Free Love On The Line by Kimberly Kincaid Page B

thick and gritty, but the names were indistinct, too jumbled to read…
    He landed back in his kitchen on a gasping exhale, and as hard as he strained to dial up what had happened after that, all Noah got was static.
                  Dammit! There had to be something he’d done just now to trigger the memory into place, some way he could do it again and get further. Clearly, being close to Violet wasn’t it, although she had been less than an arm’s length away the last two times he’d pulled something up. All three times, he’d been in the kitchen, but he was standing in the kitchen right freaking now, too.
                  There was no pattern. No logical order to any of it.
    Come on, Blackwell. Think. Think!
                  But grabbing his memory felt like trying to catch smoke in his bare hands, each one slipping away no matter how tightly Noah clenched his fingers.
    #
                  Violet was making a habit of waffling on Noah Blackwell’s doorstep, and it was definitely the unhealthy kind. But come on. Was she really supposed to just breeze back into his apartment all business as usual when at this time yesterday, she’d been trying to climb him like a jungle gym?
                  Forget personal. Kissing Noah had been downright intimate, which was totally out of the question, not to mention insane. He was a cop. Getting involved with him— physically, mentally, and most of all intimately— just couldn’t happen. 
                  Except she’d wanted it to happen. Badly enough that if Jason hadn’t interrupted them…
                  “No,” she whispered, placing a steady knock on the door in front of her. Jason had interrupted, and it was for the best. Missing her father and worrying about her brother were hard enough. No way was Violet going to add another cop into the mix of her life. Not even between the sheets.
                  Not even Noah.
                  “Hi.” Noah swung the door into his apartment, tipping his dark head in a wordless invitation to come in, but she needed to squash the awkward-factor before she even took a step. The Brentsville PD was paying her to cook for an injured officer, and it was her job to focus on doing just that.
                  She shifted on her feet, but stayed on the threshold. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I got carried away, and it was wrong, and…well, it won’t happen again.”
                  The only change to his expression was a very slight lifting of his brows, but then Noah shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was out of line.”
                  “No, it was…” Easily the most toe-curling, panty-twisting kiss I’ve ever experienced, no exceptions . “My fault,” Violet breathed, and God, she needed to scrub the memory from her brain, along with a couple of other parts due south. Snapping her spine up nice and straight, she cleared her throat back to non-hedonistic levels. “Can we call it even and start over?”
                  Straightforward as ever, Noah said, “Deal.” He stepped back from the door, and her brow popped upward as she caught sight of him in entirety.
    “Wait, where’s your sling? And is that…flour on your shirt?” Her pulse rattled with equal parts surprise and confusion, but Noah’s expression stayed smooth.
    “The doc gave me the all-clear on the sling today. He didn’t want my shoulder to lock up, and I guess my arm looks good enough to go without it.” He brushed at the powdery streaks on the front of his black T-shirt without looking at them, but Violet knew better than to fall for that. She wasn’t an amateur, for God’s sake.
                  “I’m glad you’re healing,” she said, and meant it. “But you didn’t answer the other question.”
                  A muscle in