Sweetest Mistake (Nolan Brothers #2) (4 page)

God, this was fun. She was fun.

He tapped a finger against the corner of his mouth. “You got a little something right here.”

Her pink tongue darted out to lick the smudge of ketchup.

A punch of lust hit him like a kick to the nuts.

She handed him her documents. He took a moment pretending to study her vehicle registration while he grappled with his confused lust. What the fuck was that, anyway?

“Are you aware you have ninety days to apply for a state-issued driver’s license before you are in violation of the law?”

Her throat worked and she gave a curt nod.

With an exaggerated motion, he pulled the notepad from his breast pocket, licked his index finger, and flipped it open. He paused with pen poised above the pad. “Have you applied for a new license?”

The sound originating in the back of her throat sounded suspiciously like a growl.

He started to write.

Her mouth opened, as though she might argue, but then snapped shut again.

He ripped the top sheet from the pad with a large sweep of his arm. “This will just serve as a little reminder. When you have your license, take it to the clerk’s office and the violation will be dismissed.”

She lobbed toffee-brown daggers at him. No woman ever looked at him like that. All he ever saw was adoration and longing.

A whiff of disappointment wafted through him. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

Her brown eyes cooled like an autumn frost. “Wo-would you, if y-you talked like m-me?”

A pang struck his chest, but he ignored it. “I wasn’t complaining. A quiet woman is like a mild winter. Both a rare and welcome relief.”

“Have I d-d-done something to offend you?”

“Not at all.” He leaned against her car. “It’s my job to protect the good citizens of this town from harm. I take my job very seriously.”

“And you think I’m going to hurt someone?”

“The problem is, I don’t know. I have to assume the worst until I’m shown otherwise.”

“You don’t
have
to,” she muttered.

“I mean, what do I really know about you? You’re five foot
three
if you’re an inch, thirty-two years old, and you recently bought an insanely large house.” He lowered his sunglasses to peer at her. “Oh, and you’re a Wildcat.”

Her sharp gaze swung to his face. “You've been spying on me?”

No, he hadn’t, though the thought had occurred to him. Rather, he’d obtained a wealth of information in a brief conversation with his brother, but she didn’t need to know that.

He shrugged. “I’m a cop.”

“You’re a terrorist.”

It occurred to him then that the more he tormented her, the less she stuttered. “You were one semester shy of graduation when you quit. Why is that?”

She stared up at him with soulful, brown eyes. A sliver of softness sloped through him.

“My mom got sick and I moved home to take care of her.”

He straightened away from the car. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

Her hand shot out and she plucked the ticket from his grasp. She put the Jetta in gear and whipped out onto the road.

That night, while he sat up with his bottle of whiskey, he contemplated the fact that his encounter with Emily Cole was the best part of his whole day.

Chapter Three

E
mily dreamed of a green-eyed man.

A naked green-eyed man, with a well-defined bare chest and a flat plane over his stomach. The fuzzy hair of a happy trail disappeared into his low-slung blue jeans while pink fuzzy handcuffs swung from his fingertips.

She leapt out of bed at first light.

In the kitchen, she started coffee brewing and settled in front of her laptop at the center island. She pulled up the bare-bones website she was in the midst of designing and connected her digital camera to the computer.

She spent the next hour uploading photos she’d taken of the home and its breathtaking views—she still couldn’t believe they called the body of water outside her door a lake. To Emily, a lake was an inland body of water she might swim or paddleboat across. No one would dare attempt to paddleboat across Lake Michigan, as the waves crested and crashed to shore as ocean waves might.

She fussed with the web layout, searching for a design that pleased her. In college, she’d studied photography and graphic art, and it felt good—really, really good—to use this particular skill set again.

Once done with the website, she kept working, relishing the distraction from the disturbing dream and the even more disturbing real man. She searched the web to find other bed-and-breakfasts in the northwestern part of the state and studied their websites, taking notes on everything from their web layout to their prices and general marketing strategy.

By mid-afternoon, an angry growl in her stomach roused her from her spot hunched over the laptop. A quick search for food turned up a bag of potato chips leftover from the sub sandwich she’d picked up at a deli in town a few days ago. She snagged the bag off the counter and returned to the computer.

She crunched on a chip and logged in to check her e-mail. She had a new message from her cousin, Mina. In two weeks, she’d return to Michigan, along with her boyfriend, Noah, for an extended stay and wanted to rent the apartment over the carriage house.

Having grown up two thousand miles apart, Emily and Mina didn’t know each other all that well. Not yet, anyway.

Emily sent an immediate reply stating the apartment was hers, free of charge, for as long as she wanted it, and that she couldn’t wait to see them when they arrived.

She fiddled with the website some more and sketched out a few ideas for a sign to place in front of the inn. A web search turned up the website of a sign shop she’d noticed in town, and she sent an e-mail requesting a quote for a sign with customized design work.

An hour later, she’d discovered Michigan had a robust tourism campaign and had registered the Winslow Inn and Bed-and-Breakfast with their databases. She e-mailed the city to request the house and the archaeologically significant eighteenth-century dwelling on its premises be added to their list of local area attractions.

Whenever possible, she sent texts or e-mailed. She despised the phone, as her stutter intensified severely when she tried to use it.

Soon, her stiff muscles demanded she step away from the laptop. The chips had done little to slacken her hunger. The fridge remained mostly empty, as did the cupboards. She needed to make a large shopping trip to stock up on essentials.

She hesitated. What if he lurked around town? She’d rather go hungry than face Luke Nolan. She shook herself. Who was she kidding? Chances were, he’d had his fun at her expense and would now move on. Certainly by now he’d have forgotten all about her.

On the drive into town, she rolled down her windows and enjoyed the warm breeze. Her lightheartedness sagged a little when she turned onto Main Street.

No signs of the Thief Island police when she eased through the traffic light. The sign for Mike’s Country Store sprang into view. She was going to make it.

She peeked at the speedometer and the red gauge sat on top of the twenty-five. She flipped on her turn signal.

Red and blue lights winked in her rearview mirror.

Anger rose up to choke her.

She sidled up to the curb with expert ease. Before he arrived at her window, her arm flopped out, her license and registration poised between her fingers.

His stern scowl only intensified his dark beauty. He took the license and registration from her hand. “A rolling stop is not a stop, Ms. Cole.”

“You’re right. Must be the dead body in my trunk. I didn’t account for the extra weight.”

“I’m glad you find this funny.”

Her jaw clenched tight. “I don’t find a single thing about this funny.”

“I’m relieved to hear that.”

She wiggled her fingers at him. “Ticket, please. I need to get back to the lab to check on the meth.”

“Oh, come now.” He tore a sheet from his notepad. “You wouldn’t want to give me probable cause to follow you home and conduct a search of your… premises.”

Feverish heat burned her cheeks. “You can’t keep pulling m-me over. It’s harassment, and it’s not legal.”

“This is a small town, Ms. Cole. A tiny, isolated island, to be more precise.” He lifted his broad shoulders and let them drop. “I can pretty much do whatever I want.”

She snatched the documents from his hand. “Good day, Officer.”

Her tires spun on a patch of gravel when she tore away from the curb.

In the rearview mirror, he shook his head, a wide, sparkling smile on his face.

He was laughing at her.

She refused to live like a prisoner. For the second day in a row, she remained trapped, a captive in her seaside resort mansion without wine or potato chips.

Enough was enough.

She waited until dusk to make her move, hoping the cover of night and the potential for a shift change would confuse his overzealous radar and allow her to carry out her shopping trip undetected. She stepped into her flip-flops and tugged a baseball hat over her distinctive hair.

Outside, the hot, muggy air licked her skin while the last rays of sunlight danced atop the cresting waves. She’d been on the island two weeks already and hadn’t so much as stuck her big toe into the lake. Tomorrow, she resolved, she’d go for a swim.

A few minutes later, she stole into town like a thief. She saw no sign of Officer Bright Eyes when she rolled down Main Street. Maybe it was her lucky day. Her lungs stopped expelling air until she slid safely into the parking lot of the small market store and the breath she’d been holding burst from her.

She scurried inside the store. Learning how to cook a proper meal remained on her list of things yet to do, so she loaded up on frozen dinners and prepackaged foods. Mike’s produce section was a thing of beauty, and she filled her cart with an array of colorful, oversized fruits and vegetables before winding her way to the checkout lanes.

At the car, she flung the grocery bags onto the passenger seat, darted around the front end, and fell into the driver seat. She crouched low and yanked the cap down over her forehead, unable to repress the urge to hide even knowing Luke would recognize her car whether he glimpsed her behind the wheel or not.

She steered out into traffic, and as she neared the stoplight leading out of town, her adrenaline soared. This time, she would make it. Victory never tasted so sweet.

The light changed. She bit back a curse and eased to a stop. And that’s when she spotted him. The white SUV, with its dark green lettering, sat tucked beneath an elm tree on one of the neighborhood side streets, no doubt stalking innocent civilians going about their legal affairs.

While the car idled, she kept her eye on the SUV. Would he harass her today? Was there any chance he had actual police work to do? Had he been spying on her some more? Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

Let him snoop. Some things he didn’t know. Couldn’t know.

Like the fact that she’d been a painfully shy child with a torturous stammer. Or that, in all her thirty-two years, she’d slept with exactly one man, and him only a handful of times.

Or the real reason she’d dropped out of college.

While it was true her mom had started to show symptoms of the disease that would kill her, Audrey hadn’t yet required full-time care when Emily left school, nor did they yet know how serious her illness would turn out to be.

Emily left school because, in order to graduate, she had to complete a public speaking course, which required her to give a ten-minute speech in front of 250 of her classmates. Rather than subject herself to that cruelty, Emily dropped out, nine credits shy of a earning her Bachelor’s degree.

The old wounds stung anew. She scowled at Luke’s police cruiser. He’d been having a good laugh at her expense. Well, no more. She wasn’t that painfully shy, stuttering girl anymore. Well, she still stuttered, but she’d worked hard to overcome her deficiencies, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him drag them back out into the light.