Officer in Pursuit (10 page)

“You know, I was a little worried when
you said you were going to charm the hell out of me. But if this is
what you meant by that, I feel secure in my ability to
resist.”

“I’m lulling you into a false sense of
security. When you least expect it, I’m going to unleash the
charm.”

She finally let herself laugh.
Secretly, she was still worried. Grey was charming in a way she’d
never encountered before she’d met him – even when he didn’t mean
to be.

That was the danger of being around
him, the irresistible appeal: she didn’t think she had it in
herself to love anyone, but if things had been different and she
was capable, she’d love someone like him.

“Seriously,” he said, “do you need a
reason to want to be with someone? I’ve been crazy about you ever
since I met you.”

A reason? His words echoed inside her
mind and she realized that yes, she needed a reason. Or at least,
she had in the past. Part of the reason why this attraction was so
frustrating was that she had no experience with being liked by a
man just because.

She’d never been anything other than
an easy opportunity, and then, eventually, an
obligation.

The idea of being wanted simply
because someone found her attractive and likeable was almost
unreal.

CHAPTER 8

“
This is the part where I
say something charming and then you invite me in for coffee.” Grey
stood on Kerry’s front porch, carrying the tote bag full of beach
towels and sunblock he’d taken from her arms.

“I’m inviting you in,” she said, “but
it’s because it hasn’t quite been 24 hours since you hit your head.
I’m supposed to keep an eye on you for three more
hours.”

“Great. I can work all kinds of magic
in three hours.”

Kerry threw the towels in the washer,
slowly put away the sun block and generally acted awkward in her
own home until she decided that making coffee would actually be a
brilliant distraction for a whopping two minutes.

Grey said he’d like some and so she
made half a pot and accidentally dumped too much coffee into the
machine when she was spooning in the grounds.

It came out strong but good, and as
she sat across from Grey at the kitchen table, sipping from a
striped and lightly chipped mug, things started to feel surreal
again.

Surreal and strikingly ordinary at the
same time. Relaxing, almost. Was this what it would feel like to be
with Grey – really be with him, in a relationship?

She pushed the thought away, washed it
down with too-hot black coffee.

“Guess I need to run this over to my
neighbor’s place.” She picked up the newspaper she’d left on the
table, mostly just for something to do with her hands.

The rubber band snapped, like it was
old, and the paper unfurled against her fingers.

“Oh.” Oh, shit. “I had no idea they
were still running stories on this. When are they going to drop
it?”

Familiar words stood out
bold in the headline, conjuring up images of an equally familiar
place.
Wisteria Plantation House Set
Aflame by Randy Levinson
, it read, as if
it had happened just yesterday instead of two months
ago.

By the time the mansion had been
torched, everyone had known who Randy Levinson was. His name in the
headline was a much bolder and darker statement than a description
like ‘escaped felon’ or ‘convicted murderer’ would’ve
been.

A crease formed between Grey’s eyes as
he reached for the paper. “It’s bullshit if you ask me. What kind
of tourist town keeps reminding people that a psychopath went on a
killing spree here?”

He had a point. Still, Kerry’s initial
disgust had been purely selfish. Sure, she worked at the county’s
biggest tourist draw – besides the beaches – but being reminded of
the disaster at Wisteria inflicted a deeply personal
pain.

She hated remembering that god-awful
day, hated thinking about how she’d come so close to losing most if
not all of the very few people she really cared about. She dreamed
about it, sometimes – failing Sasha in her time of need haunted her
nightmares.

“Wait.” Grey picked up the paper,
shook its curled pages. “This is an old paper, from back in
July.”

“Really? That’s weird.” Kerry’s heart
skipped a beat as a sense of wariness rose up inside
her.

Over the past few years she’d become
the wariest person she knew – paranoid was probably a better word
for it. Any little thing that was off made her wonder why, whether
it might mean something strange. Something terrible.

Even an old newspaper.

“Jesus,” Grey said, still frowning at
the paper, “look at this picture. It’s you.”

Kerry’s heart slammed against her
ribs. “What?”

“You and Sasha, and those two
gardeners. Her mom too, I think.”

She saw the scene in her mind’s eye,
even before he surrendered the paper for her examination. If all
those people were together in one picture, it could only mean one
thing.

He was right: the picture was like a
scene straight out of her nightmares, a moment she’d never be able
to forget captured in brutal, indifferent black and
white.

“Oh, God.” In the photo, Sasha lay in
the grass on the lawn, her chef’s uniform singed and stained.
Ernesto and Phil – gardeners at Wisteria – wore expressions of grim
sorrow, having just carried her out of the burning
basement.

Everyone looked stricken, devastated,
because at that point they’d all more than half believed Sasha to
be dead.

Tears welled in Kerry’s eyes now just
like they had then, encouraged by the acrid smoke billowing out of
the house. To her shame, she couldn’t hold them back.

They streaked down her cheeks and
ruined the mysterious paper from two months ago.

Grey grabbed the paper, folded its
crinkled pages up like sloppy origami and tucked it under his arm.
“Don’t look anymore. There’s no point.”

Kerry rubbed a wrist across her
cheeks, stopping her tears in their tracks and biting her
tongue.

Where the hell had that paper come
from? It’d been printed two months ago, and she didn’t subscribe to
any newspapers in the first place. She hadn’t even known about the
article, or the photo.

“Wait.” She stood when Grey stretched
out an arm, about to throw the paper into the kitchen trashcan.
“Don’t throw it out.”

“Why?”

“I just… I’ll get rid of it later.
Just not yet – not when I don’t know where it came from or how it
got on my front porch.”

Grey frowned. “A mix-up with the paper
delivery, maybe? An old paper left at the bottom of a bag or bin.
Or maybe a dog – a dog that took it when it was first delivered and
hoarded it somewhere for a while.”

Kerry’s tears had been the first
moisture to touch the paper’s pages – the integrity of the cheap
ink had been uncompromised, until she’d gotten a hold of it. No dog
slobber, no rain had touched the paper before.

“I don’t know. But I feel like I
should wait to get rid of it.”

“Okay.” He stood, put the paper on top
of the fridge.

“There – now you still have it, but
you won’t be able to reach it to inflict any emotional trauma upon
yourself.” The barest hint of a smile played around his
mouth.

“Thanks.” With the paper out of sight
and the initial shock of seeing it past, her tears had stopped.
Now, with dry eyes, she was left to simmer in uncomfortable
silence. “For the record though, I’m an expert at climbing chairs
and counters to get my hands on things. Practically a
ninja.”

“Huh. I always wondered how you short
people got things out of cupboards.”

He was over six feet tall and probably
had to worry more about bumping his head on high-up things than not
being able to reach them.

She stood up, conscious of the immense
difference in size between them – the way his body seemed to exert
a presence she couldn’t help but nearly be overwhelmed by, one that
dwarfed hers. It wasn’t just his physical size that made it feel
that way. It was his presence of personality, too.

She felt like she knew him, and she
liked what she knew. And she couldn’t fathom why he liked her so
much when she was so comparatively closed off.

Of course, if she showed him her true
colors, she’d probably scare him off for good.

“I don’t know about you,” he said,
“but I’m starving. Wanna order a pizza or something?”

“Actually,” she stood up and made a
beeline for the fridge, infused with sudden purpose, “how about I
cook something? I try not to eat fast food or takeout too
often.”

“Don’t feel like you have to cook for
me. You’ve already been so good to me over the past 24 hours, I’d
be glad to pick up the tab for dinner.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She was already
pulling salmon filets out of the fridge. She’d put them in marinade
the day before and had been planning to make them to take to work
for lunch, but they’d do just fine as dinner now. “I’m not a pro
like Sasha, but I do like to cook.”

Really, she couldn’t bear the thought
of sitting around with idle hands for the next half hour, waiting
for dinner to arrive. Cooking would give her something to do, a
welcome respite from sitting around her house trying and failing to
relax.

Grey offered to help her make dinner,
but she refused on the grounds that he was supposed to be
resting.

“You know I’m fine, right?” he said,
but sat down at the table with a cup of coffee.

The scent of soy sauce sweetened with
brown sugar rose from the skillet as she cooked the marinated
salmon, simultaneously preparing a salad on the counter beside the
stove. She had a stash of microwaveable sweet potatoes, and popped
two into the microwave while she worked.

It was a meal she’d made
dozens of times before, and still, there was something deeply
satisfying about making it. Back in Kentucky, she’d done all the
cooking in her house, but she’d considered it drudgery then. The
same casseroles and meatloaves, cheap meats and overdone potatoes:
she hadn’t dared to stray from the limited menu of
his
favorites.

Their home had been a dictatorship,
and everything she’d done had been subject to his militant
scrutiny.

Issues like variety, health and
nutrition hadn’t even crossed her mind. The freedom to cook and eat
what she wanted had been one of the first changes in her new life,
when she’d finally left Kentucky and her past behind. The novelty
still hadn’t worn off. Food was something she could control, a
tangible example of the changes she’d made in her life, a
manifestation of the direction she’d finally chosen for
herself.

She caught sight of her own reflection
in the kitchen window and couldn’t help but study it, contrasting
it with the mental image of her old self. She was slimmer now, her
facial features more defined, having been mined from the ten or so
extra pounds she’d carried across state lines, all the way from
Eastern Kentucky to the country’s east coast. Her hair was longer
too, and healthier. Her eyes looked different, somehow, though she
couldn’t say exactly why.

She finished making dinner in a haze
of bitter nostalgia and mild wonder, and when she lowered two
plates onto the table, it dawned on her how much things really had
changed, for the better.

She wasn’t the kind of person she’d
wanted to be by now, but she wasn’t the same person who’d left
Kentucky in an $800 car with a cooler packed full of water and
peanut butter sandwiches, either. The realization felt like a
victory – a silver lining that shone bright and precious around the
edges of all her insecurities and shortcomings.

* * * * *

“It’s been a great 24 hours.” Grey
stood on his front porch, facing Kerry as the September evening
darkened around them.

She’d driven him to her jiu-jitsu
place, where he’d picked up his car. Afterward, she’d insisted on
following him home to make sure he made it there safely.

He’d spent the ten minute drive from
the jiu-jitsu building to his house wondering whether he should
fake a splitting headache so he wouldn’t have to part ways with
Kerry.

“How do you feel?” she
asked.

Of course, he told the disappointing
truth. “Just fine. Thanks a lot for hanging out with
me.”

“It was no problem.”

She said that, but her face told a
different story. She wore the tiniest of frowns as he stood at the
top of the porch stairs.

“You can count on me to return the
favor if you ever need it. Just give me a call if anyone assaults
you with their foot and you need a knight in shining armor to keep
an eye on you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Evening was quickly turning to night;
the tail end of summer was fading away, and the days were already
shorter. He had work in the morning, needed to go home and get some
rest.