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“What are we doing?” Cassie asks.
“I don’t know, but I like it. I like you.” My voice scrapes with need. “You’re so beautiful. I like you smiling at me the way you are right now. You should smile like that all the time.”
I expect her smile to grow wider or that she’ll kiss me again. Instead, Cassie freezes. Her face turns hard, her eyes dark. As quickly as the heat between us sparked into wildfire, it cools to ice.
Cassie sits up and pushes me away. “This was a mistake. I have to go.”
“What?” I stare at her, but she won’t meet my eye. “What did I do?” I scoot out of her way but follow her to the door. “Cassie, whatever it is, I’m sorry. Just don’t go please.”
She stops at the door and turns, finally looking at me. “It’s not you, Bjorn. I just…” she shakes her head, and when she speaks it’s in a flat tone. “I’m going to buy this shop. You kissing me won’t change that. You can’t stop me from getting my bookstore.”
“That’s not why I kissed you,” I say, my lungs tight with shame that I made her feel like that.
But she’s already through the door. I hear the lock click before I can find anything else to say.
I pound on the door, then yell, “Cassie! Come on. At least talk to me…” I drop my fist to my side. “You don’t even have to open the door if you don’t want to,” I say more softly.
Nothing comes from the other side. No noise. No reply. Nothing.
I press my forehead to the cold metal door and try one more time. “Cassie, please.”
Still nothing.
I push away and slowly walk across the shop, not ready to give up hope yet.
But after I’ve packed up all my hockey stuff and put on my heavy coat, she still
hasn’t come back or said anything.
I don’t know what I said that ruined the moment between us, but maybe it’s for the best. Attraction doesn’t mean we’re right for each other. We still want the same thing, and only one of us can have it.
My eyes skate to the roses and pink bear on the shelf. Without a second thought, I cross the room and grab them.
On my way out of the shop, I drop them in the trash.
Chapter 15
Cassie
I hear Bear onthe other side of the door after I lock it. My body shakes as I press my back to the barrier between us. I want so badly to go back to him, back to his arms around me, and his lips pressed to mine, so I’m not thinking about anything except that moment. But the words, “you should smile more” keep ringing in my head in Captain Markham’s voice.
Those aren’t the exact words Bear said, but they’re close enough to the ones Markham said to me more than once while I was trapped against a wall, his hands on either side of my shoulders. I still smell his coffee and cigarette breath as he leaned inches from my face, telling me how much he liked my smile.
It was a game he liked to play with me. One I laughed off the first few times he did it because I was new and thought maybe itwas a sort of hazing for the new detectives on his team. But then he started sending me to get supplies out of the backroom and followed me in. Or asked me to stay late and then it was only the two of us in the office. I told him more than once to cut it out, but he’d start up again within a few days.
Captain Markham never touched me, and he never said anything inappropriate in front of the rest of the squad. He’d just find ways to corner me, then walk a careful line between harassment and assault. I’m grateful I can’t accuse him of assault, but harassment is a lot harder to prove.
I know what grooming is—a predator initiates non-sexual contact to find out how someone will react to them pushing boundaries—but I didn’t see that’s what Markham was doing to me. The fact I’m a cop only makes that more difficult to accept. If I think about it for too long, I get pulled into a shame cyclone. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, but I can’t stop the thought that I should have stopped him the first time he said something to me. Or that if I’d put up a clear wall, he would have known there was a line he couldn’t cross.
I don’t know what just happened with Bear. Not assault or harassment, obviously. I wanted to kiss him every bit as much as he wanted to kiss me. The tension between us has been building since I came back to Paradise, and something had to release the pressure. I’m not sorry it was a make-out session that did it.
But that’s all it was.
Bear and I don’t have any kind of emotional connection. Physical chemistry isn’t enough for me to let my guard down. In fact, it’s even more reason to keep it up. I can’t let myself get blindsided by another man who wants to impede my dreams. Especially not another one who only sees me for my looks.
Bear telling me he liked my smile brought me back to reality. And the reality is, we’re fighting for the same place, and he’s proven he’ll use whatever tactics he can to get it. We both have.That’s not why I kissed him, but I don’t trust that’s not why he kissed me.
What Markham says I did to him, I actually did to Bear—sent signals I was attracted to him. I don’t know how I did that with the captain, but I definitely flirted with Bear. I practically begged him to kiss me. I can’t blame him for seeing an opportunity and taking it if it gets him closer to what he wants.
