Page 16 of Taming Her

The door pushed open and he set his hand on the small of her back, urging her forward.

She stepped in, struggling to see anything in the blackness.

An amber-hued light came on overhead. It was a small hallway with exposed stonework. A skinny-legged wooden dresser held a bowl with a selection of keys. Above it was a gilt-framed mirror.

“Didn’t picture you with a cutesy cottage, Griff.”

“My grandmother left it to me a few years ago. Too many memories to get rid of it, plus the location suited me.” He shut the door, turned a key, and slipped a bolt. After stooping to remove his heavy black boots and set them aside, he said, “This way.”

She toed off her heels and followed, her curiosity piqued. Her house, though messy and in need of a professional clean most of the time, was modern with contemporary furniture. A few expensive pieces of artwork her father had sent her for Christmases and birthdays dotted the walls. The small garden was the only thing she fussed over, the scented rose bed her pride and joy. Years ago, when her mother had been around, Ava had helped her with the rambling family garden, sowing, pruning, planting vegetables. And now, she found it relaxing to work with plants, almost meditative. She didn’t long for anything else when she was with her roses.

She came to a halt at Griff’s side in an enormous farmhouse-style kitchen—heavy beams strung the low ceiling, an Aga was set in a bricked inglenook, and a huge pine table stood on a deep burgundy rug. To the right a staircase led upward to a dogleg.

Griff was enormous too, not just wide with bulky muscles, but without her shoes she was a head shorter than him.

“Water or coffee?” He stepped to an island that had a sink in the middle of it with a fancy curved chrome tap.

“Wow, you know how to treat a girl, what about some wine, or a whiskey? I’m partial to Irish.”

“You.” He pointed at her and scowled. “Need to get your head straightened out.”

“My head is on perfectly straight, thank you.” She flicked her hair over her shoulders—not so easy when cuffed.

“Yeah, right.” He filled a glass of water, set it near her, then released the Velcro on his stab vest.

She watched as he removed it and set it on a soft chair beside the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over darkness.

“What?” he asked, spotting her staring at him.

“You’re bigger now.”

“I was a boy back then.”

“I seem to remember you were all man in the bedroom.”

“That was nothing. A warm-up.”

She waggled her eyebrows. “I’m intrigued.”

“Don’t fucking mess with me, Ava, you’re in deeper than you know.”

His deep tone went straight to her core, fizzing between her legs and making her spine tingle. Griff was one hot cop, a man to take seriously, admire.

“So where’s your wife? What’s she going to say about me being here?”

“No wife.” He undid the top button of his dark shirt.

“Why not?”

“Who’d put up with the hours I’m working?”

“For the right man, most women.”

His lips flattened into a tight line.

“I need to pee.” She nodded at the hallway. “Can you take these off so I can go? Wasn’t there a door back there in the hallway? To a downstairs loo?”

“Yeah, very perceptive of you. But no, the cuffs stay.”

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