Drawing The Line (6 page)

“
Your manager has all my contact information, as well as my partner’s and my boss’s. Plus we’ve stepped up police presence at Mac’s and put a few extra security measures in place for your employees, just in case. You don’t have to worry,” Jason said, stepping in from his spot by the front hallway with a trust-me smile.

Whether it was h
er shredded nerves playing catch-up from this morning or the unexpected blast of reality setting in, Serenity couldn’t be sure. But all of a sudden, the pain in her head grew fangs as it rattled along with her pulse, and she pressed her fingertips to the bridge of her nose to try and check the sensation.

“If I didn’t have to worry, we wouldn’t be doing this.” The words lacked any heat, and Jason’s smile f
ell into something more serious as he pegged her with a stare.

“I know this is a lot to take in right now. But Brody’s not going to hurt you. Not on my watch.”

Whoa. Serenity reached out for the edge of the small table in the foyer, steadying herself against the sudden shot of dizziness rolling through her aching skull. “O-okay.”

Jason’s brow tugged downward over a look she couldn’t decipher, but the expression disappeared before she could unravel it. “Why don’t I help you with your suitcase?”

“Oh.”
Surprise pinged through her chest, easing her grip on the polished wood of the hall table. Dr. Fisher
had
said even mild concussions could be serious, and her balance sure did seem like playing whoopsie-daisy was its new favorite pastime. A little assistance might not be such a bad plan. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”

“No problem.
It’ll go faster with two of us, and the less time we spend here, the better,” Jason said, giving up a thoroughly pleasant look chock full of
just doin’ my job
.

“Right.
” Of course that was why he’d offered to help. Ugh, even his ulterior motives were charming.

Serenity
squashed her chagrin like trash in the compactor and kicked her feet into gear, heading past her kitchen and through the cozy living room. Jason followed her down the short stretch of hallway leading into her bedroom. She realized, two steps too late, that her laundry hamper was about five days past critical mass and her bed was half-made at best. The bright red tank top and matching pair of boy shorts she’d tossed aside as she got dressed this morning were smack on the top of the clothes pile in his path, and great. Between that and this morning’s run-in at the hospital, Jason had officially seen more of her lingerie collection than everyone she’d dated for the past year combined.

             
He cleared his throat, taking an awkward step back toward the doorframe as he locked eyes on the offending items, and suddenly her cozy little bedroom was hotter than Satan’s kitchen.

             
“So, uh, apple turnovers,” Jason said, snapping up all her attention in one fell swoop as he winged his gaze up from the floorboards. It was just a weird enough thing to say that an involuntary laugh burst past her lips, scattering the tension that had hooked into to her shoulders for the last hour straight.

             
“What about it?” Serenity asked, rebounding enough to excavate her suitcase from beneath the bed and start rifling through her closet. Maybe when she was finally done with this mess of a day, she’d be able to bake for a bit. Cooking always set her to rights, but apple turnovers, with their perfect juxtaposition of buttery, flaky crust and mellow, cinnamon sugar fruit? Now
that
was comfort food.

“They’re
a Mac’s specialty, right?” He shifted into a casual lean against the glossy white trim of the doorframe, and how had she not noticed how broad his shoulders were before now?

             
“Oh, ah, yes.” She folded the thin cotton sweater she’d pulled from its perch in the closet, and the purposeful movement steadied her as she repeated the process with a few more garments. “A lot of the recipes at Mac’s are a group effort, and some of them are even family dishes brought in by the employees. But the turnovers are all mine. It’s one of the first recipes I ever came up with, right down to the pastry dough.” 

             
“Mac’s signature apple turnovers are your recipe?”

             
The combination of interest and disbelief in his voice lifted her attention from the battered old suitcase splayed over her rumpled coverlet, and she bit back a tiny smile. “Don’t sound so surprised, Detective. I do own the place.”

             
“Oh, I’m not shocked. It’s just that my sister would kill to know how you make those.” His eyes lit just a touch at the mention of his sister, and Serenity connected the dots with a start.

             
“The blond you have lunch with every week is your sister?” Now that she thought about it, the resemblance was pretty obvious. But that’s what she got for sticking mostly to the kitchen.

             
Jason nodded, shifting back to let her pass by and open the dresser drawers on the other side of her bedroom. “Violet’s my twin, although I’m older.”

             
“You’re older.” The smile quirking at her lips was impossible to tamp down this time, and Jason matched it with a full-blown grin that took a potshot at her knees.

             
“By six minutes. But it counts.”

Serenity
swallowed as she grabbed one last handful of T-shirts from a drawer to finish packing, and God, was her thermostat completely non-functional? “You two must be close if you have lunch together every week.”

He
nodded, a brief flash of fondness sparking in his eyes. “We are. What about you? Any brothers or sisters?”

“Are you asking for the police report?” Jeez, he hadn’t been kidding about covering all the bases for safety. Not that
family would be an issue for her, but still.

“No,
I’m asking out of curiosity. Or does polite conversation not work on you either?” Jason moved her well-worn suitcase to the floor with a fluid lift-and-swing, propping the handle into his palm to maneuver the thing across the floorboards with a chuckle Serenity felt under her skin.

“Oh, no. I mean, yes.” She grabbed
a dark blue travel bag and headed into the adjoining master bathroom, grateful as hell to have a task to focus on. Even if it
would
get her closer to leaving. “Polite conversation is fine. I don’t really have any family. Other than my staff at Mac’s.”

“None at all?”

At least this was an easy topic.
“Well, I’ve never met my father, and my mom is somewhere in India, learning to read Sanskrit and embracing her inner light. Or at least she was four months ago. I’m not sure where she is now.”

Jason
did a quick blink-and-gape combination that would’ve been amusing if Serenity hadn’t built total immunity to the response over time. “That sounds…uh, deep.”

S
he lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted demi-shrug and slid her shampoo from the ledge in the shower. “You don’t have to sugar-coat it. My mother’s lifestyle is totally weird, but she’s always been like that. She mostly moves around restoring failing restaurants, but there are plenty of extended ‘life-experience’ trips according to her latest whim.” She paused to snag her mother’s favorite phrase in air quotes. “I was raised on a steady diet of go-where-your-spirit-takes-you.”

One gold-blond brow went up. “
And how many places did her spirit take you?”

Serenity
didn’t have to pause to double check the count. She knew the number by heart. Even if her heart had never been in any of those places.

“
Twelve. Including two European countries and a commune in Oregon.” 

“Wow
,” he murmured, watching her methodically pack the last of her toiletries into the bag balanced on the white marble vanity top. “That is a very free spirit.”

The smile tickling the edges of her mouth tasted wry, but it felt better than she had all day.
“The woman named me Serenity, Detective. Are you really surprised?”

Jason took the bag
from her, close enough for his woodsy, cedar-like scent to break over her senses. “So you’re pretty good at packing up, then. Is that why you’re so cynical?” His gaze flicked over the suitcase they’d left in the narrow confines of the hallway, and Serenity’s throat tightened at the sight.

“
I prefer to think of myself as pragmatic. And this is the first time I’ve gone anywhere in four years.” The thought of leaving Mac’s behind, even temporarily, plucked at her yet again. She was responsible for every person, every meal— hell, every last spoon— in the place, and that was exactly how she liked it.

Only now, she wasn’
t.

Serenity
dropped her eyes to the beige ceramic floor tiles under her feet. As much as she hated every ounce of leaving, it was better to just do it quickly, like ripping off a bad-situation Band-Aid in one hard yank.

“Anyway. I just need to grab a few things from my kitchen, and then we can go
if you want.”

But Jason didn’
t move from his spot in the doorframe. “I’m sorry.”

She waited for the inevitable quip
and agenda-fueled little half-smile that would surely follow on its heels, but instead he just met her eyes with a flash of sympathy so genuine and real, it might as well have reached out and held her tight. The thought pressed Serenity’s breath flat in her lungs, and as idiotic as it was, her arms ached to lift up in order to grab onto him, to cancel out the turmoil of her day, to let him surround her with the expression weaving between them so tightly right now.

As if he’d camped out in her mind, Jason shifted toward her, close enough
that she could feel the warmth rolling off his body, and it was all she needed to tumble right over the edge of reason. Serenity folded herself against the expanse of Jason’s chest, her breath releasing its iron-fisted hold on her lungs in one long exhale as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. His strong palms pressed into her shoulder blades, but he didn’t pull anything sappy like rubbing her back in little circles or trying to tell her everything would be fine, and damn it, that only made her want to hold him tighter.

And the way they were clasped
together in the tight, warm space of her bathroom made her want to do a hell of a lot more than hold him.

Serenity pulled her chin up, angling her
face toward his, and yeah, eyes that blue were just plain cheating. “Thank you,” she breathed, but still her arms refused to disengage from the lean, hard line of Jason’s shoulders.

But he didn’t budge either
, except to drop his eyes to her mouth. “You’re welcome.”

She pressed up to brush her lips over his, intending it to be no more than a feather-light touch. But the warmth banked between them sparked low and hot in her belly, and when Jason slid one hand around to
cup the side of her face, deepening the kiss instead of pulling away, she parted her lips to let him. The masculine scent of cedar and spice surrounded her, filling her up, and Serenity tightened her grip to press her aching breasts into the plane of his chest.

Keeping the hand on her cheek in place as he slid his tongue over her upper lip in a lingering sweep, Jason swung her around to gently place her back to the vanity. He
framed her hips with his own as he closed the last inch of space between their lower bodies, and any thoughts Serenity might’ve had of this being crazy or impulsive or wrong vanished like smoke in a downdraft. The flare in her belly spiraled down between her thighs, turning the ache into a demand as she skimmed her hands down his lean waist to get better access to the delicious friction building between them…

And smacked
her palm right into the cold, unyielding steel of the gun on his hip.

Jason jerked into motion
so fast it had to be pure instinct, snaking an arm between them as he pushed back and blocked his right hip from both her grasp and her line of vision. The maneuver sent her into a backward stumble as if her legs had been manufactured by Goodyear from hip to heel, but Jason reached back in to steady her just as she regained her balance.

“Jesus. Serenity, I’m sorry.”
He hitched, his hand hot on her forearm for just a breath before the touch turned perfunctory, and okay, this day had officially punched every hole in her crazy ticket. She might’ve had a truckload of stress with a couple of adrenaline chasers on top, but to go all White Knight Syndrome on a guy she was about to go into close quarters with and wasn’t even sure she particularly liked?

She must have hit her head a lot harder than she’d thought.

“No, I should be the one apologizing. I let the tension of all of this get the best of me, and I was wrong to be so impulsive.”

Jason
opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue, and she lifted her spine up straight, ready to stand her ground. But then his cell phone rang, the electronic trill cutting through whatever argument he’d been about to work up.

“Why don’t we call it even
, Ms. Gallagher?” he asked, his expression calm and professional as he slid his phone from his pocket.