Page 2 of Always My Love

ChapterOne

Harper felt her heart skip when she noticed the two dark-haired police officers step into the restaurant. That happened any time she encountered one of the police officers in town.

She knew the duo very well. Nick Farrow and Tom Reyes were nice men. Social. Kind. But that didn’t stop the worry and fear from almost taking over. They were the law, so Harper kept her distance.

Tom glanced around the restaurant and saw his new wife, Kate, who was Nick’s sister, wave from a corner booth across the room. He quickly disappeared.

Nick headed straight for her.

The man was one of the best-looking guys in the small town by far. Still, she couldn’t afford to do anything about it.

He was a cop and, well, she was a murderer.

She pasted on a smile as he approached the bar and leaned against it.

“What’ll you have?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“Coke,” he answered easily. He watched her as she busied herself getting the drink.

There were a handful of police officers that frequented the Golden Oar restaurant, where Harper had gotten a job tending bar the first week that she and Hailey had moved to the small town of Pride, Oregon. But none were as sexy as Nick, who somehow swaggered when he walked, making Harper think of a dozen things that she’d like to do with him. To him.

The man was sex in a uniform. He was not only the hottest man Harper had ever flirted with, but the most dangerous.

Dangerous because of what it could mean to her and Hailey if he or any other cop in town looked too closely at the sisters.

They were as far as they could get from the small Georgia town they’d grown up in. The one they’d run from over six years ago.

They’d told everyone in town that they’d moved into their uncle’s place after he left it to them when he died. The story was true, sort of. Hank Davis was really their great-uncle, and he had indeed died five years back. But Hank hadn’t left her and Hailey his run-down cabin on the outskirts of the small town. He’d left the place to their mother, his niece.

All it would take was someone looking into them, and their entire world would come crashing down. Again.

Harper had gotten a job behind a bar mixing drinks and serving beers, again, while Hailey had gone to work serving pizzas at the local pizzeria, Baked.

After being in town for over a year, they’d managed to fix up the old cabin a little. At least the roof didn’t leak any longer and the fireplace worked well enough to keep them warm through the winter.

Most of their life had been spent in Georgia where the coldest it got was around fifty degrees. Here in Oregon, just last week it had gotten below twenty. Plus, it snowed and rained. A lot.

If not for the working fireplace in the two-bedroom place, they would have frozen the first month that they moved in.

She set the soft drink down in front of Nick and started to turn away.

“How was your Christmas?” Nick asked as he shifted his tool belt and weapon slightly and sat down.

“Good,” she answered, knowing she had to pretend to be normal. “Quiet. Thankfully. I heard you had a wild time catching that woman who broke into the grocery store.”

Everyone in the small town knew how Wyatt Auston’s crazy ex-fiancée had broken into the store and locked him in the freezer after attacking Hannah, Wyatt’s new fiancée, twice. Nick and Aiden had to break through the store’s glass door to save Wyatt.

“Hannah did most of the work. By the time we caught up with the woman, she’d run outside and Hannah was sitting on her.” Nick smiled.

The man had the sexiest smile. She just couldn’t turn away from it and could not help smiling in return.

“I would’ve paid anything to see that,” Harper joked.

She liked Hannah Crawford. To be honest, the little town had a lot of people in it that she liked. It was only the police that she was leery of. Especially Nick.

She could see herself growing too comfortable around him, forgetting that he was the law, and letting her guard down.

Nick leaned on the counter and lowered his voice. Harper had to lean in to hear his next words.