Busted: Promise Harbor, Book 3 (25 page)

“Penis,” Gauthier guessed.

Baffled, she stared at the drawing. “Where do you get that?”

“Isn’t that like some ink-blot thing where everything is supposed to look like some kind of phallic symbol?”

“Freud focused on phallic symbols. Rorschach created the ink-blot tests,” Jackson corrected. He perched on the edge of Hayley’s desk.

Gauthier shrugged. “Still looks like a penis.” Head down, the other cop wandered away.

“Rorschach and Copernicus,” Hayley mused. “Impressive.”

“No, what’s impressive is how sneaky you were this morning.” He thankfully lowered his voice. “It won’t happen again.”

She gave up on feigning interest in the sketch. “That implies it will happen again. Sleeping over, never mind the sex, wasn’t part of our agreement.”

“It is now.”

The stubborn tilt of his chin set off alarm bells in her head. She leaned back in her seat, putting some space between them. Too bad the space wasn’t enough to make her forget how good he looked, or how good he smelled. If he’d set out to make her want to get as close to him as she could, he’d certainly succeeded.

Just like he’d also succeeded in getting under her skin, exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. Telling herself it wouldn’t go beyond that was the only way she could meet his eyes.

“I’m heading over to see your grandfather.”

Grateful for the change in subject, she forced a smile. “He’ll like that.” The reminder prompted her to let Jackson know Gramps thought they were actually dating. “He doesn’t know that we’re not…” She glanced at Jackson, quickly losing her train of thought. It was his fault for sitting there, looking good enough to eat, that easy confidence nearly as sexy as the seriousness in his eyes.

“Not…what?”

She blew out a breath. “He thinks we’re dating.”

“And?”

“And you can’t tell him we’re not.” Once Jackson left town, she could find a way to break the news that wouldn’t lead to Gramps sneaking out to track Jackson down.

“Why would I do that?”

Was he trying to drive her crazy? “Because we’re not actually dating.” How could he keep Freud, Rorschach and Copernicus straight and not follow what she was saying?

“So,” he mused a little too loudly. “I was just a one-night stand?”

She jumped up and slapped her hand over his mouth. “Keep your voice down.” They’d drawn enough attention already.

Jackson covered her hand with his, planting a feathery kiss on her palm.

She tugged her hand back. “Could you behave yourself for more than thirty seconds?”

Jackson caught the waist of her pants and tugged her forward. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with me not behaving myself last night.” The whispered statement made her shiver.

“Time to go.” She nudged him off her desk, steering him toward the exit. They both knew he had more upper body strength than she possessed in her entire five-foot-eight frame, but he kept moving.

“Say hi to Gramps for me.”

“Sure.” He snagged her wrist at the last second, pulling her in. He slanted his mouth across hers, blowing any sense of decency right out of the park by deepening the kiss until she didn’t know where her lips started and his ended. “I’ll see you later.”

Jackson walked away, and she turned back to her desk, not looking to see if anyone had taken notice.

“I need some help, please.”

She paused, glancing at a woman in designer shorts and a halter top that had probably cost more than Hayley’s last check. The oversize beach bag and expensive camera slung over the redhead’s shoulder marked her as a tourist.

The woman tapped a hand on the desk, ignoring the just-a-minute finger the officer on the phone held up. “I need to talk to someone about a robbery.”

Hayley crossed to the woman at the desk. “I think I can help. I’m Detective Stone.” She held out a hand.

The redhead dismissed her with a sound of disgust. “I’m looking for a real cop. Not some rookie puck bunny.”

Heat flooded Hayley’s cheeks, but she forced aside the unexpected awkwardness of a tourist—an unimpressed one at that—recognizing and labeling her because of Jackson. This was her turf. “I work in the robbery division,” she began.

“Looks to me like you were working him over. Or maybe it was the other way around.” The redhead smirked. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll wait and talk to a real cop.”

Real cop? She’d worried that being seen with Jackson would affect her reputation with the people of Promise Harbor. It had taken a lot of hard work and years to overcome a past that some, especially since Jackson had rolled back into town, were still quick to recall.

But coming from a tourist?

She wasn’t sure if that made things better or so much worse. It shouldn’t bother her what the woman thought, she knew that, but with everything piling up in her personal life—the comments about her wilder days, the renovations, her puck-bunny association with Jackson—she suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of losing the respect she’d fought so hard to earn.

If a tourist could walk through the door and make assumptions about how well she did her job based on her relationship with Jackson, so could everyone else in town.

“And if it’s all the same to you,” Hayley returned, her voice cool, “you can talk to me or you can have a seat and wait a couple hours for my partner to come back.”

The redhead wasn’t happy, but she followed Hayley to a room where they could talk. Hayley listened attentively, quickly ruling out any connection between the woman’s stolen purse and the other robberies.

And the whole time she couldn’t let go of one thought—when Jackson left town, would she still be the Hayley people knew they could depend on or would she just be known as Jackson’s latest conquest?

Jackson walked down the hall in the palliative care unit, past the room with the leather couches, only to backtrack at the sound of cursing, loud and familiar. He found Coach propped on the edge of a center cushion, his gaze trained on a flat-screen television playing a recording of the NHL draft. Matt had mentioned setting it up for his grandfather.

“Can you believe this kid went in the third round? Gonna be a pain in their ass, I guarantee.” The old man didn’t look at him right away.

Jackson laughed. “Isn’t that what you said when I got picked up?”

He shrugged. “I’m wrong once or twice a decade.”

He joined Coach on the couch and they sat through thirty minutes of the draft, chatting about players and stats and what drugs some of the general managers must have been sniffing to make some of the player trades they had.

“I need some fresh air, Jack.”

Jackson grinned at the nickname. Coach was the only one he let get away with calling him that. Jack was his father, and once he’d hit twelve he’d craved an identity outside of Jack Jr.

Fresh air turned out to be pushing a wheelchair so Coach could bum a cigarette outside. Coach waved him off, guessing Jackson was going to be stupid enough to comment on him smoking. “They’re already killing me so what’s the point of giving them up now?”

Somehow Jackson knew Coach wasn’t sharing that particular outlook with Hayley. He couldn’t imagine her taking that well. He smiled at the memory of her gasping through one of Coach’s cigarettes. The old man would likely freak out over that as much as Hayley would if she spotted her grandfather sneaking around outside.

“How are the renovations going?”

“They’re coming along.” He hadn’t been at the house long enough to get anything done yet today. Talking to Hayley after she slipped out of the bed without waking him had come first. By the time he dragged on some clothes and got his car towed to a garage to replace a faulty spark plug, he’d been downright annoyed that she’d skipped out on him.

Coach stabbed out the cigarette after only a couple drags. “I didn’t realize you knew so much about carpentry.”

He nodded. “I picked up a few things from helping my dad with stuff around the house growing up, and I helped a friend build his house.” And then another friend’s house. He’d helped build half a dozen of them over the course of five off-seasons. “Hayley didn’t realize that either.”

Coach nodded. “That granddaughter of mine is something else, isn’t she?”

“Yes, sir.”
Something else
didn’t quite cover it though. Neither did determined, fiery, loyal and sexy as fucking hell.

“I know my diagnosis has been hard on her. Good to know she’ll have you to help her through the rough times.”

Rough times.

Jackson’s stomach knotted painfully. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about Coach’s cancer on the way over, foolishly thinking they might be able to talk like it wasn’t the pink elephant in the room.

He couldn’t make up his mind whether it helped or not that Coach thought he and Hayley were in it for the long haul. Hayley had left that little detail out. Or was that just Coach making his own assumption? Jackson had certainly never given Hayley the impression that he was staying, so he couldn’t imagine her thinking otherwise.

Thinking about leaving now, though, didn’t seem like the good idea it had last night when he’d been stranded in the rain. His agent had texted this morning to tell him that the Sentinels would be flying Jackson up for an interview any day now. He knew he would have been more excited about it if he hadn’t been so preoccupied lately.

“And don’t let Millie chase you off,” Coach threw in.

“Millie?” Jackson frowned. The old man wasn’t talking about his dead wife, was he? Maybe Millie was a nurse or another local? Or was this some kind of confusion tied to his disease? Neither Hayley nor Matt had mentioned it.

“She’s been banging doors around the place since I got sick. She’s always been protective.”

Coach thought his wife’s ghost was responsible for the old house’s bad drafts and slamming doors? Did Hayley know about that?

“Better take me back to my room before that Nazi of a nurse calls a code for a missing person,” Coach grumbled.

Jackson pushed the wheelchair back inside, relieved the old man left the ghost topic alone on the elevator ride back to his floor. Instead he chatted about the hospital food not being so bad and how hot his oncologist was. “Stacked to the nines,” he added, holding his hands out in front of him.

Jackson laughed, and Coach reached back and gave his hand a tap and a brief squeeze that said everything they hadn’t about him being sick.

Christ.

Throat tight, he kept his head down, falling into silence for the rest of the walk.

Ahead, a nurse walked toward them, an almost painful-looking scowl on her face.

Coach’s hand shot into the air as they passed her. “
Heil
, Trudy.”

The nurse rolled her eyes and mumbled back something that sounded a lot like “crazy bastard” and kept walking.

Inside Coach’s room, Jackson helped him out of the wheelchair, hoping he didn’t want to rest yet. He didn’t want to see him disappear under the covers again so soon. Outside of the hospital, Jackson could almost make himself believe there wasn’t anything wrong with the old man, but here among the medical equipment designed to give Coach as much comfort as possible in his remaining days, there was no hiding from how sick he was.

Whether or not Coach picked up on Jackson’s tension, he chose to sit in the chair. “I know you’ll be good to my girl. God knows she needs someone she can rely on in her life.”

Jackson had been labeled a lot of things but reliable hadn’t ever been one of them, not off the rink anyway.

“Heard you’re up for a coaching job.”

He nodded. “I’m a little worried about that, though.” It was the first time he’d voiced the concern aloud. It wasn’t as big of a concern as the fear that coaching other guys who could still play hockey would turn him into even more of an asshole than he’d been after the accident.

“Do you remember the first thing you asked me when you joined the team?”

Jackson thought it over, then laughed. “I asked how long until you could make me the best.”

Coach nodded, leaning forward to straighten a blanket over his legs. “And what did I say?”

“What makes you think you could be the best?” he imitated in his best booming Coach voice.

“Okay, what did I say
after
that part?”

“That it was all up to me.”

“And?” he prompted.

Jackson grinned. “And you were right.”

Coach relaxed back in his chair, his eyes heavy, tired. “Life doesn’t always turn out the way you expect, Jack.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“You belonged on the ice with a stick in your hand, but it never defined you.”

“I know.”

His eyes narrowed like he wasn’t sure which one of them Jackson was trying to fool. “I think you loved to skate more than you loved to play hockey, you know. You’d show up almost an hour early for every practice just so you could have the rink to yourself. You rarely worked on shooting or drills before the other guys got there.”

Jackson laughed, reminded of the all the times he’d stepped out onto the ice when there hadn’t been another soul in the place except the maintenance guy. No one to impress, or keep an eye on so he wasn’t jumped from behind. No strategy or watching for player weaknesses.