Accidentally in Love (25 page)

“Safety first.”

God, he was cute.

Ellie’s earlier boil had slowed to a steady simmer, but she almost came undone when he reached for her again.

“Lose the boxers,” she murmured against his mouth. “Deal with the safety issue, and meet me over there. I’ll be the naked one on the mattress.”

She was back in his arms before they both tumbled onto the soft cotton sheet. Lacing his fingers through hers, he pressed her hands back against the mattress and leaned in to kiss her with feather-light, slow agony.

When she tried to free her hands so she could pull him closer, he shifted both her wrists to his right hand and grinned down at her.

“Start without me? Is that what you said?”

“Well, come on,” she laughed, squirming harder. “You just left me standing there.”

“They were packed, okay? How was I supposed to know I was going to need them tonight?”

“I’m sorry! I just—”

His kiss stole the rest of her word, and this kiss wasn’t soft or feathery or slow. It was hot, hungry, and wild. He hadn’t touched her anywhere else and she was already on fire, desperate for relief, but he wouldn’t give it to her, not yet. His mouth was everywhere, scorching trails of kisses down her neck, across her shoulder, and over the swell of her breast, where the first brush of his lips ripped a cry from her throat that only made him smile more.

She cursed out loud when he left her breast and started back up, trailing kisses across her collarbone and up her throat. The higher his mouth moved, the lower his free hand roamed, until every inch of her was screaming for more: more of his lips grinning against hers, more of his tongue teasing the corner of her mouth, and a whole lot more of his fingers dancing down her belly, then slowly lower, driving her insane with each tentative touch.

Ellie arched toward his hand, but he wasn’t giving in yet.

“Patience,” he murmured.

“I’ve been patient for weeks,” she cried. Wrenching her hands free, she gripped his biceps, digging her nails in hard, urging him on, yet still not nearly ready when he finally moved over her, smiled, and pushed inside her with one long, slow thrust.

He caught her gasp in a deep kiss, holding himself still until she moved beneath him, letting her think for about half a second that she was in control. She wasn’t. With them now moving as one, he eased them out of the slow, steady rhythm she’d started and teased her higher, faster, before bringing her back down once, twice.

Growling against his smiling mouth, she nipped at his bottom lip, swearing she’d finish it herself if he didn’t. Easing her knees up, he pushed into her one final time, deep and hard, sending her spiraling out of control, and he held her there, letting her come apart in his arms, breathing his name and digging her nails into his back, before he followed her over the edge.

“Jeezus.” Brett sprawled out on his back, and Ellie curled up tight against his side, her cheek on his chest, her leg intertwined between his, while his fingers drew slow, tingling circles on her shoulder.

“What are we doing, Ell?”

“Oh, Ponch, please don’t make me explain it to you,” she said. “It takes all the fun out of it.”

He didn’t laugh. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

“I know. So why are we wasting time talking?” She pressed a slow kiss against his chest and then against his rib cage, but he wrapped his hands around her before she could go any lower.

“Ell.” The softness in his voice made her sigh.

“You said you couldn’t leave without me knowing the truth, but I already knew it. I just didn’t know if you did.”

His eyes weren’t storm-filled, and they weren’t clear; they were confused, unsure.

“We’ve got one night, Brett—less than one night now—and then you’re gone. I don’t know about you, but to me, what we’ve had these last few weeks and what we have tonight feels like a hell of a lot more than most people ever get. So let’s not question it—let’s just take it and hold on to it as long as we can.”

When he pressed his lips against her head, she sighed against his chest.

“And someday when you’re old and gray, sitting around with the other old dudes in the Old Cops Nursing Home, you can tell them all about that girl you accidentally fell in love with, and how even though you might have only ever had one night together, it was so much more than that. Gads, that sounds like something right out of a Nicholas Sparks novel.”

“It
is
more than that, Ell.”

“I know.” This time when she kissed his chest, she pressed her lips right above his heart, where she could feel it beating against her mouth. And this time when they came together, they took their time, savoring every touch, every kiss, each breath, until the slow, gradual build exploded around them again and again.

He called her when he got to the airport, and he called her again after he cleared security. Even though she was at work, she kept talking to him, her soft voice like a balm against the gaping hole in his gut as he wandered aimlessly past all the shops and restaurants near his gate.

She told him how Jayne, Regan, and Maya had shown up at the store first thing and wouldn’t leave until Ellie told them what happened—not in detail, she assured him, but the general idea.

“It was like a race between Jayne and Reggie to see who could get their Stooge on the phone first.”

“Who won?”

“Regan, of course. She cheats.”

Brett grinned into the phone. “Speaking of the other Stooges, they’d love this comic-book store I’m looking at. It’s full of Star Wars…”

“Brett?”

In the front window stood life-size cardboard cutouts of the original
Star Wars
characters: Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Han Solo.

“Brett—are you there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Sorry, can I call you back?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, I’ll call you back.”

That was it! The Han Solo scar. How could he have missed it for so long?

He started to call Hudak, remembered that she was on her four off, so called Sarge instead.

“Hey, Sarge, yeah…We’re loading in a couple minutes….Listen, can you send me the video files from the Palmer hit-and-run from last year? File number’s 14-12210…I know, but Hudak’s off till Tuesday, and if I’m right about this, we need to get a jump on it….I’ve got a five-hour flight ahead of me, what else do I have to do? Right, thanks.”

Boarding had already started before the files showed up, so Brett waited at the gate until everyone else was loaded before he handed over his boarding pass. Waiting for the plane to hit cruising altitude almost drove him around the freakin’ bend, but as soon as the seat-belt sign went off, he had his tablet up and running.

Whoever had been driving the truck that hit Ellie last year couldn’t have timed it better. The intersection had been deserted at the time, but it was the main one in town, surrounded by a convenience store, gas station, fast-food joint, and the Ford dealership. Between all those places, they had video of every angle, and yet the driver had still managed to get away. In the days following the accident, Brett and Hudak had collected every surveillance video of the area, including traffic cams for as far as they could, and then spent countless hours poring over every one, frame by frame.

This time he could go faster because he knew who he was looking for; he just couldn’t remember if it was the convenience store or the burger joint video he wanted.

Every person going in or out of one of the businesses had been checked off and accounted for, except for three. Of those, one was a middle-aged woman, one was the child with her, and the third was a guy in a New Jersey Devils ball cap. Because of the way he walked and the brim of his cap, they’d never gotten a clear shot of his face, but when he’d gone into the…yup, the convenience store…the camera had caught a brief glimpse of the lower half of his face.

And that faint scar on his chin.

As soon as his flight landed, Brett was on the phone back to Sarge, explaining what he’d found. That alone didn’t put Kurt in the truck that hit Ellie last year, but it did put him in breach of his probation, and that, on top of the other charges they had him on, would keep him back behind bars for a while.

“Oh, and Sarge, maybe have Hudak talk to Pastor Pete, find out which part of town he was sleeping in around then. Maybe he knows something.”

It was a stretch, to say the least, but it was worth looking into. Pastor Pete had only come to town a few weeks before Ellie’s accident, they had Kurt on video wearing a Devils cap, and it seemed awfully coincidental that in the last couple of months, ever since Kurt had shown up again, the pastor’s main scripture quote was always the one about the devil prowling around.

Brett’s next call was back to Ellie.

“Who loves ya, baby?”

—Lieutenant Theo Kojak,
Kojak

Every day without Brett was just another day. Ellie got up and went through the motions of work, home, playing ball, and Chalker’s—she even finished her driving lessons with the new guy, Drew Something-or-Other—and most of the time she managed to do it all with a smile. But it still felt like there was a giant piece of herself that had gone missing—a piece she hadn’t even known was there until it wasn’t.

They called, they texted, they even Skyped once in a while, but it wasn’t the same, and they both knew it.

So she kept busy. She helped Regan with the details for the upcoming fund-raiser game, refocused on the orders for fall and Christmas, and as well as feeding Pastor Pete, she now made a point of taking some baking or a decent meal to Dickie a couple of times a week. God only knew what would have happened if he hadn’t been there that day, so it was the least she could do.

Days morphed into weeks, but she was so busy she hardly noticed how Brett’s calls had trickled down from three or four a day to once a day to what it was now—a text every few days. No, hardly noticeable at all. Sure, she checked her messages half a dozen times a day, but that was just being responsible.

Or stupid.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’d started to distance himself right around the same time Jayne started making noise about finding “a nice guy” for Ellie.

Jayne had already tried to play cupid with Maya, Regan, and Brett and, to date, was batting zero, so even if Ellie were interested, which she wasn’t, the chances of Jayne making a love connection for her were slim to none. Time after time, Ellie refused, and time after time, Jayne would come up with someone else.

It was shocking that Jayne even knew that many single guys. So much so that Ellie wondered if she didn’t make half of them up—something Jayne neither confirmed nor denied when they met at Chalker’s the Tuesday before Griffin Game weekend.

“You can’t say no every time,” Jayne complained.

“Of course I can.”

“Don’t even think of it as a date. Meet for coffee. Or lunch. Or what about a beer at the game on Saturday? That’s perfect.”

“If he’s so perfect,” Ellie muttered, “set Maya up with him.”

“Oh no,” Maya said, pushing her chair back and holding up her hands. “No way. She’s already tried with me; it’s your turn.”

Grinning, Regan nodded. “She has a point, Ellie. Time to take one for the team.”

“Don’t throw sports analogies at me,” Ellie laughed, but it had already weakened her defense a little. They were a team, the four of them, and sometimes you had to do things for your team just because your captain asked you to.

“He might be at the game on Saturday,” Jayne went on. “So if he is, that’d be perfect. No pressure, no nothing.”

“No nothing is right.”

“Come on, Ellie. He’s new to town, so it’d be nice for him to meet a pretty girl, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ellie sighed. “You’re right.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Me? No. Maya’s the pretty one.” When Jayne’s frown deepened, Ellie shrugged. “You won’t even tell me his name, Jayne. What does that say about him?”

“It doesn’t say anything about him, but it says everything about you!” Jayne opened her eyes wider and proceeded to do an insulting impersonation of Ellie: “I can’t date a guy named Bob because I had a fourth cousin twice removed named Bob, and that’d just be creepy. Can’t date a Steve—too
Blue’s Clues
–ish. Can’t date a dentist because they have their fingers in other people’s mouths all the time, can’t date a teacher because Dickhead’s a teacher and that ruins all of them for all of us, can’t date someone with green eyes or brown hair or someone with a crooked tooth or who wears…I don’t know…yellow shirts.”

By the time she finished, her face was a little red, Regan and Maya were both snickering, and Shelley was staring at Jayne openmouthed as she delivered their next round.

“Just ignore her,” Ellie said, tucking a few extra bucks into Shelley’s tip glass. “She’s just having a bit of a breakdown. And for the record, Jayne, most of those issues were Regan’s, not mine. I mean, the yellow shirt thing, yeah, of course. Very few men can pull off wearing yellow, so you can’t dog me for that one.”

“Okay, if I can guarantee this guy won’t be wearing yellow, and that his name isn’t Bob or Steve, would that sway you?”

“Well, it wouldn’t hurt, that’s for sure.”

“Okay, what else?”

“No one married, on the rebound, or recently separated.” When Jayne smirked at that, Ellie frowned. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing. It’s good—that helps narrow it down a little, and so far, this guy fits.”

“Forget it, Jayne.” Her sense of humor waning, Ellie took a long sip of her wine. “Whoever this guy is, he’s not going to ‘fit.’ Not unless he’s about six feet tall with a dark blond brush cut, amazing blue eyes, a drop-dead gorgeous smile, and a giant flower tattoo on his right bicep.”

Jayne reached across the table and squeezed Ellie’s hand. “Sweetie, if I could do that for you, you know I would, right?”

“Sure.” Ellie shrugged, forcing herself back out of her pity party. “But in the meantime, you’re going to throw every Bob, Steve, and yellow shirt you can find at me, aren’t you?”

Lifting a teasing brow, Jayne grinned. “Maybe not
every
one.”

Even the weather cooperated on Griffin Game day. No surprise that the tickets had sold out within hours of going on sale, and Regan had been overrun with people willing to volunteer in the beer garden, run a 50/50 draw, line the fields, ump, or anything else that needed doing. Anything for a chance to get close to the one and only Griffin Carr.

It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hit, throw, or catch. It didn’t even matter that he never made it on base. He was there to put on a show, and he did that in spades. Between innings he signed autographs and posed for pictures with anyone who asked, all the while encouraging the fans to donate more to the hospital, which of course they did, because it was Griffin freakin’ Carr.

With the exception of Griffin, everyone on the team took turns on the bench. That didn’t mean Ellie had to like it, but at least Reggie was off this inning, too, so the two of them hung near the door of the dugout, Ellie leaning against the opening and Reggie peering out through the chain-link, her fingers curled through the holes.

“How’re you doing?” Regan asked.

“I’d prefer it if we were winning,” Ellie laughed. “But since every other person here seems to think we’re just here to ogle the movie star and have fun, I’m breathing my way through it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” She was going to leave it at that, but Regan kept looking at her, waiting for an answer. “I’m ridiculous, that’s how I’m doing. He’s been gone almost two months and every game I still look for him at short. Every time we go over to Jayne’s, there’s a little part of me that hopes he’s going to just show up like he always did, and what really pisses me off is that I still get that jumpy thing in my stomach whenever he calls or texts me. Which isn’t happening very often anymore.”

“Bastard.” Leave it to Regan to make her laugh.

“Right? You’d think after we spent all that time together—”

“That whole month.”

“Exactly. You’d think he’d be a little more devastated about leaving me.” She rolled her eyes and grinned. “I mean, come on—a little devastation is not a lot to ask.”

“Hell,” Regan agreed with a grin, slapping her glove against Ellie’s shoulder. “A chick like you—you gotta be worth a medium amount of devastation at the very least.”

The next batter cracked a high fly ball to straightaway center, right at Griffin, and as Ellie watched, it was like the entire world slowed. Silence fell over the crowd as everyone pushed to their feet, waiting, waiting, and then losing their minds when the ball landed right in his glove.

“Only took him eight innings to figure out how the mitt works,” Ellie snorted. “Not bad.”

Still cheering, Regan laughed over the roar of the crowd. “We didn’t bring him here for his athletic prowess.”

As they watched, they both tipped their heads a little and frowned.

“Ellie? Is it just me, or…”

“You mean…I know! I thought I was imagining it at first, but now…”

After tossing the ball to Carter at second, Griffin jogged back out toward his position, then did a slight detour and rounded over to left field to chat up the fielder out there again. It was the same thing between every batter, during warm-up, and in the dugout.

Ellie and Regan both nodded. “He’s totally hitting on her.”

When the inning ended, Griffin headed for the on-deck circle amid deafening applause, while Maya headed straight for the dugout, her face a whole new shade of pink, her finger wagging between Ellie and Regan.

“Don’t even,” she warned. “Just don’t.”

“Are you kidding me?” Ellie whispered. “Look at him! A hot, rich guy, Maya? You could do worse. You
have
done worse.”

Maya’s blue eyes lit up with the most evil glint Ellie had ever seen.

“Which is exactly why I’m not shutting Movie Man down right here and now.” With nothing more than an arch of her brow, she had both Ellie and Regan searching the stands for something or someone…

“Nice!” Regan laughed, high-fiving Maya. It took Ellie another second, but then she spotted them: Dickhead and his skank in lawn chairs next to the bleachers. She was bouncing on the edge of her chair; he was slumped back in his, a scowl etched across his forehead.

Karma, Ellie mused. She was getting her licks in again.

As he’d promised he would, Griffin hung around for a while after the game, until Regan had to send Nick and Carter in to help his people extract him from the crowd.

“Sorry, folks.” She had to stand on the bleachers to yell over the din. “But he has to get going. Work, work, work. We want to thank you all again for coming out today and for your generous donations to Newport Ridge General. And, of course, we couldn’t have done this without him, so please help me thank the always amazing Griffin Carr.”

Smiling brightly, Griffin lifted his borrowed glove in salute and bowed, but before leaving the field, he made a quick detour through the dugout, where Maya was gathering the equipment.

Once he’d been hustled into his car and driven away, the crowd dispersed fairly soon after. Volunteers weren’t keen to hang around if Griffin was gone, so it was left to their core group to clean up and pack everything away.

While Ellie, Maya, and Jayne gathered up the bags of empties, Regan sat in the dugout with Nick’s accountant, Martin, counting the donations they’d collected. When they were both satisfied they had the correct total, one that made Regan whistle, they sealed the cash in a Tyvek envelope for Martin to deposit; he would also deal with the paperwork part of reimbursements before the final donation was made.

Jayne wandered over near Ellie with a half-full bag of trash and a worried frown.

“Sorry,” she said. “Guess the guy didn’t show up after all.”

“What guy? Oh, right.” Ellie laughed, sort of a half-snort, half-snicker. “Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that since we left Chalker’s, so it’s just as well.”

Jayne didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t say anything else, and when everything was done, the six of them set up their own little tailgate party at the back of Nick’s truck.

“Beer, Ellie?”

“Water for me,” she laughed. “The ink’s still wet on my brand-new license—don’t want to be giving those damn cops any other reason to snap it away, now, do I?”

“Why don’t y’all come over for dinner later?” Jayne asked. She didn’t wait for anyone to agree or disagree. “I’ll grab some steaks on the way home.”

And just like that, their sad little tailgate party was over and they each paired off to head home: Jayne and Nick, Regan and Carter, and Ellie and Maya.

“Pick you up in an hour,” Ellie said as Maya hopped out at her apartment.

“You drove to the game; I’ll drive us to Jayne’s.”

“No way. I’ve been three months without this baby,” Ellie laughed, smoothing her hand across the dashboard. “I need to make up the time.”

She wheeled the car into her driveway, grabbed her backpack, and headed for the door as late-Saturday-afternoon sounds floated around the neighborhood.

The McLarens’ beagle was barking its fool head off, Dickie out cutting his grass, Jackie’s twins squealing and splashing in their kiddie pool, and somewhere nearby a power saw whined for a few seconds, then whirred to a stop.

She had the key in the lock when she stopped. That power saw sounded awfully close…like…
really
close. As quietly as she could, she tugged her bat out of its Velcro strap on the side of her bag and headed around the side of her house to the backyard.

“What the—?”

Her pile of garden tools and hoses, usually heaped in the northeast corner, were now stacked in the old rickety wheelbarrow on the other side of her yard, and in their place now stood a half-built wooden shed. The front and two side walls were up, and as she watched, some unseen force shifted the back wall into place and fired a nail gun a few times before the air fell silent again.

Even the McLarens’ dog shut up for a couple of seconds.

“Uh, hello?” She took a few tentative steps closer, but only a few. If the crazy shed builder turned out to be an ax murderer, she wanted as much distance between them as possible.

“You told me you’d lock your bike up.”

No. Oh no. No no no no no. If this was some kind of joke, it wasn’t funny. If it turned out that that voice belonged to someone else…

Bare-chested, with his jeans covered in sawdust and his T-shirt dangling out of his back pocket, Brett stepped out from behind the shed with a pair of clear plastic goggles covering his eyes.

“Last time I came back here, I almost broke my neck on the damn thing, so from now on, keep it in here.”

If she opened her mouth right then she was only going to blubber, so she sucked both her lips back behind her teeth and just stood there blinking at what surely couldn’t be real. And yet…