Tumbledown (4 page)

“Here you go,” she said, the pellets rattling down against the metal as she scooped out their supper. Leaving them to eat and squabble, she swung her kit bag over her shoulder and allowed Tilly to lead her up onto the porch. Her mouth was watering before she had even opened the door. Whatever Sarah had been baking smelled heavenly.

“What can I do to help?” she said as Sarah turned away from the oven.

“Get changed.” Sarah pulled off her apron, revealing a flimsy tank top and a ragged pair of shorts. “You’re making me hot just looking at you.”

Alex waggled her eyebrows and Sarah grinned as she belatedly recognized her double entendre.

“You haven’t got a hope in hell until you’ve put that uniform in the laundry basket and had a shower,” she said. “I know who your first punter was today, remember?”

“Ah.” Self-conscious, Alex sniffed at her shirt. “Can you still…?”

Sarah laughed. “No, I can’t, but everything’s set in here, so go get cleaned up and then we can eat.”

As if casting the deciding vote, Alex’s stomach gave a sonorous rumble.

“Tea’s in ten,” Sarah warned her.

Alex saluted crisply. “I’ll be ready in five.”

*

“This may possibly”―Alex licked the back of her spoon, reconsidering the rest of her statement― “no,
definitely
be the finest cherry pie I have ever eaten.”

“You’re very sweet,” Sarah said, flicking a piece of crust for Bandit to chase off the edge of the porch, “but you say pretty much the same about everything I bake.”

Alex shrugged. “I can’t help but be appreciative of your many talents.”

“It is a bloody good pie,” Sarah conceded, cutting them each another generous slice.

She set aside what little remained and then stretched her legs out in front of her. The wood of the porch was rough but warm against her bare feet. In the distance, occasional streaks of lightning flashed silently down toward the lake, but the storm was still miles away and, far from being threatening, the blue-silver slashes gave a spectacular outline to the clouds massing in the night sky. A thin rain was beginning to mist the grass that she had mown that afternoon, giving the parched surface a much needed soak and making everything smell freshly washed. It was so peaceful that she forgot all about the pie in her bowl and just reveled in the sense of calm.

“And then I asked Quinn if I could go in naked tomorrow and he said that was fine…”

She blinked, suddenly aware that Alex was studying her intently.

“Sorry, what?” She mentally replayed the last thing she remembered hearing. “If you’re going into work naked, love, at least remember to wear sunscreen,” she said.

Alex let out a bark of laughter. “So you were sort of listening.”

“No, sorry. I didn’t hear a damn thing apart from that last bit,” Sarah admitted. “I was just…” She put her dish down and turned to face Alex properly. “I never thought I’d find this. Did you ever think you’d find this?” The words came out in a bemused rush.

Alex patted the space on the bench between them, and Sarah shuffled closer to nestle into her embrace.

“Honestly?” Alex asked.

Sarah nodded to prompt her to continue.

“I thought I’d stay in LA, end up living in some crappy condo where you can always hear your neighbors fighting or their TV screeching, but I’d tell myself that it wouldn’t matter because I was a cop and that was everything I wanted my life to be. At best, I expected a few meaningless relationships, and realistically, I’d probably have hit the bottle sometime in my forties and gone on to drink myself into an early grave.”

“Fucking hell, Alex.” Sarah shifted, looking up to see whether she was joking.

Alex licked her lips nervously. “I know now that I didn’t have anything,” she said. “I had the job, but there has to be more than that. Family, or good friends, or if you’re really lucky, someone like you.”

Sarah wrapped her arms around Alex and felt Alex fumble for her hand and grip it tightly. For the past two years, they had really only had each other for company. Sarah’s closest friends were in England, while Alex’s friends from LA had fallen out of touch with her long before she moved to Maine. Although both of Alex’s brothers had come to the wedding, her parents, living barely four hours away in Boston, hadn’t spoken to her since she was released from the hospital in Seattle, and they had refused to acknowledge her relationship with Sarah. Alex rarely mentioned them, and Sarah knew better than to push for reconciliation.

Alex stroked her thumb across the back of Sarah’s hand. “If you’d asked me a few years ago whether I could see myself living in the depths of rural Maine, working as a small-town cop and coming home to half a petting zoo and a beautiful wife, I would probably have laughed in your face.” She kissed the top of Sarah’s head. “I never knew I was looking for this,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “So, no, I never thought I’d find it.”

Her palm was warm against Sarah’s and she took a deep, shuddering breath. Lightning blazed across the sky and rain began to pelt the ground in fat, heavy drops. Sarah stared at the approaching storm until the rain and her tears blurred into one. She felt Alex move and then a tug on her hand.

“Let’s go inside,” Alex said.

“Okay, I’ve beaten this to within an inch of its life. What do I do now?” Alex peered into the bowl as if the mixture itself could provide her with an answer.

On the other side of the kitchen, her hands covered in sticky marinade, Sarah attempted simultaneously to fend off a marauding cat and assess the creamed butter and sugar in Alex’s mixing bowl.

“That’s good. Should be fine,” she said, trying to shift a strand of hair from her eyes by blowing upward. “You whisked your eggs?”

Alex nodded.

“Okay, whack the eggs and flour in together. You’re supposed to add them a bit at a time, but it doesn’t really matter if you fold them in gently.”

“Fold them in gently,” Alex repeated. She chewed her bottom lip, looking from the bowl to the remaining ingredients. “I have no clue how to do that,” she said, feeling like an idiot. Her family had always employed kitchen staff, and no one had ever taken the time to show her how to cook. She had been learning the basics from Sarah and already had a few simple recipes in her repertoire. This, however, was the first cake she had made, and although the Victoria sandwich in the illustration looked impressive, the process of putting it together was proving a little tricky.

She glanced up from the recipe book when she heard running water. Sarah dried her hands on a towel and came to stand beside her.

“I’m sorry. I promised I’d show you how to bake a cake, and I’m just leaving you to struggle, aren’t I?” She sounded apologetic, but she was smiling.

Alex smiled too. Sarah had made her that promise when they had first met. “Well, we are working to a tight deadline,” she said.

The potluck picnic wasn’t scheduled to start for another three hours, but the kitchen had been a hive of activity since dawn. They had run out of eggs and spent the morning bribing the chickens into laying the extra one needed for the cake. A triumphant squawk from the coop less than twenty minutes ago had signaled success, but now that all the ingredients were in place, Alex wasn’t certain her rookie skills were up to the challenge of doing anything with them. She watched Sarah pour the whisked eggs into the bowl.

“Okay, chuck in your flour as well.”

Alex did as she was instructed.

“Fabulous. Now grab hold of the spoon like this.” Standing behind her, Sarah placed a hand onto Alex’s, and together they managed to get a workable grip on the wooden spoon. “You don’t want to beat this or you’ll knock all the air out of it and we’ll end up with a pancake.” Her voice was low and amused, the warmth of her body was pressing close, and Alex tried very hard to concentrate on the words and ignore the fact that she was suddenly finding her cake baking lesson incredibly erotic.

“A pancake would be bad,” she murmured, feeling that she should say something at some point.

Sarah laughed, her chest shuddering against Alex’s back. “A pancake would be as bad as whatever it is you’re currently imagining, Alexandra Hayes.”

“I am imagining cake,” Alex said, a flush heating her cheeks. She had always loathed her given name, but the way Sarah said it made tingles shoot right down her spine.

Sarah rested her chin on Alex’s shoulder as she began to work the spoon. “You’re a terrible fibber,” she said, her fingers not so much guiding now as stroking the ones beneath them.

“And you’re making it very difficult for me to concentrate.” Alex’s protest came out a little higher in pitch than she had intended. “It’s gonna be a pancake!”

“No, it’s not. You’re doing beautifully. Some people cheat and use a food processor for this, but personally,” Sarah dropped her voice, speaking confidentially into Alex’s ear, “I prefer to get hands on and do it the old-fashioned way.”

Alex shivered, despite the kitchen’s heat. “You’re actually trying to kill me, aren’t you?” She felt Sarah’s teeth nip at her earlobe. “Oh God, is this finished? It looks finished to me.”

“It’s fine. It’s done. Get it in the tins,” Sarah said with unmistakable urgency.

“What about the curry?”

“Simmering.” Sarah hurriedly smoothed the top of the cake batter into an even layer. “I’ll stick a lid on it so it’ll be Bandit-proofed. And these”―she picked up the tins and slid them into the oven―“will take about fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes.” Alex checked the clock. “What could we possibly do for the next fifteen minutes?” When she turned around, she found Sarah perched on the kitchen table, her shirt already unbuttoned and pushed low on her shoulders.

“Well, that’ll save some time,” Alex conceded, using a finger to smooth frosting across Sarah’s lips before kissing her. Vanilla and rosewater combined on her tongue. It was delicious, and when they broke apart, they were both wide-eyed and panting. Alex considered the bowl of frosting in her hands.

“Can we make more of this?”

“Yes.” Sarah nodded quickly, leaning back on her hands to allow Alex to paint a line of it down her chest. “Jesus, I don’t remember cookery classes at school ending like this.” She gasped as Alex followed the line with her mouth.

“Then you went to a very boring school,” Alex said, and reached for the bowl again.

*

The sun was so hot, so vivid, that it burned orange beneath Sarah’s closed eyelids as she lay back on the blanket. Water dripped down her face from her soaked hair, but she couldn’t be bothered to dry herself, letting the midafternoon warmth do the job instead. The music from the small funfair and the gleeful sound of children’s laughter seemed to fade into the background, and it was only when something hard and cool poked her in the ribs, startling her, that she realized she had been dozing. She snatched at the offending object and heard Alex yelp. Opening one eye, she found Alex grinning down at her and a half-gnawed carrot gripped in her fist.

“Can I have my carrot stick back?”

“Definitely not,” Sarah said, making a show of crunching into it. “Did you get anything other than rabbit food? I’m starving.”

“I’m not surprised, little champ.” Alex patted the small trophy Sarah had been presented with after a series of swimming races, and then passed her a plate laden with an assortment of food.

“Wow.” Sarah stared at the mass of seafood, salads, cornbread, and barbecued meats. “Sure we got enough here?” She caught the fork Alex threw her and raised her bottle of beer. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Alex took a long drink and rested the cool glass bottle against her forehead. “I would’ve gotten some of your curry, but there was none left.”

Sarah cracked open a freshly steamed crab claw. “I can always make it for tea one night. Maybe in winter, when it’s not a million and one degrees in the shade.”

“Good call.” Alex dropped her voice a notch. “I did manage to snag a piece of our cake though.” She winked in such a knowing manner that Sarah almost choked on her crabmeat.

“God, if they only knew,” she said, looking around at the families gathered on picnic rugs and the children chasing each other across the beach.

Alex started to laugh. “Margot St. Clare caught me by the barbecue and told me it was one of the best cakes she had ever tasted.” Her shoulders were shaking so hard that she had to put her plate down. “She wanted to know what the secret ingredient in the frosting was.”

Sarah closed her eyes slowly. “Alex, what did you tell her?”

There was a pause as she waited in agony for Alex to compose herself sufficiently to respond.

“Rosewater,” Alex said at last. “What the hell else did you think I was going to say?”

Any retort Sarah might have made was forestalled by a screech of static and a crackling public address announcement.

“Oh, that’s my cue.” Alex gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and scrambled to her feet. “Wish us luck.”

“Break a leg,” Sarah called as Alex dashed through the maze of townsfolk and pets and shrieking children.

The Police Department versus Avery All-comers Tug o’ War was—according to everyone Sarah had spoken to in the past week—the undisputed highlight of the potluck picnic. Feeling too comfortable to move from her blanket, she stayed where she was, deciding that she had a decent enough view. The rope had just been raised, and the teams were poised to take the strain when Lyssa Mardell waved and trotted across the sand toward her.

“Hey.” Lyssa had three bottles of beer in her hands. She offered one to Sarah and set the second bottle in the cooler. “Save this for Alex when she’s finished. She’ll probably need it as a consolation prize,” she said, sitting on the edge of the blanket.

Sarah shuffled over to make a bigger gap for her. “Thanks. You off duty today?”

“Hell, yes. I’m back in on Friday night.” Lyssa snagged a piece of chicken from Sarah’s plate and looked at her expectantly. “So, you heard yet? You must have heard by now.”

Never sure what Lyssa’s shift pattern was, Sarah hadn’t wanted to risk disturbing her after a night shift by calling her. As a result, she had been sitting on her good news for three days. She smiled, feeling shy all over again. “I got ninety-six percent,” she said.