Undercover Engagement (Private Pleasures 5)

Oh, who was

she fooling? This wasn’t about the sofa or the screen door. She rubbed her hand over her forehead, where an ache pounded dead center. She missed Swain. Meeting her parents’ stares again, she dredged up a half-hearted smile. “Very exciting.”

They weren’t fooled. Two sets of worried eyes looked back at her, courtesy of FaceTime. “Sweetheart, is something wrong?” Her mother asked gently. “You have so much to be happy about. Success with your new job, moving into your new place. But you don’t seem happy.”

“I’m happy about both those things. Really, I am. It’s just…” God, how to explain Marcus Swain to them?

Turns out she didn’t need to. Her father pinned her with a pointed look. “Did you unlock the lockbox yet?”

She examined her toenails rather than square off with The Brick. “Not yet.”

“The job’s done, hotshot. Spring the lock on the personal thing and decide if there are still issues to resolve.”

“I think, based on what I’m seeing, there are,” her mother offered. “Do any of these issues involve the classmate you kissed in the parking lot at graduation?”

She’d never been able to hide anything from her parents. “They do. He’s with the County Sheriff’s Department. He was my partner on the joint op. We got close. Very close, I thought.”

“But…” her mother prompted.

“But now the op is over and…” Shit. “What it comes down to is, I don’t know if I can trust him.”

“He was your partner. You worked an entire op with him, in close quarters.” Her father sat back and folded his massive arms across his massive chest. “After all that, you know whether you can trust him.”

“Do I? Maybe my judgment sucks? There’s some evidence to suggest it does.”

“Let me ask you this, Officer Brixton, would you go through a door with that guy on your six?”

She opened her mouth to give the quick answer, the affirmative one that sprang automatically to her lips, but then stopped, considered. Considered the way he’d helped her get her undercover persona just right. He might not have spared her feelings much in the process, but he hadn’t let her make a rookie misstep right out of the gate, either. She considered how he hadn’t wanted her to be alone and unprotected with their targets, because he didn’t trust anybody. She considered how, when she’d stepped into Rawley’s for the meet, she’d felt that island of calm during her moment of panic, knowing Swain wouldn’t let anything happen to her. “Yes. I’d trust him to have my six.”

“Even now, with evidence suggesting your judgment sucks?”

“Even now,” she admitted.

Her father shrugged. “There you go.” Maybe sensing her lingering doubt, he leaned forward until his face filled the screen. “People always say trust must be earned, and that’s true, but at some point, in the giving of it, it’s also a gift. Your mother and I didn’t raise the kind of woman who takes back a gift, especially a hard-earned one. If he hands it back to you, that’s one thing. But taking it back without a word?” He shook his head. “That’s not fair.”

As usual, her father was right.

“Oh, and Eden?”

“Yeah, Daddy?”

Her father’s slowest, scariest grin filled the screen. “If it turns out your judgment sucked, I will kick that deputy’s ass so hard he’ll have to contract with NASA to get it back.”

…

Moving sucked. Sitting in a half-furnished house with nothing but his own shitty company sucked. Waiting on pizza that he’d eat in his half-furnished house with his own shitty company sucked. Mostly, not having Eden there sucked, but he’d left a message on her phone earlier in the day after speaking with Malone, telling her to call him whenever she got the chance, so the ball was in her court. Which sucked.

A knock at the front door pulled him out of his sucky thoughts.

“About time. Hold on,” he called, got up from the sectional and approached the door, stopping by the hall table to grab his wallet. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming after all.”

Footsteps retreated from the other side of the door. “One sec,” he yelled. Geez. Okay, he’d been a little rude about the wait time, but didn’t the delivery person want a tip?

“Hey, man—” He swung the door open in time to see Eden hustling for the steps. Away from him. His brain stalled at the sight of her, but his reflexes took over. He hooked the back of her jeans and hauled her around.

And there she was, looking wide-eyed and far more uncertain than he’d ever seen competent, resolved Eden Brixton look in their entire association.

“I—I should have called. You’re expecting someone…”