Page 51 of No Offense

But she was texting him. Not even twenty-four hours since they’d last seen each other,shewas textinghim, and asking him to stop by. It was okay for him to do so, wasn’t it?

Of course it was. Pete was wrong. They were adults. There were no rules. Were there rules?

He knew there werelaws, of course, and what to do about people who broke them. But this was different. Certainly there weren’t really rules like Pete was saying, about texting back too quickly, and the jumping of bones (Lord, how he hated that expression) by certain dates, and all of that. That was simply unbelievable.

Although, to be honest, Katie had shared a few things about dating in high school, and all of them had sounded just as unbelievable as the things Pete had shared. They hadsounded so awful, in fact, that John had instituted a rule of his own, and that was that Katie wasn’t to date anyone until college.

But she had only laughed at him and said, “Oh, Daddy,” and done precisely as she liked. So that had been a failure, much as his own dating life had been until now, so clearly he knew nothing.

But that was high school. This was the adult world.

Quickly, he texted Molly back that he had to finish up some things (Pete would approve of this) but could meet her in a few hours.

A text bubble appeared. She was texting back!

Great. I’ll be helping out at the inn. Can you meet me there?

Of course he could. The inn was on his way home. And the good thing about the inn was that it had a bar. They could have a drink (surely she was allowed to drink while on check-in duty), and that would almost be like a date. A quick date, but it might count as their second.

And then when they finally managed to meet for the steak dinner, that would be their third—

No. No, he was not playing Pete’s game.

See you there, John texted back.

Of course, for it to count as a date, he had to pick up flowers on his way over, even though Pete had warned him against doing this.

But Pete didn’t know everything. Pete was John’s age,yet had never been in a relationship lasting longer than four months, so how were his rules working out for him? John knew from experience that women liked flowers, and also felt that Molly deserved flowers after everything she’d been through, finding an abandoned babyandits mother near death.

The only problem was that it was Sunday, so the island’s only flower shop was closed.

But that wasn’t a problem, because John knew from having dealt with a credit-card fraud case at Island Blooms that the Morettis, the flower shop’s owners, lived in a sweet little cottage behind the store, while also owning several apartments above it.

So he banged on their door until they answered it and bemusedly agreed to open the shop and allow him to buy a nice bouquet of daisies. Not roses, because that would be overkill, and Molly seemed like the type who would like daisies.

While there, he also queried the Morettis about the availability of an apartment for the new children’s librarian. It was ridiculous for Molly to have to work two jobs just to afford to live in Little Bridge, and the Morettis were known as being conscientious landlords, who kept reasonably priced, if fairly small, apartments.

“Molly’s very quiet,” he assured them, though in actual fact he’d found Molly to be quite loud when expressing her opinions, which she did quite often. “And she works for the city, so her income is steady.”

This piqued Mrs. Moretti’s interest. She said they happened to have a tenant they were kicking out of one of theirone-bedroom apartments at the end of the month. “Rent never on time, and the parties!” She shook her head in disgust.

“Why didn’t you call me?” John asked. Excessive noise without a permit was considered a breach of the peace in Little Bridge.

Mrs. Moretti shrugged. “Call you every night? What would be the point? Anyway, he’s leaving now. We can take your girlfriend.”

John felt himself blushing. “She’s not my girlfriend. Like I said, she’s the new children’s librarian, and since the hurricane, as you know, affordable housing has been very—”

“Yes, yes.” Mr. Moretti laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “We know. She’s not your girlfriend, but you’re bringing her flowers. We understand very much.”

John, still blushing, had them wrap the daisies in plain brown paper—he didn’t want the bouquet to look too over the top—and left after thanking the Morettis profusely. By the time he arrived at the Lazy Parrot it was happy hour, and the guests who’d already checked in were lounging around the pool with margaritas and cocktail plates.

“Hey, sexy policeman,” one of the lady guests said to him as he walked by, looking for Molly, who hadn’t been at the front desk. “Are those flowers for me?”

“No,” John said flatly. “And I’m with the sheriff’s department, not the police. These flowers are for Molly Montgomery. Have you seen her?”

“Oh, John!”

He saw a woman wearing a florescent-green beach cover-up with matching flip-flops waving to him from across the pool and realized it was Joanne Larson, one of the Lazy Parrot’s owners. He approached her, grateful to be getting away from the woman who’d called him a sexy policeman.