A Little Harmless Addiction (18 page)

She nodded. “I get that. I like it actually. I’ve met a few of my neighbors, know their names, their kids’ names. In Atlanta, I didn’t know one person who lived on my street. People never took the time to say hi. They were too busy with, well, whatever. And part of it was me. I was so focused on building my career I forgot to have a life.”

He gave her a fatherly smile. “And now you have one.”

She nodded, feeling the rightness of the statement and how much it meant to her. “Yeah. Now I have one.”

An hour later, she was closing up the shop when her cell phone rang. When she saw the familiar number, her heart jerked. What did Detective Morrison need with her?

“Hello.”

“Jocelyn, how you doing?” the policeman asked. He had been the calm in the storm, with his easy Georgia-boy ways and his contempt for Greg. He had waded through the disbelievers and been a silent hero to keep her safe. He had believed her without question.

“Fine. I’ve been keeping myself busy.”

“Probably not hard there in Hawaii. Is it as pretty as they say?”

Even with her nerves frayed, she looked out, down the street to the little patch of beach she could see. A nice soft wind still blew through the palm trees.

“Yeah. It is.” She paused, then swallowed her fear and asked, “Why are you calling?”

The sigh she heard was filled with regret. “Greg cut a deal.”

Greg’s lawyer had been playing a game for months, and with Greg’s connections, she had always thought this might happen.

“What kind of a deal?”

“Community service, time served,” he said, disgust dripping from his voice. “I threw a fit, of course.”

She could barely hear the words as her brain went blank. Time served? For what he tried to do? The bastard had almost killed her, was intent on that, and they were going to let him walk around free.

“Jocelyn.”

She shook her head. “Sorry. What?”

“I said I tried to resign from the unit—”

“No. You can’t do that. We both knew this was a possibility when it came up. He has a record now. There isn’t much he can do to get that off his record. Plus, he’s ruined financially.”

“Is that enough?”

She didn’t know. “It will have to be.”

Chapter Thirteen

Kai arrived at Jocelyn’s house, his body tired, but the drive had been worth it. He’d taken enough time to run back his house to shower. It had been a bitch of a day with unskilled fishermen and he’d gotten smacked more than once with a damned big mahi mahi. By the time he’d walked off his boat, he’d smelled like rotting fish.

He grabbed his overnight bag and walked up to the door. It was odd that in the last week he had started feeling more comfortable at Jocelyn’s house than his own. It wasn’t the house itself, that much he knew. He should be worried. He had never been one for sleeping over night after night. Here and there, no biggie, but there was a part of him that realized he was slowly moving in with Jocelyn.

He stopped in his tracks. Is that what he was doing? He glanced down at his bag and then at the door. She hadn’t pushed, not once. Not like a lot of women. She just went happily along with the idea that he would be over and that they would plan their night together.

He was frowning as he walked up the steps. He could see her through the screen door. She was sitting on the couch, sipping tea and reading over a cookbook. Something shifted in his chest. He had known he loved her. He probably hadn’t had a chance since he’d met her. But this was something else entirely. He started to realize that she was more important to him than anything else.

Without knocking, another sign that he was practically living with her, he opened the door. She looked up and smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes, but that might because she was tired. Dark circles marred the delicate skin beneath her eyes.

“Hey. How was your day?” she asked absentmindedly.

The simple question meant so much to him. He would have never thought himself a man who needed hearth and home, but to walk through the door after the bitch of a day he’d had, to a woman asking him that question, it felt right.

“Crappy. I got hit three times with a mahi mahi.”

He set his bag down and walked to her. Taking her hand, he pulled her up off the couch, sat and then toppled her down on his lap. He kissed her, enjoying the warmth of her body, the taste of her on his lips.

When he pulled back, he said, “Hey.”

She smiled again, this time it did reach her eyes. “Hey. Are mahi mahi big?”

“One weighed over one hundred and fifty pounds.”

Her eyes widened. “Wow, I thought they were little fish.”

Chuckling, he skimmed his hand over her bare thigh. “They are in the store.”

“I guess so. Are you hungry? I had a sandwich.”

“Don’t worry. I can get it.”

He picked her up and put her back down in the same spot, then headed into the kitchen. It was always neat as a pin, clean, sparkling. He knew part of it was because of her profession. May didn’t cook in the restaurant, but she was a tiger about keeping the kitchen clean.

“How did your day go?” he asked as he stuck his head in the fridge to see what she had.

She didn’t say anything at first, then, “Okay, your father came by to say hi.”

Chuckling, he settled into making his dinner. “My father will always come in and say hi to you.”

He thought he heard her sigh, but he might have been wrong. When he joined her in the living room, he settled beside her. “Do you want to do anything tonight? Both of us are off tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “I have to go in. Someone came in with a rush order for a cake.”

He pushed aside his irritation that they had lost their day together.

“But I should be done by ten in the morning. Then we have the whole day together.”

“Am I that transparent?”

She shook her head, a smile curving her lips. “Naw. I was irritated too, but she paid Cynthia more for it, and I do enjoy doing the cakes.”

“So nothing tonight.”

She scooted closer. “Uh uh. I just like the idea of sitting here with you.”

The small admission was an arrow straight to his heart. And so he smiled and enjoyed the feeling.

The knock at his office door pulled Kai away from his paperwork, but he wanted to curse when he saw Chris’s face through the window. He motioned him in. He wasn’t in the mood for another talk with Jocelyn’s brother. But if there was one thing an Aiona understood, it was family.

“What can I do for you?” he asked Chris.

“When did it happen?” Every word came from behind clenched teeth.

Kai frowned. “What?”

“I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen it online. Dammit, I can’t believe she kept it from me, but I thought you would let me know.”

He shook his head, still trying to figure out if he’d missed part of the conversation. “I have no freaking idea what you’re talking about.”

Chris stopped his pacing and stared at him. “He’s getting out with time served.”

For a second, he still had no idea about what Chris was referring to. Then it hit him like a punch to his throat. “Are you talking about Greg?”

He nodded.

“Can’t be. Jocelyn didn’t say a word.”

“I read it online. He pleaded to attempted sexual assault, and because the judge knew him and knew it had been a horrible mistake on Greg’s part, he is letting him off. Fucker.” Sarcasm and anger dripped from every word. But Kai ignored it. His own anger was building, but not only against the system that needed to be fixed. No, there was a healthy dose for the woman who hadn’t told him the news.

“When?”

Chris looked at him then. “What?”

“When the fuck did it happen?”

Chris must have realized she had kept it from him then. His face lost some of the anger. “From the date, early yesterday morning.”

“Do you think she knows?”

Chris hesitated.

His anger swelled and normally he wouldn’t let it bother him. Now though, he could barely control his need to hurt someone. “Don’t treat me with fucking kid gloves. Tell me.”

Chris nodded. “Yeah. Detective Morrison wouldn’t have let her find out from another source. He would have called her yesterday.”

She had been acting a little weird the night before. She had been tired, or so he had thought. Maybe it had been her worry over this. He stood up and walked out the office. Chris followed.

“Now don’t get pissed at her for not telling you.”

Kia stopped and turned to face him. He had always admired Chris, for what he was, for the way he treated Cynthia.

“What would you do if Cynthia did the same thing?” he asked.

Understanding moved over his features. “Okay, yeah, I would be pissed.”

He turned around and started toward the front door again. “I’ll have her call you after I yell at her.”

“Dammit.”

“Problem?” Cynthia asked.

Jocelyn shook her head and took off the decorative edge for the second time. “No. Just can’t seem to get this right.”

“You seem out of sorts.”

Jocelyn jerked a shoulder, trying to hide the panic that was clawing at her stomach. She had been so close to taking her pills last night before Kai had gotten home. Once he’d arrived, she had felt his calming presence down to her toes. And he didn’t even know it. She wasn’t sure what scared her more. The fact that she might have needed her meds last night, or that Kai seemed to be her substitute.

“Hey, are you there?” Cynthia asked.

“Yeah. Just a little off today.”

Cynthia frowned. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that order. This is your seventh day in a row working. You need to take tomorrow off.”

Jocelyn shook her head. “No.”

“Yes. No arguments. You’re tired. I can see it. Of course, if I didn’t know what was keeping you up at night, I’d worry.”

Jocelyn felt her shoulders slump.

“What?”

“I had a bad night last night.”

And now she had wished she had told Kai. She would have slept better if she had talked it over with him.

“No matter—”

“I need to talk with you, Jocelyn.” Kai’s quietly angry voice cut Cynthia’s comment. She turned and found him glowering at her. Cynthia looked from one to the other and opened her mouth but Chris stepped in behind Kai.

“Let them have a moment.”

He grabbed Cynthia and led her out of the room. When they were alone, Jocelyn waited. The silence grew, the only noise coming from the front of the shop.

“What did you want?” she asked.

“Did they let the bastard off?”

Dammit, he knows.
“Yeah. Or they will. I’m not sure.”

“When did you find out?”

“Yesterday.”

She couldn’t tell what he was thinking by looking at his face. It unnerved her.

“That’s why you were so upset last night.”

“I wasn’t upset last night.”

“Yes, you were. There was something a little off, but then, how would I know. I apparently don’t know you at all.”

Agitation filled her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“The woman I thought I knew would have told me if something like this happened. Or I thought she would.”

He said nothing else, but now she finally saw what he was feeling. Anger bled out of his eyes as he watched her as if waiting for her to lie.

“I’m used to dealing with things on my own.”

He shook his head. “That’s not going to fly. I thought we had something here. I thought we were building.”

“I told you I was a mess. You apparently ignored that part of the conversation.”

His upper lip curled in disgust. “Don’t even try that shit with me. You kept it from me on purpose.”

He thought she’d done it to hurt him. The accusation went unsaid. And, God help her, maybe she had. She had kept it from him on purpose, but she still wasn’t sure why.

“Funny coming from a man who isn’t ready to open up.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Want to tell me what went on with Keisha?”

His expression blanked and his eyes turned colder. “That’s in the past.”

“Oh, Jesus, do you hear yourself?” Resentment she didn’t know she had boiled up and spilled over into her panic. It made her voice harsher than she expected. “You, who wanted me to open up, tell you everything, doesn’t want to tell me a thing about the one woman who broke his heart.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Really? Oh, that is rich.” She barked out a laugh that sounded desperate and painful even to her own ears.

He clenched his jaw. “I said it was in the past. It has no effect on me now.”

“If it didn’t, you would have told me about it. At least I have been honest with you. You hold things back from me. Don’t you think I know that Keisha stomped on your heart, used you and tossed you away? But for some reason, my pain is okay to go over, to share. Maybe this has more to do with the fact that you can’t deal being with a woman who doesn’t need you to save her.”

The moment she said the words, she wanted to pull them back. But it was too late.

Pain shifted over his face first, then it dissolved into a remote expression she had never seen on him before.

“Well, don’t worry. I’m out of the business of saving women.”

And with that, he turned and stalked out of the kitchen. Cynthia returned a second later.

“Jocelyn?”

She was numb. Afraid to think, to feel. At the moment, she just didn’t know what the hell to do. She concentrated on taking one breath, then another. He had left her. She knew she had used Keisha as an excuse to explain why she hadn’t told him about the news of Greg’s deal. But if there had been some truth to it, he wouldn’t have gotten so angry.

“Chris.” Cynthia’s voice had turned panicky.

Chris came back in and Jocelyn felt warm arms surround her. “Come on, Jocey.”

She almost allowed him to bundle her out of the kitchen, but she stopped at the door.

“No.”

“What?” he asked.

She stepped away, straightened her shoulders and then looked from Cynthia to Chris. “No. I have a cake to do.”

“Oh, Jocelyn, I can call the woman and tell her you couldn’t do it,” Cynthia said.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t need to be taken care of.”