Romance on the Edge 01 - Hooked

slice of Garrett Hunt instead. Then where would she be? Screwed. Not necessarily in a satisfactory way.
    Garrett turned to her, and she jerked her thoughts out of the bedroom. His eyes narrowed as he took in the heat flushing her face. She hoped his cop eyes didn’t read anything into it.
    “I want you to promise to contact me if anything else happens.” His ice-blue stare imprisoned hers.
    She tried to look away. She did not want to make that promise.
    “Sonya.” He sighed as he must have read her intent. “I can’t help, unless you do.”
    Damn, why did he have to look at her like that? Like she meant something to him. He was a fish cop. She was a fisherman. Having casual sex with each other was one thing, but the way she felt, and the way he gazed at her, there wasn’t anything casual happening between them.
    Garrett grasped her hands. “Promise me, Sonya.”
    “Oh, all right. I promise.”
    His lips twitched into a crooked smile. “That wasn’t so hard.”
    She scowled. “The hell it wasn’t.”
    He laughed. The sound did funny things to the rhythm of her heart. Garrett gave her one last look and then said his goodbyes. Sonya watched him climb into his Jeep and drive down the beach.
    Grams came up alongside her and draped an arm over Sonya’s shoulders. “You’re sinking fast, aren’t you?”
    Sonya scoffed. “Grams, he’s a fish cop.”
    She hummed and gave Sonya a knowing smile. “I always did like a man in uniform.”
    As it turned out, so did she.

    Aidan tried to stay away. He really did. He’d been pacing his side of the bluff watching Sonya and that trooper. No matter how he reasoned with himself—using breathing techniques, and visiting his damn screwy happy place—he couldn’t keep away.
    He waited until the fish cop left, and then found Sonya alone on the beach, mending nets. He could hear Nikolai and Peter discussing the best way to tear into the carburetor of the outboard engine, but with the curve of the bluff, he and Sonya might as well have been alone.
    “Why’d you have to bring in a fish cop?” Anger rimmed the edges of his vision, and he couldn’t help his biting tone.
    Sonya swung around, eyes wide in surprise. He’d approached downwind, and she hadn’t heard him. She straightened and gripped the plastic needle she’d been using to patch holes in the net. He knew he was frightening her, a side of him got off on it, the other begged him to rein it in.
    “We take care of our own out here, Sonya. Bringing in a trooper will only invite more trouble. The other set netters find out you’re getting cozy with a fish cop, you’ll have a bigger mess than you can clean up.” He took a breath, hoping to calm his temper. “You should have come to me.” That more than anything had his anger at a boiling point. Who was he madder at? Her for not trusting him or himself for ruining that trust?
    “What if one of our own is causing me trouble?” Sonya asked, with a look that accused.
    All the bluster went out of him like a pricked balloon. Of course, she’d think he was the culprit. He’d warned her that her plans would bring trouble. His chosen method of dealing with problems was to fight it out. That was in the past. He would never forget he’d used his fists on her. Seeing things from Sonya’s side, it wasn’t a huge step to believe he’d do something like this.
    He rubbed the back of his neck. How had things between them become so strained? As kids, they’d played together on this very beach. As teenagers, they’d flirted with each other on this beach. Finally, as adults, they’d made love in the tall grass that overlooked this very beach.
    “Sonya, I would never intentionally cause you, or your family, harm.” She looked away from him, and the pain in his chest seemed to stop his heart.
    “Part of me really wants to believe that, Aidan.” She flicked the end of the mending needle, and then faced him again, her gaze full of resolve. “The other part of me remembers what you are capable of when you’re angry.”
    He reached out and took the needle from her fingers and lay it on the net mending frame. Then he held her hand in his, lightly tracing her trim nails. “What will it take to make you forget?”
    Her sad, solemn eyes met his. “I don’t know.”

    When Garrett had boarded the Calypso the night before, he’d filled Judd and Skip in on the incidents that the Savonskis were dealing with. Other than notifying the rest of the troopers to keep theirs