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Shocked, Abby inhaled sharply.
He tasted like dark chocolate. Cold milk.
And things that she’d never experienced and suddenly wanted to, so very badly.
But just when she was adjusting to the notion that Sloan McCray’s lips were brushing across hers, he was lifting his head. “Next time you talk to your friends, you can tell them that you lived up to your promise.”
He meant sharing the chocolate, of course. But she couldn’t do a single thing except sit there and mutely nod.
The lines arrowing out from the corners of his dark eyes crinkled a little. “You pour a helluva cocktail,” he murmured before turning away and walking silently to the door.
A moment later, he was gone.
And Abby was still sitting there as mute as a stump of wood.
“Izzit New Year’s?” Dillon’s sleepy voice startled her so much she jumped off her stool as if she’d been stung. She rounded the counter and went over to the couch where he was knuckling his eyes.
“It is. And time for you to go to bed, Mr. Marcum.”
He giggled a little, the way he always did when she called him that. “I stayed awake the whole time, didn’t I,” he boasted as he slid off the couch, dragging his blanket after him.
“Sure thing, honey.”
He padded barefoot into the first bedroom. “I think Mr. Sloan is a White Hat,” he said.
She folded back the comforter for Dillon to climb into bed. It was noticeably cooler in his room than in the living room, but the comforter would keep him warm enough. “Why’s that?” The video game was the classic story of good against evil. White Hats against Black Hats. Of course in this instance, it was geared for children, so the hats were worn by animated dinosaurs. Dillon loved all things dinosaur.
Her little brother shrugged as he climbed onto his twin-size bed. “’Cause.”
“Sounds like a good reason to me.” She brushed his dark hair off his forehead and kissed him. “Go to sleep. Oatmeal with raisins in the morning.”
He threw his arms tightly around her neck. “You’re not gonna leave, too, are you, Abby?”
Her heart squeezed. He didn’t mean leave his bedroom.
He meant leave.
“I’m not ever going to leave,” she promised. She smacked a kiss on both of his cheeks and settled him against his pillow. “Ever,” she added.
He let out a long breath as if her answer had actually been in doubt then grabbed his fleece blanket up against his cheek and turned onto his side.
Abby left his room, pulling the door halfway closed so that he’d still be able to see the light from the bathroom next door.
Then she returned to the living room, blew out all the candles and cleaned up, washing and drying the crystal glasses carefully before putting them back in the cupboard.
Seeing that the fire was burning low and steadily, safely contained by the screen, she shut off the lights in preparation of going to bed herself.
Instead of going to her own room, though, she found herself at the front window, peering into the darkness.
She touched her fingertips to her lips.
Felt her stomach swoop around.
It was a first for her.
Oh, not the kiss. She’d been kissed before. Just never at midnight. Never on New Year’s Eve.
But she needed to remember that to Sloan McCray, the kiss was probably nothing more than a simple gesture.
She looked at the house next door. Wondered where his bedroom was. Wondered if he was thinking about her, too.
But then she shook her head. He’d called her “wet behind the ears.” And the way she was standing there, gazing at his house in the darkness, would only prove that she was. So she turned on her heels and went into her bedroom across the hall from Dillon’s.
Her bed wasn’t the narrow twin that Dillon’s was, but it was just as innocent. She peeled off her leggings and her sweater and pulled open her drawer. Her pj’s were about as seductive as Dillon’s, too. Soft cotton pants with pink-and-green polka dots and a matching T-shirt with a grinning skunk on the front of it.
She made a face as she changed and threw herself down on the middle of her full-size bed.
Her room was even chillier than Dillon’s, but she felt hot. Flushed. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why.
Even before learning that the man next door was a true-life American hero, he’d made her stomach swoop.
She stared into the darkness and pressed her fingertips to her lips again.
Then she groaned and flipped onto her side, hugging the pillow to her cheek.
* * *
The mattress springs squeaked slightly when Sloan flipped restlessly onto his back for the tenth time.
Dawn was finally relieving the darkness seeping around the blinds, and instead of lying there, tossing and turning pointlessly for another few hours, he pushed off the bed and went to the window. He tilted the blinds just enough so that he could look down on the house next door.
Did the window on the side of the house belong to her bedroom or Dillon’s?
He muttered a low oath. Kissing her had been stupid.
Sweet as all get-out.
But still stupid.
Abby Marcum was a nice girl. And, sweet lips or not, she was not what he needed in his life.
He didn’t know what he needed. But he knew it was not a girl like her. A girl with responsibilities. With ties. The kind of girl who’d expect ties.
As well she should.
If there was one thing Sloan was not good at, it was ties. He was trying where Tara was concerned, but even with his own sister he wasn’t winning any awards.
He turned away from the window, dragged on his running gear and went outside. The air was frozen, sending his breath into clouds around his head as he stretched. He usually ran in the middle of the night. Maybe that was crazy, but it was better than tossing and turning while sleeplessness drove him nuts.
Last night, though, he’d been busy looking into Abby’s open, innocent face.
He shut down those thoughts and set off down the street in the opposite direction from the one he usually went, just so he wouldn’t pass by her house.
Instead, he ended up passing the school where Dillon would be going in a few days, and where she’d be handing out bandages and ice packs, and he thought about her anyway.
He picked up his pace and headed around to Main Street. Light was already streaming from the windows of Ruby’s Café. New Year’s Day or not, Tabby Taggart was obviously already at work in the kitchen, probably making the fresh sweet rolls that people came for from miles away. He knew that she’d already have hot coffee brewing and if he knocked on the window, she’d let him in.
He kept running and passed the darkened windows of his sister’s shop, Classic Charms. Even though she’d taken on a partner now, he still thought of the shop as Tara’s. He finally slowed as he reached the sheriff’s office and went inside to the warmth and the smell of coffee there.
The dispatcher, Pam Rasmussen, gave him a look over the reading glasses perched on her nose. “Surprise, surprise. Some of us come into the office because we’re scheduled on duty. Others, namely you, come in because you have nothing better to do.”
“Happy New Year to you, too. And I’m not here to work. I was just out for a run.” He reached across her desk and flipped the book she was reading so he could see the cover. “Suppose that’s another one of those romances you like.”
“What if it is? Romance isn’t a dirty word. If you realized that, maybe you wouldn’t go around so grumpy all the time. I know plenty of women who’d—”
“No,” he cut her off bluntly. The last thing he needed was a setup by her. Or by his sister. Or by anyone.
The taste of dark, creamy chocolate on Abby’s lips taunted him, and he ruthlessly closed his mind to it. “Quiet night?”
“Except for a call out at the Pierce place.” She grimaced. “Neighbors called in the disturbance.”
Sloan filled his mug and glanced around the office. All of the desks were empty. “Who took the call?”
“Ruiz. Just before he got off shift. Report’s still on his desk if you want to read it.”
Dave Ruiz was one of the other deputies at the Weaver office. There were more than twenty of them in all, covering the county.
“Dawson’s out on an accident toward Braden, and Jerry’s checking an alarm that went off at the medical offices next to Shop-World,” Pam added, without looking up from her book.
Sloan picked up the report on the Pierce disturbance, read through it and tossed it back down again. “Lorraine Pierce needs to leave that bastard,” he said.
“Yup.” Pam turned a page in her book. “But she won’t. Not until he puts her in the hospital. Or worse.”
Sloan sighed. He figured Pam was probably right. And there wasn’t a damn thing they could do because Lorraine refused to admit that her husband, Bobby, had hurt or threatened her in any way. Every time they’d locked him up, she’d taken him home again. “She ought to put some thought into that kid of hers, then,” he muttered. Calvin Pierce was about Dillon’s age.
Which only had him thinking about Abby yet again.
He gulped down the coffee, scorching the lining of his mouth in the process. But not even that managed to eradicate the image of Abby’s soft eyes staring up at him over a crystal glass full of milk.
“When’re you gonna tell Max you’ll stay on for good?”
He looked over at Pam. She was still reading her book.
The sheriff had asked him to stay on permanently, but Sloan wasn’t ready to agree. “Guess that’s between me and Max.”
She tilted her head, eyeing him over the top of her reading glasses. She just smiled slightly. Pam was not only the department’s dispatcher, she was also one of the biggest gossips in town, and he didn’t want to provide the woman with any more fodder than necessary.
He took his coffee, went into the locker room and grabbed a shower. Then he dressed in jeans and an old ATF sweatshirt, signed out his usual cruiser and drove back home through the thin morning light.
Abby’s house was still dark when he turned into his driveway a few minutes later. No signs that they were up and about or that the oatmeal with raisins was in progress.
He went inside and started a pot of coffee and tried to pretend that the house next to him was still sitting empty and cold and unoccupied.
He was no more successful at that than he was trying to decide what to do with his life.
* * *
“Abby, come on.” Dillon was dancing around on his snow-booted feet, impatiently waiting for her to finish putting away the breakfast dishes. “You promised we’d make a snowman. With a carrot nose and everything.”
Her brother was a lot more enthusiastic about trudging around in the snow for a few hours than she was. But she’d promised, so she rounded the breakfast counter and tugged his stocking cap down over his eyes, making him giggle. “You can get started while I put on my coat.”
He pushed his hat back and raced out the front door, so anxious that he didn’t even pull it shut behind him. She followed and stuck her head out. “Stay in our yard,” she started to warn needlessly. Dillon was already crouching down next to the porch, balling up a handful of snow in his mittens to begin the snowman.
Her gaze shifted to the house next door.
It was completely still, not even showing a spiral of smoke from the chimney like most of the other houses on the block. She would have assumed he was gone, if not for the SUV emblazoned with Sheriff on the side parked in his driveway.
“Hurry up, Abby!”
Dragging her eyes away from the house next door, she noticed that Dillon’s snowball had already grown to the size of a pumpkin. She retrieved her own coat and boots and, when she was bundled up almost as much as her brother, went outside.
The pumpkin had nearly doubled in diameter by the time she joined Dillon in the middle of the yard. “How big are you planning to make that?”
He threw his arms wide. “This big.”
She couldn’t help laughing. “You want a fat snowman, then. All right.” She bent over and put her gloved hands against the big ball. “Let’s roll, bud.”
Even between the two of them, by the time they managed to push the growing ball across the yard twice more, they could barely manage to budge it. “This is big enough,” she told him breathlessly as she straightened. Her breath clouded around her head, but warm from their exertions, she pulled off her knit cap and shoved it into her pocket.
“No, it’s not,” Dillon argued. He threw his arms wide again. “This big.”
“Dillon—”
“Kid’s right,” a deep voice said behind them. “It’s nowhere near big enough.”
She whirled to see Sloan standing on his front porch watching them. Pleasure exploded in her veins.
He’d kissed her.
On New Year’s Eve at midnight, he’d kissed her.
Maybe it meant nothing to him, but it sure had meant something to her.
“Happy New Year,” she said brightly. Despite the frigid temperature, he was wearing only a long-sleeved black sweatshirt with his jeans. “Aren’t you cold?”
There was at least fifty feet separating their houses, but she could still see his wry smile from where she stood. “Watching all that work you’re doing’s keeping me warm enough.”
Not entirely sure what to make of that, she felt herself flush. Dillon was bouncing around his snowman base, and she focused on that. “We can’t make this any bigger,” she told them both. “It’s already too heavy to move.”
