Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding)(18)

Jackson scrambled to his feet, grabbing the edge of the counter to steady himself against the wave of dizziness that frayed the edges of his vision. Head fuzzy or not, he still put as much distance between them as the small space allowed.

“I was putting it down.” He scanned the counter for the stupid ax, then abandoned the futile search when Hayley took a step toward him.

The crammed shed closed in and he pushed past her, needing air, room to move—a f*cking drink. Christ. Tased him? Was she out of her damn mind?

“Jackson,” she began.

He held up a hand before he bit her head off. Nervous energy crawled under his skin. His long, almost drunk-feeling strides ate up the grass before he pivoted back around to face her. “You actually tased me?”

“I told you to put the weapon down and you didn’t.”

He lifted one the ear buds dangling around his neck. “If I had heard you and knew I was seconds from getting a few hundred volts shot into me—”

“Thousands actually.”

He stared at her.

“Fifty thousand,” she clarified, looking like it was no big deal.

Unbelievable.

He spun away from her and scrubbed a hand down his face. First the arrest and now a tasing? Jesus.

“You’re mad.”

“Fifty thousand volts. Yeah, I’m a bit pissed.” And pissed was putting it lightly. Had he been slammed into the boards like he’d first thought, he would have retaliated and had his fist halfway down the *’s throat by now.

Instead he was staring at a five-foot-eight blonde in her bare feet, wearing ripped jean and a Superman T-shirt. He didn’t let the whole cute-girl-next-door image fool him for a second. Hayley Stone was as tough as they came.

And she apparently had it out for him.

“You’re mad?” she challenged, the sharp edge of frustration cutting into her voice.

Oh no. There was no f*cking way she was going to turn this around on him.

“You’re mad?” she repeated, taking two threatening steps in his direction, and so help him for a second there he thought about backing up. “You roll into town and last what, five hours before you’re in the middle of a fight? I’m already on my captain’s shit list for taking so long to wrap up an ongoing robbery investigation and then I have to cuff the local hockey legend?”

“I didn’t start that fight,” he snapped.

She barely let him get that much out. “But you didn’t walk away from it either, did you? And it didn’t stop there. Right now that picture of us kissing is probably being splashed all over the Net with me as your latest flavor of the week, to help save your reputation no less. And to top it all off, you go sneaking around in the dark, leaving me no choice but to take action against an armed perpetrator, who coincidentally turns out to be the only person who could possibly get me fired, and you’re mad?”

Jackson’s head was spinning, and it had nothing to do with the aftereffects of the tasing. He didn’t have time to wrap his head around half of what she’d said before she stormed past him.

Like hell she was walking away at this point.

“Hayley!” Despite the occasional step that felt out of balance with the lingering dizziness, he went after her.

She managed to keep a few steps ahead of him the whole way back to the house, the boards on the front porch creaking under their combined weight. She flung open the screen door and the decades-old frame screeched in protest. Half surprised it hadn’t been ripped off altogether, he let the door bang softly behind him.

Hayley moved through the house, not stopping until she reached the kitchen. The surrounding chaos slowed his pursuit, leaving him gaping at the missing cupboard doors, pieces of wood, tools, drop sheets and paint cans littering most available space.

It was an interior designer’s nightmare.

Drawers opened and closed, and he stared at Hayley digging through one after another. He might as well have not been in the room from the way she brushed past him to search the drawers behind him.

She spun back around, retracing her steps. This time she removed the drawers and reached up inside, feeling around. At her third opening, she murmured, “Knew it,” withdrawing a small package.

The trembling in her hands was apparent when she pulled a cigarette from the pack and tried using the small lighter tucked inside the package to light it. It took three misfires and a violent shaking—that should have sent the lighter flying across the room—to make it finally give up a flame she could use.

Tossing the lighter on the counter, she inhaled sharply—and coughed harder than a middle school teen sneaking her first cigarette. “Shit,” she choked out, then took another painful-to-watch drag.

“What are you doing?” One of them needed to know, and it sure as hell wasn’t him. He was still reeling from the fact that she’d zapped him with fifty thousand volts.

She half-coughed, half-laughed. “Not sure.” Her exhale was more of a sputtering wheeze, and she frowned at the cigarette. “I haven’t had one since I was sixteen. Forgot how much I hated his brand.”

So they were Coach’s cigarettes, not hers.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

As angry as he was, it was damn hard to take her question seriously when she stood there glaring at him with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth like it tasted about as good as three-day-old boxers. “Before or after you brought Annie Oakley into the new century outside in the shed?”

Unimpressed, she held the cigarette for another inhale. It wasn’t much better than her previous attempts. Jackson had tried smoking exactly twice in his life, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t look half as disastrous as she did trying to suck the nicotine into her lungs.

Hell, the kitten could have done a better job.

He grabbed the cigarette from her lips and stabbed it out in the sink. “Coach would be pissed if he knew you were smoking in the house.”

Hayley stared at him, her eyes watery from the smoke, and burst out laughing.

Laughing was probably the last thing on earth he should have felt like doing, but in the face of those flushed cheeks, her hair sticking up everywhere and that pitiful attempt to calm herself down after tasing him—tasing him, for f*ck’s sake—how could he not laugh?

He’d enjoyed himself more in the last twenty-four hours than he had in weeks, probably months. And the craziest part was that she’d done that with arresting him, making him climb a tree and then shocking the crap out of him—okay, maybe not the latter so much—along with a few less painful moments in between.

Kissing her hadn’t hurt a damn bit either.

He didn’t have a clue what it all meant, but the longer he stood there watching her clutch her stomach and wipe at the corners of her eyes, the harder it was to hang on to his anger. Maybe if she hadn’t looked so cute with cigarette ash on her Superman T-shirt, or if she hadn’t sounded downright adorable laughing her ass off, he would have gotten the hell out of there.

Watching her uncoiled the tension holding his spine in a vise grip, and when she slid to the floor and propped her back against the fridge, her laughter slowly fading to the occasional giggle, he sat down next to her.

“Don’t tell him I had one of his cigarettes, okay? Sick or not, Gramps would kick my butt from here to the Canadian border.”

“Our little secret.” He thought back to what she’d said outside and the worry that she’d be fired whether or not her actions were justified. “The tasing is our little secret too.”

Eyes closed, she let her head thunk back against the fridge. “I should have saved myself a lot of hassle and locked you up when I had the chance. Maybe you would have come to your senses.”

“I can think of other ways to bring me to my senses.” If her hands weren’t still trembling just a bit he might not have joked with her.

“Do not get cute with me,” she growled.

He grinned. “You think I’m cute?”

She blew out a breath. “I think you’re a whole lot of trouble.”

“You used to like trouble.”

With a laugh, she leaned forward. “I used to like joyriding, skinny dipping and deep fried ice cream too, but I’ve learned—”

“Together?” he cut in.

“What?” She shook her head. “No—”

“They should go together.” They sure as hell fit together pretty damn nicely in his head all of a sudden. That kiss had given him a taste for her, and Hayley had a body he could spend hours eating off of. A body he could spend hours with period.

She arched a brow. “Do you have ADD?”

He tried to follow, wondering if the trace amount of nicotine she might have taken in between coughing fits had gone right to her head. “No.”

“Then how the hell do you go from being furious I tased you to joking around and talking about skinny dipping and ice cream?”