Nash
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.
