Page 7 of Playing with Fire

Dale gulped and nodded before spinning on his heel, his eyes pointed down. He was marching so quickly and inattentively that the young man didn’t catch the display of summer-themed candy until he ran smack into it. The bags spilled onto the floor, burying the probie’s feet and tripping up another customer as they wheeled their cart by.

“Well, shit,” Beckett muttered. So much for getting in and out quickly.

Fifteen minutes and one giant candy cleanup later, Beckett actually made some headway with the shopping. He’d apologized profusely to the manager for causing such a ruckus, and after spending five minutes answering questions about his family’s apple farm and enthusing about how bountiful this year’s harvest would be, Beckett managed to sneak away into the dairy section.

After procuring at least six cows’ worth of milk, and enough soft and hard cheeses to clog the arteries of the most seasoned marathon runner, Beckett headed for the cereal aisle. When his cart crashed to a halt and he nearly spilled over into the basket, his first instinct was to get annoyed. Then he found out just who he had crashed into. Suddenly, Beckett wouldn’t have cared if he’d done a double gainer and landed onto the linoleum floor.

Standing in front of Beckett, like she walked straight out of his dreams and into the grocery aisle, was the wild woman. In fact, it had been nearly impossible to banish her from his mind, especially when her bright smile and rapturous expression appeared in his dreams. No one had made such a lasting impression on him before. Now that she was in front of him again, he had every intention of returning the favor.

“Well, hello there,” he purred.

Her eyes shot up to his, the sea green staring back at Beckett instantly becoming his new favorite color. They widened slightly as they took him in, moving from the boots on his feet and trailing up his body like a sweet caress until they landed on his face. Beckett was a big man, tall and broad from both genetics and hard work, so there was a lot to behold. If he preened a little under the attention from the gorgeous woman, well, that was no one’s business but his own.

“Oh, hi.” Her melodious voice hit his ears like the sweetest symphony. Then she reached up to tuck a loose strand of that spun honey hair behind her ear, something he longed to do himself. The longer he stood there, the more he wanted to stay. “Sorry about bumping into you,” she said, appearing slightly self-conscious.

Beckett chuckled and backed his cart up an inch, but no further as he didn’t want to be too far from this woman. “Well, there’s no need for you to be sorry, seeing as how I bumped into you. I should know better than to turn a blind corner.”

The woman smiled shyly and nodded. “That’s okay. I won’t call the market police to come cite you for reckless driving or anything.” Her eyes danced with mirth before she glanced to the side. “Well, I better let you get on with your business. You might have somewhere important to be.” She nodded at the department logo on his chest before she turned and drifted a little further down the aisle.

Not wanting to miss his chance with this woman again, Beckett followed along, making sure to grab a giant bag of oats from the bottom shelf before he forgot why he was in the store in the first place. “Nowhere else seems quite as important as here at the moment,” he confided. When she looked up at him with an adorably furrowed brow, Beckett smiled and pointed to his half-full cart. “We can’t exactly do our job properly if we’re not fed properly.”

She peeked into his basket for a moment before glancing up at him again. “That’s a lot of food,” she remarked with a wry smile.

Since Dale hadn’t come back with the rest of the items on the list, she didn’t even know the half of it. “I will admit, we aren’t the lightest eaters.” Beckett tore his gaze from hers to peek into her own shopping cart. It was filled with fresh fruits and vegetables, a variety of cheeses, rice, beans, and a pint of icecream. “Yeah, all that would maybe last one meal around the fire house. Two if you count the ice cream separately.”

The woman hummed prettily as she picked up two different boxes of cereal. “Don’t count me out yet. I’m not quite finished with my shopping.”

Her eyes bounced between the two flavors for a moment. Beckett couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched her. “Having a hard time deciding between sugar or more sugar?”

She narrowed her gaze at him, scrutinizing his face. Whatever she found must have put her at ease because her smile was back, albeit dimmer than before. “Actually, when you’re as big a connoisseur of sweetened cereal as I am, you can taste the differences. For instance, the red box is filled with fruity hoops, and the yellow box is filled with honey-flavored squares. So really, it’s about whether you’re searching for a bright burst of flavor or something more subtle.”

Beckett’s smile threatened to take over his whole face. The more he listened to this woman talk, the more he liked her. She was this interesting mix of wild energy and tight control, with just a little dash of adorkable thrown in for good measure. She was a puzzle he couldn’t wait to solve. He’d only gotten the first few pieces, but he had no doubt it would create one hell of a pretty picture the more he completed it.

“It seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought…” he trailed off. Beckett had been hoping she would supply her name, and after a weighted beat, she didn’t disappoint him.

“Willa,” she supplied. With a nod, Willa placed the brown box back on the shelf and tossed the red one into her cart. At Beckett’s raised brow, she lifted a shoulder and smiled prettily. “Subtlety is overrated.” Liking directness was nothing less than what he would expect from the wild woman in front of him and knowing that emboldened him.

Smirking, Beckett leaned a little closer, intending to shoothis shot. Pleasure flowed through him when she didn’t step away from his obvious interest. “In that case, it’s a pleasure to meet you Willa. My name is…”

“Kemp!” Dale shouted from the end of the aisle. Beckett turned just as the probie came to a halt next to him and dumped an armful of groceries into the cart. “I finished my half of the list, and in record time.”

Swallowing the rebuke that was on the tip of his tongue at the man interrupting his conversation with Willa, Beckett smiled politely at Dale and clasped his shoulder. It wasn’t his fault Beckett was finally getting somewhere with the woman of his dreams only to be interrupted. “That’s great. I was just enjoying Willa’s sugar-coated cereal manifesto.” Beckett’s body turned toward the woman, only to find the aisle in front of him abandoned. “Oh fuck a duck.”

“What’s that?” Dale asked.

Beckett ignored the question as his eyes darted around the empty aisle. Willa was nowhere to be found and his shoulders slumped in defeat. If he believed in fate, Beckett would think it was against him for all the close calls he’d had with that woman without ever actually getting anywhere and wondered if he shouldn’t just give up the ghost. But he believed people were in charge of their own futures, and right now he wanted nothing more than to make that woman a part of his.

“Nothing, Banks. Let’s grab the last few things and head to the checkout.” Beckett’s eyes roamed the market as they gathered the rest of their necessities, and when they landed on a certain blonde at the checkout stand, he smiled again.

As Beckett pushed the cart toward her lane, he took a long look at Willa. Her hair was tucked up in a sloppy bun, giving him a peek at her swanlike neck. Her slender body was encased in a long dress made of a material so light that it swayed with every subtle movement she made. She was a little more than half a footshorter than him, the perfect height to be able to tuck her head under his chin as he held onto her. Beckett had been attracted to women before, but none as strongly as he was her. Willa was everything he desired in a woman with the bonus of also being someone he found inherently fascinating despite not even really knowing her yet. Those sea green eyes had a story to tell. Beckett wanted to curl up on the floor at her feet and listen to every word.

Unable to hold back any longer, he moved up behind her, frowning when the panic in her voice as she spoke with the cashier became evident. “I swear I had it when I left the house,” she insisted shrilly. She reached into her woven purse and rifled around a moment before coming up empty. “I’m so sorry. Is there a way we can put this aside and I can come back later with my wallet?”

The teenage boy she had been speaking with looked more like a deer in headlights than a cashier at that moment, so Beckett decided to save them both some trouble and slapped his personal credit card on the small counter. “Here,” he told them, pushing it forward. “It’s on me.”

Willa looked over her shoulder to gaze at him, her expression a mix of gratitude and distrust. “You really don’t need to do that,” she insisted. “I can handle it.”

Nodding, Beckett held his hands up. “I’m not saying you can’t. Just trying to be friendly.” He was always friendly, always ready to help someone in need, but he definitely wanted to get into her good graces so that he could ask her out.

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