“Course we’re gonna come,” he muttered, taking a sip of his coffee. “Heard you got hurt, and your mom insisted we make sure you were ok.”
“More like your daddy insisted. He lost his shit the second Ellis told him what had happened, and the next thing we were in the car headed here,” Rissa chuckled, placing creamer and sugar in front of me. I absolutely hated sugar or anything sweet in my coffee, so I reached for the creamer and added a dash to my cup. The stronger it was, the better I was. “Course, we didn’t realize when Ellis said that Raoul was looking after you, that he was looking after you,” she added, winking at me.
As soon as she said it, three things happened at once. The first thing was that Hogan let out a loud growl, his eyes narrowing as he glared at me. The second thing was that what she’s said made me shift in my chair, and I blushed for the first time since I was a kid. And third thing was Rose, who covered her face with her hands, forgetting again about the bruising, and yelping when she pressed too hard against it. How she could forget about it, I didn’t know, but she just kept on doing it.
The last thing snapped Hogan out of his death stare, though, and brought his attention onto his youngest child. The second he saw the full extent of the injury, he was up and out of his chair. “You,” he pointed at me, “take me to where the little asshole is. I’m going to k…”
“Probably best not to say threats in front of a police officer, Hogan,” Rissa advised, coming over to rub his back. “And calm down. You know what the doctor said about your blood pressure.”
“It’s not that bad, Dad,” Rose said, trying to calm him down, too.
“Not that bad? Not that bad?” he repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “Have you seen your damn eye? Actually, that’s a good point - can you even see out of it?”
Walking over to her daughter, Rissa cupped her hand under Rose’s chin and tipped her head to the side, giving her a better view of it. “Jesus, he really got you good, baby. Your poor beautiful face.”
“Rose has pressed charges, and the woman he was abusing is pressing charges, too,” I advised them, taking a sip of my coffee and breathing out in relief.
“The woman he was abusing? Ellis didn’t mention someone else was involved,” Rissa whispered, looking sadly at her daughter. “Is she ok?”
Looking over at Rose, I understood the pleading look in her eyes, and took control. “I’ll tell you the full story.”Three hours later…
“I’m sorry,” Rose whispered out of the side of her mouth as we left the station, her parents leading the way back to the car.
What was she sorry for? More than likely the fact I’d been left with her parents while she went in to answer the questions DB had for her. Police work was a matter of procedure and red tape, and she might have written out her statement last night, but to make sure the asshole who’d hit her got the punishment he deserved, more questions had to be answered today.
Initially, I’d been in with DB while he went through my side of it all, but mine had only taken ten minutes, meaning that once he took Rose through, I’d been left with Rissa and Hogan for fifty-nine minutes… not that I’d counted every single one of them or anything. That didn’t sound so bad when you thought about where we were, but during that time I’d been grilled by Rissa, glared at by Hogan, and every last one of my colleagues had enjoyed every second of it. Well, aside from Rory, who’d decided I was next on her target list after DB got together with Tabby and she realized that was never going to change.
I wasn’t secretive, my life was an open book, but there was something about answering questions about myself for an hour that made me feel uncomfortable. “Heard it, did you?”
Glancing over her shoulder at us, Rissa smiled at her daughter. “Did you know that Raoul’s part Mexican and part English, Rose?”
She probably did, but instead she replied, “Is that so?”
“Yup, his mom’s parents came to the States from Santa Fe just after she was born, and his dad moved here with his company. The night he arrived he had jet lag, so he went to an all-night diner near his hotel,” she told her excitedly, like it was a romance book, “because he hadn’t found an apartment to live in yet, so he was staying at one. Which was really nice of his company, don’t you think?” It was a rhetorical question, because she didn’t wait for anyone to answer before continuing, “His mom was studying for her finals, so she was juicing on the Java, and they sat next to each other and got talking. Next thing you know, they’re getting married, and Raoul’s brother was born ten months later, Raoul eleven months after that – in the same year – and his sister was born three years after that. How beautiful is that? It was like fate that they were both at that diner in the middle of the night.”