Beneath the Badge (First Responders 4)

“My turn,” he said softly. He grazed his fingers over her hip in a rhythmic motion. “The first time I shot someone in the line of duty, I threw up.”

Her heart squeezed. He was getting personal after all. “Oh, Matt…” Then she looked at him closer. He’d said the first time. Meaning there had been others. No wonder he looked a little dark sometimes. She didn’t imagine that was something an officer did lightly.

He looked at her expectantly. She was next. She scrambled to think of something to share. Something personal without going into the mess that was the downward spiral of her family life. Something to do with work…

She bit down on her lip. “The first time I lost a patient, I cried in front of the owner.”

“And you don’t do that?”

“I try not to. I’m supposed to be gentle and supportive. I’m not supposed to need them to hand me tissues, you know?” She smiled ruefully. “What about you, Matt? Have you ever had to deliver that sort of news to a family?”

He slipped his fingers off of her hip and she could feel, rather than see, him stiffen beneath the sheets. Something dark and foreboding made the air heavy now. All because of one innocently asked question. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You don’t have to answer that.”

His face, which had been relaxed and smiling only a moment before, was now a clash of hard planes and painful angles. Clearly he had done something like that only much, much worse. She should have known. Should have imagined when he said he’d done undercover work and been on special task forces. Who knew what sort of things he’d seen and done?

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t mean to pry. I’m serious. Just forget I asked.” And yet even as the words came out of her mouth she couldn’t resist adding, “Does it have to do with why you were killing the heavy bag yesterday?”

He sighed. “Let’s just say that seeing that puppy mill…it brought back memories, that’s all. It was looking in their eyes that did it. They looked so beaten, Linds. Defeated and sad and accepting. Like they’d somehow deserved it…”

“Are we still talking about dogs?” she asked quietly, gently.

“Perhaps not.” He sighed. “Sometimes you get the bad guy. Sometimes it’s too late, though. And you have to live with that as well.”

She didn’t want to see any more of the dark underbelly. She had enough of her own to deal with. Lots that she’d rather forget. “Well…” She tried to inject a little lightness into her voice. “Let’s not dwell on the past, eh? I’m starving. You got anything in this place for breakfast?”

He seemed to accept her diversion as his body relaxed. “As a matter of fact, I do. Breakfast is the one meal of the day where I excel. How does blueberry pancakes sound?”

“Like heaven.”

He slid out of bed, treating her to a delicious view of his bottom as well as a broad, muscled back. With a minimum of fuss, he pulled on a pair of shorts but left his chest bare. Lindsay kept the sheets tucked beneath her armpits, nowhere near as comfortable with casual nakedness as Matt was.

After he’d disappeared around the corner to the bathroom, Lindsay got up and put on her underwear and jeans, then slipped into the T-shirt of Matt’s that she’d put on last night. It still smelled like his detergent and fabric softener and a different, unique scent from his dresser drawers, perhaps, or whatever he wore for aftershave that was never quite erased during washing. She made the bed and once she heard clanging and banging going on in the kitchen, she made her way out and to the bathroom.

She looked in the mirror and squeaked at the woman staring back at her. One eye had a smudge of yesterday’s mascara in the corner and her hair was a puffy, tangled mess. But there was a twinkle in her eye she hadn’t seen before, a color in her cheeks that was new and exhilarating. She looked like a morning-after woman. She felt like a morning-after woman. And she was finding it damned hard to feel sorry about that—even after the way the conversation had gone this morning.

Once she’d splashed some water on her face and tamed her hair into a loose ponytail, she made her way to the open space that made up most of Matt’s apartment. Dawn was barely breaking, casting pale shadows through the wall of windows. Matt had a light on above the kitchen counter as he beat pancake batter in a bowl. Beside him a griddle heated, and she watched as he reached over and dumped in a cup of blueberries and sprinkled on some cinnamon.

“Can I do something? Make coffee?”

“The machine’s right there, the water should be heated now. Just pick your flavor from the rack and have at it.”

“What would you like?” She spun the rack and grabbed a straight-up Columbian roast for herself.

“Surprise me,” he said with a smile, ladling batter onto the hot griddle. “You’re good at that.”

A few minutes later they were seated on the bar stools, drinking coffee and pouring maple syrup on their pancakes. Breakfast had never tasted so good—and Lindsay wasn’t deluding herself as to why. She was nervous and yet more relaxed and loose than she’d been in months. Sex really was an effective stress buster.

“What time do you have to be to the clinic?” he asked, shoveling a forkful of pancakes into his mouth.

“Oh, around eight. I can’t stay long. I’ll have to go home and have a shower, change my clothes…”

“You could shower here,” he suggested, but there was a wicked gleam in his eye.

“And then I’d be late. Don’t you have to work today?”

He shook his head. “Not until tonight. I’m on night shift this week.”