“Thanks.” I took the beer bottle from Presley.
“You’re welcome.” She sat in the chaise lounge by my side, the hinges squeaking as she kicked her feet up.
“This is a nice yard.” I tipped the top of my bottle toward her lawn, then took a swig.
The grass was green and lush, a carpet as nice as some fairways I’d played at golf resorts. It was almost out of place here in this little neighborhood. Or would have been if her other neighbor’s yard weren’t exactly the same. There was no fence back here, and the grass flowed in a green wave across property lines. Except the green of my lawn wasn’t nearly as brilliant.
“My neighbor on the other side owns a small landscaping company,” she said. “We trade. I do his bookkeeping and he takes care of my yard.”
“Ah.” Tomorrow I’d call Juno and have her hire the guy.
We drank our beers, listening to the subtle noises around the block. A kid laughed. A lawn mower rumbled. Birds chirped. Our two chairs were the only thing Presley had on the square deck that jutted out from the sliding glass door off her dining room.
The evening was warm, and though she’d positioned the chairs in a patch of shade, I was grateful for my white linen shirt and pair of cargo shorts.
Presley was wearing a pair of shorts that, for once, didn’t need a belt to keep them on her frame. They were black and fit tight to the curves of her hips, exposing those mouthwatering, trim legs and golden skin. When I’d spotted her beside her Jeep earlier, my eyes had zeroed in on her legs, stirring my dick to life.
Her shirt was baggy over the shorts, more like a man’s T-shirt than the normally tight tops she wore. If it hadn’t had a vintage pink and orange flower on the front, I would have worried the shirt was her ex’s. She’d tied it in a knot at her side, showing the smallest triangle of skin above the waistband of those shorts.
I was drooling into my beer, feeling like a lucky son of a bitch that I’d come home at just the right moment to catch her. I still wasn’t sure how I’d scored a pizza invitation, but I was taking it.
“It’s your birthday.”
Presley nodded. “Yep.”
“No big plans or a party with your friends?”
“I don’t celebrate my birthday.” Her tone was crisp and cool, that subject closed.
She’d told me it was her birthday but she didn’t want to talk about it. Interesting. I’d play along.
At this point, I wasn’t going to push anything that might make her kick me off her deck. After she’d run out of Stockyard’s last night, I’d figured she was done with me for good.
Dacia’s stunt had been typical, something I should have expected. She’d seen the desire I had for Presley and, since she’d been having a rough day, decided to torment someone else.
As I’d eaten my burger and she’d twirled a french fry in a dollop of ketchup, never actually eating the damn thing, I’d told her that if she ever put her mouth on me again, I’d blacklist her from my social circles and do everything in my power to get her fired from Dark Paradise.
That had shut her up.
Dacia might be a snake, but she wasn’t dumb. She knew I had a broad network of connections in this industry and I was not fucking around.
“Sorry about last night,” I said.
Presley shrugged. “For what?”
“For Dacia.”
“It’s fine.” She took a drink.
I shifted so I could look at her square on. “There’s nothing between Dacia and me. She saw the way I looked at you and decided to play a game.”
“Okay.” Presley kept her eyes forward, but the corner of her mouth lifted.
One of these days, I’d do something to make her smile and laugh. She’d be gorgeous, smiling with no walls in place. “So what was the deal with Leo?”
She sighed, bringing her knees up to her chest. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got nothing to do tonight.”
Presley stayed quiet, something I was learning didn’t necessarily mean she was shutting me out. She was simply careful with her words and cautious with her trust. I respected that. I didn’t trust many with the details of my past either.
“I was engaged,” she said, letting the words hang in the summer air. “Jeremiah decided to break it off with me on our wedding day by forgetting to show up at the ceremony.”
I winced. Leo had told me as much yesterday, but it hurt to hear the pain and humiliation in her own voice. And it still made no sense. Who would leave Presley? What kind of an asshole would break up with someone on their wedding day? What kind of prick didn’t turn up for her? “And Leo settled the score with his fists.”
She nodded. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but yeah.”
“Is there, um . . . something with you and Leo?”
“No. Definitely not.” She barked a laugh. “He’s the annoying older brother I never had.”
The air rushed from my lungs. Thank fuck. That hug had been bothering me since yesterday morning. It had seemed intimate, but now that I replayed it again, maybe I’d read too much into it. Maybe it had been a tight hug between friends. Maybe it looked like that when I hugged my sisters too.
“Can I admit that I was jealous yesterday?”
The color rose in her cheeks. “Can I admit I was jealous too?”
My gaze dropped to her pink lips. My tongue wagged behind my teeth, desperately wanting to be set free, but I swallowed hard and tore my eyes away.
This woman was testing the limits of my restraint.
This woman might push me over the edge.
“How was your beer with Chief Rosen?” Presley asked.
“Fun.” I grinned. “He’s a good guy, and I appreciate him humoring me. He told me some interesting stories about Clifton Forge and being a cop here. It was kind of like old times. Turns out, some idiots are just as stupid in Montana as they are in California.”
“Do you ever miss being a cop?”
“Some days,” I admitted. “It was a stressful job, but rewarding. I miss feeling like I do a little bit of good every day.”
I tried to make up for my lack of civil service through donations. Every year I gave money to different inner-city charities, especially those that helped kids.
“What was the best day you had as a cop?” Presley asked.
“The best day? Easy. The day of the school bus.”
“Really?” She sat up straighter and shifted so her knees were aimed my way. “I would have thought it was the hardest.”
“It was also the worst day. I’ll never forget all those crying faces. Seeing that guy with the gun. Those kids . . .” That day, I’d learned what true fear looked like. It had nearly sent me to my knees.
Her eyebrows came together. “Then how was it the best?”
“They lived.”
Understanding dawned on her face and she reached over, placing her hand on my forearm for the briefest touch.
Those kids might have been traumatized, but they were alive. Seventeen lights shining in the world.
“I hear from them sometimes. Or their parents. I have a secret Instagram account under a fake name, and I follow most of them.” Once I’d made my first million, I’d also set aside money to fund their educations. If there was a way I could help them succeed in life, I’d do what I could.
“What happened that day? Can you talk about it? It’s fine if you don’t want to. I can’t imagine it’s easy to relive.”
“It’s okay.” I hadn’t spoken of that day in years, but I had this overwhelming urge to confide in Presley, maybe because I trusted her with my secrets.
I trusted so few people, and it didn’t come naturally.
Presley was . . . different. Special. I looked at her and saw a safe harbor. A vault. She guarded the people at the garage so fiercely that I wanted a sliver of that loyalty too. And she was asking because she wanted to hear it from me, from my perspective.
Most people assumed they knew the whole story from the news. They made assumptions about how it had gone down. So rarely did anyone ask for my point of view.
The last time I’d spoken of it had been with one of my sisters. Becca had wanted to know the details about six months after I’d resigned from the force. Just like Matine and Astrid, she thought it was why I’d quit.
Only Mom, Dad and I knew the truth.
The day I’d quit was also the last day I’d spoken to my father. Something else my sisters were sure had to do with the bus.
“It was just a normal day,” I said. “Started my shift early, right as the sun was coming up. I was on patrol that day and had a new partner, Margaret. It was her second year and she’d just transferred to my precinct. I was the senior officer but we were both young. Want to hear something stupid?”
“Sure.”
“Promise not to judge me too harshly?”
“Oh my God,” Presley groaned. “Did you sleep with your partner?”
“No.” I laughed. “I most definitely did not sleep with Margaret. She was—is—beautiful, but we were definitely not attracted to each other.”
“Okay, so what am I going to judge you for?”
“I was glad to be paired with a female officer because I thought I’d get to show her the ropes. That I was already superior because I was a guy.”
“Yeah.” Presley frowned. “I’m judging you.”
“As you should.” I lifted a hand. “In my defense, I was a closed-minded idiot. But I was an idiot who learned. Margaret taught me a lot that morning, and after the school bus, I started to see things differently. I saw my sisters differently. My mom too. I opened my ears and listened to their opinions, not assuming mine were already right.”
Because Margaret was strong and sure. Because Margaret was brave and balanced. Because Margaret had saved those kids. And because I admired her.
“Still judging me?” I asked.
“A little.” Presley smirked. Some of those qualities I saw in Margaret were staring back at me with vivid blue eyes.
“Fair enough.” I chuckled. “I hired mostly women after quitting the force. My assistant, my agent and my manager are women. Before you ask, I didn’t hire them because they were women. I hired them because they were the best, and I think as a younger man, I wouldn’t have given their résumés a chance. I’m not proud of it but . . . I’m man enough to admit my flaws.”
“Okay, you’re forgiven.” She took a drink of her beer. “So what happened that day on the bus?”
“Margaret and I were driving around. It was sunny and hot already, even in the morning. That’s how I knew something was wrong on that bus. Every window was up. Those buses don’t have air conditioning, so the kids always have their windows down. Kids see a cop car, normally they wave out the windows, especially if they’re younger. You drive by and see all these little fingers sticking out.”
“Makes sense. Did you pull it over?”
“No, it was parked in the lot of a grocery store. Another thing that seemed strange. Full buses don’t park until they’re at school. I was driving and eased off the gas for a long look. This guy was standing beside the driver. The driver had his hands on the wheel, eyes forward. And the guy standing was dressed completely in black, with a coat and hat. On a hot day in that bus without the windows down, he’d be sweating bullets. The whole thing was off, so I slowed when on any other day I probably would have kept driving.”
My gut had been screaming.
“We took another lap around the block and I pulled into the grocery store’s lot from the other end, coming at the bus from a different angle. That’s when I saw it.”
“The gun?”
I nodded. “An assault rifle. We learned later he had a handgun too.”
“What did he want, the guy?”
“To this day, I don’t know. The driver said the guy had come out of nowhere on his last pickup. One of the kids had climbed up the steps, smiled and walked down the aisle. The driver watched the kid in the mirror as he took his seat. Then when the driver went to shut the door, the guy was just . . . there. He’d been waiting. Came onto the bus, yelled at the kids to shut up and close their windows. Then he ordered the driver to drive through town. Had him stop in the parking lot. The whole time, he was mumbling this crazy shit about saving the kids from themselves. Saving them from society.”
“He was crazy.”
“He was something. There was no connection to that bus driver or any of the kids other than he lived in the neighborhood where that route went. If there was more to it, we’ll never know.”
“He’s dead?”
I nodded. “He shot Margaret. I shot him.”
Presley gasped. “Did she—”
“She’s alive. He hit her in the shoulder.”
“Thank God.” Her frame relaxed. “How did it happen?”
“Fast. I called for backup and parked in the middle of a bunch of cars, hoping he wouldn’t see the cruiser. We got out with weapons drawn. Margaret went to the back of the bus as I went to the front. He didn’t see either of us. We were planning on waiting until SWAT arrived, but then everything went to shit. One of the kids opened the emergency hatch. And then . . . it was over. Maybe thirty seconds and it was done.”
I’d seen the entire thing from my position. The kid spotted Margaret from his seat at the rear and ducked low. I had already been moving at that point, dodging cars to get closer. When the hatch door opened, I was running full tilt toward the front window.
“The back opened and the guy went crazy. He started screaming loud enough that I could hear it outside. He lifted his gun, aimed it at a kid. I screamed something, hoping I’d get his attention. I figured if he saw me, he’d shoot me instead of a kid.”
My feet had felt like cement blocks. The driver noticed me first, then a couple kids in the front. They bent low, leaning past the seat in front of them, their faces twisted in fear.
To this day, I saw them at times. Small faces covered in blood.
“I fired at the same second he did. I shot him right through the glass. Three bullets. That was it. Boom. Boom. Boom. One hit him in the back of the head, the other two his spine. Blood and brain matter everywhere.”
Presley flinched.
“Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so graphic.”
She waved it off. “I’m not scared of some blood. I just . . . that’s insane.”
“The driver opened the door for me. I got in and expected to hear kids crying and screaming, but it was silent. They’d all huddled down in their seats, and it wasn’t until I walked down the aisle they began to look up. Seventeen terrified faces all looking at me. I-I didn’t know what to do with them.”
“But Margaret did,” Presley guessed.
“She saw me frozen and immediately took over. She wiped the kids’ faces clean with her shirtsleeves. She helped me unload every one of those kids from the back and was calm the whole time. Touched each kid, hugged the ones who needed it. I didn’t even realize she’d been shot until the bus was empty. She didn’t say a word.”
It wasn’t until another police car arrived that the kids started crying. Then it was deafening wails as they clung to Margaret and me.
“Wow.”
I nodded. “Like I said, it was the best day because they all lived. And the worst day too.”
“I read an article about it, after you got to town.”
I raised a teasing eyebrow. “You googled me?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “Sorry. I was hoping it would make me dislike you.”
“Did it?”
“You’re drinking my beer and I gave you the good chair.”
I chuckled. “Touché.”
“There was no mention of Margaret. If you hadn’t told me about her, I would have thought you saved those kids yourself.”
“The official press release included both of our names, but the mainstream media latched on to me. Mostly because some asshole from the grocery store took a bunch of pictures with me and the kids and sold them to the tabloids. Margaret had already been loaded into the ambulance.”
“That’s unfair.”
“I thought so too, but she was actually glad for it. She didn’t want any part of the publicity. Our commanding officer asked if we’d make a statement, and she told him no, so I did it all. She doesn’t get much credit for that day.”
“Sounds like she didn’t want it.”
“True. I might have killed the guy, but she was the hero.”
“You both are.”
“I’m no hero. I just play one on TV.” I stole Presley’s words, hoping to lighten the mood, but her expression remained serious. “I did what every other cop in my position would have done. What most do every single day.”
Then I’d quit.
I was no hero. I was a selfish, greedy coward.
“Did you have a hard time taking a life?” she asked.
“No.” There was no hesitation in that answer. “Never.”
“So why did you quit?”
Why? That was a whole other story, one I wasn’t ready to tell. But I’d explain when. “I went into SWAT training after that and joined a team, but the media were still following me around. The paparazzi could make a buck from my pictures so they took it. An agent tracked me down and asked if I’d ever thought of making a movie. One thing led to another and I had this contract in front of me for half a million dollars.”
“You were a sensation.”
“He wanted to exploit the situation and I let him.” Thanks to some lucky breaks and the fact that I had talent, I’d ridden that wave to the top. “I wish I could say I had a noble reason for quitting, but I don’t.”
“You did it for the money.” Presley’s tone wasn’t judgmental, more matter-of-fact.
“I’m still doing it for the money. This money, it’s . . . it’s life-changing money. It’s legacy money. My kids won’t have to live on ramen noodles or peanut butter sandwiches when police department budgets get cut. My parents don’t have to worry about retirement. My sisters and their husbands won’t go into debt paying for my nieces to go to college.”
“I think working for your family is a fairly noble cause, Shaw.”
“I’ve always felt like a sellout.”
My old squad had teased me about it after that first movie. They didn’t know the whole reason for me leaving, neither did Presley, but the money had been a major factor. Their teasing had felt more like accusations than jokes.
I bet that new car rides smoother than my Honda.
It only took me twenty minutes to get here from the station. How was traffic from Malibu?
Surprised you can even stomach the cheap beer.
“You’re not a sellout.” Presley’s hand was on my arm again, sparking desire and soothing worry with a single touch. Then her hand was gone, and I wanted it back. “I’m going to go order pizza. Want another beer?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
She stood and walked away, her perfect ass encased in those shorts. I savored the natural sway of her hips, drinking in the chance to stare before she disappeared inside.
The warm air filled my lungs and a lightness settled in my chest, the weight of the past drifting away. I hadn’t talked much about that time, maybe because there hadn’t been a person around I’d trusted to listen.
Presley had my trust. I wasn’t sure why, but my gut said she deserved it. She’d guard it fiercely.
I stood from the “good” chair and followed Presley inside.
She’d just hung up the phone when I found her in the kitchen. “I forgot to ask what kind of pizza you like.”
“I’m not picky.” I stood against the counter beside her, our shoulders nearly touching. “And it’s your birthday.”
Leaning closer, I let my elbow brush the skin of her forearm.
Presley darted for the fridge before the touch lingered, pulling out two more beer bottles. She handed one to me and took up a rigid stance three feet away. “We should be able to hear the doorbell from outside.”
Except I didn’t want to go outside. I put my beer on the counter and stepped into her space. If she really wanted to go, she could sidestep me and leave the kitchen, but she didn’t try to make another escape.
Her gaze stayed locked on mine as I shuffled her backward until her tailbone was pressed against the counter. “What are you doing?”
“Something I’ve wanted to do for weeks.” I lifted a hand and ran my knuckles down the curve of her cheek. I bent low, my mouth hovering above hers. If I left Clifton Forge without one taste of Presley Marks, I’d regret it for decades. “What would you say if I asked to kiss you?”
Her eyes darted to my lips.
“What would you say?” I repeated.
Presley’s lashes lifted, those blue eyes sparkling. Then, on an exhale, she whispered, “Yes.”
I crushed my lips to hers, not giving her a chance to rescind. Then I pinned her to me, wrapping her petite frame in my arms and holding her close.
She sank into me, her soft lips gentle under mine, hesitant at first. Cautious. Then it was like she said fuck it, because she dropped any pretense and kissed me within an inch of my life.
The hold I had on her was nothing compared to the way she gripped me with her free hand, hauling me down by my shirt. Her cold bottle of beer between us pressed into my abs. She licked the seam of my lips, demanding entrance, and when it slid against mine, I swallowed her moan. Or was it mine? With the licking and the tangling and the heat—holy shit, the heat—the world around us disappeared. There was only me and her and this inferno. There was only her fresh, citrus scent tinted with the sweetness of vanilla.
My blood thundered in my ears. My head was dizzy. This kiss was likely going to make my brain combust but I dove in deeper, shuffling my legs closer and pressing my arousal into her hip.
It was her gasp I swallowed that time.
Then she was gone, just when it was starting to shift from a kiss to foreplay. She ripped her lips away, planted her palm against my heart and shoved me onto my heels.
“Sorry.” I swiped a hand over my wet lips. “I got carried away.”
“No, it’s—” She shook her head and dried her own mouth before burying her face in her hands.
Son of a bitch. Was she going to cry? Maybe she was thinking about her ex. Was it too soon since the failed wedding?
One day, maybe I’d remember that Presley rarely did what I expected. Her hands fell away and she burst out laughing. The smile I’d hoped for on the deck, that carefree, unguarded laughter, made my knees weak.
There she was. The wall was gone and it was just her. Breathtaking. Real. A beautiful, magnetic woman, and I couldn’t look away.
Presley pulled herself together, her musical laugh ended too soon, but the smile stayed. “That was . . . wow.”
My heart dropped from my throat. Wow. Wow was good. “Wow, yourself, woman. I’ll need a cold shower later.”
She giggled. “Someday, years from now, I’m going to remember that time the gorgeous movie star kissed the hell out of me in my kitchen on my birthday.”
And any time I thought of Montana, I’d remember the woman with eyes bluer than the big sky. Or maybe I’d just think of her, no trigger needed.
Maybe when it was time to go, there’d be no leaving her behind.