With the drawl, the way his voice dropped low, husky, how rough looking he was, a little scary but with dimples at the same time, I could understand the man’s allure. Everybody wanted a cowboy to call their own. “I think it’s awfully shortsighted of you to think you know what he wants his whole life to be.”
He shook his head like I had no idea.
“You never know until you jump.”
His glare was dark. “Not all of us have the safety net you apparently enjoy up there in Chicago, with the way you’re comin’ at me. Everyone’s all nice and out in the open, huh?”
“No, but my boss, the guys I work with—none of them give a shit about who I sleep with. They only care about how I do my job.”
After a moment he nodded.
“I like having my safety net, and maybe if you don’t have one here, you should think about going someplace where you will,” I quipped, smiling in that way I did that pissed people off. “You guys could both put in transfer requests tomorrow, but you won’t because you’re scared of what that would mean for the two of you.”
“You don’t know anything about me or him.”
“Nope,” I agreed. “All I know is that your partner looks at you like you walk on water, and you like that just fine.”
“Listen—”
I rode roughshod over him. “You have all the power. And he has shit because you haven’t come clean and told him that the idea of taking him home with you gets you hard.”
I expected him to hit me, and I was prepared if he tried. What I was not expecting was the look of absolute surprise on his face.
“Oh, come on,” I said, remembering how I hid my heart from Ian and how much longer we would have been together if I had just come clean with him from the start about my feelings. “You’d have to be blind to miss what you mean to him. It’s you who’s playing his cards pretty damn close to his chest.”
“I—”
“It was the same for me, so I get it. I swear to God, I wouldn’t even be giving you shit if I hadn’t been right there where you are.”
“How do you know?”
I shrugged. “You were jealous when you walked up on us, and earlier today—you stand really close to him, right up in his space. I’m now familiar with that maneuver.”
“Oh?”
“I live with my partner.”
It took him a second. “And you’re not roommates.”
“No.”
“Where is he now?”
“Deployed.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s his calling.”
He nodded and was quiet for a moment. “Callahan’s really young.”
“And you don’t wanna fuck him up. I know. You told me.”
“I need to keep things how they are, just friends.”
I took a breath, let it go, resolved to stay out of it going forward. “Okay.”
“That’s it? You give me the third degree and finish with okay?”
“No, man, you’re a lot stronger than I was, and if you can stand it the other way, more power to you.”
“What other way?”
“Watching him fuck other people.”
“The fucking don’t bother me none.” It was patronizing how he said it, like he was above it all.
“The falling in love with will,” I volleyed.
After a long moment, he said, “I suspect you’re right.”
“But there’s nothing to be done, right?”
He declined to answer.
The “Hey, hi, hello.” came out of nowhere.
I turned, and there in front of me was five foot seven inches of Josue Hess, looking even more fragile and beautiful than he did in his pictures online. I’d noticed his eyes first because it was something I did from my days as a foster kid. Always check first to see if people had kind eyes. Hess’s were dark, glittering obsidian. That and his gorgeous burnt sienna skin with undertones of ochre, a blush of antique gold under silken brown that his Jamaican-born father had gifted him with, made him traffic-stopping beautiful. But that wasn’t all. From his German and Dutch mother, he received sharp elfin features: a short upturned nose, a wide expressive mouth, and long curling lashes. “Pretty” was the only word to use with such devastating genetics at work right there in front of me.
“Josue,” I greeted. “May I call you Josue?”
He nodded quickly, and I noticed he was looking me over like he was examining me for flaws. It was slightly disconcerting, but the scrutiny wasn’t interest, more like he was making a decision on my worth as a human being.
“How are you?” I asked.
He moved in closer and stared up into my face, studying me further.
“Josue?”
“Okay,” he said after a few moments of silence, nodding. “This makes more sense. Mind, body, and soul in alignment with what I expected.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You actually look like I thought you would, is all.”
“Pardon me?”
“You three, you’re marshals,” he announced, waving the pointer finger of his right hand at me and Redeker and Callahan, who’d just joined us. “But I didn’t see them in my reading, only you, so clearly you’re the one I’m supposed to go with.”