Chapter 15 #2
Everyone turned in unison to see Summer standing in the doorway. Ashes, at the end of her restraint, leapt to her feet and bounded over to her.
Summer bent and scooped her up. She wore one of her long, loose, sleeveless sundresses with a tank top beneath, both in the color of a California poppy, which showed off bronzed, toned limbs and all that shiny fiery hair.
Joe imagined he could smell her, some complicated mix of spring flowers and sexy woman.
On her face there was a somber, unreadable expression, though her eyes lighted right on Joe’s.
“Sorry,” she said, petting the puppy. “I’m eavesdropping. ”
“I called to see if you were busy,” Camille said, tears in her voice. “On your last night in town.”
“I’d’ve liked to see you.” Summer came into the room. “I’d been feeling alone.”
The statement sliced right through Joe. He hadn’t gone to her that night out of self-protection, but he should have thought about her being alone, feeling as if she had no one to turn to, no reason to stick around. Some friend he’d made.
“So you’ve connected the two fires.” She sat heavily. “Which means, of course, you’ll be looking at that first fire, the one where my dad died.”
Camille gasped, and when everyone looked at her, she swallowed hard. “I hadn’t thought—Oh my God.”
Summer leveled Joe with those deep jade eyes. “Am I right?”
“Yes,” Joe said, sorrow filling him at the pain this was going to cause all of them. “You’re right.”
Camille abruptly pushed up from the chair and walked out of the room without looking back.
Summer sighed and got to her feet as well, but Kenny stepped in front of her. “Let me,” he murmured.
“Do you think she’ll talk to you?”
“I do, yes.”
“She’s even more stressed than I imagined,” Summer said when Kenny was gone, staring at the door. She set Ashes down and hugged herself in a gesture Joe wasn’t even sure she realized she made.
Socks appeared in the doorway and glared at the specimen of puppy.
Ashes let out one hopeful, excited bark.
“Ashes, sit. Stay,” Joe said firmly. “Stay.”
Ashes didn’t sit but she did stay, her entire body quivering with the effort to hold herself back. One small whine escaped her.
“Stay,” Joe said again softly.
Socks, not being under any orders but her own, walked into the room and right past Ashes.
Ashes barked again and leaned in to lick Socks’s face. That proved too much for the cat, who hissed, which invited Ashes to bound after her.
Socks leapt over the backs of two chairs, jumped onto the table and off again in a single graceful bound.
Ashes became a frantically barking mass of excitement, chasing the cat around the table in circles.
They both vanished beneath the table, from which emerged more wild barking and ferocious growling.
“Goddamnit.” Joe dove beneath the table, snagged the puppy, and came face to face with Summer, who’d dove under the table from the other side to grab Socks.
“Your puppy is short on manners,” Summer said with a smile.
“You’re telling me?” The puppy licked Joe’s chin. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Keep her, of course.” Summer was close enough that if they hadn’t had the puppy and the pissed-off cat between them, he might have been able to lean in and do something stupid.
Ashes did it for him. She craned her neck and licked Socks again. Socks retaliated by lifting a paw and bitchslapping the puppy across the face. Ashes yelped and Joe jumped, cracking his head hard on the underside of the table.
He swore at the cat, at the puppy, at Summer who was laughing at him as he backed out from beneath the table. He sat right on the floor while the stars cleared from his vision. “I’m beginning to see why that dog was at the pound.”
“You wouldn’t give her back.”
He rubbed his aching head. “In a heartbeat, I would.”
Summer kneeled in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders, peering into his pupils. “How many of me do you see?”
“One, which is more than enough.” He grabbed her hand when she would have pulled away. He understood the stress he saw behind her smile, but didn’t like it, nor the fact that he worried so damn much about her.
Socks jumped up to the couch, twitched her tail, and scowled at them.
Summer ignored the cat, made a soothing noise in her throat at Joe, and sank her fingers into his hair, unerringly finding the nice bump he’d just given himself. “You always had bruises all over you. I hated that.”
He closed his eyes. “Red—”
“I cared about you. So much.”
“And now?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“I care about you now too.” She kissed his jaw, first one side and then the other, but then rose to her feet and gave him a hand.
He let her pull him up and eyed the delicate purple shadows beneath her eyes. “Are you off work?”
She nodded.
“I have more to do at the office, but I could use a fun little run first.”
She arched an amused brow. “You were going to go for a run. Now. For fun, no less.”
It felt so good to see her knowing grin, he felt one split his face as well. “You know it. You could come with me.”
“You, Joe Walker, are a very sweet man.”
“Sweet?”
“Oh, is that not a manly enough adjective? How about strong? Smart. Gorgeous. Sexy—”
“Keep going.” He let her tug him to the front. Camille was gone, and so was Kenny. Summer locked the store up and they dashed out into the rain, which seemed to be coming down in sheets.
“Darn, I forgot about the storm,” Joe said, tongue firmly in his cheek. “Probably we shouldn’t run in this.”
“I happen to remember you love the rain.”
Yeah, he did. In the old days, they’d wait out a storm in the back of the library, or the warehouse, or her house. It didn’t matter where. They’d watch TV or play games or just talk. But he kept the memories to himself as they ran to the parking lot.
“Your car,” she said, hand out palm up for his keys. “My turn to drive.”
He grinned. “We drove the truck. Looks like Kenny took it and Ashes. You’ll have to drive us in the Bug. I need a ride home to get clean clothes.”
She navigated the storm and traffic with easy precision. By the time they parked at the marina and ran down the dock toward his boat, they were once again soaked. “I don’t know…”
“Baby,” she said. “Get your running clothes on.”
The sailboat he lived on was forty-six feet long, all sleek polished wood and white trim.
Below deck, they stood dripping in the galley that had wood floors, shiny wood cabinets, a wood booth for dining, and a stainless steel sink and refrigerator.
The counter was clean except for two cameras he’d left out, which made Summer smile.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, and tossed her a towel. “I’ll be right back.” He moved through a small archway into the captain’s quarters, slid the door shut behind him, and stripped out of his soaked work clothes.
“Wow, I’m impressed,” Summer said.
Butt-ass naked, he whipped around, but the door was still shut. The walls were incredibly thin, and he had to laugh at himself. “Impressed at what?” he asked, rifling through his drawers for something clean to wear.
“You actually have healthy food in here. Salad makings, yogurt, fruit, and veggies—”
“Having fun?”
“You said to make myself at home. Ah.” He heard his cupboards opening. “You do have a vice. Frosted Flakes.”
He pulled on the first pair of sweats he came across and began the hunt for clean socks. “A guy’s gotta have something good for breakfast.”
He heard her opening and shutting some more cupboards and had to laugh.
She was still nosy as hell.. He’d have sworn he heard the clink of a spoon against a bowl, but that was ridiculous.
She’d never stoop to eating Frosted Flakes.
It wasn’t green and didn’t have the required amount of good nutrients per ounce.
Locating two socks that he wasn’t quite sure were an exact match, he turned around, looking for a shirt.
Snatching one off the foot of his bed, he cocked his head at an odd crunching noise.
Holding the shirt in his hand, he slid open the door between his bedroom and the galley, then gawked at her sitting at his table with a huge bowl of Frosted Flakes, shoveling them into her mouth.
She’d stripped out of her sundress, leaving her in the coral tank top and black biker shorts that hugged her hips, leaving her belly bare.
The ring there flashed. Her tank was wet from her hair, and her nipples were hard.
“These are amazing,” she said around a mouthful, dribbling a little milk out of the corner of her mouth, lapping it up with a quick dart of her tongue.
“Slow down, sailor, we aren’t going to be able to run if you eat that entire bowl.” He felt his body quiver when her tongue darted out again, at the other corner of her mouth this time.
Her hair was still dripping down her shoulders. If she’d had any makeup on, it was all gone now. Her expressive jade eyes never left his. “We aren’t going to run, Joe.”
“We’re not?”
Now her gaze dropped, caressing his bare shoulders and chest, before dipping even lower. “Nope.”
“You said you wanted—”
“You. I said I wanted you.” Standing up, she came toward him. She stroked a finger over his collarbone, his shoulder, then his pec, right over his nipple.
An involuntary hiss escaped him as she slid her wet body up against his. “Red. God—”
“Remember the other night?” She pressed her mouth to his neck. “When you touched me? When you—”
“I remember,” he said tightly, his knees wobbling at the feel of her mouth on his flesh.
“It was the first time since I’d been home that I felt like I could breathe.” She glanced at him from beneath her long lashes. “That was because of you. I want to breathe again, Joe.”
“You just want the release.”
“Oh, yeah, I do.”
He had no idea how he found the strength to put his hands on her shoulders and back away, putting some air between him and her glorious curves. “We’re going running, damn it.”
Her eyes were dark and filled with what she wanted, and it wasn’t a little jog.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he demanded, fisting his hands at his sides to keep from reaching for her. “I told you. I can’t do this and keep it light with you, I just can’t. Don’t ask me to.”
She stared at him for a long time, disappointment, regret, and something else crossing her face. She slid the towel off her neck and reached for her dress, which she had lying on the back of a chair. “Don’t worry, Joe. I won’t. I won’t ask you to do anything.” And she headed toward the stairs.
Damn it. “Red—”
She kept walking.
And he let her go. He had to.