Page 48 of Flirting with Forever

“They came in through the back,” Beth told him. “We can access it through this alley.”

She led him through to where the back entrance of Mary’s shop was propped open. There were two cops smoking back there and yellow crime scene tape that Beth pulled up to let John duck under.

He stepped into Mary’s storeroom and groaned. Boxes and boxes of goods were toppled and torn. There was a thin covering of down feathers over almost everything. Glass crunched under his feet. Not a thing had gone untouched. He couldn’t even begin to estimate the cost of these kinds of damages. He hoped to God she had insurance.

“She’s upstairs,” Beth told him. She pointed the way through the decimated shop to the interior access door to the stairs that led to her apartment. John winced when he saw the damage to the inside of the shop. It was even worse than the storeroom. Every bit of upholstery sliced open, shelves yanked off the walls, leaving gaping, ragged holes in the drywall.

John walked up the same stairs he had last weekend, a bag of beer and lemonade in his hand at the time, his stupid heart beating nervously at the idea of seeing Mary in her natural habitat. Now his stupid heart was beating nervously at the idea of seeing Mary dejected and frightened.

Her front door was propped open as well. He frowned at the signs of forced entry against the locks. She’d have to get a new door.

That was when he heard it. Her sparkly laugh. It sent a shiver down his spine. He jumped, pleasantly surprised, like looking down at his hand and seeing an unexpected butterfly resting there.

He moved toward her kitchen, noting that nothing looked out of place or destroyed in her actual home. Good.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Mary with the lights out. Tears on her cheeks. Her shoulders hunched. Maybe even, indulgently, he’d imagined her hair a shade or two darker than normal. Everything dimmed by her shock and fear.

But no. Of course not. Mary sat at her kitchen table with a detective, her head thrown back in laughter, her sunny hair in a high pile on her head and a fancy, decorated T-shirt splashing color across John’s eyes. She was not huddling in a corner, jumping at shadows. She was radiant light itself, and John should have known. He just should have known. Why did he keep expecting himself to be able to handle being around her? He should know by now that there was no immunizing himself to her. This pull was elemental, expansive.

She looked up, saw him there in the doorway and immediately rose up. Her jaw dropped open for a second and something flashed in her eyes. “John!”

“Beth—Officer Herari—told me what happened. I came to make sure—”

John cut off because Mary was across her kitchen in half a blink of an eye. She fit herself perfectly under John’s chin, her hair like warm satin against his throat. Her arms came hard around his ribs in a single, solid band. She was pressed to him in a long, fierce line, only his messenger bag keeping their hips from lining up.

He dropped his arms around her, holding her closer than he’d ever thought he might be allowed to. He couldn’t help but drop the weight of his cheek against her hair. He flattened his hands on her back and gave her a quick squeeze, and then another, when her nose turned in toward his sternum.

Her breath stuttered just a little bit, and when she pulled back from him, John saw it. Just a split second of fear and pain that she couldn’t hold back anymore.

She stepped back from John, one hand firmly on his shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said in a clear, low voice.

“Ms. Trace,” the older detective said as he rose up from his seat at the table, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Mary and John. “I have everything I need from you right now. I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow.”

“Thank you so much for everything,” Mary said, stepping away from John and following the detective to her front door.

They exchanged words that John didn’t listen to. He was still fighting his way through a full-body buzz from where she’d tossed herself against him. Didn’t she know she was precious cargo? She shouldn’t go slamming herself into unexpected men, like a ship on the sea. He traced a hand down the line of his chin to his throat, where her hair had been pressed. That hair was a hell of a weapon. Nothing had ever felt better or more dangerous against him.

She appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, and his fog immediately receded, because those were tears in her eyes.

“Mary.”

“Oh, John,” she said with a shudder, crossing the room to him again. This time, he dropped his messenger bag aside and met her in the middle. His hand came to her hair as her nose pressed hard into his sternum. “It was so terrible.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe later,” she whispered. She looked up at him then, and John’s heart stumbled. He’d been foolish to think that tears would dull Mary’s light. If anything, the high emotion on her face almost heightened it. It was like the sun catching droplets of rain from the side, each drop its own gorgeous prism.

He talked himself out of tracing away the teardrops with his thumbs. Too risky. “Are you all right?” He had to know.

“I’m okay. Just shaky. And exhausted. I barely slept last night anyway. And then as I was drifting off, I heard them—” She took a deep breath. “My bones feel like they weigh a hundred pounds.”

“You should take a nap. I could go out and bring back something for us to eat.” He was being presumptuous assuming he could stay with her for dinner, but she just nodded.

“Okay. Yeah.”

They separated from the hug and she took a few steps toward her bedroom. She paused and peered down the hallway. “Actually, I think I’ll come with you to get the food.”

He blinked at her and she was back at his side. He’d never seen her flit quite so fast. He understood all at once. She was terrified to be here alone. And he didn’t blame her. Her door was kicked in and she probably hadn’t lain down on her bed since she’d bolted out of it after hearing the break-in. She wasn’t eager to curl up alone in her unlocked house and he didn’t blame her.

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