“Gimme those,” I said. “You round up the utensils.”
She set the dishes down on the table rather than handing them to me.
“So you and Marshal Graham seemed friendly this morning.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
The forks and knives she’d collected clattered as she dropped them on an empty platter. “Seriously?” Her eyes flashed as she crossed her arms. “What’s your problem with Nolan?”
My problem was that he was Nolan to her, not U.S. Marshal Graham.
“My problem is your pal Nolan is shadowing my ass. He followed me here. Hell, he’s probably parked out there in the driveway right now.”
She drummed dark red nails against the sleeves of her sweater. Hard and sharp over soft. “He’s not my pal. And you could have at least invited him in.”
The fuck I could have.
There was a crash in the kitchen followed by half a minute of swearing. “Why in the fuck are wet dishes so goddamn slippery? Where the fuck do we keep the broom?” Knox snarled.
“Jar times three,” Naomi yelled from upstairs.
“Sit,” I said.
Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
I pulled out a chair, pointed to it. “I said sit.”
Waylon galloped into the room, plopped his ass on the rug at my feet, and looked around for a treat. Piper joined him, looking hopeful.
“Now you’ve done it,” Lina said.
Muttering under my breath, I dug out two of the treats I had in my pocket and gave one to each dog. Then I pulled out another chair and sat.
“Please s-i-t,” I said, gesturing to the empty chair.
She took her sweet time doing it, but she sat. “This isn’t an interrogation room, hotshot. And I’m not a suspect. Any relationship past or present between me and Nolan is none of your business.”
“Here’s where you’re wrong, Angelina. See, I don’t believe in coincidences, especially not when there’s a whole mess of ’em. You’ve never visited my brother in his hometown before. All of the sudden, you just up and decide to surprise him with an open-ended visit. Unlikely, but okay. You also show up after I get myself shot and right before Naomi and Waylay get taken. Again, could be just a coincidence.”
“But you don’t think so,” she said, folding her arms.
“Then you just happen to have a history with the marshal in charge of being a pain in my ass.”
Lina interlaced her fingers on the table and leaned forward. “Nolan and I had a sweaty, naked forty-eight-hour fling in a motel in Memphis five or six years ago.”
“That was right about the time you recovered $150K in stolen jewelry for your bosses at Pritzger, wasn’t it? And those fellas you recovered it from just happened to be the subject of an FBI investigation, didn’t they?”
She studied me for a long beat. “Where did you get that information?”
“The bust was big news. Made some headlines.”
“My name wasn’t mentioned in any of them,” she said coolly.
“Ah. But it was mentioned in the local PD’s incident report.”
Okay, so I’d done more than a little quiet digging today.
She blew out a breath through her teeth. “What do you want?”
“Why are you here? And don’t give me some bullshit about missing your old pal Knox,” I warned when she opened her mouth. “I want the truth.”
I required the truth.
“I’ll say this slowly so you’ll be sure to catch it all the first time around. I’m none of your business. My business, including who I am or was ‘friendly’ with, what I do for a paycheck, and why I’m in town are also none of your damn business.”
I leaned in closer until our knees brushed under the table. “All due respect, Angelina? I’m the one with holes in me. And if you’re here for any reason relating to that, then it’s very fucking clearly my business.”
Her phone rang and the caller ID on the screen read “Dad.”
She stabbed the Ignore button and pushed the phone away, tension in her movements.
“Talk. Now,” I said.
She bared her teeth, her eyes going dark and dangerous. For a second, I thought she was going to lay into me, and I relished the thought of her anger rising up to slam into mine, waking it up and fanning it into an inferno.
But the inferno was interrupted by a shrill beep.
Lina slapped her hand over the watch on her wrist, but not before I saw the number on the screen next to the red heart.
“Is that a heart rate alert?” I asked.
She came out of her chair abruptly enough to startle the dogs. I got to my feet.
“That, like everything else involving me, is none of your damn business, Chief,” she said, then started for the doorway.
She almost made it, but we’d both underestimated my level of mad. I caught her, my hand clamping around her wrist and drawing her back.
She spun. I stepped. And that was how I found myself standing flush against her with her back to the wall.
We were both breathing heavily, our chests moving against each other with every inhale. She was a tall, long-legged woman, but I still had enough inches on her that she had to tilt her head to look up at me. I could see the pulse at the base of her throat.
Yes. It was a whisper in my blood. The closer I got to her, the louder it grew.
With control, I ran my hand down her opposite arm to her wrist and lifted it. She watched me without pulling away. I broke eye contact to glance at her watch. “That’s a pretty high heart rate for sitting around talking,” I observed.
She tried to pull free, but I held on.
“I wasn’t sitting around talking. I was sitting around trying not to break a cop’s nose.”
I still had her hand in mine. Her other one was fisted in my shirt. But she wasn’t pushing me away. She was holding me where I stood.
“Let’s both calm down,” I said mildly.
“Calm down? You want me to calm down? Gee. Why didn’t I think of that?”
I’d scaled the volcano and now I was looking down into pure, molten lava. All I wanted to do was jump into that glorious heat.
“Tell me what we’re dealing with here,” I insisted. “Do you need a doctor?”
“Oh my God, Nash. If you don’t let me go right now, no jury on earth will hold me accountable for the damage I do to your testicles with my knee.”
That threat combined with the way she was moving against me had me going from halfway hard to flag-flying, pitch-a-tent, that’s-the-ball-game-folks fully aroused.
Fuck.
Then we were both moving.
I had her fully pinned against the wall, one hand at her waist just under her breast, the other flat on the wall next to her head. Meanwhile, her hands were white knuckled in my shirt, holding me to her.
I could follow her breath as she sucked it in, expanding her chest, before the exhale warmed my face and neck. I breathed her in and shifted against her.
I needed to back off. Not only was it a shitty idea to get involved with a woman I knew was lying to me, there was the fact that my head was messing with my dick.
“You want me to back off?” I said, running my nose along her jawline.
“Yes,” she hissed. But her hands pulled me tighter to her.