Page 39 of Perfectly Matched: Harbor Falls Romance Collection

Chris sat hunched over his coffee cup, letting the steamy aroma drift to his nostrils. He inhaled long and deep, taking in the dark roast blend he started every morning with at Sugar High on Main. The ripples in the hot beverage swirled as he stirred in another spoon of sugar.

It was his second cup and he needed the high-octane java jolt this morning, complete with extra sugar. Having slept barely for several nights now, he knew he would need all the help he could get today to stay alert and coherent.

Lifting the cup to his lips, he slammed back the remainder and set the over-sized mug on the table with a clatter.

“Refill?”

“Yup.”

He glanced up at Sydney Hart with a grimace. She smiled wide and filled him right back up.

“Long night?”

she teased.

“Might say.”

He hunched over again and pulled his mug and the sugar bowl toward him.

Sydney snickered.

“Hm. Sorry you were up all night, Chris.”

He ignored the emphasis on the word up. She sat the carafe on the table and glanced out over the street in front of the shop.

“Next time tell Katie you need your sleep. Otherwise, you are grumpy as hell in the morning. After all, Harbor Falls wants you alert and steady on your feet, Officer Marks. You know, with all this protecting we need around here.”

She laughed.

“Hmpht.”

Harbor Falls was about as crime-free as Mayberry. He grimaced into the mug.

“My, my,”

she drawled.

“trouble in River City?”

“That’s none of your beeswax.”

He sipped at the hot liquid.

Sydney rambled on.

“Hm. Well now, isn’t that Miss Katie over there as we speak? Heading toward the library?”

Chris dropped his spoon on the table, sloshing a bit of coffee over the side of the cup, and jerked his head up toward the direction Sydney was looking.

“Shit.”

Picking up the coffee carafe, the bakery owner giggled and backed away, nodding at Chris’ fellow officer, Matt Branson, heading toward the table.

“Your coffee and Danish comin’ right up, Matt.”

Chris sank a little lower in his seat as Matt slid into the booth.

“Gotta love living in a small town,”

he said, shrugging out of his jacket.

“Not only does everyone know your name but what you want for breakfast.”

“Hmpht,”

Chris uttered, still staring out the window.

“and your business, too.”

“Sounds like a personal problem.”

You got that right. Personal as hell.

He heard the snap of a newspaper and figured Matt was reading the news, just like always. It was so stereotypical one almost had to laugh. Two of Harbor Falls’ finest from the local police force meeting for coffee and doughnuts while the whole of Harbor Falls drifted by outside the coffee shop window. Here they were, Barney and Andy, waiting for a reason to race to the cruiser out front, on the off chance they would get to use their one bullet.

Matt had been on the force several years. Chris was a relative newcomer to Harbor Falls. He’d craved small-town living all his life, having grown up in Chicago suburbia. While on a vacation with an old girlfriend in the mountains, he’d discovered the charm of the town called Harbor Falls and all that came with it. The girlfriend didn’t understand, and they broke up not long after he told her he landed himself a job and was moving south. He’d been here two years and loved every minute of it. She went on with her life.

Funny, that breakup stung but he got over it quickly. This recent rejection from Katie had left him more than stung and he wasn’t dealing with it very well. At. All.

This morning, however, his mind wasn’t on his old girlfriend or on police business. He wasn’t thinking about being cop-like. His thoughts roamed more toward other avenues. Like how to get Katie back into his bed. Back in his life. It had been nearly a week since they’d rendezvoused on the mountain. She’d been putting him off ever since and it was about to drive him crazy—in more ways than one.

Katie.

His Katie. Dammit.

His gaze transfixed on the scene across the street, he stared at her. He watched every slow and tortuous movement she made as she exited her car, reached for the rear side door, and bent to retrieve something out of the back seat. Slim-hipped, she wore a red, knee-length, ass-hugging skirt, tight enough to cup under her nicely rounded rear-end. His heartbeat picked up its cadence thinking about that round ass. Under him. On top of him. His hands gripping and squeezing. Not to mention her equally full and ample breasts heavy on his chest; her waist-length brunette hair cascading over him while she rode him like a barrel-racing cowgirl….

Shit. He wiped his brow.

He couldn’t drag his gaze away. Her backside swaying for the world to see—or for him to see?—she tugged her purse and a box out of the back seat of her shiny red Mustang GT.

The vixen.

She knew he sat there every morning getting his breakfast and drinking coffee with Matt. And she knew damned well how he liked to watch her. He’d whispered naughty words into her ear while they were intimate way too many times, talking about how hard he got watching her walk from the parking lot to the library, and how each and every time all he thought about was getting her into bed and….

He shook that thought off. Why in hell, after the argument they’d had the other night, and the quick and dirty fuck they’d had on the side of the road—only to end with an argument that sent them both hightailing it back home—was she sashaying that tempting ass of hers in front of him like that now? Today?

“Damn woman,”

he muttered, bringing the mug back to his lips.

“Like a spoiled little girl who needs a spanking.”

Matt slapped the newspaper down on the table.

Chris met his stare. “What?”

“All right. Spit it out. What’s going on between you and Katie?”

Giving his head a slow shake, Chris drew up one corner of his mouth.

“Not a damn thing.”

“There’s something.”

“Nope. Nothing is going on between the two of us and that is the problem.”

Matt leaned in.

“She holding out?”

“Not speaking.”

He cleared his throat.

“Yes, and holding out.”

“Doesn’t sound like Katie. What did you do?”

Chris mumbled.

“Something stupid.”

Sydney returned with Matt’s Danish and black coffee and they silenced. She left as quickly. “Stupid?”

Matt echoed.

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, Chris. What the hell did you do?”

He sipped his coffee.

Sidling his gaze back to Matt, he replied.

“Asked her to marry me.”

Matt spit coffee halfway across the table.

“Shit!”

Chris jerked back.

“You damned near spewed all over my uniform.”

He swiped at his pressed black shirt.

“Costs me a buck-ninety-eight each to get my shirts cleaned and starched!”

Concentrating on wiping minute droplets of coffee off his badge, he avoided looking at Matt, who was staring a hole right through him. Heat radiated from his cheeks and he was embarrassed.

Yes, dammit, he had asked Katie to marry him. And she had flat out refused. Laughed and yelled at him. Pretty much told him it would be a cold day in hell…

“Why in God’s name did you do that?”

His gaze rose.

“I love her.”

Matt cleared his throat.

“Now Chris, don’t get me wrong. You know I like Katie a whole helluva lot. But she’s a wild filly, as wild as they come, and you think you’re gonna tame her?”

He lowered his head and fiddled with his napkin.

“Was trying.”

“And how did you propose to do that? Katie made no bones about it when you started dating that she wanted to remain footloose and fancy free. I told you—and I won’t say that I told you so—that you were getting into deep water. She’s pretty new back in town, you know—well, she grew up here of course but she’s just come back after years of living in the city—and you know she’s been around the block a time or two. Hell, even when she was a teenager here at Harbor Falls High she had earned that love ‘em and leave ‘em reputation. Katie Long can’t be tamed. Better men than you have tried. Her legacy in this town with men didn’t disappear the ten years she was gone. She’s such a damn contradiction, librarian by day, temptress at night. That was my biggest fear, that you’d fall head over heels in love with her and she’d break your heart.”

He paused and looked to his partner.

“Dammit, I saw this coming.”

Narrowing his gaze, Chris looked out the window.

“For a man who said he wouldn’t say, ‘I told you so’, you just did a damn good job of it.”

Matt exhaled. They sat in silence for a moment. Looking back toward the library, Chris realized Katie was now gone. Shit. He’d missed her sway into the building.

“I can tame her.”

“Hm.”

“No, really. I can.”

Matt chuckled.

“You’re not going to give up, are you?”

“Nope.”

“So how do you propose to tame her?”

“Sex.”

“I thought you said she was holding out. How’s that working for you?”

Chris grinned and eyeballed Matt.

“With the palm of my hand.”

“Excuse me?”

“She likes to be spanked.”

Silence.

Chris angled his gaze toward Matt, whose left eyebrow now sported a significant arch.

“You don’t say.”

“I do say. Now, nothing real bad kinky and I would never hurt her—I don’t want to dominate her at all, not really into that lifestyle shit—but she seems to respond to a little hanky-spanky action in the bun area.”

Matt rubbed his chin.

“I never would have thought.”

Grinning, Chris added.

“and right about now, I’d like to lay my hand flat across those—”

“Hot cross buns?”

Startled at the female voice coming from his right, Chris looked first to Matt, and then to the woman standing beside them. Suzie Hart Matthews, Sydney’s cousin and Matt’s sister-in-law, stood staring at both men while holding out a tray of some kind of rolls with a crisscross of icing over the top.

“What?”

“Want to try my hot cross buns? It’s a new recipe and Sydney is going to give them a go here at Sugar High. I thought you might want a sample. Fresh out of the oven, they are. And hot.”

Chris was definitely thinking about hot buns, and about crossing them with the palm of his hand, but what Suzie offered up at the moment wasn’t going to do.

He rose.

“No thanks, ma’am. Maybe another time. I’ve got some business to tend to.”

He tipped his head, glanced at Matt, tossed a couple of bills on the table, and left.

****

Things were slow this morning. Thank goodness.

Katie stood behind the checkout desk, glanced over the near-empty library, and decided that Saturday mornings weren’t what they used to be. Oh, they did have their traffic and busy times, but it was nothing like she wanted it to be. Used to be, when she was younger and growing up in Harbor Falls, that moms and kids would come to the library for story hour on Saturdays. She had always enjoyed that when she worked shelving books on Saturdays in high school. But they canceled story hour a few weeks ago when the library board realized they were competing with Saturday morning soccer and cheerleading. Story hour now happened on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, targeted only for preschoolers and stay-at-home moms. Around here, most moms worked, so the crowd was dwindling and she worried story hour would be gone all together one day.

Also used to be that the old-timers came in to read the newspaper or catch up on gossip on Saturday morning. Now they head to Sugar High across the street for coffee and Facebook.

Interesting sign of the times.

It troubled her, this occasional lack of library business. She loved books. They were her life. A self-proclaimed bookaholic, she devoured most any book she could get her hands on. Not to mention, she was writing one herself. Had been since she graduated from college five years ago. No one knew that, of course. She kept the one thing to herself. That and her other dream. Oh, everyone in Harbor Falls thought she was perfectly happy coming back home after all these years—she’d worked in Charlotte after college—and taking over the librarian position. Especially since the job had stayed vacant for almost two years. And yes, she was very glad to get the job and start building back the library’s offerings, but this recent slump had her a little unnerved.

She needed her job—at least for a while longer, until she got a handle on the next phase of her life. Her dream. Her goal.

You see, she wanted more.

Usually she anticipated and relished in the hustle and bustle of Saturday mornings, the rushing off into the stacks to help someone find a book, the rustling of newspapers and magazines in the reading corner, the hum of the old copier, and low mumblings and occasional giggles of children. But today, truth be known, she was glad for the silence. Her brain cluttered with recent events, she welcomed the quiet. Besides, there was plenty of work to do today. Bea Brammel, her library assistant, had been off work all week with sick kids and as a result, there were dozens of books to be shelved from the week. She wasn’t sure yet if Bea was coming in today. Katie hadn’t checked the library phone messages yet.

She would check there after she shelved for a while.

“No time like the present,”

she said aloud, drifting toward a cart full of disorganized books. She pushed it toward the stacks then stopped at the end, working through the volumes to organize them a bit before heading into the stacks. She looked forward to spending time handling and categorizing this morning. The menial work would keep her mind from spinning.

Still, as she idly shelved book after book, her thoughts subconsciously turned to the one thing she didn’t want to think about.

Chris. Damn him.

She knew, of course, that he was surprised as hell at her reaction a few nights ago. In the four months they had dated, everything had gone so well. In fact, it was the one relationship she’d had thus far that felt promising. Almost. That almost part, however, was more to do with her than him.

She cared for Chris a whole helluva lot. Might even be falling in love with him. Hell, she probably was in love with him. They’d had good times together and the sex was, well, exceptional and explosive. Most of all—and this was the thing that frightened her more than anything—they could talk.

So much so, in fact, that she had damned near shared her hopes and dreams with him not long ago. She’d never done that with any man. Never.

That scared her.

Tremendously.

He was getting too close and she was letting him in. Surprisingly, she had almost convinced herself that it was okay. That being part of a couple with Chris was a good thing. Then… Then, dammit, things went haywire and instead of logically talking and working things out, he popped the stupid question on her. Why couldn’t he have waited a little longer, until she was good and convinced that this couple thing could even, possibly, be permanent?

That was all she had needed. A little time.

Her brain started spinning, rerunning the old scripts in her head. Love ‘em, leave ‘em. Don’t get attached. She didn’t do permanent. Hadn’t she made it clear that she didn’t do forever? That she wasn’t interested in anything more than dating and having fun and living in the moment?

Crap.

Most men were fine with her Devil-may-care attitude about relationships. She counted on that. They weren’t looking for deep commitment. That was her safety net. She wasn’t looking for commitment, either, because commitment would get in the way of her hopes and dreams.

Chris, unfortunately, was now looking for commitment. Even if he’d never verbalized it. He’d moved to this Podunk town by choice, hadn’t he? She’d moved back to Harbor Falls because it was a steppingstone. A good job that paid well and allowed her to save money. Living in her grandmother’s house rent-free was also a bonus. Her goal was to put back enough funds to live on for a full year so she could finish writing her book, and get it spit-shined and polished and off to an agent. Then after the book sold—of course it would because if anyone knew books, she did—she was going to find a nice quiet beach house somewhere and live out the rest of her life, writing her own stories rather than shelving those of others.

She was giving herself a year to devote to the book and she had to make her dream happen in that year. That was her plan. Then this sexy police officer popped into the library one day, two months after she’d gotten the job, and her plans went south.

What the hell happened to her life? Her plans?

Chris Marks happened. That’s what.

****

After sitting in his cruiser for the past hour, Chris was glad to get out and stretch his legs. As he strolled across the street, he glanced up to the clock on the town hall building and noted the time. Two minutes before noon. The old clock was a minute slow, everyone in town knew that, so he had only a minute to spare.

He glanced to the library door.

There she was. Bea. Leaving. She was always the first one out the door. Katie was usually an hour or so behind.

He picked up his stride. The library closed at noon.

Just as Bea turned to lock the door, he sidled up beside her, grasped her arm, and put a finger to his lips as she turned to look at him.

“Sh…”

he sounded and slipped inside. She smiled and locked the door behind him.

Good ol’ Bea.

Inside, the library was still and quiet. He stopped for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the lower light in the building. A shuffling sound came from the rear.

Ah, yes. There you are my sweet little vixen.

Creeping through the empty library, he glanced back through each aisle of books until he came upon the last one, closest to the wall. He hesitated a second, then peeked around the corner.

There.

Halfway into the stack, he caught sight of long silky legs and a red skirt hitched up over her right hip, and grinned. Katie stood partway up the ladder, at least four rungs up, braced against the bookshelf. Her sinful derrière at his eye level, one foot rested on a shelf while she leaned to place a book precisely in its Dewey Decimal System home.

In three silent strides, he was behind her, each fist gripping the ladder on either side of her hips. His foot was on the first rung of the ladder before she had a clue he was anywhere near.