PLAYED

As I came to the door, I saw it was slightly ajar. I kicked it in as I swept the gun across the room, immediately feeling embarrassed as the rookie and Nathan both sat quietly on the little couch with their hands in the air.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked the rookie, about ready to strangle him for scaring me like that.

“Sorry, detective. I had to report to Captain Pierce that you’d stepped out. He said we have a credible threat on Nathaniel Hale’s life and asked me to move rooms until the threat was over.”

“There’s no room in here!” I protested, glancing from the rookie to Nathan.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make do with the floor. Captain says it should be safe to leave you two alone in a few days. Three days, tops.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As I stepped back into the hall and went back to retrieve my grocery bags, there was a definite feeling of contempt rolling through me. Captain Pierce had it out for me, and he’d been orchestrating this whole thing as a way to embarrass and harass me. I should have seen it coming. I should have seen past the heartfelt speech he’d given me, past the mock attempt he’d made to get me to say “no.” It had all been a lie, every last word of it. I wasn’t held in any higher esteem now than when I’d joined the damn force as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie.

And now, what little enjoyment I was getting out of it was going to be ruined by some stupid kid just out of the academy sharing a few hundred square feet of living space.

“Fuck,” I whispered as I lifted the bags and started back toward the room. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. The angel on my shoulder was telling me shacking up with Nathan again was a bad idea. And the devil on my other shoulder? Well… she was telling me we could make it a few days and still get what we wanted.

That happy thought didn’t make the time pass any quicker.

The next few days were impossibly dull. The three of us made do, sharing the couch and watching what few channels the antenna on our shitty little television could pick up. In the meantime, I took shifts with the rookie, keeping an eye on the grounds. Nothing changed except for my discomfort. The kid was a snorer, and his proximity to my couch made bedtime a real bitch. Thankfully, Nathan had a spare set of expensive earplugs in his bag-of-many-tricks, and by the end of day three, things had improved from a hellish nightmare to marginally tolerable.

I went to bed as usual, sprawling out on the couch and shooting one final glance over at Nathan. He was watching me, a smile plastered across his handsome face. “Soon,” I mouthed, smiling back as he gave me a little nod.

I shoved the plugs in my ears, drowning out the buzz-saw laying on our floor, and in no time at all, sleep found me.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I woke up to much more favorable circumstances. My eyes fluttered open and filled with visions of a room full of flowers. Every kind and color were strewn about, bright bursts of warmth and romance in an otherwise dismal space. The smell of impeccable floral arrangements filled my nostrils as I found myself nearly blinded by light streaming in through the unfettered windows, the curtains drawn to reveal the magnitude of the beauty around me.

It should have been special. It should have made me happy.

Instead, the pretty flowers put a cold coil of dread in my stomach.

Nathan was sitting on the end of the couch, a triumphant smile on his face as he watched my eyes open and focus on the innumerable vases and bouquets around me. “I couldn’t guess your favorite,” he told me, “but after the last few nights, I figured you might need a little pick-me-up to remind you that world’s not such a bad place, after all.”

I stared at him, my mouth dry. “Where’s the rookie?”

“Gone. The captain moved him back down the hall early this morning. I thought you’d be happy,” he said, his head tilting to the side as he studied my obvious displeasure.

“Nathan… you didn’t charge this to the card the department gave you, right? I mean… there’s no way it’s loaded up with enough money for this…”

He frowned at me like I was insane. “Of course not!” he laughed. “I used my personal one. I’d never put your job in jeopardy like that.”

I sat up, clutching the blankets to my chest and the semi-sheer cami covering it. “Your personal card? You aren’t supposed to have a personal card! You just put yourself in jeopardy, Nathan, and right now, my job is you! Jesus fucking Christ, have you lost your damn mind?”

“It’s a card for a subsidiary business. There’s almost no chance anyone could track the purchase back to me…” His face fell as he watched me. His lips parted as if there was something more he wanted to say, but I ran him over before he could get the words out.

“Did you have them delivered? Please tell me you did.”

“Well, yeah. I couldn’t just carry them by myself…”

“You ordered online? Over the phone?”

“No. I wanted to see what they had. I took a drive down there myself.”

I groaned and covered my face with my hands. He couldn’t possibly have done something so stupid!

“What’s the big deal? It’s not like the Paddies are hanging around at flower shops…” Nathan said.

“Let me guess: you went to the closest one, right? Leslie-Anne Floral Designs?” He nodded, and I snorted in disgust. “And what’s her shop across the street from? McFadden’s-fucking-Pub! Or didn’t you notice when you were ignoring everything the Captain tried to drill into your skull before we came to the Peachtree Overlook to spend seven miserable days together?”

Nathan recoiled as if I’d physically struck him. I damn sure felt like it, but it almost looked as if what I’d said had stung him worse than any slap ever could. What can I say? I’m not normally a morning person.

“Sandra, I just… I just wanted to be good to you. I wanted to do something nice—”

“Then you should have listened!” I raged. “You shouldn’t have put both our lives in jeopardy, and by extension, my fucking job!” This was a disaster. All my panic, my self-doubt, and the pent-up frustration I’d been carrying around with me exploded, showering Nathan with the hot ash of my rage. “You think the men out there didn’t notice two thousand dollars’ worth of flowers being carted up here? The whole damn neighborhood probably watched it happen! What do you think the Captain is going to say about t

his?” I shook my head, flinging off the blanket and pulling a shirt out of my duffel bag. “Just when I’d thought you’d started to change…”

“I don’t get how buying you gifts is a bad thing,” Nathan said, standing up and following me. “Okay, so I took a risk. But I wasn’t followed. I made sure of it. I…”

“You don’t get to hear me say ‘no,’ and then do it anyway,” I snarled, whirling on him so fast our noses almost collided. “That’s not being nice, Nathan. That’s being a fucking entitled asshole who thinks they know best, even when he oh-so-clearly doesn’t. That’s deciding that what you want to do matters a hell of a lot more than what others want. That’s the spoiled rich kid in you coming out to play, and I don’t think it’s fucking cute.”

“Sandra—”

“No! Absolutely not!” I turned back to my bag and stuffed my blanket into it. I didn’t give a shit that I was still in my pajama bottoms, and I didn’t care that there was a big part of me that just wanted to jump into bed with this man and fuck the life right out of him. I was done. I couldn’t do this. Staying here could cost me everything I’d worked so hard to achieve, and Nathaniel Hale wasn’t worth it.