Chapter 5
FIVE
HARMONY
The shift was non-stop. There had been a half-hour when she’d been able to put her head down on a bunk and a quick break where they’d been able to drive up to Kandi’s for a quick ice cream cone just to get some sugar into her system.
It wasn’t until she’d finished her shift and ducked into the showers to wash off the exhaustion that she remembered what Crois had told her the day before.
He said he’d come and take her to breakfast.
She’d been sure that he was just joking.
Actually, she’d told herself that he was joking.
It was easier than thinking he might actually show up.
As she washed the lather out of her hair, she lowered her chin to her chest and went through all the things she’d have to pick up at the grocery store to put in her closet for the next two days at home. It wasn’t a long list and there weren’t any surprises on it.
She was a creature of habit in so many ways.
Lots of greens.
Chicken and pork.
Or some beef if it was on sale.
Oh, and fruits. Apples would be good and-
“Harmony?”
She lifted her head at the question and ended up with a face full of water.
“Harmony?”
Sputtering she turned her head and wiped the water from her face. “Yes?”
“Oh, okay. Sorry.”
By the voice she could tell that it was Betty, one of the floaters who was in for a few shifts.
“Do you need something, Betty?” Harmony turned off the shower and reached for her towel.
“Oh, no. I was just coming in to see if you were still here. You have a guy waiting for you on the apparatus floor.”
“I… I have someone waiting for me?”
She nearly dropped the towel from her hands to the wet tiles under her feet.
“Yeah. I think he’s from CCPD, but I can’t guarantee that I’m right. He’s not wearing a uniform. But,” she whistled low and slow, “he’s good looking.”
“Ah… okay.” Harmony lifted the towel and started to dry off her arms. “It can’t be…”
“You want me to let him know you’re in the shower?”
“Yes.” That was her instinctive reaction. “Wait… no!”
Betty laughed and Harmony did, too.
“Sorry, Betty. I… I don’t know why I said that.”
Betty laughed again. “I get it. Handsome guys can make us stupid. Thank goodness the only guy in my life is my son.”
“I bet he’s great.”
“He’s… a challenge some days, but I love him beyond reason.”
Harmony felt a little sting of melancholy. “Love is beyond all reason sometimes.”
Betty smiled brightly at her. “That’s a great way to put it.” She gestured toward the door of the locker room. “I need to go to the morning meeting. Don’t forget tall and handsome out there. He looks pretty nervous.”
“Okay.”
Betty left the locker room and Harmony dried herself off and put on her clean clothes. Was it really Crois? Who else could it be?
She folded her dirty clothes and the towel and tucked them away in her laundry bag for later. Picking up her duffel, she walked out toward the apparatus floor.
When the sunlight touched her face, she squinted at it for a moment and blinked to acclimate her eyes to the sunlight.
“Harmony! Here.”
She turned toward his voice and stood staring.
Crois.
He looked good.
Really good.
Jeans that had no right to look that good wrapped around his legs and a simple black t-shirt.
She walked in his direction and slowly came to a stop just out of reach. “They said I had someone waiting for me.”
He didn’t move closer, he just leaned in a little.
He made her feel… smaller. Almost dainty.
Which wasn’t something she was concerned with, but when he was around… when he was close, it felt good to have him nearby.
To have him standing there, almost towering over her.
Working as an EMT there weren’t a lot of times when she could feel dainty, protected.
Her job was to wade into danger and emergencies and save people. Bring them to the light.
You can’t be someone who needs protecting in the way she wanted to be protected.
But her focus was on work. Helping people.
If there was a chance at more?
Well…
“You came.”
“You didn’t think I would?”
Harmony’s smile twisted a little. She couldn’t help how her voice sounded.
Especially when it was telling on her.
“I… I wasn’t sure.”
He was smiling at her. “And now?”
She smiled back at him. “Where are we going?”
“What are you in the mood for?”
She answered him honestly. “Food. I’m starving.”
His smile looked like he was on the verge of laughing. “I can do that.”
“Good.” She nodded and meant her answer. “I’m looking forward to it.”
CROIS
Peggy Ann’s wasn’t crowded when they arrived and the woman herself came out to greet them. “Well look at you two!”
Harmony lowered her gaze a little, her cheeks reddening. “Morning, Peggy.”
Crois looked up as Peggy put her hand on his shoulder. “Morning, Peggy.”
The owner of the diner gave him a pointed look. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the two of you in here together.”
He nodded and met Peggy’s gaze straight on. “It’s the first time, but it won’t be the last.” He looked over at Harmony and saw that she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.
He knew that he could come on a little strong.
“I promised Harmony food and lots of it. I knew this was the right place to come.”
Peggy put her hand on her hip and nodded. “Smart man.”
Then she turned to look at Harmony. “What would you like to eat?”
“Pancakes,” Harmony was almost beaming with excitement. “A big stack of them. With berries, I don’t care what kind. And bacon. Crispy. With lots of syrup.”
As she said the words, Crois’s belly both rebelled and craved the idea of Harmony’s order.
Peggy turned to him. “You?”
He shrugged. “My usual, please.”
“Please,” she echoed, “you’re always so sweet.”
She gave his arm a bump with her hip.
“It’s a good day when I see you, Crois.”
She walked away, leaving the two of them alone at the table.
“You come here a lot,” Harmony looked at him with a smile.
“It’s easier than trying to cook for myself.”
“You sound like you don’t like cooking.”
He shrugged. “I don’t, really. It’s more of a bother. I only worry when I have to train for a fight.”
“A… a fight?”
“I box from time to time. Not much in the recent years, but I like the sport of it.”
“Sport?” Harmony sounded pained. “I’ve seen the damage that boxers take from repeated hits.”
Crois couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t worry about that too much.”
Harmony narrowed her gaze at him. “Why not? I can tell you the kid of harm that you could suffer from a single hit and-”
He reached out a hand and touched her arm where it was rested on the table.
The sudden contact stopped her words, and she looked up at him.
“I don’t worry about it much, Harm, because I don’t let them land a hit anywhere important.”
She didn’t say a word in reply.
The silence stretched on and he ended up giving her a tight-lipped grimace. “You don’t believe me.”
She gave him the hint of a shrug. “I can believe that you’d want to stay safe and that your training would do you good, but you can’t control the other fighter.” She put a hand over her heart. “I can’t understand why someone would put themselves in danger for sport or anything else.”
He leaned closer to the table, meeting her gaze with his own. “Harmony, I’m a police officer. Danger is a daily thing for me.”
Her complexion paled and he knew he hadn’t made a good point. He’d made a point all right, but it wasn’t one that would make her feel better.
“Crois, I-”
“Ooookay, you two.” Peggy showed up at their table side with two plates. She put down a plate in front of Harmony and Crois watched her expression change in a heartbeat.
Harmony Morgan looked at her plate full of pancakes and bacon like he’d seen women stare at two dozen roses.
She touched her palms together and rubbed them in glee. “Oh, this is glorious, Peggy!”
Peggy beamed at her. “You are a sweetheart, Harmony.”
Then Peggy turned to him and put his plate down in front of him. “Be nice to her.”
Crois held his hands up in surrender. “What? Of course!”
Peggy’s gaze was fixed on him as she nodded. “You’ve been warned.”
When she walked away, Crois turned back to look at Harmony and found himself smiling from ear to ear.
She was bent over her plate, her nose about an inch away from her pancakes.
She moved back and forth from edge to edge on the stack of pancakes, breathing it in.
At one point the tip of her nose nudged a blueberry from the pile on the surface and it rolled to the edge and fell off, bouncing along the crispy bacon strips and then the end of the plate.
It came to a stop on her napkin beside her fork, but Harmony didn’t seem to notice.
She was smiling, a giddy grin.
He reached out and picked up the syrup container and set down near her hand. “Don’t forget the syrup.”
When she looked up at him, her eyes were shining.
Damn. If she could look at pancakes like that, well he wanted to be a pancake. A whole steamy stack of them.
“Thanks.” She picked up the syrup container and poured it over the pancakes like a rushing waterfall.
He watched the streams of dark amber syrup cascading down to the plate’s surface and when it almost reached the edge, she closed the syrup container and set it down.
“So perfect.”
She didn’t even use a knife.
Harmony used the side edge of her fork and cut through the stack before spearing the top piece and lifting it to her mouth.
“Mmmm.”
Crois swallowed at the sound, feeling a rough scratch in his throat.
He watched her chew and swallow that first bite, and then another.
And another.
He couldn’t help but stare as she cut through the stack again and took another bite.
The more she ate, the more he stared.
It wasn’t because of the amount of food she was eating.
It had everything to do with how she enjoyed it.
Every bite was like a revelation. Sweet and delicious.
Damn, he was hungry, just for something more than the plate in front of him.
She’d nearly finished the second cut from the stack when she seemed to realize that she had an audience.
Harmony looked up at him, a worrisome look on her face. “Wh…what?”
He couldn’t help smiling at her. “Nothing really, Harmony. I just like the way you like those pancakes.” He reached for the glass of water near his plate and took a drink from it. “I can’t help but feel a little jealous.”
She looked down at the plate and then back up at him.
Harmony’s brows raised and she gave him what almost looked like a flirtatious smile. “I haven’t found anything in Center City as delicious as Peggy’s pancakes. If you’re jealous of that? There’s nothing I can do to help you.”
She speared another piece of pancake adding a juicy blueberry onto the tine of her fork. With both pieces on her fork, she swished it around in the syrup on her plate and then swept it up and between her lips.
Crois was holding it together.
Sort of.
Kind of.
He could have held it together if a line of syrup hadn’t traced over her bottom lip.
He swallowed again forcing a breath into his lungs and out again.
He wanted to lick that syrup off of her lip.
Or suck it off, with her lip between his teeth.
There were any number of ways he wanted to clean it off of her lip, and none of them would be okay at this point and time.
He’d just have to wait.
But he’d also have to earn it.
That he knew.
Harmony picked up a piece of bacon and gave it a good luck on one side and then the other. With a smile she broke off the tip making him grimace. The snap was as loud as her smile was bright.
He was nearly blinded by it.
And when she put the piece in her mouth, the sound she made…
Well, he was painfully hard under the table.
He lowered one hand to his thigh and tried to grip his leg through the fabric of his pants and failed.
Another bite of the bacon strip made him see stars. It wasn’t just the noise she made as she ate it, it was another swipe of syrup that draped over her lower lip.
Crois had never had a food fetish. Well, he’d never really had a fetish of any kind. He had his hands full with making a woman happy with the things that nature gave him.
But… he was starting to wonder if syrup was going to play a part in his future. If Harmony liked it that much, he’d buy stock in a syrup company and fill shelves full of it just to play.
With her.
Harmony Morgan.
She finished the first strip of bacon and licked the syrup from her fingers.
Crois stood up, almost knocking his chair to the floor.
He took a few stiff-legged steps away and called over his shoulder. “‘Scuse me. I need to… I need to… I’ll be right back.”
By the time he got to the men’s room, he was aching and winded.
“Holy…” He pushed open the door to the bathroom stall in the men’s room and before it was even locked, he was working down his zipper.
When he had his dick out and wrapped in his hand, he closed his eyes and saw stars.
Crazy?
Sure.
But he couldn’t stop his reaction to her.
The simple act of eating had reduced him to a painful, quivering man in need of relief, and there in the bathroom stall, he found a way to release it so that Harmony wouldn’t see how little control he had over himself where she was concerned.
He, he realized, was in a lot of trouble.