Free Officer in Pursuit by Ranae Rose Page A

fearless. For someone who’d never seen the ocean
until a few years ago, she was a great swimmer.
    Watching her, Grey thought about
riptides and jellyfish and all the things he normally didn’t waste
time worrying about. He wasn’t sure why those dangers seemed so
real now, in a way they never had before. Maybe because Kerry
looked so small and alone out at sea.
    He swam to her.
    When he reached her side, she seemed
surprised. “You shouldn’t be swimming,” she said, and turned back
without another word.
    She didn’t reprimand him any further,
but he still felt like a jackass as they headed toward shore. When
she started to wade back in, he did too. He might as well head in:
he’d managed to cool down, and obviously being in the water with
her today lacked the magic it’d been so full of last
time.
    When they got back to their towels,
she pulled a couple of bottled waters out of a soft cooler and
handed one to him.
    For the longest time, they were both
silent. Silent and virtually alone. There was an old man with a
metal detector inching his way across the beach, and a woman
jogging with a golden retriever on a leash. But they were far away
and it was like he and Kerry were in their own quiet little
bubble.
    “I’m sorry if I seem bitchy,” Kerry
eventually said. “It’s just that I feel guilty.”
    He frowned. “Hey, stop beating
yourself up. It’s just a little concussion. I’m fine, and it’s not
your fault anyway.”
    “It’s not just that.” She turned to
look at him, and he could feel her making eye contact, even through
her glasses’ enormous lenses. “There’s something else I should tell
you. I’ve been holding back, and I can’t take the guilt
anymore.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Kerry’s stomach balled up into
something that felt like a mass of barbed wire and broken glass.
She was infinitely grateful for her sunglasses. Should she feel
guilty over that too?
    She dropped her gaze as she wracked
her mind for a way to say what she had to without sounding
fantastically egotistical.
    “I really like spending time with
you,” she finally said, “even if I’m not good at showing it. But
the truth is that I don’t have any business flirting with you or
anyone else, and I feel like maybe I’ve been … well, leading you
on.”
    For a split second, Grey looked like
he’d been sucker-punched. He recovered quickly, though – so quickly
that Kerry wondered whether she’d imagined his reaction just to
boost her own ego.
    “I thought…” He unscrewed the cap to
his water bottle, held it open but didn’t take a drink. “I thought
we went on a date the other day, at the café. Figured maybe if I
could lay on the charm thick enough, you’d eventually fall for me
the way your friends did for Liam and Henry.”
    He flashed her a grin that was gone as
soon as it’d appeared.
    Inside, she was cringing all the way
to the moon and back. A part of her wanted to scream that yes, it
had been a date, and that they should go on another one. But she
knew what she had to do, and this would ultimately be less awkward
and painful if she got it over with quickly. “I’m
sorry.”
    He looked like he was about to say
something else, but didn’t. And then his expression changed. “Hey,
what do you mean you don’t have any business with me or anyone
else? Do you have a secret husband locked away in an attic or
something?”
    His words hit her like a ton of
bricks, and she felt suddenly and absurdly exposed, even though
what he’d said was just as ridiculous as he’d obviously meant it to
be. “No, of course not. My house is way too small to hold someone
prisoner in without getting caught.”
    “Right. No attic, and no basement.
What’s the deal, then – are you a nun on the lam?”
    “Ha, no.” She might as well have been.
Her date at the café with Grey, complete with shark cookies, had
been the most romance she’d experienced in years.
    “Then what is it – you can’t just
break my heart, crush