His Best Mistake (Shillings Agency 6)

He was probably living his life, perfectly content without her in it, and she was mooning over a man she didn’t even want to be with. “I’m not stressed,” Daisy said a defensively.

“Sure you’re not.” Lauren sipped her cosmo, licking her lips. “I can see why you drank this the other night and got freaky in the hotel with some dude. This is good.”

“Yeah.” Daisy still didn’t touch hers, or that topic. Lauren had been prodding her for more information, but she’d been carefully avoiding the probing questions. “How’s Steven doing?”

“Good. He’s been busy with work, though.” She took another sip of her cosmo, frowning at the clock. “He’s on a project that’s had him out at all hours of the night, but they just finished up, and he said he can meet us here in ten minutes for dinner. Thank God.”

Daisy traced the rim of her glass, not taking a drink. “Let me guess. As soon as that last fry touches his lips, you’re out?”

“Yep. Maybe before.” Lauren grinned. “And I don’t even feel bad about it. It’s been too freaking long since I got some sugar.”

Daisy rolled her eyes. “Nice. Ditch your best girl in a bar.”

“It’s an Applebees in suburban Maine. That doesn’t count.”

She had a point.

“What’s going on with you anyway?” Lauren asked, frowning at her. She placed her full attention on Daisy, which wasn’t a good thing. She’d missed her calling. She should have been a cop. “Ever since the wedding, and that night with that guy that you refuse to talk about, you’ve been quiet.”

She lifted a shoulder, avoiding her eyes. “I’ve been busy at work.”

“Still pushing papers?”

“Until this thing is off?” She lifted her cast, waving it under Lauren’s nose. “I don’t have a choice. I can’t chase down bad guys with a broken arm.”

“How much longer?”

“It comes off next Friday. I can’t frigging wait. It hasn’t even hurt for, like, two weeks. I think they left it on so long just to mess with me.” She dropped her good hand to her lap, not touching her drink. “I’ve had enough of sitting behind a desk to last me a lifetime.”

“Is it really so bad?”

Daisy frowned down at her untouched drink. She’d joined the police force as a way to save people from the same fate she’d suffered. Her mother had been shot during a mugging, over fifty dollars she’d had in her wallet. That’s what her mother’s life had been worth to that man who pulled a gun on her and demanded her purse.

Fifty. Frigging. Dollars.

At her mother’s funeral, as she held her sobbing father’s hand at the graveside, with the scent of freshly dug dirt and fresh roses intermingling with the spring rain falling from the gray clouds overhead, Daisy had sworn to become a cop. To find the men who did this type of thing, and put them behind bars, so no one else’s lives were ruined like hers and her father’s had been.

She’d been ten.

That determination had never faded.

So, yes, it was that bad to sit behind a desk, watching crimes happen that she couldn’t help solve. “Yes,” she said simply.

Lauren nodded, sympathy lighting up her eyes. “I get it.”

“I know you do.” She bumped her with her shoulder. “It’s why I love you.”

“One of the many reasons.”

“Of course.” She tapped the untouched cosmo in front of Daisy. “Drink that. I’m hoping to get deets from you about that night at the wedding if it hits you hard enough.”

Daisy laughed. “Yeah. Not happening.”

“You swearing off booze now? Scared you’ll find another hot stranger and do dirty, dirty things to him?”

Daisy shrugged. “You know I’ve never been big on drinking.”

“Having a drink occasionally doesn’t make you an alcoholic.” Lauren hesitated. “And it doesn’t make you your father.”