I looped Piper’s leash around my hand and grabbed one of the two bouquets out of my vehicle’s cup holder.
“Come on, Pipe. Quick stop.”
We got out on the street just as Nolan pulled up to the curb behind me. I threw him a sarcastic salute, which he returned with a half-hearted middle finger.
I was actually almost starting to like the guy.
Piper led the way up the walk to the duplex. It was a two-story brick-and-vinyl building. Both units had a small front porch and flower boxes.
I headed up the three steps to the door on the left. There was a gray-and-white cat crammed up against the screen in the front window. Classical music filtered out to me. I gave the skeptical cat a wave, then I stabbed the doorbell.
Piper sat at my feet, her tail wagging with enthusiasm. It wasn’t as annoying as I thought it would be, having her at work with me. Her routine demands for attention kept me from spacing out over paperwork. And while she wasn’t comfortable enough to let any of the other officers pet her yet, she had started taking hourly trips around the bullpen once she figured out they had treats for her in their pockets.
Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door along with an annoyed, “I’m coming. I’m coming. Hold your damn horses.”
The door opened and there she was. My guardian angel.
Xandra Rempalski had thick, curly hair. It was black with strands of violet woven throughout. She wore it half up in a lopsided topknot while the rest cascaded past her shoulders. She had tan skin and brown eyes that went from annoyed to curious to recognition.
Instead of scrubs, she was wearing a denim apron with hand tools and loops of wire stuffed in the pockets. Long, silver earrings made up of dozens of interconnected hoops dangled from her ears. Her necklace dripped with tiny chains that formed a V between her collarbones. It reminded me of chain mail.
“Hi,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid I hadn’t done this a long time ago.
“Hi yourself,” she replied, leaning against the doorframe.
The cat lazily threaded its way between her bare feet. Piper cowered behind my boots and pretended she was invisible.
“I don’t know if you remember me—”
“Chief Nash Morgan, age forty-one, two gunshot wounds to the shoulder and torso, O negative,” she rattled off.
“I guess you do remember me.”
“It’s not every night a girl finds the chief of police bleeding out on the side of the road,” she said, flashing me a quick grin.
Piper chanced a peek around my boots. The tubby tabby hissed, then plopped its ass down in the doorway and started licking its butthole.
“Don’t mind Gertrude the Rude,” Xandra said. “She’s got attitude for days and no sense of propriety.”
“These are for you,” I said, shoving the bouquet of sunflowers at her. “I should have come by earlier to thank you. But things have been…”
She looked up from the flowers, the smile fading to a sympathetic grimace. “It’s tough. Seeing it on shift isn’t easy. I’m sure living through it is no picnic.”
“Feel like I should be kind of immune to it,” I confessed, looking down at Piper, who had once again glued herself to the back of my legs.
Xandra shook her head. “When you start being immune to it, that’s when it’s time to get out. It’s the hurt, the caring that makes us good at our jobs.”
“How long have you been in the emergency department?”
“Since I graduated with my RN. Eight years. Never a dull moment.”
“Ever wonder how long you can afford to care?”
Her smile was back. “I don’t worry about things like that. It’s one day at a time. As long as the good balances out the bad, I’m ready for the next day. It’s never gonna be easy. But we aren’t doing this for ease. We’re doing it to make a difference. Things like this? A thank-you from one of the ones who made it? That goes a long way.”
I should have gotten her a card.
Or something that would last longer than a pile of sunflowers.
But I had nothing but words. So I gave her those. “Thank you for saving my life, Xandra. I’m never gonna be able to pay you back for that.”
She hitched the bouquet up on her hip. Her earrings caught the light and glittered. “That’s why you just keep payin’ it forward, Chief. One day at a time. Keep doing good. Keep balancing those scales.”
I hoped to hell removing Dilton from duty was a step in that direction. Because right now, like everything else I did, it felt like not nearly enough.
“I’ll do my best.”
“You know, having something besides the job helps. Something good. Me? I date inappropriate men and make jewelry,” she said, sweeping a hand over her apron full of tools.
Right now, I felt like I didn’t have a damn thing besides a needy foster dog and a hole or two that would never be healed.
There was a resounding crash next door followed by a loud, long wail. I jolted, my hand automatically moving to my service weapon.
“Don’t,” Xandra cautioned briskly. She stowed the flowers and the cat inside and made a move to push past me.
“You need to get inside,” I insisted, nearly tripping over Piper as I hurried down the steps. Nolan was hustling up the walk, his holster unsnapped.
“Wait! It’s my nephew. He’s nonverbal,” Xandra explained, following me next door.
The details of her statement came back to me. She’d been running late to work because she’d stayed to help her sister calm her nephew.
I paused and shared a look with Nolan. I let her pass me on the steps.
“He has autism,” she said, letting herself in her sister’s front door.
“Keep the dog,” I said, tossing Piper’s leash to Nolan and following her inside.
My blood was still pumping, focus still narrowed. In the middle of the gray living room carpet was a man—no, a boy—curled on his side, hands covering his ears as he rocked and howled with a pain only he could feel. Next to him were the splintered remains of a toy brick castle.
“The cops? Really, Xan?” A woman bearing a striking resemblance to Xandra knelt just out of range of the violent kicks from the boy’s long, gangly legs.
“Very funny,” Xandra said dryly. “I’ll get the blinds.”
“Can I do anything?” I asked cautiously as Xandra quietly closed the curtains on the front windows.
“Not yet,” Xandra’s sister said over her son’s plaintive screams. “We have a doctor’s appointment in an hour. His headphones are charging.”
I stood inside the door feeling helpless while the two women worked in tandem to make the room darker, quieter. A protocol, I realized.
The wails soon quieted and the boy’s mother slid a weighted kind of cape over his shoulders.
Before long, he sat up. He was tall for his age, with dark skin and the spindly limbs of early puberty.
He glanced at the ruined castle and let out a low moan.
“I know, buddy,” his mother said, carefully sliding an arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay. We’ll fix it.”
“Amy, this is Chief Morgan,” Xandra said. “Chief, this is my sister Amy and my nephew Alex.”
“Chief,” Amy said as she rocked Alex in her arms.
“Hi. I just came by to thank Xandra for…”
“Saving your life?” she prompted with a small smile.
“Yeah. That.”
“Sorry for the disturbance,” she said, accepting the book Xandra handed to her.
“No apologies necessary.”
“And you were worried how well your first interaction with the cops would go,” Xandra teased her sister.
Amy’s lips quirked again before she pressed a kiss to the top of her son’s head and began to read.
“That’s another strategy. Laugh even when things aren’t funny,” Xandra said, handing me a fabric tote.
With Alex shooting looks of concern in my direction, I did my job and helped restore order, brick by brick.
When the room was clean and the story was over, I nodded to Amy and followed Xandra to the door. Alex got to his feet and slowly crossed to us. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and the grip of his hand on my arm was strong. But there was a sweet, little-boy smile on his face as he looked at my chest.
“He doesn’t believe in personal space,” Xandra warned in amusement.
Alex reached out and traced a finger over my badge, point to point to point. After he’d traced the star twice, he nodded and released me.
“Nice to meet you too, Alex,” I told him softly.
With my arms full, I gave the door two light kicks and waited.
It opened seconds later and everything in me went warm when I saw her. Lina wore leggings in a dark purple. Her sweater was a fleecy ivory that stopped an inch above the waist of her pants. A wide tie-dye headband held her hair back. She was barefoot.
“Evenin’,” I said, strolling across the threshold and dropping a kiss on her cheek. Piper followed me in and made a beeline for the couch.
“Well, hello. Uh, what’s all this?” she asked, closing the door behind me.
I ducked into the kitchen and dumped the bags on the counter. “Dinner,” I said.
She appeared in the doorway. “That doesn’t look like the Thai takeout I was going to order.”
“Not only beautiful but smart.” I plucked the wildflowers out of one of the grocery totes. “Vase?”
She gestured at the bare countertops. “Do I look like I have a vase lying around?”
“We’ll make do.” I started opening cabinet doors until I found an ugly plastic pitcher. I filled it with water, then shredded the plastic around the flowers. “Wildflowers because they reminded me of you,” I explained. And because the lily of the valley reminded me of my mom.
Lina shot me one of those complicated woman looks before giving in and burying her face in the flowers.
“This is very sweet of you. Sweet but unnecessary,” she said.
I noticed she was giving me a wide berth in the tiny space. It was cute that she thought she could rebuild those walls that had come down the night before.
“Mind gettin’ Pipe a bowl of water while I start the prep?”
She hesitated for a second, then opened a cabinet and found an empty takeout bowl. “You really don’t have to cook me dinner. I was a minute away from ordering food,” she said as she turned the water on in the sink.
“I had a long day,” I said conversationally as I pulled a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses out of one of the bags. “And thanks to you, for the first time in a long while, I had the energy to deal with it.” I opened the wine with a pop and set the bottle aside.
“I heard something went down with one of your officers,” she admitted, setting the water dish on the floor. “Mrs. Tweedy said you caught one of your guys stealing counterfeit bills out of evidence after they spent it at a strip club.”
“I wish,” I said.
Piper appeared in the doorway with a sports bra in her mouth. She spit the bra out in the bowl and drank around it.
“Come on, Pipe. Stop eatin’ laundry.” I snatched up the bra. “I believe this is yours.”
Lina took the bra and threw it on the counter next to the broccoli.
“Then Neecey all but tackled me on the sidewalk in front of Dino’s,” Lina said, hopping up to perch on the counter. “She told me you headbutted that no-good Tate Dilton in the candy aisle of the grocery store.”
“I worry about this town’s language comprehension sometimes.”
She smirked. “Neecey also said she heard that you two wrestled into a canned soup pyramid and that the store manager found two cans of minestrone all the way over in the freezer section.”
“If you pour, I’ll tell you the real, much less eventful story.”
“Deal.”
I filled her in on my day. All of it. It felt good. To share a kitchen. To share my day. Lina seemed genuinely interested. She sat on the counter and we talked as I sautéed chicken, peppers, and onions. Piper joined us with an endless parade of toys and laundry.
I had to stop myself over a dozen times from moving between Lina’s legs, sending my hands sliding up her thighs, and going in for those pretty, red lips.
This connection I felt was real, tangible, and deep, but I didn’t know how deep it went for her. And I wasn’t about to scare her off with the level of my need for her.
“Why are there pajama pants in this bag? Is this some new age dessert I don’t know about?” she asked, poking around in the last tote.
“Yeah, about that,” I began.
“Nash.” My name was a gentle warning on those lips.
“I know last night was supposed to be a one-time thing. I know you took pity on me because I was a fucking mess.” I turned the burner off under the chicken and popped the lid on the pan before turning to her. “I also know I haven’t slept that well in…maybe ever.”
“We can’t keep doing this,” she said softly.
I wiped my hand on the dish towel I’d brought and then did what I’d been dying to do. I stepped between her knees and slid my hands up her thighs to rest on her hips.
Her hands planted on my shoulders and stayed there. Not pushing. Not pulling.
It was an intimate position. And I wanted more as my blood went from warm to simmering in a heartbeat.
“Look, I know it’s not fair to ask you. To make you responsible for this piece of my well-being. But I’m desperate. I need you, Angelina.”
“Why do you call me Angelina?”
I gave her hips a squeeze. “It’s your name.”
“I know that. But no one calls me Angelina.”
“It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful, complicated woman.”
“You’re quite the charmer. I’ll give you that. Flowers. Dinner. Sweetness. But how long are we going to play this game?”
“Baby, it’s not a game to me. This is my life. You are the only thing in my entire existence that makes me feel like I’ve got a shot at finding my way back. I don’t understand it. And frankly I don’t need to. All I know is I feel better when I’m touching you. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t feel like a ghost or a shadow. I felt good.”
“I felt…uh…good too,” she confessed, not quite meeting my eyes. “But we’re playing with fire here. I mean, sooner or later, you’re going to get overly attached and I’ll have to destroy your fragile man heart. Not to mention the fact that we basically woke up dry humping.”
I grinned. “That’s why I brought pants. With a drawstring.”
“This is not the kind of peer pressure TV movies prepared me for. ‘Hey, Lina. Sleep snuggle with me so I can feel alive again,’” she said, faking a deep baritone.
I gave her hips another squeeze and pulled her an inch closer to me. “‘There’s nothing I’d rather do than go to bed and not have sex with you, Nash,’” I said in a breathy, Marilyn Monroe imitation.
She blew out an aggrieved sigh. “It’s annoying how cute you are.”
“Annoying enough that you’re gonna let me sleep with you tonight?”
She squeezed my shoulders and brought her forehead to mine. “I’m really trying to make better decisions, but you are not making that easy.”
I gave in to temptation and kissed her nose.
“Ugh. You’re impossible!” she complained.
“What was wrong with your previous decisions?”
She bit her lip.
“Need I remind you that I’ve been disgustingly vulnerable with you for, what, forty-eight hours now? I just spent twenty minutes tellin’ you all about my day. It’s your turn. Give and take. Talk, Angel.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like sharing. Especially not when I don’t come out looking good.”
“I repeat. Fetal position at the foot of the stairs.”
“I was leading a team during an operation. We had to make a quick, unplanned exit off a roof when our thief came home early. I didn’t know the guy I was with was afraid of heights. I made the jump and landed in the canal. When I looked back, he was still standing there frozen. I yelled, and he panicked and landed on his ass on the hood of a car.”
“Ouch,” I said, deciding I didn’t need to know exactly what danger required an escape by roof.
“He broke his tailbone, so he was lucky. But I should have known better. At the very least, I shouldn’t have forced him to take the risk.”
Her fingers traced tiny circles on my chest.
“The thing is, there are rewards for doing my job well. Bonuses, status, the thrill of the chase. Being the hero and bringing home the win. In my company, aggressive tactics are praised. I got a bonus and Lewis got a busted ass. I realized that as good as I am, sometimes it just comes down to luck. And I don’t want to count on that forever.”
“Minus the money part, I get that.” It galled me that I was here in this kitchen because of luck.
“It’s more heroic to be a hero for something other than a big, fat paycheck,” she said.
“How big and fat are we talkin’?” I teased.
Her smile was feline. “Why? You have a problem making a lot less than your emotional support bed buddy?”
“No, ma’am. I do not. Just curious how much ‘a lot less’ is.”
“I have a brokerage account and a walk-in closet full of very nice designer duds. That sexy Charger out there in the parking lot? I paid for it in cash with last year’s bonus.”
I let out a low whistle. “Can’t wait to see what you get me for my birthday.”
“If memory serves, you and your brother barely spoke for years because he gave you money.”
“Now that’s a dirty lie,” I said, picking up my wine. “We barely spoke for years because he forced money on me, told me what to do with it, then didn’t like what I chose to do instead.”
“Well, in that case, Team Nash,” she said.
“Figured I’d get you there.”
“What exactly did Knox want you to do with the money?”
“Retire.”
Her eyebrows skyrocketed. “Retire? Why?”
“He hates that I grew up and became a cop. We had our fair share of brushes with the law growing up. Knox never outgrew his distrust of authority. He’s mellowed some. But he still likes to dabble in the gray area. Like those illegal poker games I’m not supposed to know about.”
“What about you? Why aren’t you still dabbling in the gray?”
“If you ask my brother, it was a ‘fuck you’ to him and our childhood. Us against the man.”
“But that’s not the truth.”
I shook my head. “I thought, instead of operating outside the system, why not make changes within it? Our scrapes with the law were pretty minor. But Lucian? No one was there to protect or serve him. He was thrown in jail at seventeen and sat there for a week, which never shoulda happened. That’s what changed for me. No amount of hell-raising and lawbreaking was going to help him out of that jam. And all it would have taken was for one good cop to do the right thing.”
“So you’re out there doing your job for all the future Lucians,” she said.
I shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed. “And the free uniform. Rumor has it the pants make my butt look good.”
Lina grinned and I felt that warm campfire-like glow in my chest. “Oh, Studly Do-Right, that rumor has been substantiated. It is official fact.”
“Studly Do-Right?”
“Something around town you don’t already know?” she teased.
I closed my eyes. “Tell me that’s not my nickname.”
She fluttered those long lashes at me. “But, Nash, I know how important honesty is to you.”
“Christ.”
