Dark Blue (South Island PD Book 1) (3 page)

As soon as she was gone, she disappeared from his thoughts, replaced by the same recollections that’d kept him up half the previous night.

Belle in her car, speeding over the bridge onto the island. Belle in her kitchen, pouring him tea. And most of all, Belle jumping on his dick with an enthusiasm that’d belied her inexperience. That had happened years ago, but he’d sooner forget to breathe than forget the details.

Time and distance had forced him to chalk it up to a stroke of sheer dumb luck – something to think back on whenever he took his cock in his own hand. He’d relished every detail more times than he could count and the years gone by had turned the experience into a fantasy.

One night, and then she’d left. One night of finally caving beneath the pressure of his attraction to her – one night he’d remember for the rest of his life, even if he never got to touch her again.

Yesterday, coming face-to-face with her again had forced him to realize that the star of his fantasies was a living, breathing woman still capable of taking his breath away.

God, she was beautiful. Fifteen minutes in her presence had been enough to assure him that she still retained her old grace of movement and that those dark, dark eyes hadn’t changed a bit.

In the course of a single day, the fantasy he’d turned to so many times in the dark had crept into every waking hour, causing his dick to stand at attention at random, inconvenient intervals.

Now, he could only hope she’d call despite the speeding ticket and his awkward appearance at her house.

He was miserably aware that it was a lot to hope for.

“Here you go.” Ashley lowered a plate in front of him, forcing him to divide his thoughts between Belle and breakfast.

Not that the food didn’t look good. He got the same thing every time: scrambled eggs and bacon with a couple beignets on the side. He liked to save those for last and dip them in his coffee.

“Looks great. Thanks.”

She grinned. “Anytime, Jackson. You let me know if you need anything.”

She said it as though she was going to go make herself useful elsewhere, but she didn’t. Instead, she found things to wipe down and coffee mugs to inspect at his end of the counter.

She put on the same show every time, even though he never left her with anything more than his standard twenty percent tip. He wouldn’t have had the heart to tell her if she’d asked, but she excited him about as much as watching paint dry.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with her. If anything, there was something wrong with him. He always wanted what he couldn’t have instead of what came easy.

Right now, that was Belle.

Who the hell was he kidding? It had always been Belle.

 “Zackary, you shouldn’t have. Really.” Belle glanced down at the offering the student worker had placed on her desk. The sandwich wrapped in wax paper might as well have come with ribbon and a greeting card.

“It was no problem. I was there, so…” He shrugged. “I know you like turkey and Swiss.”

She reached under her desk for her purse. “How much?”

She knew very well he’d meant the sandwich as a gift, but she wasn’t about to let him get away with that. The day she started letting students buy her lunch would be the day she’d start looking for a new job.

“Don’t worry about it.” He waved a hand, as if he wasn’t a student working thirty hours a week in the admissions office to help finance his education.

“Zackary, listen to me.” She sat up straight in her office chair and met his gaze, focusing on the widening eyes behind his glasses. “I remember what it was like to live on a student’s budget. You’re not buying me lunch. Not today, and not ever. It was a nice gesture, but…”

She pulled out a bill and held it out.

When he made no move to take it, she arched a brow.

“Take it,” she said. “Don’t make me play the boss card.”

With a sigh, he finally took the money.

It wasn’t the first time she’d had to remind him she was his boss and not a peer. He was a decent worker when he actually focused on his job, but lately he’d been too busy trying to work his way into her good graces.

At twenty-seven, she was barely his elder. But the years between them might as well have been a lifetime. She hadn’t been all that impressed by college guys when she’d been a student herself, and now she felt the same way about them as she had about the neighborhood kids she’d babysat as a teen.

“It only cost seven bucks,” he said, staring down at the ten she’d given him.

“You can pay me back later.”

His expression brightened. “Or maybe I could buy you a cup of coffee to make it up to you. There’s a new café down in the student center.”

Jesus. What had she done?

“If you ever find yourself bringing coffee for the office, I like mine with two sugars and two creams.”

“Oh, right.” He pocketed the bill. “Or we could walk down there sometime. Or whatever. Hey, do you still need me to call and check in on the status of that transcript?”

She relaxed a little in her seat, biting back a sigh. “Yes, I do.”

“All right. I’ll go do that.”

He straightened, standing to his full, considerable height. He was tall, but slender in a way that made him seem even younger than he really was. If Belle hadn’t known better, she might’ve thought he was a high schooler.

Sometimes, she felt bad over how blatantly he forced her to shoot him down. There was no telling whether he flirted with her for entertainment or truly thought she might succumb to his charm.

Hopefully, it was the former. The thought that he might actually be anticipating getting into her pants was unsettling.

Of course, just last night, she’d wondered whether Jackson Calder had been anticipating the same thing. That look he’d given her…

She’d attributed it to their history, but now she was starting to wonder. Did she give off some kind of fuck-me vibe so cheap that even college kids picked up on it?

“Let me know when you get an update on that transcript.” She turned back to her computer before Zackary could see her frown. “And shut the door behind you, please.”

Alone in her office, she unwrapped the sandwich. She’d payed for it, and she might as well eat it. She wasn’t a student anymore, but she wasn’t exactly a Rockefeller, either.

As she took her unofficial lunch break, it wasn’t Zackary who haunted her thoughts, but Jackson. He was all man, no tactless adolescent. The image of him in his South Island PD uniform had been burnt into her mind’s eye and a shiver hit her every time she summoned it to memory.

Thinking of him caused a tightening in her core and an ache in her chest – she wasn’t sure which was more unbearable.

She almost wished she could be as uninhibited – and naïve – as she’d once been and jump into his arms, just for the pleasure of it. But not being taken seriously was a recurring motif in her life, and it’d been the source of so much heartbreak that she finally knew better than to encourage it.

Jackson was the only man who’d never disappointed her, and she wasn’t about to offer him the chance.

She’d obviously been a good time for him, and the impression seemed to have weathered the years. He’d made it clear he was interested, but interested in what? Something serious, or another fling?

He’d taken her by surprise last night, and she’d been too flustered to ask. The ball was in her court now – if she wanted to see him again, she needed to call. The idea was appealing and intimidating at the same time.

She’d spent so many years putting Jackson up on a pedestal, relishing the memory of their night together, that she didn’t want to tarnish it. She didn’t like the idea of trying and failing to recapture the magic of it, either.

Her time with him – that one night – had been pretty much perfect. The romantic experiences she’d had since had been anything but, and the humiliation of her last failed grasp at happiness still stung. She’d never had much luck with love, and she always took the fallout of her attempts hard.

She didn’t want it to be that way with the one person who’d made her truly happy, even if it had only been for a night. She wasn’t sure she was ready to put herself in the line of fire for more heartache.

Taking a chance with Jackson would be gambling with some of her most precious memories … and hottest fantasies.

* * * * *

The worst part of being a police officer was responding to calls that reminded Jackson of where he’d come from. At any given time, he was only a 911 call away from a domestic dispute that’d bring the first seventeen years of his life rushing back, threatening to drag him straight through a rift in time and into a cesspool of shitty memories.

But he was good at compartmentalizing. He had to be. Whenever he responded to a domestic, disgust would rear its ugly head for a minute until he locked it away and let himself be the man he was instead of the boy he’d once been.

On his way to a domestic on Thursday afternoon, he was already discarding his own emotions in favor of cold professionalism. Still, his MDT screen told him that a woman had called claiming her husband had hit her.

He hated the pieces of shit who beat on women and children.

They were all the same, and he would’ve hated them no matter what, even if he’d grown up behind a white picket fence with a Brady Bunch-type family.

But he hadn’t, and that leant a personal element to his hate.

He kept his sirens silent but let his lights flash as he sped through traffic toward the address displayed on the screen. Getting there a minute faster might mean the difference between a bruise or a broken jaw, a concussion or a fractured skull. Even life and death.

Within minutes, he arrived at a stucco ranch house. It was modest, maybe a thousand square feet, but the columned porch looked freshly-painted and potted ferns hung from its rafters. Brass numbers next to the door told him he had the right address.

Glancing at his screen, he hit On Scene and exited his Charger.

The sun beat down on the back of his neck and a familiar stiffness swept down his spine. He was aware of the Glock on his hip as he approached the house. Sometimes domestics were nothing more than tears and melodrama. Sometimes they were serious. And occasionally they threw curveballs: he wouldn’t be the first officer to be assaulted or even shot at by a possessive, violent asshole angry at police interference.

When he reached the door, he stood to the side and knocked, listening for the sounds of an argument or violence.

All was silent. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

“Police,” he called, and knocked again.

A couple more seconds and the door swung inward.

There was no sign of the woman who’d called in. A dark-haired man in his thirties stood in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a white undershirt. He stared at Jackson as if he’d never seen a police officer before.

“The hell?” He peered past Jackson, at the cruiser. “Something going on?”

“Got a call about a domestic dispute at this address. Who else is home?”

The man’s jaw dropped, then tightened visibly. “There’s no dispute here.”

“A caller named Kate says differently. That your wife?”

His face began to redden. “Get back in your cruiser, Calder. There’s no problem here.”

Calder
. As his name left the other man’s lips, realization clicked.

“Sanders.” He was an officer with the South Island PD, though he belonged to a different platoon than Jackson.

Sanders gave an irritated jerk of his head, which might’ve been intended as a nod, then began to shut the door.

Jackson planted a hand against it before it was halfway closed. “I need to speak to your wife.”

He narrowed his eyes. “She doesn’t have anything to say to you.”

“She called 911 asking for help. Says you hit her.”

For a few seconds, they both stood frozen with hands on the door, gazes locked. A sour taste filled Jackson’s mouth, and if the expression on Sanders’ face was any indication, he was experiencing something similar.

“You gonna make me call for back-up?”

Sanders sneered, then twisted to yell over his shoulder. “Kate!”

A thin brunette in capris and a cotton tank top emerged from the hallway beyond the kitchen. She was pale, and her dark eyes looked huge in her small face. Her hair had fallen – or been pulled – halfway out of a bun, and as she stepped into the light, the redness rimming her eyes became apparent.

“Calder here needs to hear from you that there’s no problem.”

Her gaze darted to her husband, then to Jackson. When her eyes locked with his, the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

It wasn’t hard to tell when someone had really been abused. Not for someone who’d lived it. And the look in Kate’s eyes planted bitter certainty in Jackson’s mind.

They were wide, pleading – as if she were trying to communicate with him without words. He could see her pulse jumping in the hollow of her slender neck, and her hands were shaking. She was terrified. As she opened her mouth to speak, she shrank in on herself as if she were bracing for a blow.

“Greg, I—” Her voice was hoarse, probably from crying. If it’d been from being strangled, there would’ve been marks on her neck.

There were none – Jackson had looked immediately.

“Tell him there’s not a goddamn problem!”

“I’m sorry. I can’t live like this anymore. I—”

“Cut the crap, Kate! You like having a roof over your head? You don’t lie to the fucking cops. You don’t mess around with me like this.”

Sanders’ entire face was red. Jackson took advantage of the other man’s distraction, moving in close enough to smell the stale tang of whiskey. He was hungover, maybe even still intoxicated.