CHAPTER TEN
Lennox
“Yes, Officer. Of course, Officer,” I said, trying not to smirk too hard as the young female island cop tried her best to read Naomi and me the riot act. Though, judging by the way her mouth kept trying to lift at the corners, she found it just as funny as we did.
“You’re lucky it was me,” Officer Bruce said, rolling her emerald-green eyes.
“I was just on a cruise around, and after what happened here last year, I always tuck into Heaven’s Leap and check things out.
Then I saw the foggy windows and, well …
definitely wasn’t expecting the new principal and Naomi Geuer to be necking. ”
Naomi snorted. “Did you really just say ‘necking,’ Myla? How old are you?”
That made the pretty cop laugh. “You know what I mean. I didn’t know you two were a thing. Probably best to take it home though, huh?”
“He’s got a kid and I’ve got two kids. Where could we possibly go?” Naomi asked.
She was right. I hadn’t thought about that. This was all very new, and we were taking it slow. I certainly wasn’t ready to go full throttle into a blended family with Mabel, Honor, and Austin, and I doubt Naomi was either. Where would we find time to be together without alerting our offspring?
Myla’s gaze turned sympathetic. “I don’t know, but it can’t be here. At least not during the day.”
Naomi crawled off my lap, and that’s when I realized I had a rather painful erection. She knocked my cock with her knee and it was all I could do not to groan in agony.
“Can you maybe keep this on the DL for a bit, Myla?” Naomi asked. “It’s still rather new. We’re taking it slow, figuring things out. It would be nice if the whole island didn’t know. Not yet anyway.”
Myla did a lip zip-lock-and-toss-the-key. “Police-perp confidentiality.”
“Is that a thing?” I asked. Then I glanced at Naomi. “Are we perps?”
She shrugged.
The police officer’s smile widened. “No. But I won’t say anything. You guys should get going though.” Her gaze pivoted toward the road. “And I’d do so soon since there are three vehicles making their way toward us now and one of them appears to belong to Jolene Dandy.”
“Shit!” Naomi exclaimed, awkwardly crawling over the center console into the back of the truck. She hid behind the passenger seat. “That’s The Island Mouth. If she sees us together, every island in the Puget Sound will know by sundown.”
“Put your belt on when you’re out of Dodge,” Myla said before heading back to her cruiser.
I waited until she drove off before turning my truck back on and pulling out. I smiled at the people in the other cars; one woman’s eyes lit up when she saw me. She waved, and I waved back, but hit the accelerator a little harder to put some more distance between us.
“Coast is clear,” I said to the woman hiding in the back. “You can come out now.”
Her side-eye was cheeky as she climbed over the console into the front seat and put on her belt. “Myla brought up a good point. Where can we go to get to know each other better?”
I lifted one shoulder. “I have no idea. My kid is always home.”
“And when mine aren’t, you’re at work.”
Drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I twisted my lips in thought. “This does put us in a pickle, doesn’t it?”
“I mean … eventually, I would like us to get to a more physical relationship. But I am happy to take it slow … we’re both noobs at this dating thing.
However, even just finding somewhere to relax and be alone without throwing our …
” I lifted my hands into the air and shrugged.
“Whatever this is … in the kids’ faces would be nice.
Where can we go?” She tapped her chin. “I might need to buy a boat.”
“Hang on. You said that the house on the property you guys just got was going to stay. Is it somewhere we could maybe use as our own little getaway?”
I could see the cogs spinning in her head. “Maybe. I know it was in a state of disrepair. But we did plan on fixing it up so it could be useable. I could maybe turn that into a new project and expedite the fixing so we could use it.”
“Is that something you have to run past the rest of your business partners?”
“Yes. But they’re all discreet.”
I reached across the seats and took her hand. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Where is Mabel right now? Home?”
“No. Actually, Danica messaged her this morning and invited her over to Tom’s farm. I dropped her off on my way to see you. She wanted to check on the osprey—which she named Oakley, because it’s gender neutral—as well as see the other animals.”
“So … your house is empty right now?”
I smirked just as we approached a four-way stop. If I went straight, that would take us to the vineyard; if I went left, we would get to my house. “My house is empty right now.”
“I … I would like to see where you guys live.”
“Yeah?”
Her nod was subtle, but her eyes glittered with mischief.
“Okay.”
I took a left, and we drove the rest of the way home in silence, though something promising and definitely exciting hummed between us.
“Are you going to want to duck down when we pass Rolph’s house?” I asked her when I turned a corner and the two mailboxes at the top of my driveway came into view.
“Maz and his wife aren’t the gossipy types,” she said, staying put. “I’ll take my chances.”
To her luck, neither Maz nor his wife was outside. We drove past their house without any issue, and I parked my truck in the driveway.
“This place is so private and cute,” she said, unbuckling her belt. “I had no idea there was even a house back here.”
Birds chirped in the towering trees behind the house, and if you really focused, you could hear the waves crashing down on the beach. It was a small trek down a trail, but the fact that we literally had the beach in our backyard was something both Mabel and I found magical about the property.
“It’s a small house. Only two bedrooms, but it’s perfect for just two people.” I unlocked the front door with the code and let her enter first. “We don’t need anything big.”
“That’s how I feel. The cottage isn’t spacious. I live in the loft, so I have to awkwardly get dressed on my back because I can’t even stand up or even kneel fully, but I don’t care. I love it all the same.”
“Something to drink?”
“Just water.”
I poured us each a glass and brought it over to her where she stood in front of the big picture window that looked out into the sloping backyard and dense forest. “I’m sure Mabel must spend a lot of time outside watching all the birds. I heard them all when we got here.”
“It’s the kid’s paradise, really. She spends hours in the yard observing and sketching the birds.”
Even though we’d just been sucking face in the cab of my truck not twenty minutes ago, for whatever reason, things between us grew awkward as we stood in front of my living room window staring out at the trees and afternoon sun dappling through the canopy.
A tremendously large part of me just wanted to grab her and walk her backward to my bed, but I said I wanted to go slow.
More than that, I needed to go slow.
I didn’t want to scare her away with my overzealous feelings, or get spooked myself. We’d also just shared some really heavy stuff with each other.
“Do you … maybe want to walk down to the beach?” she asked, gesturing to the trail at the bottom of the sloped yard.
“Sure.”
I took her empty glass from her, and I had just hit the lock button on the door when gravel crunched under tires and a champagne-colored sedan pulled in, parking behind my truck.
“Fuck,” Naomi said under her breath.
“What?”
“That’s Jolene Dandy.”
My gut hit my feet. “The Island Mouth?”
“Yep.”
Two car doors slammed, and an older woman of average height and a slim build with gray and black hair and coppery-brown eyes flashed us an enormous, almost triumphant grin as she came toward us. Another woman of similar age met her around the grill, and the two approached.
“Naomi,” Jolene said, her voice far too high-pitched and sing-song for anybody’s liking. I was sure dogs were barking in distress somewhere. “What are you doing here?”
“I could say the same thing to you, Jolene,” Naomi said, her voice even, if not a little hostile.
“Well, as an Island Elder and head of the Island Welcome Wagon, Karen and I thought it best to pay Principal Paul an official visit and meet his daughter.” She glanced around me, toward the front door. “Where is the little tyke?”
Tyke?
“She’s off with Honor, Sam, and Laurel,” Naomi said.
“Didn’t I just see you at Heaven’s Leap?” I asked her. Did the woman follow me home?
Jolene’s eyes widened. “Oh, did you?”
“Yeah. You waved at me. Did you turn around and follow me home?”
“W-well … n-no,” she sputtered. She shrugged her boney shoulders and flapped her hands like a penguin trying to fly. “Well … how else did you expect us to find out where you lived? You’ve been so secretive since moving here. This island doesn’t keep secrets. We’re a community of honest people.”
“Secrets aren’t necessarily lies, Jolene,” Naomi said. “Some people prefer not to have their dirty laundry aired to the masses. And maybe Lennox wasn’t ready for his daughter to meet everyone. Some people require gentler transitions into things.”
Jolene waved her hand to dismiss Naomi, and that instantly sent the hair on the back of my neck straight up. “Oh, pishposh. She’s a child. She needs to meet people. She needs to get to know the island. Where is she? With the others?”
“Back off, Jolene,” Naomi gritted through her teeth. “When Lennox and his daughter are ready for her to meet the rest of the island, she will. For now, leave it alone. Do not force a child to do something they don’t want to do. Particularly meet a bunch of strangers.”
Pride rushed through me at Naomi defending my daughter. But she wasn’t just sticking up for Mabel, she was sticking up for me too. I was sure our conversation was still fresh in her mind and she wanted to drive an axe through Kyla’s chest. Lord knows I still did.