Page 24 of Under the Lights
Her breath caught in her throat and she opened her eyes. How could he know how badly she wanted that?
Chase let go of her hand and lifted his hand to her rib cage, only to find the unforgiving hardness of the bulletproof vest under her uniform shirt.
He growled in frustration. “This vesthasto go. And it can’t be comfortable.”
“I’m used to it,” she said, but the reminder she was on duty sparked horror that burned through the haze of desire. She put her hands on his forearms and pushed them down. What the hell was she doing? “This can’t happen.”
“You’re right.” He blew out a breath and shoved his hand through his hair. “You’re Coach’s daughter.”
Anger pushed the lingering frustration of sexual need to the back burner. “Excuse me?”
“I can’t mess around with Coach’s daughter. And in his own house, for chrissake. You’re off-limits to me, but I have a hard time remembering that when I’m around you.”
“Flattering, but very wrong.Coach’s daughteris not my identity, and that’s not why this”—she pointed from him to herself—“is not happening. It can’t happen because I’m not going to be ground up in the rumor mill because I slept with one of the guys who are basically Stewart Mills’ current versions of rock stars. Especially while I’m on duty.”
His jaw clenched and released. “Fine. That’s your reason this can’t happen. My reason it can’t happen is that I don’t want to disrespect a man who means the world to me.”
“Why don’t you just leave my dad out of it?”
“That’s kind of hard when we’re standing in his kitchen.”
She shook her head. Sure, she was a little embarrassed to have behaved like that in her parents’ house, but that was because they were her parents, not because her dad wasCoach.“Let me make it easy for you. I’m leaving, so you can stand here in his kitchen all by yourself.”
He said her name, but she didn’t bother turning back. And she thanked whatever stars kept her parents out late enough that she could get the cruiser out of their neighborhood before they got home. They definitely would have flagged her down, and the last thing she wanted to do was talk to anybody.
She’d had more than enough talking for one night.
07
By Friday afternoon, Chase was questioning whether or not he’d been crazy to agree to come back to Stewart Mills. He was hot and tired, and would happily spend the rest of his life free of teenagers.
He’d reported to the town hall that morning to get instructions from Alice Dubois, who had volunteered to oversee the street fair. Her instructions amounted to explaining to him what she wanted and telling him to go do it, so he’d rounded up the boys and gotten to work.
It had taken them almost two hours just to lug all the booths and tables the town used for Old Home Day out of the storage area, and then they needed to be sorted into the locations Alice had marked on a very badly hand-drawn map before being assembled.
Now he was trying to finish off the assembly of the town’s ancient dunking booth—which Alice had warned him hadn’t been used in years—by himself, because he was a sucker and had finally let the boys go dig up a late lunch.
And they didn’t have one of those lightweight plastic jobs you could rent for parties. No, Stewart Mills wasn’t going to spend money when they had an almost perfectly good monstrosity from the sixties made up of heavy wood and metal.
When he’d finally gotten it placed according to Alice’s map, he realized the only way to fill the tank would be with buckets by hand, which would take about two months. After looking around, he found a water spigot, probably used to water the town square if need be, and moved the damn thing so they could use a hose, which he borrowed from the hardware store.
He’d finally gotten the trigger mechanisms to work properly and was up on a ladder, trying to hang the old sign that advertised it was a dunking booth, just in case it wasn’t obvious. The sign wasn’t really necessary—especially since the thin wood it was made of was drying and splitting, and he was having to work around that—but he had fuzzy memories of the tank being used a time or two when he was a kid, and he liked the old sign.
When he paused, turning his head to stretch his neck, he saw Kelly across the town square, and it looked as though she was looking for somebody. It probably wasn’t him, since they hadn’t spoken at all since she’d stormed out of Coach’s kitchen.
One the one hand, he hoped itwashim but, on the other, she was in uniform. Official police business was rarely fun.
Through the corner of his eye, he watched her approach. Maybe it was a combination of the boots, vest and weight of her belt, but she seemed to walk with an extra-sexy sway when in uniform.
When she stopped at the bottom of the ladder, he smiled down at her. “Good afternoon, Officer McDonnell.”
She put her hands on her hips and squinted up at him before adjusting the brim of her hat. “I should write you a citation for being disruptive in public.”
“Unless Stewart Mills got a noise ordinance along with all those shiny stop signs, this is feeling like harassment.”
When she smiled, he felt a rush of relief. Wednesday night had ended so badly, he hadn’t been sure how things would go the next time they bumped into each other. Besides the fact that he didn’t want to explain to his hosts why he and their daughter weren’t speaking, he liked talking to Kelly. He didn’t want a kiss—even one that had shaken the hell out of him—to ruin the budding friendship he thought they had.
“Mrs. Clark bumped into Mrs. Davidson, making her drop her eggs, which led to a verbal altercation. According to the complaint, it was your fault.”
