Page 12 of First Date: Divorce (Wyoming Marriage Association #1)

When Eric pushed open the shop door after parting from Kiernan, K.D. stood on one side of the counter and Mrs. Cavendish on the other. Between them sat a small pile of clothes and a larger pile of clothes.

“This is what we’re taking.” K.D. rested her hand on the small pile.

Mrs. Cavendish spotted him and smiled with more relief than if he’d been the cavalry, and she’d used her last bullet.

She addressed him. “Truly, Mr. Larkin, these pieces are entirely necessary for what you indicated.” She patted the larger pile.

He picked up K.D.’s pile and placed it atop Mrs. Cavendish’s. “We’ll take them all.”

“Eric.” He wouldn’t have ignored K.D.’s tone in a cop-citizen situation, but this wasn’t that, no matter how she pretended it was.

“All,” he repeated.

“Excellent, Mr. Larkin. In the end, she dresses beautifully and I believe you will be pleased.”

K.D. glared at the woman. The kind of glare that should have criminals quaking in their bad-guy boots, and irk high-class shop managers who already appeared frazzled beneath a calm veneer.

Good thing Mrs. Cavendish didn’t notice the look K.D. sent her. The older woman kept smiling at him, or possibly at the credit card he held out.

“I’m sure I will be pleased.” He smiled back, not breaking eye contact, so the store manager wouldn’t look toward K.D.

Mrs. Cavendish palmed the credit card without a hitch and turned to the register.

With her back safely to them, he wrapped a hand around K.D.’s elbow and steered her toward a far display.

“What about this, dear? Have you looked at things for fall?”

Though K.D.’s jaw worked and her arm under his hand felt tense enough to boing , she didn’t say a word until they were out of earshot. Even then, she kept her voice so low Mrs. Cavendish wouldn’t hear even the staccato rhythm of anger.

“ She dresses beautifully? What kind of crack is that? And in the end? Sounds like She cleans up well once you scrape the grime off her . Like I’m some horse she dug out of a mud pit and has been grooming all afternoon.

Or like I’m one of these mannequins — these dummies — whose only use is to hold up the clothes she chooses to put on it.

She dresses beautifully sure wasn’t her reaction to my real clothes.

You should have seen her face when I took off my shirt and she saw my—”

She clamped her mouth shut. A renewed glare descended. She started to aim it at him, stopped when she apparently saw something in his face that made her look bounce away. She spun free of his hold on her arm and took three jerky steps toward another display.

Mrs. Cavendish had seen her … what?

He could imagine.

Or out of what?

He could imagine that, too. Oh, yeah, he could imagine that.

At that moment, she stopped abruptly and tried to turn around. But she slammed into him. It wasn’t that hard of a collision, yet it knocked the breath out of him.

That surprised him … for about half a second, until several things clicked.

She’d recognized the implications of what she’d just said — and hadn’t said.

She’d recognized that he’d recognized the same things.

And, to top it off, the display she’d turned away from like a dumpster fire, featured an undergarment that dried his throat by where it wasn’t . It plunged from a nonexistent neck to well below the waist and slashed up high on each hip.

It was suggestive on a mannequin.

On a body like K.D.’s, it would go from suggestion to command.

Would she react that way to almost mentioning her underwear or coming face-to-unnaturally-pointed-breast with the mannequin barely wearing that — what did they call those things? Teddies? — if she wasn’t aware of him as a man?

Oh, yeah, and a final recognition — that his reaction didn’t come from the force of their collision, but from that momentary sensation of her softness against his chest and groin.

“What?” she abruptly demanded. Having backed up a step, she propped her hands on her hips. But that made her elbow brush the teddy-wearing mannequin’s thigh. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s that look for.”

“Wondering if you need anything else.” He gestured toward the mannequin beyond her shoulder. “That, maybe?”

“You have got to be—” She bit that off and darted her eyes toward the register where Mrs. Cavendish appeared to be wrapping up her labors. K.D.’s next words were heavy with the kind of restraint that couldn’t be good for the teeth she gnashed. “Thank you, dear . But no.”

“Ah, Mr. Larkin. If you’re ready…?” Mrs. Cavendish cooed from the register.

“We’re ready,” K.D. sidestepped him neatly.

“Pity,” he murmured as he followed her toward the register with a final glance at what little covered the mannequin. “A real pity.”

*

The quizzing continued on the drive back, though there were quiet stretches Pauline never would have allowed.

Into one of those, Eric asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“Hah. I said. Tal asked my sheriff, who asked me.”

“And…?”

“And I hope it will advance my career.”

“Because…?”

“Because I want to investigate. The sheriff won’t give me the chance. Moving somewhere else would mean starting over, which I’ve been thinking I’ll need to do. But with this, it might open the door to investigating.”

“In Cabot County or elsewhere?”

“Either way. Nothing ties me to Cabot County.”

“No relationship there?”

“No. What about you?”

One side of his mouth lifted. “Since you already know I’m not in a relationship, you must mean why I agreed to this gig.” He echoed her, “I said. Cully and Ellyn asked me.”

“And…?”

“And I wanted to do something to help the community, be part of it.”

“Because…?”

“Because Cully and Grif gave me the being-a-hermit-works-only-for-crabs lecture. And if you tell Pauline that, I’ll sue you for extreme personal injury.”

“Could you?”

“I could sure as heck try.”

She breathed out a short chuckle. “Don’t try. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“As yours are with me.”

She believed it.

*

Muttering again about his buying “unnecessary” clothes, K.D. refused his help taking the purchases upstairs to her room. She said she’d be down for their next study session.

Eric went in search of Pauline, finding her in his kitchen, apparently having tossed something in the garbage.

“What are you doing?” he asked mildly.

“Throwing out bananas.”

He came around the island. “Hey, I just bought those. Why would you throw them out?”

“This,” she said — not mildly, “is precisely the sort of thing that could trip you up and blow the whole thing.”

“Bananas?”

“K.D. hates them. Hates everything about them. Can’t stand to have them around.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I know it, because she told the crew at Far Hills, and they told me.”

Why didn’t she tell me?

Stupid. The question and the twinge.

They were strangers. Barely met.

They’d finish this and they’d still be strangers.

Then they’d go their separate ways.

Pauline wasn’t done. “Can’t stand to look at them, much less have someone eat one in front of her. Here she comes. Good thing you have me around to remind you—”

“No bananas. Got it.”

“And a lot more work.”

*

K.D. wasn’t sure she’d ever worked harder. Not this kind of work, anyway.

Thinking of likes and dislikes that were such an automatic part of her that she forgot them, writing them down, sharing them with Eric, then memorizing his.

And that was the easy part.

Because the other area they tackled centered on issues in their “marriage.”

After eating the takeout dinner Eric picked up in town, followed by cookies, they sat at the island listing ways they could disagree about topics Pauline labeled as: Having Kids, Trust, Communication, and Extended Family.

Pauline left. They kept working.

They’d agreed on how to present kids as a relationship problem — he wanted them, she didn’t — without much elaboration.

Trust and Communication would be mostly fictional since they both came out in favor of honesty, fidelity, and loyalty, while the smaller issues tied into having a day-to-day relationship. They’d have to wing those.

Extended Family turned out to be a bust.

He liked his and didn’t want to make them out to be bad guys even in this fictional scenario.

When she first said she didn’t have any extended family, he’d looked taken aback. After hearing her mother raised her alone, then married after K.D. left home and she didn’t really know the man, he accepted that.

K.D. met Mark Brown when she was home between college graduation and the academy.

She’d been fortunate to get in quickly. She’d also worked her tail off.

With studies, with volunteering to get recs from law enforcement, with physical training.

She’d kept it up in those weeks before the academy, too.

She’d noticed the guy dating her mom, but no reason to think he’d last. None of the others had.

So it shocked her when her mother called and said they were getting married and asked her to come to the wedding.

She’d swapped assignments around to get one day off, driving overnight to reach her hometown.

A quick shower and change of clothes and they were at the tiny chapel for the simple ceremony.

A few photos, a reception in the church basement, saying hello to a few of her mother’s co-workers and former neighbors K.D.

barely remembered, meeting Mark’s unprepossessing family, then back on the road, back to the academy.

Since then, she’d gone home for a couple awkward overnights.

Then persuaded her mother, instead, to drive partway to meet her for lunch while Mark worked.

She hoped that would get her mother to open up about being married to Mark beyond dutifully saying she was happy. But Janeece Hamilton Brown never did.

Not during those lunches. Certainly not during their phone calls with Mark lurking in the background.

K.D. didn’t include those details in what she told Eric.

Around ten, Eric stood, stretching his long frame. “Let’s take a break. Want ice cream?”

“That sounds good.”

He got a carton of butter pecan from the freezer. Without turning around from taking down two dishes, he asked, “Want a banana on top? I like mine like that.”

“No, thanks.” She switched sheets of paper, looking for the date he graduated from college. Why could she not remember that?

He thunked the filled bowls and a pair of spoons on the counter.

She glanced at them, then at him. “No banana?”

“No. There are no bananas left in my house. Pauline threw them out.”

She frowned slightly. “I don’t— Oh. Because of me? There’s no reason you shouldn’t—”

“I don’t give a damn about having bananas in the house or not. But you didn’t tell me. Didn’t even include it on your list.”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“You thought to tell everybody at Far Hills about it, which then found its way to Pauline. It’s exactly the sort of thing that could trip us up. A food allergy—”

“I did not tell everybody at Far Hills. I happened to mention it in the course of a conversation. And I’m not allergic. I just don’t like them.”

“More than that if you get sick on them. You could blow this whole thing if you keep holding back parts of yourself.”

Her building irritation evaporated.

…if you keep holding back parts of yourself.

Was that what his ex-wife did? A reasonable conclusion from fragments he’d let fall.

She touched his arm below his rolled-back sleeve, surprising herself.

Immediately, she pulled her hand back. Not fast enough, though, to miss the warmth of his skin over solid muscle.

“We can’t possibly tell each other everything,” she said quickly. “We can only try to hit the highlights. We will trip up. We should focus on covering up on the fly when there’s a slip. I’d even eat a banana if I had to.”

His expression eased. “You’re right. We can’t tell each other everything, especially not in this short time. But if we can avoid things we know would trip us up—”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t angling for an apology.”

“Sorry— God, I hate that — saying sorry automatically. My mother does that. All the time.”

She stopped abruptly.

Keep it close to the truth , Tal Bennett had said, and she had. Too close.

Eric rested his warm hand on her forearm. As brief as her touch, yet …

“What are you worried about, K.D.?”

Bananas are one thing, but I shouldn’t have let my mother slip into this .

Wasn’t telling him that, either.

The case. That’s what she needed to focus on.

“If that was our first fight, we won’t convince anyone we need marriage counseling. These—” She gestured toward the pad where Pauline had listed problems. “—are generic. Will they accept us as a couple in trouble if we come in with these?”

He chuckled shortly. “I suspect that if it weren’t for generic issues, marriage counselors would go out of business. Okay, back to work.”

Only later, in bed, going over the growing pile of material again, did another thought surface:

Eric had recognized she’d been worried.