South Island PD: Dark Blue Part 1

Dark Blue.

South Island PD.

Ranae Rose.

If Belle is going to get a speeding ticket, it might as well be written by the hottest cop South Island has ever seen. But Officer Jackson Calder isn't just a daydream in blue, he's the first man she ever slept with, and the only one she doesn't regret.

One routine traffic stop, and Jackson's past is back to haunt him in the most bittersweet way imaginable. Too good for him and too good to forget, Belle became a fantasy after she left the island. Now that she's home for good in the Lowcountry, she's a living, breathing temptation he can't resist.

He was her first, but that was just the beginning. It's being the last that counts.

CHAPTER 1.

Charlestonians vented all their aggression on the roads. It was how they managed to keep the city's famous Southern charm from wearing thin elsewhere. So, Belle didn't think much of pressing the pedal to the floor to pa.s.s a particularly awful driver who'd nearly caused her to rear-end their vehicle.

She wasn't a Charlestonian, but she was a South Islander, and that was close enough. A steel bridge united the island with Charleston, supporting a constant stream of traffic in both directions. As she crossed it, she forgot about lifting her foot off the gas pedal something she realized when lights flashed red and blue in her rear-view mirror.

"d.a.m.n it." She slowed, barely off the bridge. The cop had been sitting there, waiting to welcome drivers onto the island with speeding tickets.

The cruiser slowed to a halt behind her on the shoulder of the road, and she fought to smooth her expression. The officer might let her off with a warning if she didn't make herself a pain in his a.s.s.

She watched him in her mirrors as he stepped out of his vehicle, revealing himself to be muscular and broad-shouldered, a strikingly masculine vision in dark blue. As he approached her car, her irritation ebbed, giving way to begrudging admiration.

If she had to get pulled over, it might as well be by a hot cop. Silver linings and all that.

After lowering her window, she could hear roadside gravel crunching beneath his boots as he came close and leaned down so she could see his face sort of.

The sun was glaring behind him, and he wore dark gla.s.ses. Still, she could just make out a hint of dark blond stubble on his jaw, as if he was near the end of a long s.h.i.+ft. It made her spine tingle.

Her gaze drifted down to his arms. They were thick with muscle, and the left one was wrapped in a sleeve of ink, black designs against golden skin. The intricate tattoos ran from his wrist to his biceps and beyond, disappearing beneath his sleeve.

"License and registration please, ma'am."

His voice was steady and leaned toward the deep end of the spectrum. What she really noticed, though, was the way her breath hitched when she heard it. Consciously exhaling, she wracked her mind for the reason. Who did he sound like?

Meanwhile, she opened her purse and her glove box, producing the necessary items.

He stared at her license twice as long as her registration longer than she could imagine it taking to read the spa.r.s.e information printed there. Did he think it was a fake, or was the picture just that bad? The DMV photographer had caught her looking dazed whenever she'd procured a South Carolina license after her move back to her home state four months ago.

She barely repressed a snort, her gaze drifting to the small a.r.s.enal strung around his hips on a heavy belt. The large gun and silver handcuffs caught her eye in particular.

"You were driving twelve miles over the speed limit." Every word he spoke teased her memory, frustrating.

"Sorry."

"Have you ever had a speeding ticket before?"

"Once, when I was seventeen." That'd been an entire decade ago.

"I remember that."

"What?" She snapped her gaze from his belt to his face, squinting against the glare of the sun.

Realization hit her with all the force of a speeding freight train. "Jackson?"

She barely kept her voice from squeaking.

"Ms. Morrissey." A grin cracked his stern expression. "I had no idea you'd moved back."

"Four months ago. I had no idea you were a cop."

"Surprise. Been an officer with the South Island PD for the past four years."

Her head spun with this revelation, and she couldn't stop staring into those dark gla.s.ses, as if she might magically develop x-ray vision and be granted a view of the eyes beneath.

He started scribbling on a pad, and guesses at what he might be writing tumbled through her mind. Could he be giving her his phone number?

She eyed his tattoo sleeve as he wrote. The designs were myriad sea creatures, swirling across his skin in a rush of water. He hadn't had them all last time she'd seen him, but she remembered a couple the bare bones of what had become a sleeve.

It suited him.

He stopped writing and handed over a blue slip of paper.

Oh, no. The truth hit her when she saw it.

"You're writing me a ticket?" As soon as she asked, she wished she could take it back the question had come out sounding petulant.

"You haven't had a ticket in ten years; it's not like you'll lose your license over this."

She schooled her features, trying to look composed. "Admit it you just want an excuse to see me again, and court is a sure bet."

Her attempt at humor earned her a bark of laughter from Jackson. Or Officer Calder, as he was apparently now known.

"You could just pay the ticket. Unless, of course, you want to see me in court."

"There's always the chance," she said, accepting the ticket, "that if I take the court date, the officer who wrote the ticket won't show."

More laughter, rough and somehow rich, however abbreviated. She'd have died if he'd known how her fingertips tingled as she held the ticket he'd written her.

"Is that an attempt to bribe an officer of the law?"

She sat up straighter in her seat, ignoring the way the seatbelt dug into the s.p.a.ce between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, emphasizing the modest amount of cleavage revealed by her sleeveless top. "Absolutely not. I didn't offer you anything."

He was silent for a moment. "Well Ms. Morrissey, I guess I'll see you in court."

She almost told him to drop the formality and call her Belle, as he always had, but bit her tongue at the last second. He had just written her a ticket, after all.

"I guess you will, Jackson."

She used his first name on purpose.

By the time he climbed back into his cruiser, her head was spinning. For a few moments, she just sat there on the side of the road, hands motionless on the wheel as her Toyota idled.

What the h.e.l.l had just happened? And why did she feel excited instead of upset?

Jackson backed his cruiser into its hiding place by the end of the bridge. With Belle gone, he was left to reconcile his shock and excitement over seeing her with the sick sense of frustration that'd followed him to traffic duty.

This was supposed to be a sort of break a breather from working calls. He'd come to the bridge after responding to the accident at the intersection of Royal and Bastille. He could still see that woman's face, pale and freckled beneath the streaking mask of blood. He'd been working this job for four years, but he'd become nauseated as he'd watched EMTs remove her from her car.

He'd gotten there first and had seen the two empty car seats in the back row and the toddler toys strewn across the floor. A sleeve of graham crackers had been tossed into the pa.s.senger seat at some point, or maybe it'd already been there when the truck had t-boned her car.

Now, he kept thinking of the kids all that stuff had belonged to. Luckily, they hadn't been in the car. But that didn't change the fact that they were going to grow up without a mother.

The crash had broken her neck she'd been dead when he'd arrived on the scene. She'd been gla.s.sy eyed and b.l.o.o.d.y from where her temple had stricken the window, and he'd realized right away that her mistake had been fatal.

All because she'd been in a hurry and had tried to speed through the intersection as the light had turned red. When people decided the law didn't apply to them, that was what f.u.c.king happened.

So yeah, he'd given Belle a ticket. If it might save her from ending up in a wreck, it was worth it. Seeing that happen to a stranger had been bad enough; the thought of it happening to her had driven him to write that ticket, even as his heart had raced for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.

She might think twice about going over the speed limit now, but she probably thought he was a jacka.s.s. He wouldn't have cared if it'd been anyone else, but it was Belle, the woman he'd been aching to see for years. Her safety was more important than her opinion of him, but that didn't stop him from feeling like s.h.i.+t.

Should he have let her off with a warning instead? Would she have taken it seriously?

His confidence in his decision wavered, but then he thought of the crash victim's dead-eyed gaze and his gut clenched.

At the same time, his heart was still beating faster than it had been before he'd stopped her. He might've earned her disdain, but that didn't do a d.a.m.n thing to alter his feelings toward her. Maybe he'd f.u.c.ked things up bad, or maybe not.

There was only one way to find out.

316 West Palmetto Street. Jackson approached the row of pale brick apartments, his gaze drawn to the gleam of 316 stamped in bra.s.s letters on the front of a ground floor end unit.

The light over the stoop was on, casting the steps in a yellow glow that warded off the dusky August evening. A potted lily every bit as nice as the ones in the bouquet he carried made him look down, examining his purchase.

He knew Belle would like it. She'd always liked lilies. He just didn't know whether she'd like receiving them from him.

He knocked on her door anyway, standing on the stoop while the florist's paper crackled over a cellophane sleeve.

When she answered she looked exactly as she had earlier that day: tall and slender, her dark brown hair pinned up in some sort of knot with a few strands left down to frame her face, and eyes of the same color. She still wore the sleeveless blue top and cropped khaki pants, too.

Gloss shone on the prominent Cupid's bow of her lips, and her collarbones created lovely lines above a hint of cleavage. He didn't dare look at her long legs clad in those slim-fitting pants.

She'd grown into a woman even more gorgeous than the one he'd known.

"Jackson?" She stared at him as if she'd have been less surprised if the President of the United States had shown up on her doorstep. "What are you doing here?"

"Brought you a peace offering." He offered her the bouquet of white lilies and little pink and yellow flowers he couldn't name, all prettier than the proverbial olive branch.

After a couple silent seconds, she took it. "Is this about the ticket?"

He nodded.

"You could've just let me off with a warning." She arched a brow, looking first at him and then down at the flowers. Stroking one white petal, she glanced up again.

A sour taste danced on the back of his tongue, but he said nothing about the accident he didn't want to talk about it, and it wasn't her burden to bear anyway.

"You could've driven at the speed limit."

"Touche, Officer Calder." Something flashed in her dark eyes, and he wasn't quite sure if she was truly angry or only annoyed.

He was rusty when it came to reading her expressions. It'd been six years, after all.

"So, I guess you memorized my address from my license?"

"I have a photographic memory."

"Well, I'm flattered." Her voice softened a little, and the gleam in her eyes faded. "What are you really doing here?"

"I wanted to see you without having to write you a ticket." He knew she couldn't understand why he'd done so, and he wanted to smooth things between them. Especially since their meeting earlier that day had sparked a craving for her presence.

She was a gorgeous woman, and years ago, he'd been the first man to ever feel her long legs wrapped around him. The memory had been haunting him ever since, and he'd wondered about her more times than he could count. Now that she was back home, he couldn't keep away.

"Do you want to come in?"

"Yes. Can I?"

"If you promise not to write any tickets."

When she stepped aside to let him in, he caught a lungful of her scent as he pa.s.sed her. Some citrusy perfume or lotion was the dominating note, but there was also a certain warm cleanness to her smell that brought back memories from years ago.

"Nice place. You said you moved here four months ago?" The front door opened directly into the kitchen, a modest s.p.a.ce outfitted with dark wood cabinets and pale grey countertops that were either real granite or a convincing imitation. The range and fridge looked new, too.

"Yeah. It's pretty small just one bedroom but it's the nicest living s.p.a.ce I can afford on the island."

He nodded. While there was reasonably-priced housing to be found on South Island, there were also luxurious homes with staggering views and crippling price tags.

Her apartment didn't have anything close to a sea view, but the beach was only a short drive away from any point on the island.