“Thank you,” she says softly.
“Always,” I say.
She smooths her hand down her hair and over her face, as though trying to hide.
I can’t help it. I reach forward and brush her hair to the side. Her face lights up and her eyes brighten at my gesture.
But then we hear a door creak open. We turn at the noise.
Jules Davis stands at her front door. She’s a tall, lean woman. At the courtroom, she wore her dyed hair down, but this morning she wears a patterned bandana around her head. She stares at us for a second, and I stare back, something niggling in my mind.
There’s something about her, about the bandana… I search my mind, wondering if I’m latching onto nothing.
But no, I’m almost sure.
I have seen her before. Or, at least, she strongly reminds me of somebody, I just can’t remember who.
“Are you okay, Mom?” Piper calls across the street.
Jules’s gaze follows my hand as I lower it from her daughter’s hair.
I shouldn’t have made such an intimate gesture so close to her house. I forgot about her mother.
Piper makes everything easy to forget, her presence intoxicating, making me want to do nothing but hold her in my arms, kiss her, and take the paths our bodies desperately want.
“Miss Davis.” I raise my hand in a wave, still with that feeling at the corner of my mind, my police instincts going off. “It’s nice to meet—”
She turns and walks inside, slamming the door behind her.
Piper winces at the noise it makes, rattling around in the frame, sounding like it’s ready to crumble.
“I could try and talk to her,” I say.
Piper slowly turns her attention away from the house, meeting my eye and then softly shaking her head. “I don’t think it would be any good, honestly. She’s got a thing about older men.”
“It probably didn’t help that I had my hands on you,” I say, trying for a joking tone.
Piper walks closer to me, lips pursed. “No, don’t say that. I loved it. Little gestures like that… well, I couldn’t have dreamed of you caring enough to do them, not with me, not even yesterday.”
I smirk. “You better get used to it.”
I don’t touch her again as we climb into the car. There’s being romantic and then there’s disrespecting my woman’s mother.
As I start the car and pull away from her house, that feeling won’t go away that I somehow know her mother. It lingers at the edges of my subconscious, the same way a suspect would back in my cop days.
Why does Jules look so damn familiar when she’s wearing a bandana?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Piper
“Stay, stay, stay… good boy, that’s it.”
Bones sits at one end of the patio, his eyes fixated on his new favorite toy.
My shoe.
I changed into a pair of sneakers when I went home this morning, and all day Bones has been leaping on them, trying to nibble on the laces. Sometimes I even let him, pretending not to see, because I can tell how much joy it gives him to let loose and just be a dog for once.
And my shoes aren’t destroyed. Yet.
I move to the other end of the patio, my hands raised. Bones’ legs are trembling and saliva pools in his mouth.
I imagine him filled with the same frantic energy that keeps trying to take hold of me. All day, it’s been difficult to focus. My mind has so much to process.
If I’m not thinking about my dad, about the paltry information my mom gave me, I’m thinking about the brick. I’m thinking about the message. But then my thoughts will turn to Pearce, to the way we hugged and kissed before he left for work.
It started out as a goodbye kiss, but then he made that muffled growling sound, the same one from last night, and my body responded automatically. I moaned and our mouths opened, our tongues clashing, our lust rising.
We only stopped when he pushed me against the wall, his hands gripping my hips.
“If I didn’t have work…”
“But you do,” I said quickly. “And your job is important.”
He leaned back, his hands still on me, staring deeply into me with those ice-blue eyes. “I’ll see you later.”
He turned and strode away.
“Wait,” I said, my heart pounding.
He paused, turning on his heel, his eyebrow raised.
He has such a perceptive way of looking at me, as though he can strip away everything and to the core of me.
But if that’s the case, he’d be able to tell.
“Yeah?” he said.
I was going to reveal it right there, but my nerves deserted me. A different question arose in its place, one I hadn’t planned on asking.
“Are we boyfriend and girlfriend now?”
He chuckled. “Do you want to be?”
“Is it such a silly idea?” I snapped, wishing I’d never brought the topic up.
I only said it so I wouldn’t have to say the other thing. But once the question was out there, I realized how badly I ached for its answer.