“Not at all.” I stole glances at him as he maneuvered onto the bench. He looked just as good as he had when I’d last seen him. The fitted Henley under his coat hugged his muscular frame, and the dark waves of his hair had grown out a little, framing his face, doing dangerous things to my libido.
He leaned his cane against the side of the bench and waved to the server across the bar. “Can I get you anything?” he asked me as she made her way toward us.
I’d hardly touched my drink, but given where Nick and I had left things after Christmas dinner, I’d definitely need some liquid courage for this conversation. I tipped my glass to our server, and with a nod, she was gone.
“I called you a few times,” he said casually. “Wasn’t sure you got my messages. Vero said you’ve been busy.”
I picked at the edge of my napkin. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. After everything that happened with Steven, I just needed some time. I didn’t mean to—”
“Hey,” he said gently, calling a time-out with his hands as he ducked his head low, capturing my gaze across the table. “You’ve been through a lot these last few weeks, and if that’s the reason you didn’t call, I totally get it. No explanations or apologies necessary. I just figured you were upset with me.”
I shook my head, confused. “Why would I be upset with you?”
“About all that stuff I said after dinner at your mom’s house. I didn’t mean to suggest that I was suspicious of you, or that you had anything to answer for. I should have kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the time to bring that stuff up.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The answers to the questions he’d asked me under the mistletoe—about why my missing cell phone had turned up in Carl Westover’s house, or what I’d been doing there with a fugitive witness the night Feliks decided to gun us all down—would have ruined more than just the moment between us. That night, Nick had said he didn’t want to know the answers, but where did that leave us now?
As if he was reading my thoughts, he said, “I’m still hoping for that sympathy kiss.”
A surprised laugh burst out of me. “Still?”
He laughed, too. “Why do you think I’m still using the cane?”
The server came with our drinks. The break in tension left a sticky grin on my face. “It’s good to see you,” I confessed when she was gone, surprised by how much I meant it. “How are you feeling?”
Nick rubbed his shoulder. “The doc did a nice job on my arm. Stitches are out and it’s feeling pretty good. Leg’s another story though. I’m in PT, pushing paper at work for another four weeks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Could have been a whole lot worse,” he reminded me. The gratitude in his eyes was hard to look at. Feliks’s men may have been the ones pulling the triggers, but part of me still felt responsible for his injuries.
My guilty gaze slid away from him to the cops congregating by a table at the back of the bar. “I feel badly keeping you from your friends.”
“You want to meet them?” he asked, taking my hand before I could answer. A thrill raced through me at his brief touch as he led me out of the booth.
Joey leaned against the wall, a toothpick tucked in his cheek as he watched the two of us pick our way across the bar toward him. I looked for Vero, but she and Georgia were engaged in a game of darts.
“Hey,” Nick said over the chatter as we reached the cops’ table. Someone called out to the server to bring Nick another beer, and they all scooted over to make room as they pushed an extra chair toward him. Nick’s hand found the small of my back as he offered me his seat. “You all know Georgia’s sister, Finlay?” The small group at the table waved. Nick pointed toward the others gathered around the dart boards behind them. “You already know Roddy.” Officer Roddy’s head towered over the others. He was an old friend of Nick’s who’d provided security at my house on more than one occasion. “And that’s his rookie-in-training, Tyrese,” Nick said, gesturing to the fresh-faced recruit who was flirting with Vero. Nick returned his attention to the officers seated around the table. He pointed to the only other woman among them. She was willowy and elegant in a fitted pantsuit, her exaggerated cat eyes curling with her smile as she reached across the table to greet me. “This is Samara Becker. Sam works in High-Tech Crimes. She just came on as part of a joint task force with OCN. And you already know Joey,” Nick finished.
Joey’s smile was tight around his toothpick. I returned it, feeling the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
I waited through an awkward pause for Nick to introduce the last member of their group. When he didn’t, Samara rolled her eyes. “And this is Wade,” she said, hitching a thumb at the shaggy-haired man seated beside her. “He’s a firearms instructor for the department.” Wade nodded, his dark eyes aloof under the bill of a well-worn trucker cap. His arms were covered in two full sleeves of tattoos under a ratty old T-shirt that read I LIKE GUNS AND MAYBE THREE PEOPLE. His crooked smile seemed directed at Nick as he resumed slowly spinning his beer bottle in its pool of condensation on the table.
Nick lowered himself into an empty chair beside me. An electric current passed through me when our knees brushed. He murmured an apology as he maneuvered out of his coat in the tight space, his body angling slightly closer to mine as he turned to hang it on the back of his chair. He smelled as intoxicatingly good as he had the last time I’d helped him put it on, like warm leather and cloves, and I bit down on my tongue as I remembered the last thing he’d whispered in my ear that night as we stood under the mistletoe in my parents’ doorway—that he’d wanted to kiss me. Then he’d left me with a chaste peck on the cheek and the nearly irrepressible need to tackle him and dry hump him in my mother’s foyer.
“You’re the author, right?” Samara asked, startling me from the memory. I cleared my throat and nodded, my palms a little sweaty. “What kind of books do you write?”
“Nick’s kind, apparently,” Wade said as he leaned back and scratched a rib. “Caught him reading one in the break room at the station last week.” The table exploded in laughter.
“You ought to try reading one, Wade. You might learn a thing or two.”
Samara gave a low whistle at Nick’s comeback and the table erupted in laughter again. I glanced over at Nick, wondering how many of my six failed backlist paperbacks he had read and what kinds of things he might have learned from them. The first book in my new series—a book loosely inspired by Harris Mickler’s murder, featuring a star-crossed romance between an assassin and a hot cop—hadn’t gone to print yet, but it was already attracting more attention than I was comfortable with. Everyone in the police station had been talking about it since Sylvia had put out a press release, when a rumor began spreading through the department that the hot cop in my story bore a striking resemblance to Nick.
“Not all of us can be eye candy, Nick,” Wade teased. “What else does the commander have you doing while you’re pushing paper at the precinct? Posing for beefcake calendars like those hose draggers at the firehouse?”