He looked back over his shoulder. Shay was looking at him with a big grin on her face. That was a new and welcome sight.
He grinned back. “Taking Bogart for a walk.”
She rolled over, dragging the covers with her. “I’ll do it.”
“It’s chilly. I won’t be long.”
She gave him the porcupine look. “You forget. For a whole month he was my dog. I miss taking care of him. Please?”
James hesitated. He didn’t want to spoil what would be a normal moment between them. An easy couples moment. “Okay, but don’t go far.”
He looked at Bogart, who was giving him that lolling-tongue doggy grin. “Do you see what you’ve done? I even have to share my girl with you.”
Bogart barked brightly and padded over to Shay’s side of the bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Shay sat behind the wheel of her car, trying to get up the courage to drive into work. It was Monday morning. James had already left to report for retraining, but the look on his face as he kissed her good-bye was anything but happy.
“Get a restraining order against Coates. Today.”
Balloons? Harmless.
After she’d walked Bogart early Saturday morning, James had walked in on her popping the balloons in the kitchen. The sexy sleepy-eyed man of early morning vanished. Pissed-off Officer Cannon was a force to be reckoned with.
Shay thought about lying. But there was a note tied to the bouquet of balloons she found on her doorstep that read “First Anniversary. Think of me.” No name. No need.
James looked at the note a long time before saying in a flat voice that this was the last time he was going to hear Eric Coates’s name without doing something about it.
Then he had gotten dressed and taken care of her car problem.
Someone had yanked out her spark plug wires. The Raleigh police officer who’d volunteered to help them out after he heard about James’s and Bogart’s rescue of the baby on Friday night spotted the problem immediately. The officer said vandalism was not unusual for a car left in an unmonitored car park. The two officers got her towed and then her car fixed in a matter of hours. Free. Professional courtesy, James told her. She suspected he had paid without letting her know.
Shay smiled to herself as she started her engine. She’d always shouldered her own world. Trust hadn’t been part of her vocabulary. She didn’t know what to do with gratitude, either. Thanks to James, the new emotions coming to life inside her were far more than thankfulness. Dangerous, because she didn’t know what to do with that new feeling of more. James was more than she ever expected in her life, better, kinder, a good man. But even a good man could only take so much. Their relationship was barely a week old. Already, he knew more about her than anyone else in her life. They needed time.
That’s why she hadn’t told him about the obscene phone call. She couldn’t afford to dump everything on him, even if her heart wanted to. If it didn’t work out, her world would shatter. To have him for now, that was more than enough. Right now, enough felt damn good.
She pulled out of her apartment complex and turned toward downtown and work. Three days ago she had been ready to grab what little she owned and run. Now she was going in to face down her fears. That was because of James. She felt her karma changing over the weekend. It wasn’t just the terrific sex. It had to do with every other moment.
There was the spur-of-the-moment Saturday afternoon picnic drowned out by a sudden shower that had left them scrambling for cover with soggy fast-food fried chicken, and an eat-everything-in-sight dog. Who knew Bogart would gobble up a carton of wet coleslaw? And sofa pillows! Fair enough, she’d offered them to him as a substitute for his bed, which she’d tossed out in a fit of self-pity after losing him. What he did with them was his business. And her mess to clean up.
Shay felt her mouth tugging upward as happy images of the weekend cascaded through her thoughts. No frown could last long when confronted with the memory of James with a skimpy towel wrapped around his hips as he made pancakes Sunday morning. Not wonderful pancakes. But who cared when a half-dressed male was in her kitchen?
She had not known it was possible to have so much easy happiness in her life. Now, more than ever, she wanted to clear away the ugliness she had let rule her life for the past year.
Her cell phone rang. It was James. She put it on speaker to keep both hands on the wheel.
“I made a call to the main office of Halifax Bank this morning, asking for a meeting with Eric Coates.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“I’m talking here, Shay. It’s polite to listen.” He was still in officer mode. “I was told he’s out of the office at a bank conference until Thursday. Looks like I’ll have to wait for a little chat with the asshole until I get back. I just thought you should know you have some breathing room. Meanwhile, you need to get a restraining order.”