“Aw,” Ali said, softening. “So cute.”
At her voice, Gus startled, and with a little girl–like squeal, fell right out of the chair. Still carefully cradling the unharmed kitten, he glared at Ali. “Christ Almighty, woman, make some noise next time. You scared Sweetheart here half to death.”
Sweetheart had her eyes half closed in ecstasy. “Yes, I can see that,” Ali said wryly, reaching out to pet the adorable gray ball of fluff. “I can also see how very hard the two of you are working back here.”
She couldn’t tell if Gus blushed behind the thick, black beard, but he did have the good grace to at least look a little bit abashed as he lumbered to his feet. “I wanted to help you,” he said, “but I had Sweetheart in my pocket, and the boss told me twice already not to bring her here. But she howls when I leave her home, and my roommate said if I didn’t take her with me today, she was going to be his Doberman’s afternoon snack.”
“Sweetheart’s secret is safe with me,” Ali said. “I just need to get into Teddy’s office for a minute.”
Gus scratched his beard. “I’m not supposed to let anyone into the offices.”
“I know,” Ali said, “and I wouldn’t ask, except I left something in there.” She’d made Teddy a ceramic pot. It was a knotty pine tree trunk that held pens and pencils, and she’d signed it with her initials inside a heart. There was no way she was leaving it in his possession. He didn’t deserve it. “Please, Gus? I’ll only be a minute.”
He sighed. “Okay, but only because you guys are always real nice to me. Teddy knows about Sweetheart, and he didn’t rat me out.” He set the sweet little kitten on his shoulder, where she happily perched, and then led the way to Teddy’s office. There he pulled out a key ring that was bigger around than Ali’s head, located the correct key by some mysterious system, and opened the office door. “Lock up behind you.”
“Will do,” Ali said, and as Gus left her, she went straight to Teddy’s desk.
No knotty pine pot with the little heart she’d cut into the bottom. She turned in a slow circle. The office was masculine and projected success, and the few times she’d been here, she’d always felt such pride for Teddy.
That’s not what she was feeling now. In fact, she sneezed twice in a row at some unseen dust, annoying herself as she looked for the pot. She finally located it in the credenza behind the desk, shoved in the very bottom beneath a bunch of crap. It was the shape of a Silver Pine tree trunk, every last detail lovingly recreated down to the knots and rings around the base. For a minute, Ali stared at the pot she’d been so proud of, shame and embarrassment clogging her throat. Swallowing both, she grabbed it, locked the door as she’d promised, found and thanked Gus, and left.
In her truck, she drew in a deep breath and drove off. It was a Winters’s gift, the ability to shove the bad stuff down deep and keep moving. Teddy wasn’t even a five on the bad stuff meter, she told herself.
As always in Lucky Harbor, traffic was light. At night, strings of white lights would make the place look like something straight from a postcard, but now, in the early light, each storefront’s windows glinted in the bright sunlight.
Things stayed the same here, could be counted on here. She thought maybe it was that—the sense of stability, security, and safety—that drew her the most.
Her three S’s.
At least until last night…
She put in her shift at the flower shop, worrying about how light business was. She brought it up to Russell at lunch, gently, that she felt she really had something to offer here, the very least of which was a website. But Russell, equally as gently, rebuked her. Like his sister Mindy before him, he was a technophobe. Hell, even the books were still done by hand, despite their bookkeeper’s urging to update their system. Grace Scott, a local bookkeeper, had given up on changing Russell’s mind, but Ali was going to bash her head up against his stubbornness, convinced they would make a great partnership.
On her break she used her smartphone to fill out as many online applications for apartments as she could find. By six o’clock, she was back at the beach house, hoping not to run into Teddy. She didn’t, which was good for his life expectancy. Even better, the front door key still worked. Bonus. She had a roof over her head for at least one more night.
In the kitchen, she tossed her keys into the little bowl she’d set by the back door to collect Teddy’s pocket crap. Out of curiosity, she poked through the stuff there: a button, some change, and…two ticket stubs, dated a week ago for a show in Seattle.
A show she hadn’t gone to.
She stared at the stubs, then set them down and walked away. Something else niggled at her as she headed into her bedroom, but she couldn’t concentrate on that, because she was realizing that Teddy had been working 24/7 for weeks. And before that, he’d been sick and had slept in a spare bedroom. They hadn’t actually slept together in…she couldn’t even remember.
Which meant that Ali had been very late to her own break up.
At this, her heart squeezed a little bit. Not in regret. She tried really hard not to do regrets. It wasn’t mourning either, not for Teddy, not after hearing him cheat on her. It was the realization that she’d really loved the idea of what they’d had more than the actual reality of it.
Sad.
She stripped down to her panties and bra before it occurred to her what the niggling feeling from before was. Reversing her tracks, she ran barefoot back to the large living room.
The house had come fully furnished, but Ted had always made the place his own, thanks to the messy, disorganized way he had of leaving everything spread around. Running shoes hastily kicked off by the front door. Suit jacket slung over the back of the couch. Tie hanging askance from a lamp. His laptop, e-reader, tablet, smartphone, and other toys had always been plugged into electrical outlets, and when they weren’t, the cords hung lifeless, waiting to be needed.
Not now. Now it was all gone, even his fancy, highfalutin microbrews from the fridge. Everything was gone, including her iPod.
How she’d missed that this morning, she had no idea, but facts were facts—Teddy had moved out on her like a thief in the night.
Detective Lieutenant Luke Hanover had been away from the San Francisco Police Department for exactly one day of his three-week leave and already he’d lost his edge, walking into his grandma’s Lucky Harbor beach house to find a B&E perp standing in the kitchen.
She sure as hell was the prettiest petty thief he’d ever come across—at least from the back, since she was wearing nothing but a white lace bra and a tiny scrap of matching white lace panties.
“You have some nerve you…you rat fink bastard,” she said furiously into her cell phone, waving her free hand for emphasis, her long, wildly wavy brown hair flying around her head as she moved.
And that wasn’t all that moved. She was a bombshell, all of her sweet, womanly curves barely contained in her undies.
“I want you to know,” she went on, still not seeing Luke, “there’s no way in hell I’m accepting your breakup message. You hear me, Teddy? I’m not accepting it, because I’m breaking up with you. And while we’re at it, who even does that? Who breaks up with someone by text? I’ll tell you who, Teddy, a real jerk, that’s who— hello? Dammit!”
Pulling the phone from her ear, she stared at the screen and then hit a number before whipping it back up to her ear. “Your voice mail cut me off,” she snapped. “You ha**g s*x in your office while I was in the building? Totally cliché. But not telling me that you weren’t planning to re-sign the lease? That’s just rotten to the core, Teddy. And don’t bother calling me back on this. Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t call—you text!” Hitting END, she tossed the phone to the counter. Hands on hips, steam coming out her ears, she stood there a moment. Then, with a sigh, she thunked her forehead against the refrigerator a few times before pressing it to the cool, steel door.
Had she knocked herself out?
“It’s just one bad day,” she whispered while standing in the perfect position for him to pat her down for weapons.
Not that she was carrying—well, except for that lethal bod.
“Just one really rotten, badass day,” she repeated softly, and Luke had to disagree.
“Not from where I’m standing,” he said.
Chapter 2
At the unexpected male voice, Ali’s heart leaped into her throat. She whirled and stared in shock at the guy standing in her kitchen. Reacting without thinking, she grabbed the key bowl off the counter and flung it at his head.
He ducked, and the bowl bounced off the wall behind him, shattering into a hundred pieces. As ceramic shards tinkled to the tile floor, he straightened, dominating the kitchen as he turned to her, eyes narrowed.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, heart thundering.
“Oh no, you first,” he said, arms crossed, looking impenetrable and imposing. “Why are you throwing shit at me?”
Wishing like hell that she had clothes on, she was surreptitiously reaching for the coffee mug on the counter—another of her creations—to pitch at his head when he lunged and wrenched the mug from her hand. “Stop with the target practice,” he said, oozing dangerous levels of testosterone.
He was tall—six feet, at least—and built like he was very familiar with a gym or physical labor. And while he stood there in the middle of the kitchen as if he owned the place, she took in other details. Sharp eyes. All the better to see you with, my dear, she thought half hysterically, feeling a little bit like Little Red Riding Hood must have when she’d been trapped by the big, bad wolf.
His hair was dark brown and tousled, as if he couldn’t be bothered with a comb. His T-shirt was stretched across broad shoulders, his jeans sitting low on lean hips. And his cross-trainers made no noise when he took a step toward her.
All the better to catch you with, my dear…
He didn’t look like the big, bad wolf, she told her panicky self. Nor did he look like an ax murderer who broke into homes and tortured women in their undies—not that she was sure what an ax murderer might look like. Snatching the dish towel off the counter, she attempted to cover herself since her Victoria’s Secrets weren’t hiding much of her secrets.
The maybe–ax murderer’s gaze wasn’t leering, though he was definitely taking in her body, and she forced herself not to squeak as he snatched her sweater off the back of a chair and held it out to her, mouth hard.
All the better to eat you with, my dear…
Heart in her throat, she didn’t reach for the sweater. She was afraid to. Instead, she eyed the block of knives two feet over on the counter, wondering if she could possibly get to them before…
He shoved them farther away.
Dammit. “You’re trespassing,” she said, proud of her steely voice.
“No, that would be you.”
Clutching the towel for all she was worth, she shook her head. “I live here.” Although technically, thanks to Teddy, that wasn’t quite true anymore. “And if you don’t go, I’m going to call the cops.”
He didn’t go.
Ali knew exactly one self-defense move, and she went for it, risking everything to step into him and jerk her knee up.
But he moved so fast she didn’t have to time to get him in the family jewels. She didn’t even have time to blink before she was helplessly pinned against the counter by a tough, sinewy body.
“Stop,” he said in her ear. Then, as if nothing had happened, he stepped back from her, once again offering her the sweater.
This time she took it, dropping the tiny, ineffective dish towel and diving gratefully into the long garment, wrapping it around herself so that she was covered from her chin to her thighs.
Better.
Or as better as she could be with the stranger watching her carefully. He stepped back a little farther still, giving her some badly needed space. His expression was carefully neutral, but his body language spoke of a deadly tension that she didn’t want to further provoke.
“So,” he said calmly, propping up the doorjamb with a broad shoulder. “You break in?”
Was he serious? He certainly looked serious. Not to mention stoic and controlled, which set her nerves crackling.
His eyes were blue. Ice blue. She only noticed because she was watching him closely for any sign of aggression. His face might have been classified as devastatingly handsome, but it could also have been carved in stone, his expression dialed to an intimidating pissed off.
But she was pissed off too. And more than a little bit scared. Sure, she’d grown up in a tough neighborhood, but this guy was light-years ahead of her in badass experience. He had attitude written all over him, and a day’s worth of stubble darkening his jaw. Though his hair was cut short, some of it managed to fall across his forehead, which didn’t soften his appearance. She doubted there was anything soft about this man. “I didn’t break in,” she said. “I live here.”
“That’s impossible.”
“How would you know?” she asked.
“Because I own the house.”
Still leaning against the doorway, Luke gave the woman standing in front of him a long look that usually had bad guys running like hell.
But she wasn’t running. Instead she met his gaze with wide, hazel eyes, making him wonder about the glimpse of fierceness he’d seen when she’d been leaving that phone message. He ached for peace and quiet, and she was clearly the opposite of peaceful and quiet—so he needed to show her the door.