Authors: Lauren Layne
“I’ll do it,” he said. “It’s late.”
She gave him a look. “It’s not
that
late. Duchess and I are used to walking at all hours.”
“Was that before or after your ex-husband started breaking and entering and then stalking you at work and sending you mysterious notes?”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “He’s not stalking me. I’m still not even sure that was him at the diner, and even if it was, your watchdogs are right outside.”
Anthony didn’t budge. Held out his hand.
“Fine,” she huffed and slapped the leash in his hand.
He glanced down. It was pink with little purple flowers. He glanced down at Duchess whose tail was wagging with enough motor power to lift the little dog right off the ground.
Maggie shoved something else at his chest. “Here are her poo bags. If you figure out how to get her to not go in the middle of the sidewalk, let me know.”
He glanced down at the small plastic bags. “They’re pink.”
She patted his cheek. “It’ll ease your rough edges. Show your officers out there your softer side.”
Anthony made a growling noise before leaning down and clipping the leash to an ecstatic Duchess’s collar.
He’d never had a dog. His mom was allergic. But when he was in eighth grade, he’d started a summer dog-walking business to earn extra spending money to buy a charm bracelet for Brenda Morris.
He didn’t remember poop bags being pink back then. And he certainly didn’t remember leashes being a fashion statement.
Once outside of Maggie’s apartment, Anthony turned left, away from the squad car. The officers wouldn’t miss the fact that he was walking Maggie’s dog, but they’d hopefully miss the fact that the leash would have been at home in Elena’s old Barbie Dreamhouse.
True to Maggie’s warning, Duchess decided that her business would best be done in the middle of the street, and it took Anthony an ungodly amount of time to figure out how to open the fluffy pink plastic bag so he could do his pick-up duty.
Duchess, for her part, waited patiently, sitting calmly as Anthony picked up her poo before wagging her tail in a thank-you and trotting forward.
Anthony was itching to get back to Maggie, but he remembered that the poor little dog had been cooped up inside the apartment all day and let himself be led around the block to inspect every stop sign post, every shrub, every crack in the pavement before finally leading Anth back to Maggie’s place.
He nodded at the officers staring at him. It was too dark to see their expressions, and Anth was glad for it. He imagined they were somewhere between shock and amusement.
Duchess raced back up the stairs so quickly that he had to take them two at a time to keep up.
He rapped a knuckle against the door, giving her a moment before his hand went for the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand, and he scowled, ready to scold her for leaving it unlocked.
But all cross words fled his mind at the sight of Maggie standing in the middle of the room. She was still in her orange diner uniform, and from the frozen look on her face, he’d guess she hadn’t moved the entire time he’d been gone.
Even the hyper Duchess seemed to sense something amiss, approaching her mistress quietly and lowering herself on top of Maggie’s feet protectively.
Up until that moment, Anthony had every intention of wishing her good night and escaping before the cops outside really started to wonder what the hell he was doing here, but at the sight of her lost expression, his plans went out the door.
He shrugged out of his trench coat, draped it over the back of one of her kitchen chairs, and approached her slowly so as not to startle her.
“My dad never went to rehab,” she said, blinking up at him. “He lied to me. Or at least he didn’t
stay
in rehab. He took my money.”
Anth swallowed his anger and gently set his hand against her waist, nudging her toward the bed. “Why don’t you change into something comfortable? I’ll find us something to eat.”
She tugged at her ponytail. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?” He moved toward the fridge.
“Don’t be nice.”
“Maybe I’m just an inherently nice guy.”
She snorted and he smiled.
“I don’t have much to eat,” she said, her tone embarrassed.
She was right, he realized, as he looked through her fridge and pantry. She
didn’t
have much.
But after a bit of rummaging, he found a box of pasta. “Can I use this?”
She shrugged. “Have at it. I hardly ever make pasta.”
He blinked at her. “What?”
Maggie grinned and sat on the edge of her bed. “Easy, Mr. Italian. I know it’s supposed to be a simple staple, but I can never make it taste as yummy as a restaurant’s.”
“Do you salt the water?” he asked, digging among her meager kitchen supplies until he found a pot big enough to fit the penne.
“Um, sometimes? If I think of it.”
“Well, there’s your problem,” he said, flicking on the tap. “No food tastes good if it’s under-seasoned. Pasta included. The water should taste like the ocean. Use a handful of salt.”
“Well, even properly salted pasta is going to be a little underwhelming without a sauce,” she muttered.
“Oh ye of little faith,” he said, watching out of the corner of his eye as she stood and went to her dresser. Her shoulders had relaxed slightly, and at least she was finally going to get out of that horrible uniform.
“If you can find something to put on that pasta, I’m going to be very impressed,” she said, pulling a couple clothing items out of the dresser and heading toward the bathroom.
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that she didn’t have to change in the bathroom. But of course she did. She lived in a studio. No walls, no privacy. Even if he kept his back turned, he’d be able to hear her undressing and—
Jesus. Was he getting a boner from thinking of hearing her undress?
Yes. Yes he was.
Well now he had to for
sure
keep his back turned.
“You’re ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Sorry?” she asked from the doorway.
“Nothing. Change your clothes. I’ll cook.”
Maggie’s voice was husky. “Captain Moretti, you have no idea how sexy those words are.”
He spun around, but she’d already shut the door with a quiet click, leaving him with a raging hard-on and a montage of images of what was happening on the other side of that door. Her creamy skin, her full curves, the way her soft hair would fall down her back as he—
“Get a grip.” He yanked open the fridge again, staring at its meager contents. A bag of carrots. A block of some sort of cheese. Packaged hummus. Two eggs. Milk.
The pantry selection wasn’t much better.
But by the time Maggie came out of the bathroom, dressed in a gray T-shirt and red flannel pajama pants, he had a clove of a slightly dried-out head of garlic gently bubbling in olive oil as he grated what he was pretty sure was parmesan cheese.
She came up beside him. “How does something so simple smell so good?”
He glanced down at her head. Her skin was pink and dewy, like she’d just washed her face, and she’d pulled her hair into a messy braid. She smelled like vanilla.
“It’s Italian food,” he muttered. “It all smells good.”
“Huh,” she said, looking bewildered. “Who knew?”
“This would be better with red pepper flakes,” he said, nudging the temperature down so the garlic wouldn’t burn. “But your spice rack is nonexistent.”
Maggie held up a finger and pulled open a drawer to her left, rustling around until she came up with a couple small white packets. “Will this work? My pizza delivery guy always gives me a big handful of these even though I only need one. I’m assuming it’s the same thing you need…”
“It’s the same,” he said, pulling a couple packets out of her palm. “We’ve got a few minutes until the pasta will be ready. And since I’m doing the cooking, I was thinking you could provide the entertainment.”
She glanced up at him. “Absolutely. Striptease?”
Anthony’s hand slipped and he narrowly missed scraping his knuckle on the cheese grater. He glanced down at her impish smile and frowned. “You’re evil.”
“Oh, so not what you had in mind?” she asked, twisting so that she was leaning back against the counter. “I mean, I’m totally dressed the part.”
She plucked at her oversize T-shirt and batted her eyelashes.
He needlessly stirred the pasta water to stop himself from telling her that he didn’t give a fuck about her clothes. He cared about what was
underneath
. And his fingers were itching to duck under that ugly T-shirt and find out if her skin was as soft as he suspected.
“I was thinking you could read to me,” he said gruffly.
Maggie’s nose scrunched. “Read to you? Like a bedtime story? I don’t really have much around here other than teen romance novels…”
“I mean your stuff,” he said, setting the spoon aside and crossing his arms.
Her lips parted. “It’s not finished, and it’s probably terrible, and I—”
Before he could stop himself, his hand slid around the back of her neck, his thumb rubbing gently against her silky skin before he dipped his head and claimed her mouth.
It was a quick kiss. Just a brief melding of mouths, an exchange of startled breath. The quickest stroking of his tongue against hers before he pulled back.
“Read it to me, Maggie.”
Her eyes were cloudy with desire, and the knowledge of how passionately she responded to even the simplest of kisses was a damn powerful aphrodisiac. And the thought of how she might respond if he pulled her across the room, pushed her onto the bed…
“Read,” he commanded again.
“I’ve never let anyone read it. Only my best friend knows that I write. Or try to write. Well, and now you,” she amended, her fingers going to her lips thoughtfully.
He pushed aside the surge of pleasure that she’d shared such a private part of herself with him. Only with him.
“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want,” he conceded. “Although if you want any pasta…”
She groaned. “Now who’s evil?”
She pushed back from the counter, moving toward the small table, and retrieved her laptop, hugging it to her chest. “It’s all on my laptop. I don’t have anything printed, and it’s all rough draft.”
He met her eyes and smiled. “I can’t wait to hear it. In any form.”
Maggie took a deep breath before shuffling over to the bed, pushing Duchess out of the way before pulling her legs up beneath her and opening the computer. “You can’t say a word, okay? And you can
think
it sucks, but you can’t
tell
me it sucks.”
“Damn, because that was definitely my plan,” he said, searching for a colander to drain the pasta. “To get you to share something incredibly private and then criticize it. Then I was going to move on to the list I keep of your flaws.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You have a list of my flaws?”
“Absolutely,” he said, giving up on the colander and instead just draining the steaming water into the sink while trying to lose as few pieces of pasta as possible.
“Name one,” she said.
He glanced at her over his shoulder.
“Well, for starters. You haven’t let me see you naked yet.”
Y
ou haven’t let me see you naked yet.
Yet.
He’d said
yet.
Later, much later, Maggie would think up the perfect comeback to Anthony’s husky statement.
She would have let her voice go all low and sexy, and said,
You haven’t asked.
But yeah, that’s totally not how it
actually
went down.
Because while Maggie considered herself relatively quick with a comeback when she had all of her senses, apparently, when faced with the prospect of being naked in front of one gorgeous, glowering Captain Anthony Moretti, wit was nowhere to be found.
“Relax, Maggie,” he said, approaching the bed with two bowls in hand. “I’m not going to make a move on a woman who’s had the kind of day you had.”
Damn
. “But—But…”
Yeah. Not the comeback she’d hoped for.
He shoved a bowl of pasta into her hands. “Eat. Then read. Or do both at the same time.”
She shoveled a bite of pasta into her mouth. “Damn, you go from sexy to bossy so fast I get whiplash.”
He looked at her. “Rumor has it some women find bossy sexy.”
“And I’m one of those women,” she said, licking a fleck of deliciously flavored oil from her lip. “But it will be a hell of a lot
more
sexy once you get me naked. I wouldn’t mind you bossing me around then. At all.”
Not so bad on the comebacks after all, Mags,
she thought, mentally patting herself on the back.
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, his eyes dark with lust. At least she hoped it was lust, because she was about four seconds away from combusting with want for this man.
“Maggie…”
Crap. She knew that tone. His eyes had gone from hot to wary, and no way was she in the mood to get rejected. Not by him. Not today.
So she deflected.
“Your turn to relax, Captain. I’m letting you keep your virtue for the evening. Also”—she pointed with her fork to her bowl—“this pasta is
really
good. Especially for having, what, five ingredients?”
“Sometimes the simple pleasures are the best kind,” he said, handing a bit of pasta to Duchess, who looked delighted to have confirmation that her begging techniques were at the top of their game.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Either you just went all weird and Zen on me, or there’s some sort of sexual innuendo wrapped up in there.”
He smiled and jerked his chin toward the laptop she’d set aside. “Read.”
She groaned. “I can’t.”
He shrugged, a gesture he did an awful lot of. Right up there with glowering. But his shrugs and glares were different tonight. Easier, somehow.
Part of the change was the lack of uniform. He was wearing jeans and a cream-colored sweater that could have easily been downright blah on another man, but on his oversize frame looked exactly right.
She nibbled another bite of pasta and, after realizing he’d already cleaned his bowl, offered hers to him.
He shook his head. “You eat it. You’ve had a long day.”
Just like that, the memory of just how long—and awful—her day had been rushed over her. Her appetite disappeared. She dropped her fork and started to set it on the nightstand, when he reached out a hand to take it from her.
He stood and started to head toward the kitchen, but Maggie grabbed the sleeve of his sweater.
“Anth.”
His eyebrow lifted at the nickname, and she looked away. “Sorry, your brothers call you that sometimes, and—”
“I don’t mind.”
Her hand dropped. “Will you stay?”
His gaze dropped to the bowls. “I shouldn’t. The officers waiting outside will wonder.”
“Right,” she broke in. “Right, of course. I forgot all about them.”
He made her forget
everything
. Eddie. Her brother. Her father. It was a wonder she remembered her own name.
Anthony looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he swore softly and stomped toward the kitchen, where he washed the dishes with the amount of noise and force she would have expected from six police captains.
Maggie knew she should offer to help—the old,
you cook, I clean
cliché—but her limbs all of a sudden were tired. Hell, her
soul
was tired.
Tired, and a little lost.
So instead of cleaning, she let herself curl into the fetal position, where Duchess promptly curled up against her belly, snout resting on Maggie’s bent arm.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered against the dog’s head. “Tomorrow I’ll be strong and brave. But—”
A warm hand rested against her head.
His
hand. His fingers skimmed her temple.
Maggie’s eyes fluttered shut.
“You are strong,” Anth said, his voice gruff. “And you’re brave too.”
She gave a derisive laugh. “I’m not. You want to know something terrible?”
The mattress sagged as he sank down beside her, his hip warm against her back. “Tell me.”
She smoothed a hand over the dog’s head, wondering if it was as soothing for Duchess as Anthony’s hand on her head was.
“The truth is,” Maggie started. “The truth is, sometimes I look at my life. I
really
look at it…and I wish that all of the bad stuff would just go away and I could start over. Go back to when I was eighteen, back before my family got in the habit of relying on me for money. Back before I let Eddie trick me into thinking he was a good guy. Back before I gave up on the idea of college and started waiting tables because my dad had finally decided to get clean and needed money for rehab, stint one…”
He didn’t interrupt her. Just kept up the soothing motion of his palm against her scalp and let her continue.
So she did.
She kept talking.
“Every time something happens with Cory or with my dad…
every
time, I tell myself that it’s the last time. But it never is. I just keep making these same mistakes over and over again, and then I have to wonder…am I even capable of making different choices? What if I’m just…pathetic?”
They were silent for several seconds, until finally Maggie let out a little laugh. “So, Captain, this is the point where you tell me I’m not pathetic.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, here’s what I know. I know that I’m pretty fucking great. And since I’m, basically, the greatest guy around, I can tell you for an absolute fact that I wouldn’t be here if you were pathetic.”
She shifted slightly to look up at his face. “What if it’s the other way around? What if you’re only here
because
I’m pathetic? Because you feel bad for me?”
He stared down at her. “That’s not why I’m here. Trust me.”
“Then why are you?”
His eyes drifted over her face, but instead of responding, he reached over to her nightstand and picked up her laptop.
Then he opened it.
“Hey, what are you—”
“Either you read me your story, or I read it myself. Your choice.”
She glared at him. Knew that if she told him to, he’d close the computer without question. And a part of her wanted to. A
big
part of her wanted to slam the laptop shut and toss it out the window where her book would never see the light of day. Never be exposed to criticism.
But maybe…
Maybe the shift from meek to brave wasn’t one big, explosive transition.
What if it was born of teeny, tiny moments like this one, where you opened yourself up, just a little, to a complicated man who absolutely shouldn’t be here, but was anyway?
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“Okay what?”
“You can read it,” she said. “To yourself, though. Not out loud.”
Her bravery had limits.
He nodded, shifting on the bed so that his back was to the headboard, his legs stretched out in front of him.
He turned the laptop toward her, and wordlessly she pulled up her manuscript. Scrolled to chapter one.
He smiled reassuringly, and then, as if she wasn’t already melting enough from the fact that he’d driven her to freaking New Jersey, waited in a horrible hospital waiting room, driven her home, walked her dog, cooked her dinner, and then cleaned up, he had to go and bump it up a notch. He opened his arm to her. “Come.”
So she did.
She curled against him, her cheek against his chest, her arm draped across his waist as his wrapped around her back.
“What about the car outside?” she whispered. “They’ll wonder what the heck you’re doing up here.”
“They will.” He turned his head slightly so his lips were against her hair. “But I find I don’t care as much as I should.”
The admission was a small one. Hardly romantic-comedy worthy. But for a man who’d made it perfectly clear that his career was of the utmost importance in his life, it was a big statement.
And for a girl who was used to people choosing anyone and everything over her, it was a heart melter.
“You going to read along with me?” he asked.
“Nah. I know what it says.”
She’d read it a dozen times. Hell, she could probably recite chapter one from memory.
“You’re just going to lay here and let me read silently?” he asked. “You’ll be bored.”
Maggie tilted her head up and met his eyes. “It’s been years since someone’s held me. Trust me, I won’t be bored.”
His gaze softened before turning to the computer screen, where he began to read.
Maggie waited for the rush of panic to set in. The rush of fear she got every time she thought about her book being exposed to the world.
But there was no panic. No fear. There was only the steady heartbeat of an uptight police captain who, against all odds, was the first person in a very, very long time to
care
.