“I’m tired of pretending I don’t find you the sexiest girl I’ve ever met in my entire life.”
“Your entire life.”
“I’m serious, January. You want to know why I moved to Austin?” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I moved to get away from a girl I was in love with but she belonged to someone else.” I gulped, my stomach twisted in knots. “But when we kissed, that burning need to have her vanished in an instant.”
I took another deep breath. “Then why treat me like a disease?”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Afraid.”
“I’m a coward, January. I’m not sure if I can handle another heartbreak and I know if I fell for you, I’d fall so hard there’d be no coming back from it. You’re extraordinary.”
I felt my body go still and my heart beat into my throat at his confession. My breaths got deeper and my chest began to pant. “Tom,” I whispered. “Sometimes the risk can be worth the reward.”
We leaned into one another and closed our eyes. He languidly kissed the side of my red throat. His mouth following up, up, up until he reached my jaw and my breath hitched in my throat.
“I think you may be right, MacLochlainn.” He kissed down my jaw line until he came to the hollow beneath my ear. “Do you know how many times I’ve imagined doing this for the past six months?”
“Oh, God,” I panted. “Probably not as many times as I’ve imagined.” I needed my hands free! If they hadn’t been tied so well behind my back, they would have been interlaced in his hair, clutching his mouth to mine.
He followed farther up my jaw and across my cheek. I closed my eyes in anticipation as I felt his lips at the corner of my mouth.
“’Ey, lovebirds! Ready for jail?” Officer One teased, settling into the driver’s seat. Tom and I broke eye and skin contact to glance his direction. He leaned over his seat toward us. “You really are a strange lot,” he said as Officer David opened the passenger side door and sat down.
Tom took a complete one-eighty. “What’s the charge, officer?”
“Attempted burglary.”
“Ah, I see, and what were we supposedly attempting to steal?”
“Uh,” Officer One said, looking over at Officer David. “When we look at the tapes...”
“Oh! They have tapes! Thank God!” I interjected, earning a silencing look from Officer David.
“We should get you attempting to open the register.”
“You won’t get that at all,” Tom said. “And when you find out that we were just innocent in all this, our car stolen, etc. How quickly can we be released?”
“Assuming you’re right, which we’re not, you’d be out in, oh, say, twelve hours?”
“Twelve hours!” I said. “But we have to be in London by ten!”
“Yeah, London by ten, you say? For what? Probably secret drug meetin’s and such.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” I said. “We just had use for the phone is all!”
“January,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Do we get a phone call at the station?” he asked Officer One.
“One, yes.”
At the station, they processed us both by taking our prints followed by a round of mug shots. I glanced at the computer and saw the pic they’d taken and almost burst out laughing. I looked like a frightened rabbit. Truthfully, I was a little frightened, but not enough to deprive myself of the laugh that was my mug shot. Does anyone take a good mug shot?
Tom rang Jason and let him know everything that’d went down. I stood beside him, waiting for my turn to call...someone. Jason would have been my call but Tom took care of that, so I called July.
“Hello?” I heard July’s voice and it sounded so good to hear.
“July!”