I don’t think anyone has ever tried to take care of me. It’s such a foreign concept it never occurred to me she’d try.
Sadie grins. “Oh my god, this is so cute.”
Ryder looks at his sister with curiosity. “Very cute.”
“What? Am I supposed to let the man starve?” Her expression is so soft when she looks at me, it makes my heart stutter.
“No, no,” Ryder says, giving me a cocked brow.
“Anyway, what are we talking about?” she asks.
“We were finishing up talking about the Crenshaw case,” Sadie says.
“Any progress?” Jessica asks.
My lieutenant shakes her head. “Not yet.”
The three of them spend a few minutes talking shop while I try to figure out why Jessica bringing me something to eat is making my chest feel tight.
When they finally leave, closing the door behind them, she turns back to me. “You’re not eating.”
My brow pulls as I look up at her. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”
She scoots around my desk, resting her ass against the edge, at the side of my chair. “I’ve expended a lot of your energy. You need to take care of yourself if you want to keep up.”
I want to kiss her but restrain myself, considering the entire station has a view. Instead, I settle for putting my hand on her knee and squeezing. “Thank you.”
Her legs part, letting me slide my hand higher up her thigh. “It was entirely selfish.”
She talks a good game, but for the people she lets in, she’s a marshmallow. And somehow, I’ve made it on to that list.
But she needs to posture, so I let her have it. “I’d expect nothing less.”
She takes off the wooden top and gestures to her concoction.
I dig the small spoon into the jar and take a bite. It’s weird and mushy and lumpy. It tastes healthy with a vague hint of the strawberry cheesecake flavor she described. It’s nothing I would make myself, nor is it something I would eat voluntarily.
She’s looking at me like she’s expecting a Michelin star to be handed to her. “What do you think?”
It’s horrible. “I think I’m the luckiest man on the planet.”
Her expression blooms with joy.
And I eat every last bite because I’m unable to stand the thought of her not being happy.
Later that night, Cole Montgomery shakes my hand. “We good?”
I nod. “Good job tonight.”
“You too,” he says.
We pound each other on the back.
After a wreck caught fire, my previous plans to relax and go to bed early, hopefully with a naked Jessica beside me, went to hell. It had been all hands on deck, and the fire chief and I put Jessica aside and came together to lead our teams in a dangerous and serious situation.
Tonight is the reason we’ve been having regular team-building exercises between the two groups in the first place, and it paid off. It was one of those rare moments where everyone and everything came together as it should, and we performed like textbook professionals.
Now we’re that mixture of exhausted and hyped-up on excess adrenaline, blowing off steam at Sam’s before we go home.
