Love in a Small Town (Pine Harbour Book 1) Read Free Page B

She was going to answer the door naked.
    But just as she talked herself into something totally foolish, he saved her from herself. He winced, and she felt the air around them drop five degrees. “I can’t come over tonight. I have to work.” His voice had a desperate edge to it, one with which she was all too familiar. “I’ll come to you as soon as we’re done.”
    Same old promise. She sagged against the tree, letting him go in more ways than one.  “No.” He held her as she lowered her legs to the ground. She couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to see the look on his face. “I don’t want to re-hash that argument. I’m sorry.”
    She pushed past him and walked out of the woods. The pulsing pain in her chest wasn’t enough to make her turn around and take one last look. What she wanted—truly, deeply wanted—wasn’t on the table. Entertaining the lingering attraction between them would just cloud that reality. 
     
    — — 
     
    Rafe should have seen that coming. Foresight had always been his downfall with Liv. She wanted him to be perfect, and he was so far from that it wasn’t funny.
    She wasn’t wrong about him prioritizing work over their relationship. He just didn’t see any other way to be a cop and a soldier. Duty called, all the fucking time.
    He loped after her, slowing to a walk when he caught up. He kept a safe three feet between them and waited for her to speak.
    “Here’s your sweatshirt,” she said quietly, handing it over. Still not looking at him. “We should talk. Really talk. No more of…” she pointed to the woods behind them. “Whatever that was.”
    “I’m free on Sunday.” Two long days away. He wanted to promise tomorrow, but knew he couldn’t. Who knew how long the raid and all the associated statements, evidence collection and paperwork would take?
    “Are you going to your mom’s for dinner?”
    “Nah.” That stopped being fun the day he’d left Olivia. He showed up for command performances but the weekly thing was too painful.
    “You want me to feed you?” Her words were…not quite reluctant, but definitely not loaded with suggestion. He looked at her in surprise and she shrugged. “A peace offering.”
    “You don’t have anything to make up to me, Liv.”
    Her lips twisted into a sad smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “We can talk on Sunday. I have to get back to work.”
    He rolled those words over and over in his head as he drove to the small, three-story apartment building that he now called home. Thought about them as he took some melatonin, darkened his room and forced himself to sleep. They were the first thing on his mind when his alarm told him it was time to get up and, fifteen hours later when he dropped back into the exact same spot, he still hadn’t made any more sense of them. 
    In between he hadn’t thought of Liv much, or her words, because that was how he pretended the dangers he faced every day at work couldn’t touch her. That the long stretch of wild lake shore on the peninsula wasn’t prime drug-trafficking territory and he hadn’t spent the last handful of hours waiting for a transfer bus to take some grower peons to the county jail. It was a drop in the bucket. Last night’s bust hadn’t netted any of the bosses—their goal in moving it up three days.
    It was possible that all three grow-ops that had been hit at once in a coordinated sting just happened to only have recent hires on site. More likely was the extraordinarily unsettling possibility that they’d been tipped off. And with only twelve hours’ notice, that narrowed the pool of potential turncoats to the officers involved and a limited number of support staff. All trusted.
    When they’d returned to the detachment office, Dean Foster had thrown a chair across the room. Rafe couldn’t blame him—and while Dean had been letting loose in a rare tantrum of epic proportions, Rafe had quietly been watching the room.
    It wasn’t necessarily in their house. Three