Love On The Line (9 page)

             
Dammit! There had to be something he’d done just now to trigger the memory into place, some way he could do it again and get further. Clearly, being close to Violet wasn’t it, although she
had
been less than an arm’s length away the last two times he’d pulled something up. All three times, he’d been in the kitchen, but he was standing in the kitchen right freaking now, too.

             
There was no pattern. No logical order to any of it.

Come on, Blackwell. Think. Think!

             
But grabbing his memory felt like trying to catch smoke in his bare hands, each one slipping away no matter how tightly Noah clenched his fingers.

#

              Violet was making a habit of waffling on Noah Blackwell’s doorstep, and it was definitely the unhealthy kind. But come on. Was she really supposed to just breeze back into his apartment all business as usual when at this time yesterday, she’d been trying to climb him like a jungle gym?

             
Forget personal. Kissing Noah had been downright intimate, which was totally out of the question, not to mention insane. He was a cop. Getting involved with him— physically, mentally, and most of all intimately— just couldn’t happen. 

             
Except she’d wanted it to happen. Badly enough that if Jason hadn’t interrupted them…

             
“No,” she whispered, placing a steady knock on the door in front of her. Jason
had
interrupted, and it was for the best. Missing her father and worrying about her brother were hard enough. No way was Violet going to add another cop into the mix of her life. Not even between the sheets.

             
Not even Noah.

             
“Hi.” Noah swung the door into his apartment, tipping his dark head in a wordless invitation to come in, but she needed to squash the awkward-factor before she even took a step. The Brentsville PD was paying her to cook for an injured officer, and it was her job to focus on doing just that.

             
She shifted on her feet, but stayed on the threshold. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I got carried away, and it was wrong, and…well, it won’t happen again.”

             
The only change to his expression was a very slight lifting of his brows, but then Noah shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was out of line.”

             
“No, it was…”
Easily the most toe-curling, panty-twisting kiss I’ve ever experienced, no exceptions
. “My fault,” Violet breathed, and God, she needed to scrub the memory from her brain, along with a couple of other parts due south. Snapping her spine up nice and straight, she cleared her throat back to non-hedonistic levels. “Can we call it even and start over?”

             
Straightforward as ever, Noah said, “Deal.” He stepped back from the door, and her brow popped upward as she caught sight of him in entirety.

“Wait, where’s your sling? And is that…flour on your shirt?” Her pulse rattled with equal parts surprise and confusion, but Noah’s expression stayed smooth.

“The doc gave me the all-clear on the sling today. He didn’t want my shoulder to lock up, and I guess my arm looks good enough to go without it.” He brushed at the powdery streaks on the front of his black T-shirt without looking at them, but Violet knew better than to fall for that. She wasn’t an amateur, for God’s sake.

             
“I’m glad you’re healing,” she said, and meant it. “But you didn’t answer the other question.”

             
A muscle in Noah’s jaw twitched, and he reached for one of her bags with his uninjured arm and headed toward the kitchen. “No.”

             
Her brows pulled in. “No, you didn’t answer the question, or no, it’s not flour?”

             
“Yes and no.”

Violet grappled with a deep breath as she followed him down the hall. “Do they teach verbal evasion at the police academy, or are you just naturally good at it?”

              “I’m naturally good at my job, if that’s what you’re asking. And yes, I didn’t answer your other question,” he confirmed, tacking on, “But no. It’s not technically flour.”

             
The sweet, decadent scent of chocolate and the underlying bitterness of something burnt to ruin reached her all at once, and Violet stumbled to an abrupt stop outside the kitchen. “Have you been
baking
?”             

Noah paused, turning toward her. “It’s…kind of a long story.”

In that moment, Violet knew she should let it go. What Noah did in his own kitchen was none of her business. She’d agreed to cook for him, not counsel him, and anyway, he didn’t seem too interested in forking over the details.

Except his face was perfectly devoid of expression, just like it had been that first day when she’d been certain he was hurting, and it dawned on her that Noah wasn’t simply a rough, gruff cop.

He was just really good at hiding.

“Funny,” Violet said, meeting his wary stare with sudden surety. “Long stories are my favorite kind.”

His eyes went dark, but he didn’t move them from hers, and the heat behind his stare rolled all the way down her spine. “You sure this isn’t above your pay grade?”

She wasn’t, especially with the way he was still looking all the way through her, but backing down now wasn’t an option. “Why don’t you try me and we’ll find out.”

Noah didn’t hesitate. “I remembered something last night after you left.”

Violet’s throat went triple-knot tight, and she clutched the grocery bag’s handle hard enough to feel the sting of her fingernails against her hot palm. “About what happened to you last week?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t much, but it’s the second thing I remember, besides you being in my hospital room.” Noah’s voice pulled down just slightly. “And I was in the kitchen when it happened, eating the rest of that cornbread, so I thought maybe if I tried to bake something…”

“It might trigger more,” she whispered, unable to hide the shock flooding through her veins. “Did it work?”

Noah’s mouth became a thin line, and he crossed his arms over the front of his black T-shirt with a wince. “No.”

She took a step toward him in the narrow hallway. “Did you taste what you made?”

“I don’t have a death wish, Morgan.” Noah delivered the words with the trademark just-the-facts lack of emotion that seemed to define him. “It didn’t really turn out like I planned.”

But Violet didn’t hesitate. “Come on, then.” Her charm bracelet jingled softly, threading through the silence as she lifted her bag and started to move. “Let’s see what we’re working with here.”

              For a long second, Noah didn’t budge. But then he turned and led her into the kitchen. “You asked for it.” He put the bag he’d taken from her safely on the counter before sliding a pan of very lopsided brownies from the adjacent space.

Violet glanced at the square baking dish, and wow, okay, he wasn’t kidding. “Did you, ah, follow a recipe?”

Noah’s unabashed look of
are you kidding me
slid over her, tempting her into a laugh. “Do you seriously think I could’ve made this up?” he asked. “I used the mix stuff, but the picture on the box doesn’t look like this.”

“I guess not.” She pushed up the sleeves of her fitted gray turtleneck, examining the brownies more closely. A gooey, three-inch crater caved in the middle of the pan, like the batter had simply surrendered halfway through. “How long did you leave them in the oven?”

“Thirty minutes, just like it says.” He pointed to the bright red box next to the stove top, and Violet tilted her head in thought. His oven was pretty out of date, but if anything, it had erred on the side of too hot when she’d used it this week. Unless…

“You didn’t happen to open the oven door a few times to check on them while they baked, did you?”

If the condition of the brownies wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway, Noah’s pause slammed it home. “I kind of burned the first batch by accident, and the light’s busted, so yeah. I didn’t know checking would wreck them though.”

She twisted her hair up into a knot before moving toward the sink to wash her hands. “Sometimes it can let too much heat escape, and that will mess with the oven temperature enough to have an effect like this. Lucky for you, all might not be lost.”

“You are looking at these, right?” Noah tipped his head at the sorry state of affairs in the pan in front of him, and Violet barely kept her smile in check.

“I didn’t say all could be saved, Blackwell. The middle is a no-go, unless you have a fondness for salmonella.” She popped the door on the cupboard over the sink and started to rummage. “You still have toothpicks in here, right? Ah!” A small red and white box caught her eye, answering the question for her, and she stood on her toes to grab it.

A single dark eyebrow rose. “You’re going to fix this mess with toothpicks? What are you, like a culinary MacGyver?”

The words hit Violet with the full force of their suggestive teasing, and her throat worked on a hard swallow before she steadied her voice. “Let’s just say you’re not the only person in this room who’s undercooked baked goods.”

Flipping the lid on the box, Violet rolled a toothpick between her thumb and forefinger, bending down until she was level with the pan. The center section really was out of the question— not even a return trip to the oven would salvage that part now that the brownies had half-cooled— but she measured the rest with a calculated glance.

“
You’ve screwed up brownies before?” Noah stood back, assessing her movements as she dipped a toothpick into the velvety brown mixture in the pan, first in one spot, then another, working her way out from the center.

“I’ve screwed up lots of things before. Trial and error is one of the best ways to learn in the kitchen. Hey! Here we go.” She held up a clean toothpick, cheeks prickling with satisfaction as she traded it for a spatula and drew a perimeter around the gloppy middle to unearth it. The rest of the brownies released from the pan easily enough, and Violet slid them to a cutting board before dividing them into squares with a flourish and a grin. “Voila! Your brownies.”    

Noah’s forehead creased as he examined the brownies, then her. “Those don’t look half-bad,” he said, his voice laced with surprise. “I thought they were ruined.”

“It’s your first batch. You can’t know all the tricks right away.” She scooped one of the brownies from the cutting board, reveling in the still-warm feel against her fingers. “
Here.”

“Thanks.” The word carried weight, more than just the single syllable should’ve allowed, and his normally stoic expression swirled with something Violet couldn’t pin down. All of a sudden, it didn’t matter that he was a cop, her brother’s partner, whose life was stretched out on the line every single day.

He was just a guy asking for help in his own way, and she could give it.

“You’re welcome. But save at least a couple of those for later. You’ve got chicken Parmesan in your immediate future, and now that your sling is gone, I’m totally putting you to work.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

              Noah double-checked the directions on the box of spaghetti, eyeballing the pot of water in front of him with a flare of doubt. Even though it was the biggest pot he owned, he was pretty sure the long strands of pasta weren’t going to fit all the way into it once the water got to a rolling boil. Never mind that he had no frigging clue what a rolling boil even looked like.

He straightened, a deep breath of resolve filtering into his lungs. Two days had passed since the near-fiasco of the brownie recipe, and Violet had never once blinked at Noah’s lack of cooking skills. Rather than peppering him with a bunch of nosy-ass questions about why he wanted to cook in the first place, she’d just slapped a spoon in his hand and put him to work. She kept sharing the kitchen and the food in that totally open, completely
Violet
manner that somehow made his unease not just disappear, but feel like it never existed.

In spite of the fact that he still couldn’t remember all of the shooting, she didn’t treat him like he’d been hand-crafted out of glass, complete with the word
Fragile!
spray-painted across his forehead.

A steady knock at the door yanked him from his thoughts, and he ran a hand over his button-down shirt as he moved down the hall to let Violet in.

              “Hey.” The syllable papered itself to his throat as he caught sight of her loose blond hair spilling over the shoulders of her deep purple shirt, and the sheer, flowy skirt swishing around her ankles took an unexpected potshot at his libido. Her smile washed over him, bright and honest, and holy shit, this was going to be the longest night of his life.

Violet Morgan was absolutely gorgeous. And he couldn’t come close to touching her.

“Hey! Wait ‘til you see what I brought you.” She held up both bags with a suggestive lift of her brows, and Noah thanked God he’d gone the casual route and not tucked in his shirt, lest she catch the hard-on brewing behind his fly.