Sweetest Mistake (Nolan Brothers #2) (5 page)

It was time she put an end to his bullying ways.

A car horn honked and Emily startled. The traffic light glowed green overhead.

She punched the accelerator and the car lurched forward. Painful memories hounded her and she pressed down on the gas pedal.

The needle on the speedometer bobbed past twenty-six, through twenty-seven and twenty-eight, to top out at thirty miles per hour as she bore down on him. She continued to push down on the accelerator.

Out of the corner of her eye, the bottle of wine she’d bought at the store peeked out from one of the grocery bags. In a moment of sheer reckless rebellion, she snatched it up and, tipping it high so he could make out its unmistakable shape, pressed the unopened bottle to her lips.

“Cheers,” she muttered.

Predictably, red and blue lights flashed in the darkening sky. With a self-satisfied smile, she pulled off to the side of the road and killed the car’s engine.

The police cruiser pulled up snug behind her and a moment later a man stepped from the vehicle. In the glare of his headlights, she lost sight of him. She readjusted her rearview mirror until he came into view.

His tall frame seemed less lean than she recalled, and he had a hitch to his walk she didn’t remember noticing before now. Her smile faltered.

Then fell away completely.

The air wheezed from her lungs. With a groan, she slunk low in her seat.

The officer’s hand came up and he knuckled a sharp rap on her window.

Her hand trembled when she pressed the electronic control button. With a soft whir, the glass between them disappeared and she looked up into a face that was very distinctly
not
Luke Nolan’s disgustingly handsome mug.

L
uke stuffed the last bite of the fast-food hamburger into his mouth and checked his blind spot before easing out over the centerline to pass a tow truck angled on the shoulder of the road.

The truck’s safety lights flashed in the night sky as the driver hitched to the front end of a Jetta.

Luke twisted in his seat. The sedan appeared unscathed, with no mangled fenders or busted glass. Maybe a mechanical failure? A flat tire? He’d missed the license plate, and there was no sign of Emily.

At the station, he parked near the front door and bore a straight path to the main desk. “You know anything about a Jetta getting towed on Main Street?”

Dominic swiveled on his chair, a wide grin on his baby face. “I got a fish in the tank.”

Luke stretched, trying to get a look through the glass partition into the jail’s cellblock. “What’s the charge?”

“OWVI.”

“Drunk driving?” An alarm bell sounded inside Luke’s skull. “Who’s the suspect?”

Newberry launched into his brief. “A female, thirty-two years old, no prior arrests. She said something about outstanding citations, but I can’t find any record of that.”

Probably because Luke never turned in those ridiculous tickets.

“Did you perform a field sobriety test?” Luke’s voice sounded thin and strained to his own ears.

Newberry cleared his throat. “Yes, sir, I did.”

“And?”

Newberry shifted his weight in the chair. “She passed.”

Relief rushed over Luke. “So she isn’t drunk?”

“Upon questioning, the suspect exhibited incoherent, slurred speech and her face appeared flushed.”

Luke stalked toward the cellblock door, his long strides eating the ground beneath his feet. “Buzz me in.”

The grating buzzer sounded, followed by the hard clank of the lock’s release, and he burst through the steel door. At the second holding cell, he lurched to a stop.

She sat huddled on the gray-blanketed cot, her back pressed to the concrete wall. Her brown eyes appeared huge in her pale face.

Another jarring buzz split the air and the door latch to her cell released.

A heavy silence hung in the air inside the cell, and with it, an odd sensation surged in him. Something gross and squirmy. It felt kind of like uncertainty, but that didn’t make any sense.

He shuffled forward. When he dropped onto the cot beside her, she jostled. She risked a sideways glance at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

A shaky sigh eased through her lips, and she nodded.

“What happened?”

“I w-w-was teaching y-y-you a lesson.”

At the stutter, he felt a pinch in the center of his chest. “What lesson would that be?”

“I saw a cop car and thought it w-was y-y-you. I figured if y-you w-were going to pull me over again, I should give y-you a reason to do it.”

He swallowed the dryness in his throat.

“I w-was speeding and—” one hand flitted through the air as if to grab the words, “I p-p-pretended to drink from a w-wine bottle I’d just bought. It w-w-wasn’t open,” she struggled to add.

Despite himself, a low chuckle slipped from him.

She searched his face. He allowed her assessment of him, and indeed, he performed one of his own, noting for the first time the smoothness of her fair skin and the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her small, straight nose. She was tragically cute.

“I really w-wish it’d been y-you in that cop car.”

“So do I.” He nudged her with his shoulder. “Sounds like you violated three, maybe four laws. A strip search might’ve been warranted.”

Her shy smile caught him off guard. Then she lifted a hand to push a hank of bright hair behind one ear, and the sleeve of her oversized sweatshirt dropped back to expose her forearm.

He stilled.

Slowly, he reached for her hand and gently turned her palm up. He pushed her sleeve up to her elbow. His fingers traced over angry red marks marring the fair skin around her wrist.

“What’s this?” There was no softening the hard edge to his tone.

She pulled free from his grip. With her other hand, she rubbed at the marks. “I guess the handcuffs did that.”

He noted similar bands of irritation on her other wrist as well and a cold violence stirred in him.

He climbed to his feet. “Can you sit tight a little longer while I go fix this?”

Her head snapped up. “You can fix this?”

“Do I hear doubt in your voice?”

She cut him with a look. “Yes.”

He laughed. “Give me twenty minutes. Half hour at the most. You okay that long?”

She nodded.

“Is there someone you want to call to come pick you up?”

“M-Mina’s out of the country. I don’t know anyone else.”

He frowned. He hoped she meant she didn’t know anyone else
on the island
. But that wasn’t what she’d said.

The knife of regret twisted. He stood. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He left the door to her cell wide open and returned to the reception area.

Dominic cradled the phone against his ear and hunched over a computer. Luke sat at the other workspace, where Dominic had left open Emily’s arrest file.

The final report not yet written, Luke combed through the rookie’s notes. He’d clocked her at thirty-three and gaining speed in a twenty-five before she came under suspicion of drinking while driving. The alcohol container visible, as she’d described.

Upon contact, Dominic observed her speech was jumbled, and at times incoherent, and then described her behavior as uncooperative.

Uncooperative?

Luke continued to read, trying to untangle the disjointed account of events. By the time he’d come to the end of the file, he had a clearer picture of Emily’s conduct, not as defiant or insolent, but increasingly withdrawn and panicked under duress.

His chest squeezed.

Behind him, Newberry shuffled papers.

“Didn’t you administer a Breathalyzer?” Luke asked without turning.

“Sloane did.”

Luke’s fingers froze over the keyboard. With a push, he swiveled in the office chair. “Sloane?”

“He booked her before his shift ended.” A defensive edge crept into Dominic’s tone. “And gave her the Breathalyzer.”

Luke’s scrambled brain attacked the information like a pit bull. “Where are the results?”

“They should be…” He shoved some papers around on the desk. “Here.”

Luke waited while the kid squinted down at the report.

A moment later, two bright pink spots stained his cheeks. “Oh.”

Luke pushed to his feet. “I’m releasing her. She isn’t drunk. Can you get her things ready?”

Halfway to the jail entrance, Luke turned. “And try to keep an eye on the handcuffs next time. If they’re digging in, they’re too tight.”

Dominic blinked. “I didn’t cuff her.”

Luke blinked back. “You didn’t cuff her?”

“No, sir.” He cleared the squeak from his throat. “I meant to, but I forgot and put her in the backseat. I didn’t want to get her out of the car just to put the cuffs on.”

“Sloane cuffed her?” Luke repeated.

Dominic’s expression turned sheepish and he scratched the crown of his head. “Yeah, and he already gave me a pointed lesson so that next time I don’t forget to do it.”

Uneasy tension situated on Luke’s shoulders. “How about you and I go over it one more time later, just to be sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m gonna drive Ms. Cole home. See if you can get her car out of the impound tonight, would ya?”

Luke returned to the holding cell to find Emily pacing the small enclosure.

“Ready to go?”

She nearly leapt into his arms. At the front desk, she signed the receipt for her personal effects and shot toward the exit like a pinball from its launcher.

She didn’t speak on the ride, and for once, Luke couldn’t think of a single quip or barb to lighten the heavy silence hanging over them.

He walked her to her front door and waited while she fumbled with her house key in the dark.

“You should consider installing motion-activated lighting out here.”

In the faint moonlight, he could make out the severe scowl screwing up her features.

He held up both hands. “Sorry. It’s a safety issue. Bad habit, I know.”

Finally, the dead bolt gave and she pushed inside. She turned back.

He waited, but she said nothing.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear something about your car,” he said.

Another awkward silence descended. She unsettled him. He had no idea what she was thinking or feeling. He could guess, but he didn’t want to guess.

He waited, desperate to hear what she’d say.

She shut the door in his face.

Emily pressed her forehead against the solid wood door and listened to the sound of Luke’s footsteps fading away. She waited for the bang of a car door, the growl of an engine, and finally, silence.

This was supposed to be her fresh start. Her new life free of sorrow and stigma and self-doubt, where she could be more than the girl who stuttered.

But Luke Nolan ruined that.

Okay fine, it might not be entirely his fault.

With a frustrated sigh, she whipped around and pressed her back to the door.

But it was mostly his fault.

She rubbed her sore wrist, only to recall his gentle touch. Her stomach gave a gleeful flip.

Dammit.
She didn’t want to soften to him. Even if she didn’t really know him, she knew she didn’t like him. With his mischievous smile and lighthearted ways, he was trouble for her. Like the cool kids in school, he flustered and unnerved her to the point she lost her composure. If she were lucky, they’d looked right through her, but on those occasions when luck had abandoned her and they’d drawn her out to stand beneath their perpetual spotlight, she’d suffered mightily, whether through taunts and humiliations or their piteous regard.

Never trust the cool kid.

Her stomach released an angry grumble, but in the kitchen, the cupboards remained bare, her groceries languishing in the passenger seat of her car, wherever it was.