“Good luck!” Deb called with the amount of joyful enthusiasm she usually reserved for cat-in-tree rescue runs. I shot her a smile as the front door swung closed behind me.
As I drove, I allowed my mind to travel back to the kiss of the night before, remembering how, even in her anger, or maybe especially in her anger, she’d been so incredibly beautiful my heart had nearly stopped. Her cheeks had been flushed, those untamed curls bouncing around her face. I’d been both mesmerized and guilt-stricken.
I’d been an ass. It came easily to me.
And I’d been an ass because I’d been jealous. Jealous that she was there for Gage. There to try to impress Gage, to get him to notice her. Of course, I couldn’t tell her that. I didn’t even completely understand it myself.
We shouldn’t.
I tapped at the steering wheel, considering the knowledge that she was also clearly interested in Gage. Jealousy wasn’t exactly a novelty in my repertoire of emotions. Truth be told, maybe I’d spent much of my life being jealous. But this had felt different . . . I didn’t know how it had felt different, but it had.
Was I being petty? I didn’t want to be petty when it came to Haven. I wanted to be better than that.
Why?
I wasn’t sure.
But that kiss. The kiss had shaken me. I was still shaken.
I was a thirty-two-year-old man who was far from a virgin and . . . God, I’d had no idea a kiss could be like that. If we’d been anywhere other than Gage’s patio during a party where anyone might have seen us, I’d have tried to take it further. Undress her. Feel her extremely soft skin against mine. Taste her everywhere. Why? Because I was turned on, and even though maybe Haven wasn’t the sort of woman I normally went for, she’d ticked every box in that dress.
I adjusted myself in my seat, a flush of hot arousal at the thought of getting Haven naked and beneath me making me feel in control again.
This, this feeling I could identify and understand, even if I’d thought twice about acting on it once my blood had cooled and we’d arrived back at the B&B the night before.
I still felt shaky on why I was on a plant rescue mission, other than that I owed her. Again, I’d been an ass. I’d set her up. I’d upset her. In a way that’d made me want to simultaneously comfort and distract her from whatever was happening in that head of hers. She’d been spiraling.
In any case, I’d been the cause of her distress, and I wanted to make it up to her.
Marc Hobbs and his wife, Lynn, had a cottage right on the lake near the one Bree had rented when she first visited Pelion. I knocked on their front door and removed my hat when Lynn opened it. “Oh, Chief Hale, come in. I saw the flyer at the grocery store this morning and texted Marc to call the office right away. I didn’t realize they belonged to someone else when I picked them up.” She eyed me nervously.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Mrs. Hobbs. It was just a misunderstanding. But the plants were important to the citizen who, er, was forced to abandon them due to circumstances beyond her control, and the police department takes the concerns of all its citizens seriously and steps in where we’re able and time allows.”
“It just melts my heart the way the Pelion Police Department looks out for its citizens, in matters both big and small. I tell Marc all the time, I say, Marc, we are lucky to be part of this lovely community. The wonders your brother has made happen since . . . well . . . since—”
“I agree,” I said softly, knowing the color creeping up her neck had to do with the fact that she’d been about to bring up my mother and how much better the town ran now that Victoria Hale and her selfish motives had moved three towns away.
“I do have some bad news though,” she said, hesitantly. “You see, I had good intentions but apparently, I just don’t have much of a green thumb. Those plants might have done better if I’d just left them on the side of the road and let the small amount of rain we’ve had do its thing.”
She led me to the screened-in porch off the back of the house. Five dehydrated, miserable-looking plants sat near the window, staring longingly out at the water beyond.
Ten minutes later, the plants stuffed in my backseat, a trail of leaves leading from the Hobbs’s front door to my cruiser, I waved out my window, peeling off down the street. “Stay with me, guys,” I told the plants.
I picked up my cell phone and called Haven’s number.
“Chief Hale,” she said sweetly.
“Are you home?”
Home. Had I really started thinking of The Yellow Trellis Inn as home?
“Uh, yes. Why?”
“Meet me out front,” I demanded. “And bring . . .” My mind searched for the right apparatus or product or tool that might help these sorry suckers. “Bring the hose!” I shouted.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Haven
The screen door swung closed behind me as I stepped outside the house. I frowned in confusion, squinting down the road as I waited to see Travis’s cruiser.
What in the world was he up to?
Bring the hose?
I glanced back at the house, spotting a wound-up hose near the wide front steps. With a huff, I walked back to it, unwound it, and squatted down next to the spigot.
“What’s going on?” Betty asked, her tone laced with concern as she stood on the porch, watching me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Travis just told me to be ready with the hose.”
“Oh dear.” But she looked more excited than nervous now.
“What’s happening?” Burt asked, his walking stick clicking on the wood of the porch as he came up beside Betty.
“I don’t know, but I’ll describe the scene as it . . . as it . . .”
“Happens,” Burt said quietly.
“No, no . . .”
“Unfolds.”
“No . . .”
“Occurs.”
“Exactly,” Betty said.
A car appeared in the distance, turning onto the road that led to the B&B and coming to a skidding halt in the driveway.
Travis jumped out of the cruiser, throwing the back door open and removing the saddest-looking plant I’d probably ever seen. I gasped, turning the water on with a flick of my wrist and dragging the running hose to where he stood. “Oh my God!” I said, gasping and then laughing. “You found them? You found them?”
“Yes!” he called, his head back in the cruiser as he removed another plant, setting it next to the first one. “Hurry! They might only have minutes left.”
I laughed again, but got right to work moving the hose back and forth over their roots and leaves, giving them the drink they so obviously needed, crooning to them while I did.
As Travis shut the doors of his cruiser, I lifted the hose too quickly and accidentally shot a stream of water in his face. “Eek,” I said, lowering it and soaking the front of his uniform.
He brought his hands up in defense, running one back through his saturated hair, laughing suddenly, water droplets flying out around him.
I dropped my arm, water pooling at my feet as I stared at him, laughing proudly in front of the plants he’d rescued. For me.
My heart constricted. My muscles felt heavy. It made me feel both energized and . . . afraid.