Page 17 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Sheriff

“I don’t have any condoms with me, but I’m clean.” I get the words out even though my whole body’s shaking with wanting her.

“I trust you, and I’m clean too.” She grinds down onto me. “Nothing between us. I want to feel you.”

So I give her that. I grip her hips and push up into her. She lowers herself at the same time, and then I’m inside her, all the way to the hilt.

I watch her face the whole way; watch her mouth fall open and her eyes go soft and dreamy. I pull her down to me and press my lips to hers. “You feel amazing already.”

She wiggles on me and I flip us so she’s under me and I’m on top.

That makes her laugh. “I love how you can manhandle me like I tiny little woman.”

I know what she’s saying. I know how the world has made women feel about their bodies. No matter what they look like, they’re taught to find all the flaws. It’s bullshit.

“You’re tiny compared to me. And I love your body. Your softness and curves. I think you’re perfect.”

Her legs come up and wrap around my hips and she gives me a sweet smile. I have to drop my forehead to hers and just breathe, because I’ve spent a decade convincing myself that everyone was better off if I kept to myself, didn’t allow anyone to get close. As it turns out, I was only ever waiting to find the one place I’d fit without having to hide anything about me.

“There you are,” she whispers, like she can feel it too. Like she knows.

Then I move, and there’s no more talking for a good long while—just the two of us and the last of the rain and her nails in my back and her voice breaking around my name. When she comes apart the second time I go right over the edge with her, buried deep.

After, we’re a wreck of tangled limbs and damp sheets and I’ve got her tucked into my side where I’m starting to think she’s always belonged. I came back to Saddle Creek after being a big city detective because I wanted some peace and a slower life. That’s what I told myself. But now I can’t help but think that maybe I came back so I could meet Hope.

I can’t stop touching her—her shoulder, her hip, the soft curve of her belly. It’s like my hands are trying to map her so they don’t forget any detail.

“Your heart’s going a mile a minute,” I murmur against her temple. “The watch was right about one thing.”

She huffs a laugh. “First accurate reading it’s ever taken. Figures it’d be about you.”

“I was engaged once. Her name was Tara,” I start, and feel her go quiet and attentive against me. “It wasn’t that she was a bad person. It’s that I couldn’t bring all of myself to it. I’d come home off the worst day you can imagine. After seeing things nobody should have to and I’d need to vent about it. Process the horrible things people do to each other. But she couldn’t hear it. She’d change the subject, shut me down. Wanted the man but not the badge, not what the badge saw. So I split myself down the middle. Kept the cop in a box and gave her what was left, and after a few years there wasn’t enough left of me to be anything to anybody.”

My arm tightens around her. “I told myself that was just the deal. That a woman like you, especially with all that sunshine, couldn’t possibly want the darkness that seems to cling to me like a heavy coat.”

Hope shifts, props herself up on my chest, and looks down at me with her pretty brown eyes.

“Griff Meadows.” She lays her hand flat over my heart. “You listen to me, because I’m only going to be this serious once tonight and then I’m going back to being unbearable. I can handle every part of you. The cop and the man and the badge and everything it’s ever seen. Bring it all home. You can take that coat off or you can leave it on. It’s up to you.

“I’ve walked through my own fire—you know that now—and I promise you I will not flinch.” Her voice softens. “And I only ask one thing back. That you can handle every part of me too. The stubbornness and the sunshine. The incessant baking and bad home-repair. There is never a need to split yourself down the middle for someone else. No offense to your ex, but she sounds incredibly selfish.”

I stare up at her and I feel the last wall I’ve got come down without a sound. Just crumbles into a pile of dust right at her feet.

“Every part,” I tell her. “I’ll take every part, sweetheart. Pretty sure you’re stuck with me now.”

“Good.” She settles back down against my chest, cheek over my heart, and I feel her smile against my skin. “Because the roads are washed out, so you’re literally trapped here till morning.”

“That the only reason I’m staying?”

“Nope.” She yawns, warm and boneless and mine. “But it’s a good head start.”

chapter

nine

Hope

I wake to sunlight, which feels like a trick.

After a night like that with all the drama and then the subsequent progression with Griff and me. Now though, there’s actual sun slanting through the gap in the curtains, laying a warm stripe across the wreck of my sheets.