I wasn’t distracted by the way his mouth curved when he smiled. “Get the sugar and salt mixed up?”
Damn him, I had.
I groaned, pressing my palms to my face and wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. “I should make you eat the entire batch as penance for distracting me.”
His grin spread wider, slow and wicked and completely unrepentant. “Worth it.” He leaned in just enough to brush his lips over mine again, quick and teasing and sweet. “Every single time.”
And then he winked—actually winked like some kind of old Hollywood charmer—looking positively delighted with the chaos he’d caused, and sauntered out of my kitchen, leaving me standing in the wreckage of my workspace, my carefully maintained composure, and an entire bowl of what would undoubtedly be the saltiest, most inedible pastry dough in the history of Maddox family baking.