Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding)(17)

Letting go of the bar to pay his medical expenses wasn’t an option, so that left her gramps’s place. Surprisingly, her gramps was more okay with that than Hayley.

“Figured I’d wait for you. You being a celebrity and all these days.” He held up his hands when she glared at him. “Don’t cuff me.”

Knowing better than to let him bait her, she waved him back upstairs.

As expected the neighbors didn’t have any information they could use. Their suspect, judging by a few vague descriptions and the size of the print in the mud, was male and awfully slick.

Processing the scene wasn’t enough to work off the restless energy from the crazy day, and since she still hadn’t heard from Gavin, she decided to get in a little painting after all. She didn’t bother heading back to her apartment to change. Most of her stuff was at Gramps’s place. Had been for the past couple of weeks so she didn’t have to go back and forth all the time.

She parked her truck in the driveway, but by the time she left her bag by the front door, kicked off her shoes and walked through the dark house, the last couple of nights of too little sleep started catching up with her.

The breeze from the sewing room on the second floor drew her down the hall. The room hadn’t been touched since Nan died two years ago. Gramps had been firm on no changes being made to their home until both of them were gone, and then he’d gotten sick.

Like the den, she was saving this room for the end of the renovations.

She stepped over the plastic that was on the floor to protect the carpet from getting wet and pushed open the curtains. The window had been stuck since they found out her gramps had cancer, and no amount of banging or wiggling had been able to unstick it.

When neither she nor Matt had any luck putting it down, she’d had one of Gavin’s brothers over to take a look. He hadn’t fared any better, and neither had his contractor friend. Replacing the entire window, frame and all, had been their professional opinion, although no one could figure out why the window wasn’t closing to begin with. She’d finally ordered a new custom-made window last week, but it wouldn’t arrive for another couple of weeks.

Hayley dropped down on the old sofa by the door, her brain too tired to think about renovations or work or even Gavin.

That kiss, on the other hand, wasn’t too tiring to think about at all. Replaying the taste and feel of Jackson’s mouth managed to reanimate the butterflies back-flipping in her stomach.

It was really too bad she wouldn’t get to kiss him again, but she wasn’t interested in some casual fling before Jackson left town, which would probably be sooner rather than later with a coaching position in the works.

And kissing him earlier had likely cost her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if that picture taken at the inn started circulating the Net. If she’d ticked off half the town arresting him, she couldn’t imagine what people would say behind her back with a picture like that going around.

Once upon a time she wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought, but all that had changed when she’d turned her life around.

Kissing him to help salvage his career was one thing—her reputation could take a minor hit, maybe—but that didn’t explain why she’d baited him at the last second about a long-ago kiss that was best left in the past.

Exhaling slowly, she let her eyes slide shut and sank a little deeper into the sofa.

She definitely had enough to deal with without throwing an undeniably sexy guy with a mouth hotter than sin into the mix.





Something brought Hayley awake with a jolt. Recognizing the sewing room instantly, she leaned back against the sofa and scrubbed her hands down her face. She needed a bed and at least eight hours of undisturbed sleep.

Sighing, she stood, making it only as far as the door when a sound outside stopped her.

With the light off she had no trouble seeing through the window, and with the full moon and the lake reflecting the silvery glow, she easily spotted the shadow disappearing into her gramps’s shed.

Son of a bitch.

On the off chance it was Matt looking for more hockey stuff for the bar—an unusual time for that—she didn’t call for backup. But she did grab her Taser from her bag by the front door, just in case, and slipped out into the night.

The dew-covered grass was wet and cool beneath her bare feet. She kept the shed in sight, but took an indirect approach.

Ten feet away from the shed, she paused. “Matt?”

A low oath came from inside, and she edged closer, keeping her back to the shed, then pivoting around just outside the doorway.

Deep shadows separated her and the guy breaking into the shed. Shadows didn’t worry her, and neither did the fact that she was in the open and more easily visible.

No, what bothered her—and dumped a gallon of adrenaline into her system—was the ax clutched in the guy’s hand. He was roughly six feet tall and had close to a hundred pounds on her. She didn’t want to think about the force he could put behind the weapon in his hand.

“Drop it and turn around slowly.”

The shadow turned toward her all right, taking a half step in her direction, but the bastard didn’t let go of the ax.

And Hayley didn’t let go of the trigger on her Taser until the guy’s body went ramrod straight, the delivered electrical shock making it impossible for his brain to give the rest of his body any message beyond what the f*ck?

But it was Hayley’s brain screaming it the loudest when she finally recognized the guy in the shed.

Jackson.





Five hundred pounds. Minimum. Two, maybe three guys on skates going twenty-five miles an hour and they’d just smashed him into the boards.

He shouldn’t be standing, probably shouldn’t even be conscious. And he damn well shouldn’t be yelling like his vocal chords belonged to a kid who’d just been nailed in the balls by a puck.

Jackson couldn’t move. Every part of him locked up, and f*ck it hurt.

His voice cracked, the high-pitched sound scraped from his throat with a hot knife. And then he was going down. Nothing worked. Every muscle stalling when they should have worked to break his fall.

Pain flared through his body when he hit the wood floor instead of the unforgiving ice he’d expected. His head struck something softer and bulky, which thankfully silenced the boy-band scream.

What. The. Fuck.

He blinked. Once, twice, frowning at the dark rafters above his head. Where the hell was he? His heart kicked at his ribs, his lungs working hard to draw in more air.

Light flooded the space, and he recognized the blonde who crouched over him even before his eyes fully adjusted.

“Jackson?” Hayley ran her hands across his chest then slid her fingers up the side of his head and into his hair.

He might have enjoyed it if she hadn’t looked a little freaked out and if he didn’t have the inexplicable urge to punch something. A lot of somethings.

“Are you okay?”

He gave himself a second to mull that over, wanting to be sure he’d imagined the sensation of being slammed into the boards and pinned there. He clearly wasn’t anywhere near a rink, but the adrenaline-driven anger pulsing through his bloodstream disagreed.

“I’m on the floor. Why?” He lifted his head from the musty hockey bag under him.

Hayley ignored the question, continuing to look him over.

“I need you to stay here for a second, okay?”

Seeing as lifting his head churned his stomach harder than the biggest shake-’em-up fair ride he could imagine, he was perfectly okay with staying exactly where he was. “What happened?” Everything seemed to be working fine, except for the dizziness and the pain in his side.

Hayley didn’t answer him, but he heard her fiddling with something behind him and then she was gone.

He tipped his head back to search for her, but found himself alone. Her absence gave him the chance to remember he’d been in Coach’s shed looking for his old lucky hockey stick. How he’d ended up sprawled across the shed floor was still a mystery.

She returned a minute later carrying a first-aid kit.

Shit, was he bleeding?

He tried to move again, relieved the vertigo was fading, but he still couldn’t move much without wanting to puke.

“Jesus.” He pulled at the hem of his shirt that she held gathered in her hand. “What are you doing?” He bit back a curse as she poked him with something. “Hayley?”

Only when she finished wiping at his skin with an alcohol pad and applied a bandage did she rock back on her heels.

“Hayley,” he snapped, wanting an explanation.

She offered a hand to help him up. “I tased you.”

“You what?” He jerked back from her hand, surprised he could keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged.

She nodded to the weapon lying near the door. “I thought you were breaking in, and when I saw the ax in your hand…” she trailed off, then frowned at him. “Why didn’t you put it down?”