Date Next Door

“No,” she assured him, tugging at his shoulders. “I’m fine.”

He held back with a frown. “Just let me look at your leg….”

“Later,” she said, pulling him down to her. “I’m busy right now.”

“Nic—”

But her name was smothered against her lips. After a moment, Joel stopped resisting.

They were sitting in front of Nic’s TV a few nights later when they almost got into another quarrel. It started innocently enough. They were watching a newsmagazine-style show and they were both intrigued by a story about a program for at-risk youth that had been initiated by a psychologist and a police officer in Baltimore. Because both Joel and Nic had professional interests in troubled kids, the program sparked a discussion between them about whether a modified version would be helpful in their small town.

“You could do something like that,” Joel suggested as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Work with at-risk kids, I mean.”

“I do, sort of,” she reminded him. “A lot of my calls involve kids in trouble.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean in the course of your regular police work. I meant you should think about focusing exclusively on that work. You’d be good at it. Maybe in a high school setting. You know, like a counselor.”

“A counselor?” Nic stiffened and pulled slightly away from him on the couch. “I’m a cop, Joel. Not a shrink.”

“But you said you wanted to work with kids—”

“I’d be interested in getting involved in a program like the one we just heard about. A joint thing with the police department and social services. I never said I wanted to leave the force.”

“Look, I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said getting a good look at her expression. “We were just talking.”

Nodding, she pushed herself off the couch. “I think I’ll get a soda. You want anything?”

“No, I’m fine. Nic—”

“I’ll be right back,” she said and escaped into the kitchen. She needed a couple of minutes to compose herself before she rejoined him.

Maybe she was reading too much into things again, but she had been badly shaken when Joel had seemed to be pushing her into the same career his late wife had once pursued. Surely he hadn’t meant it that way. It probably had just been a spur-of-the-moment comment made in response to something he’d thought she said. But telling herself that didn’t ease the sick feeling deep inside her stomach.

At his office, Joel had just finished caring for a child with a painful ear infection and was spending a few minutes returning telephone calls, before moving toward an exam room for the next appointment.

“Hey, Joel,” his partner, Bob McCafferty, called from down the hallway. “Did you hear the news?”

“No, what news?”

“There was a hostage situation over by the tracks this morning. Some meth-head holed up with his ex-girlfriend and her kid. Threatened to kill himself and take them with him—and a few cops to boot. I heard your neighbor was right in the middle of it all.”

Joel literally felt his heart skip a beat. “Nic?” he managed to say coherently, his hand clenching around the chart he held. “Is she…?”

Bob held up a hand and shook his head. “Chill. She’s okay. From what I heard, no one was hurt. It got hairy for a while, but it all ended okay.”

The breath left Joel’s lungs in a rush that left him a little dizzy. “That’s…good to hear.”

“Big excitement for this town, huh? I bet your neighbor will have a good story to share with you later.”

“Yeah. I’ll have to be sure and ask her about it,” Joel said grimly. “Excuse me, Bob, I’ve got a patient waiting.”

He needed to stay very busy for the rest of the day, he told himself. Too busy to think about what might have happened.

As he pasted on a professional smile and pushed open the door to the examining room, he could almost hear the echo of his mother’s voice reminding him that anyone who cared about a police officer would have to learn to live with daily fear.

It was time for him to do some very serious thinking about his relationship with Officer Nicole Sawyer.

“I don’t think I can handle this, Nic.”