Busted (Promise Harbor Wedding)(27)

He groaned at the sight of her in just panties and a T-shirt, her shorts still lying at the end of the bed like she’d decided to rest her eyes for a second before changing.

Looking everywhere else in the room rather than directly at her, Jackson crossed to the window. Hayley kept the room tidy, only her discarded jeans on the floor. The dresser next to the window was a different story. Girly stuff littered the top of it—hair ties, makeup, a ring and a chain with locket.

The teddy bear in the hockey jersey from his team surprised him. As did the hockey puck sitting next to a half-empty glass of water.

Interesting.

The bear and the puck didn’t strike him as necessities amid her other, more essential items. She hadn’t even bothered to fully unpack the duffel bag on the floor. A pile of her clothes were still folded inside.

He picked up the puck, recognizing the state championship symbol printed on the other side of it.

Had Coach given it to her or had she been there? Jackson had been so focused on the game, on the win, and on taking down any dickhead stupid enough to throw a fist in his direction, it didn’t surprise him that he couldn’t remember Hayley being there. Still, he found himself wishing he could place her in the stands that day.

He closed his hand around the puck. Hayley wasn’t the only one who’d been caught off guard.

Careful not to disturb her more than he had to, he grabbed the corner of the quilt on the bed and dragged it up to her waist.

She stirred, but her eyes remained closed, her face relaxed. Peaceful. No narrowed eyes, flushed cheeks from him pushing her buttons or even that slow, sexy smile that seemed to precede every other witty comeback.

So why was he still so turned on? And why was the urge to slip his fingers beneath those panties so at war with a strong need to crawl beneath the covers and pull her into his arms?

Downstairs, Jackson took his time cleaning up and washing out his brushes for the next day. He left only the kitchen light on, and headed out to the dock, where he sat, removed his sandals and plunked his feet in the cool water.

The puck lay next to him, and he flipped it around in his hand, listening to the occasional owl across the lake for longer than he planned.

For the first time in years, it felt good to be back in Promise Harbor.

Before his accident he’d always been too focused on making the playoffs or waiting for the next hockey season to start to appreciate coming home. It had been easier to get his parents to visit him, and for a while there he’d gotten a little caught up in showing off the new life he’d built to both his parents and his friends from the harbor.

Maturity and the accident had given him some much-needed perspective on that front, but he’d still avoided returning to the harbor.

Sitting on Coach’s dock, his feet in the cool, dark water and a beautiful, clear night settling in around him, he couldn’t quite remember why it had been so important not to come back.

He didn’t turn around when footsteps padded down the dock behind him.

“Have you always been so stubborn?” He watched Hayley sit next to him, following the long line of her legs as she curled one beneath her and slid her other foot into the water.

If she understood he was talking about her getting up when she clearly needed the sleep, she only shrugged, then nodded to the puck in his hand. “Still stealing? Getting tased really made an impression on you, I see.”

“Why do you have it?”

“It was a memorable game.” She reached for it, but she wasn’t fast enough.

He held it out of her reach. “And you cart it around with you?”

“We all have our good luck charms.”

Jackson wasn’t buying it. “A rabbit’s foot and four-leaf clover are good luck charms.”

“Tell that to every hockey player who stops shaving during Stanley Cup playoffs.”

“Not luck,” he corrected. “Tradition. Really, what’s with the puck?” he pressed.

Gaze trained on the lake, she kicked at the water. “It was the last thing my dad gave me.”

As far as sad subjects went, she had his beat flat out. Jackson offered the unopened beer he’d brought with him. She took it, twisted off the cap and made him grin at the long drink she chugged.

Atta girl.

“It was a great game, even if the ref did have his head up his ass for most of it.”

“Coach made you leave.” The memory came out of nowhere. “You kept screaming at the ref.” How had he forgotten that?

“The ref was an idiot and wouldn’t have known the difference between an icing call and an ice cream sundae if people were throwing peanuts at him.” She took another drink. “And Gramps didn’t make me leave. I just wasn’t allowed to be within shouting distance of the players’ bench.”

He shook his head. “How did you end up going from that rebellious girl to a straitlaced cop?”

“Straitlaced? Forget about the tasing the other night already?” She laughed. “Not everyone would share the opinion of my being straitlaced.” She took another drink. “My mother, for example,” she added, when he threw her a questioning look.

Jackson remembered how much tougher Mrs. Stone had been compared to his mother growing up. There was never any pulling the wool over her eyes, and Hayley probably knew that better than anyone. “I can’t imagine she’d be easy to impress.”

She shrugged. “I gave up on that when I was a teenager, but at least we can talk now without arguing.”

Remembering the tension between the women at Barney’s, he could only imagine how intense it had been when Hayley was at her troublemaking peak. “She must have been relieved when you became a cop.”

“As opposed to a criminal, probably.” She set her beer aside and flattened her hands on the boards. “I certainly never imagined I’d end up carrying a badge.”

“It suits you.”

She glanced at him, brow raised.

“Well, I would need to see you and the badge and nothing else to be absolutely sure.”

Hayley punched him in the arm.

“Seriously though,” he prompted, genuinely curious as to how that came about.

“When they found my dad’s body, no one would tell me anything. I was the first to find out that his car had been pulled out of the harbor, but they thought my mom should be the one to tell me his body had been inside, I guess. So I sat in the station and waited and waited for them to track my mother down. Waited for almost two hours.”

Her knuckles whitened around the bottle she reached for.

“Maybe they were respecting my mother, or maybe they were worried what the resident troublemaker would do when she heard that her father hadn’t actually left his family without a word, but had been sitting at the bottom of the harbor for two weeks.”

The sip Hayley took barely wet her lips. Jackson closed his hand over hers, and she stared at their interlaced fingers for a long moment before gently squeezing.

“So I promised myself,” she continued. “That I wouldn’t give anyone a reason to think I couldn’t be trusted after that. Roughly, anyway. It may have taken me a while to fully straighten myself out.” She slid him a sidelong look. “More of an answer than you were looking for, huh?”

It was his turn to take a drink. “Well, I had been hoping it might have involved a lot of soul-searching and a naked slumber party.”

Her shoulders shook with laughter, and he leaned in to her, relieved he’d chased away the pain in her voice for a while.

She exhaled slowly. “We’re a pretty pathetic pair, aren’t we?”

He shook his head. “What’s pathetic is how long it’s taking you to finish your beer. You’re a disgrace to the Stone name.”

“Oh, that’s harsh. Not everyone aspires to the heights of power-puking like you.”

Knowing she was talking about the borrowed truck incident, he shrugged in his defense. “I was a kid.”

“But grown-up enough to cop a feel.”

Jackson paused, searching her eyes. He grinned. “You weren’t mad because you got blamed for taking the truck. You were mad that I was at Sunset Bluff with someone else.”

She took his bottle and sniffed the contents. “Are you taking drugs?”

Snatching back his beer, he tipped the bottle at her. “Admit it. You were into me in high school.”

“Please.” Hayley blew out a dismissive breath, not quite meeting his eyes.

Wait. Was he actually on to something here? The goal had been to tease her, make her forget all the other stuff she had to deal with, but maybe he wasn’t so far off the mark.

“You were.”

“I was not.”

Nothing on her face betrayed otherwise, but somehow he knew she was lying. Or was he just too fixated on the way she’d kissed him in the janitor’s closet that night years ago?

When he continued to stare at her, thinking about the best way to get her to admit that she must have thought about him once or twice after that kiss in high school, she surprised him by caving. “I may have thought you were a little cute.”