The Pegasus Marshal's Mate (U.S. Marshal Shifters 2)

Terrence McMillan

Chapter Sixteen: Tiffani

They had excused themselves from Florence Edmondson’s house as politely and quickly as they could. (Tiffani had taken two more fragrant, crumbly shortbread cookies wrapped up in a napkin, though, speed be damned. She’d seen how Martin stared at them, and she couldn’t bake to save her life.) They sat in the pale dome light of Martin’s car and talked while they nibbled their way through the shortbread.

“It couldn’t have really been him,” Tiffani said. She knew Martin knew that, but she thought best when she thought out loud. “Florence knows him. And she’s the furthest thing from senile.”

“No, she was sharp enough to cut the real McMillan to ribbons,” Martin agreed.

“Now one of my fondest memories. Okay, so she definitely would have recognized him.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind about that. Which means our mystery man had some reason to not just sign a fake name, but to sign this particular fake name. Interesting.”

“Someone trying to frame the judge?”

“Maybe, but only if they had a pretty low opinion of anyone who’d be looking into it. There’s no reason for McMillan to want to sabotage his own trial. Even if he did want to, he’d have a thousand easier ways to do it.”

“And he’s desperate to have this run smoothly. He wants it as the capstone of his career.”

Martin nodded. “So it’s not him, and it wouldn’t make much sense for someone to try to convince us it was. Which means they’re just throwing mud around—McMillan’s a jackass, so I’m sure plenty of people would be happy to tweak his nose a little. It probably amused our guy to sign the judge’s name while he recruited a bunch of people to interrupt McMillan’s big day.”

“Then maybe it is just a prank,” Tiffani said. She wasn’t hopeful, though. “Maybe it’s not related to the bomb threat and it’s just someone messing with the judge.”

“Maybe.”

“Does it have to lead to something?” She kissed a cookie crumb off her fingertip. “If this part was a prank, could all of it just be a prank?”

“It could,” Martin said, but he didn’t sound any more convinced than she felt. “It’s just that it makes sense as a someone ramping up to something. First it’s just a phone call, then it’s direct intervention within the courtroom, even if it’s harmless. If there’s a third point coming up, I don’t like the direction that we’re going in.”

“No. Me neither.”

“But it’s my job to be paranoid about this kind of thing. And...”

He touched the back of her neck, stroking his warm fingers into the little wisps of hair that gathered loosely at her nape. It made her tingle all the way down to the soles of her feet.

“And?”

“And with you in the picture, I don’t know that I trust myself to think about this clearly. If anything happened to you, it would kill me.”

He said it plainly and simply and she knew—with her whole heart, she knew—that he wasn’t trying to persuade her of anything. He wasn’t saying it to try to convince her that this “one perfect match” concept was really something that applied to them. He said it like it was a neutral, objective fact.

He had no game plan. Loving her was not a project for him, something he would prune and cultivate until at last it reached perfection, whereupon he would leave it alone. He wanted to give her a little romance, sure, but that was just part of who he was. It wasn’t a con. It wasn’t a sale.

She didn’t think she would ever get tired of knowing that.

“I love you,” Tiffani said.

It was the end of the line—it was what she had started to accept from almost the moment they had met, it was what she had flirted with on the sidewalk and thrilled to in the sky. But she could finally put it into words.

I love you and I believe you when you say you love me.

I believe we’re going to be happy together. That I can make you happy—maybe even as happy as I already know you can make me.

She felt like there was a knot in her throat, making it hard to talk. She started to follow this confession by saying that she knew she didn’t deserve him, but then she wondered who she was saying that for. Maybe she sometimes believed it herself, but she knew he didn’t. So why did she feel like she had to announce it?

So when she went on, she was heedless and giddy, and she talked about him, not about herself.

“You’re smart and funny and thoughtful and you care so much about getting everything right, and you’re good to your team and you’re good to little old ladies who think you’re out to squash their civil liberties and also you’re really, really, really good in bed—”