Bad Girl by Night (24 page)

Carly just shook her head, smiling lightly, still feeling surprisingly in command of the situation. “Nothing in particular. Just realized I never take a vacation, so I’m taking one
here
, now. I’m using the time to sort of . . . clear my head on some stuff. I’m doing some reading.” Which was the truth. “And taking some bubble baths.” Also true, because she had. It had been part of one of the exercises in her books.

“You know, after seeing you out last Friday night, Dana had this crazy theory that maybe you were holed up in your apartment having sex with the new town cop for days on end, because no one’s seen him around this week, either.” The sigh Beth Anne released this time was less happy than the last. “But looks like that was just wishful thinking.”

“No,” Carly said, the word leaving her with alarming ease. “I
have
been having sex with the new town cop.
Amazing
sex, in fact. He’s out of town right now, but I’m guessing when he gets back, we’ll have
more
amazing sex.”

For someone who wasn’t usually comfortable talking about her sex life—or the usual lack thereof—Carly even enjoyed it when her friend’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t quite believe it, but it was actually fun to shock Beth Anne. She smiled and went on, brimming with a brand-new inner confidence. “I bet you guys thought I never
have
sex, huh?” she asked, suddenly feeling the need to share her new sense of normalcy. “Well, surprise—I do.”

Once Beth Anne got over her shock—she broke into an enormous grin. “Praise the Lord! You have no idea how happy this makes me.”

After which Carly couldn’t resist teasing her even further. “But be careful when you go running to tell Dana. I don’t want to be responsible for sending her into premature labor.”

W
hen her front buzzer sounded the following evening around nightfall, she opened the door to find Jake standing on the other side. He looked beautifully rugged and unshaven in a T-shirt and jeans.

“Hey,” he said, voice low, blue eyes sparkling in the light of streetlamps just starting to illuminate Main Street. That quick, her heart nearly pounded through her chest.

“Hey,” she replied softly, just drinking him in, wanting him. She’d never met a man who brought out such a visceral reaction in her, a craving that felt bigger than both of them each time she saw him.

“How are you?” he asked—and given the gravity of their last encounter, the question held more weight than usual.

“I’m good,” she said, her simple answer feeling equally as noteworthy.

His eyes widened slightly, hopefully. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

That was when he lifted both hands to her face and kissed her.

She sank into it, let it sweep her away, curled her fingers around his wrists to make sure she didn’t melt into a puddle right there on the front steps of her shop.

“Missed you,” he breathed when the kissing finally came to an end.

“Come in,” she told him, taking his hand.

From there, they lay on her bed catching up, and they ordered pizza to be delivered from Angelo’s. It was strange to be talking about golf and birthday cake one minute and the letter she’d written and burned the next—but in another way, it was easy, because Jake made it that way.

After the empty pizza box was set aside an hour later, Jake pulled her to him, closing his hands over her ass through the khaki shorts she wore, and pressing his hard-on to the crux of her thighs. Mmm, God, he felt so good. And after a week of looking inward and examining unpleasant things, she realized again just how ready she was to resume living.

“I want you,” Jake murmured, eyes heavy-lidded with lust, yet then his eyebrows pinched together lightly. “But only if you’re into it. I mean, maybe sex seems weird to you right now.”

And he was sweet as hell to be concerned, but she said, “Are you kidding? If you don’t rip my clothes off in the next two minutes, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Thank God,” he said, then reached for the bottom hem of the tank top she wore.

Within mere seconds he was rolling her to her back, parting her legs, and pushing into her. Whispering how hot and wet her pussy was. Kissing her neck, her breasts, thrusting hard and deep. And in the end leaving her just as sated as always. As she slinked away to the bathroom afterward, returning to find him asleep in her bed, she wondered how she’d had the strength to walk away from him in Traverse City.

But it was simple. She’d been a different person then. Or as close as she could come to being one. Now everything was different.

O
n Monday morning, she resumed her normal schedule, back in the shop at eight a.m., refreshed and full of energy, Oliver by her side.

When she called Schubert’s to place her lunch order, she stopped Frank from making her usual ham and swiss and instead ordered chicken salad on a croissant. And when she returned to work later, getting back to Dana’s baby crib for the first time in a while, she decided the piece actually looked plain—and she wanted to give it more flair. She still appreciated the simple beauty of straight lines, of course, but at the same time she felt her artistic perspective shifting, just a little; she found herself wanting to create something with a few more curves, with a greater sense of movement and flow.

And when she woke up on Tuesday, instead of throwing on the nearest old T-shirt for work, she drew from her closet a bright yellow fitted tee that hugged her shape a little more and made her feel a bit prettier. It was still practical for the shop, but it was more cheerful—like she was beginning to feel inside. And rather than pull her hair back into its usual ponytail, she changed things up by grabbing a big clip from her dresser and twisting her hair up into a cute, messy knot like Tiffany sometimes wore.

When Winterberry’s front door opened just before lunchtime, she looked up to see Dana—who was beaming. She said to Carly, as if Carly might not know, “You’re having sex with Officer Lockhart!”

“I can’t believe it took this long for the news to reach you,” Carly said with a grin, glancing up from sanding a small heart-shaped keepsake box—she’d just designed it herself this morning, and it would make a great, reasonably priced gift item.

“I can’t, either—I wanted to kill Beth Anne when she told me she’d known since last week. And I kind of wanted to kill
you
for not telling me, too,” she said, “but I’m too happy to be mad. And wow, you even
look
different, too. You’re all . . . glowy or something.”

And that was an apt description, Carly decided, for how she felt, both inside and out.

Thanks to Jake, everything inside her was changing, in big and wonderful ways.

That was when Dana’s eyes dropped to the heart box. “Wow, that’s gorgeous. I want one.”

 

 

M
ost people thought of Jake as a pretty strong, capable guy. Some people would even call him tough. He was a cop, after all. Back in Detroit, he’d taken down plenty of bad guys. He’d dealt with criminals from all walks of life. Not a whole lot scared him.

But what had happened that morning when he was seven years old walking to school—not many people knew about that. It was his kryptonite. In some ways he thought it had made him stronger,
forced
him to be stronger. Yet no matter how he sliced it, it was impossible to think of that defenseless little kid walking down the street, getting coerced by a stranger, and not feel a little weaker for it.

And yet, he’d told Carly without blinking an eye. He’d barely even weighed the decision. Once she’d shared with him about her father, telling her had felt . . . natural. And that was a first.

He’d told other women in his life, years earlier. But even as caring as his old girlfriends had been, there was something much more comfortable, much more
right
, about telling someone who really
understood
—in a way you just
couldn’t
if you hadn’t been through something similar.

The walk between his place and Carly’s was about a mile, but the sun was setting, cooling the air, and he’d felt like getting outside, taking his time, leaving the car behind. Walking, he’d always found, helped him think.

The calendar page had just turned from July to August—it had been a month since he’d bought Carly’s pie. The changes in her since that time amazed him. Not only the ones he alone saw—in bed—but the changes in her everyday life, too. She dressed differently. And though she’d seemed invested in her work before, now she appeared truly enthusiastic, often showing him new pieces and new ways she was altering old designs. She’d finished the crib for her friend Dana, and to Jake, it looked entirely different from the piece she’d first shared with him a few weeks ago.

As for their relationship . . . well, that was what it was now—a relationship. He felt closer to her all the time. They ate lunch together most days—either meeting at Schubert’s or eating on her back patio. And, of course, the nights were even better.

He continued to push her sexually, just in small ways now, and she welcomed it. She’d even started getting into the same sort of dirty talk they’d exchanged in Traverse City—she’d finally figured out that she could be as wild as she wanted with him and he’d still care about her afterward. Somewhere along the way she’d completely lost her inhibitions; she shied away from nothing he suggested. Damn, she’d melded her sweet self and Desiree nicely.

Sometimes they talked more about what each of them had been through when they were young, but most of their time together was spent just being a regular couple—eating out, eating in, talking, laughing, and having lots of hot sex.

And that was probably best, Jake had decided. He wanted to be there if she needed to talk, but the more attached to her he began to feel, the more he wondered . . . if it was a good idea. For two people with their particular backgrounds to be together. They ignited such profound passion in each other sometimes that . . . hell, was that healthy?

After all, from the moment he’d found out Desiree wasn’t really Desiree, hadn’t he, deep down inside, suspected why? He might not have
wanted
to think it, or believe it, but he knew what abuse—of any kind—could do to people, how badly it could fuck them up.

And maybe knowing it—knowing it gut-deep even if he hadn’t quite admitted it to himself—maybe that was what had drawn him to her so intently, so ravenously, even when she’d wanted nothing to do with him.

Maybe he’d wanted to save her.

Or maybe he’d wanted to be with someone who could understand him completely.

But if he’d still been seeing Dr. Jim, he was pretty sure his old confidant would have told him that this was a
bad
idea, that two people suffering from the same wound couldn’t heal each other, and that you couldn’t save anybody anyway—that people had to save themselves.

Yet maybe she had. Saved herself. It sure as hell seemed that way.

In a way, it made him feel . . . fucking heroic. He’d made her face her past, helped her start moving beyond it.

But in another way . . . hell, he’d never felt this tied to a woman before. Let alone after only a month. Maybe this was a dangerous bond to share.

And yet he kept walking, just as eager to reach her as he’d been from the first time he’d chased her up Main Street.

As he rounded a corner onto Main just now, Turnbridge felt like a much different place to him. People greeted him or lifted a hand to wave. He’d started feeling comfortable here. He still wished his new job was a little more exciting, but he’d left Detroit because he’d
wanted
a quieter existence, right?

His heartbeat actually sped up in anticipation as he neared Carly’s shop, ringing the buzzer when he finally arrived since it was past closing time. A moment later, she whisked open the door with a smile, her honey-colored hair falling in gentle waves around her face.

“Hey,” he said in a low rasp.

“Hey yourself,” she said, then lowered her gaze from his eyes to his hand. “What’s this?”

Damn, he’d been so lost in thought that he’d practically forgotten he was carrying the potted plant he’d picked up at a greenhouse outside town. “It’s a winterberry bush,” he said, then glanced at it a bit skeptically. “Or it will be. Eventually.”

She smiled, taking it from him, as he explained, “You mentioned wanting to put some plants in that little green space by your patio and I figured this would be a good start. I was picking up a few things for my yard when I saw it.”

She tilted her head, raising her gaze back to his. “Jake, that’s so sweet. Thank you.”

“And I didn’t get it just because of the store name and all that,” he went on. “After I read the tag and talked to a guy at the greenhouse about it, it was more that it kinda . . .
reminded
me of you. I mean, he told me, just like you did, how hardy it is, even in harsh conditions. And I was thinking you’re way that way, too. Strong, and tough, and beautiful, despite
your
harsh conditions.” Then he let out a breath. “Damn, that sounded a lot less corny in my head.”