Hot Date. Amy Garvey

too much time alone, trying to figure out how she could make the little bit of money she still had pay for everything she needed to go into business for herself. And no one but Nick had come into the shop since last Friday, which was trouble, because that made it all too easy to find herself avoiding the disaster that was her bank account and her life and throwing herself into the disaster that was the store.

      He was still staring at her, waiting for an answer. “What?” she said, hoping the irritation in her tone would scare him away. “So I took down the wallpaper. I’m not breaking any laws, as far as I know.”

      He sighed and shook his head, running a hand over his closely cropped hair. “Not yet,” he said darkly, and pushed past to shake the ladder. “This thing could qualify as an antique, though. Isn’t there a decent ladder downstairs?”

      “I’m not going to fall off it, Nick.” Rolling her eyes, she bent down to gather the shredded wallpaper into a plastic garbage bag. “What are you doing here, anyway? Aside from spreading doom, I mean.”

      He leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. Buttery sunlight through the window fell on his bare forearm, turning the fine hairs there to dark gold.

      Dark gold. Please. It was just hair. Man hair. Nick’s man hair. She wasn’t tempted to touch it. Not at all. She had some sense left, after all. The last thing she needed was a complication shaped like a…big, strong, sexy man. She restrained the urge to groan in frustration and looked away to stuff more discarded wallpaper into the bag.

      “Guess who I found at my mother’s house this morning,” he said.

      “Jimmy Hoffa?”

      He ignored that. “Your father, Grace.”

      She twirled the garbage bag before affixing a twist tie. “My father what?”

      “Was at my mother’s house. This morning.” He stared at her, waiting for a response.

      She was waiting for the rest of the story. When it didn’t come, she laughed. “Am I missing the punch line? What’s wrong with that?”

      “They were flirting,” he said incredulously. “Laughing. Touching.”

      She stopped to picture that, her serious, shy dad and Nick’s mom, with her gentle smile and matching sweater sets. “Touching? Really?”

      “Well, no, they weren’t…touching,” Nick retorted. “Not like that. But still, Grace, think about it.”

      “Think about what?” she said, and carried the trash bag back to the kitchen. Nick followed, his handcuffs rattling on his belt. “They’re adults, Nick. Adults who have been alone too long, if you ask me. To tell you the truth, now that I think about it, I’m surprised this didn’t happen earlier.”

      She set the bag down in the mud room just off the kitchen and turned around to find Nick gaping at her.

      “Well, it’s true,” she said, waving him into an empty chair at the table, which was still cluttered with the remains of her morning coffee. “Just because you’re not interested in a relationship doesn’t mean your mother isn’t.”

      “What?”

      There went that vein again. He really needed to have his blood pressure checked, Grace thought, dragging her gaze away from it to stare at the tabletop. Why on earth had she said that? Nick’s love life was none of her business.

      But then, their parents’ love lives weren’t exactly his business either.

      “I think it’s sweet,” she said quickly, before he exploded at her. “My dad and your mom, I mean. Think of the possibilities! I like that. It’s spring, Nick. It’s time for new things to grow.”

      He snorted, and she looked up to see him shaking his head. “Speaking of growing, how exactly are you planning to support yourself? You can’t live with Toby forever, you know.”

      As if she needed another reminder. She got up from the table irritably. “I’m working on it,” she told him, and grabbed up the raspberry jam she’d used, to her disappointment, on a corn muffin that morning. “I’m just trying to figure out how to cover expenses.”

      Nick shook his head. “You’ve got some bare earth to cover out front or Toby is going to have your head.”

      “It’ll get done,” she said. “Why are you so interested, anyway? I can take care of myself.”

      “Yeah, well, you’re doing a bang-up job so far,” he muttered, and stood up to lean against the back of the chair. “Are you really sure you want to do this, Grace? Start over from scratch?”

      Not again. Why did everyone insist on believing that they knew what she should be doing with her life better than she did? She put away the jam and shut the refrigerator door with more force than necessary.

      “I am absolutely sure, Nick,” she snapped. “Are you sure you want to be a cop? Are you sure you want to live in Wrightsville? Are you sure you should be cutting your hair like that?”

      He narrowed those big hazel eyes at her. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

      “That’s not the point!”

      “That’s for sure!”

      They glared at each other for a minute across the wide pine table, with the fridge humming in the background and the old mantel clock on the counter ticking like a heart.

      Standoff, Grace thought, stiffening her spine as she glowered at him. They’d done this so many times before. When she stole the boys’ G.I. Joes and married them to her Barbies. When Nick found her carrying an abandoned baby bunny into the house. When she’d decided to find out what a bottle of Michelob tasted like just hours before the eighth grade dance.

      He was good, she had to admit—his gaze never faltered, and the cocky tilt to one of his eyebrows made her itch to reach up and smack it back into place.

      “What do you want me to say?” she finally demanded, hands on her hips. “Why do you even care what I do?”

      He looked as though she’d slapped him. “That’s low, Grace. I’ve known you forever. And I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

      She rolled her eyes. “Well, it’s too late for that.” She softened when he lowered his gaze. The rigid set of his jaw was a rebuke. “You can’t protect everyone, Nick. Not all the time, not from everything. This is a chance for me to do something right, for once. I just need a little time. I need…”

      She couldn’t finish the sentence. Not with Nick looking at her again, dubious and immovable as always. I need someone to believe in me, she thought instead, and was surprised at how much it mattered.

      And at how much, she suddenly realized, she wanted Nick, her childhood nemesis, to be that someone. Or at least one of them.

      The crackle of Nick’s radio startled her. He took the thing off his belt and turned around to answer it. Everything about him changed in that moment—suddenly he was completely alert, focused, and ready to go.

      Like a lion, she thought, with a gazelle on the horizon. All brain, muscle, and instinct. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he growled at her.

      What was absolutely shocking was how much she suddenly wanted to hear him do just that.

      “Traffic assistance needed at Bryant Farm and Hilltop Roads,” said a female voice. “Vehicle accident reported.”

      “Officer responding,” he said into the radio, and turned back to Grace. “I have to go.”

      She nodded at him without a word.

      And then tried to convince herself she wasn’t appreciating the way his uniform pants fit so gorgeously over his ass as he walked away.

      Charlie Costello, it turned out, had a really nice ass.

      Not that Toby was staring or anything.