Page 68 of Straight Shooter

A muscle in his forehead twitched. “For what?”

“For being you.”

He grinned, revealing his perfectly even white teeth that she couldn’t wait to feel nipping her skin. “No, thank you.” He hooked his arm around her waist and flopped her onto her back.

Ring, ring!

He dropped his head. “Shit. That’s probably Lieutenant Jackson.” He caught her nipple between his lips, sucked, and then sprang from the bed. “Don’t move.” The sheet fell away from his body and exposed the cords in his arms and legs. His quad muscles flexed, and she dragged her gaze over the thick, full erection between his legs. He stepped into a pair of black briefs as he answered the call.

“Rhett speaking.” The gruff, throaty sound told her exactly how irritated he was by the interruption. God, he was glorious. Tanned, built in all the right places, and genuine to boot. He winked at her and pointed to the kitchen. “Coffee?” he mouthed.

Her bones turned to butter.

She’d fallen fast and hard for Rhett Callahan.

“Yes, sir.” Rhett filled two mugs with the black elixir and reached for the cream and sugar. He’d already given his statement at the hospital the previous night, while the doctor had looked after Peyton’s finger. His mind had been racing a mile a fucking minute with worry—why he’d fretted so much over her finger was beyond him. Hell, he’d barely flinched when they took the bullet out of the spot a couple of inches away from his collarbone, but seeing the wound on her dainty hand had jarred the shit out of him. He brought his attention back to his conversation with Jackson, which took great effort. “I’d like to know the depth of Eric’s relationship with Beanie.”

“We’re getting to that. For now, the focus is setting the record straight on who killed Raquel. Between the text messages on Vicky’s phone and Jenny’s new statement, plus what Beanie confessed to Ms. Risk, well, it’s pretty incriminating for him.”

“And Andre and Donatello Moretti? They’re not off the hook, are they?”

“Hell no. We have on record from Andre’s other partners that he’s rough in bed, which coincides with Beanie’s statement that he basically finished the job—Beanie’s claiming he didn’t realize how injured she already was, but that’s something for the courts to decide. For now, they’re both accomplices to murder.”

“And Moretti?”

“We arrested Officer Jeremiah James this morning for giving out Jenny’s location. There’s an internal investigation being conducted as we speak to determine how he got access to that information.”

“Someone higher up in the police department is involved.”

“Undoubtedly. As for Moretti, he’s facing numerous charges. From what I’ve heard, Jeremiah is hitting opera-singer octaves to minimize his own sentence. Moretti won’t have a fighting chance.”

Rhett stirred Peyton’s coffee and then his. “Good. And Mandy and Eric?”

“Mandy suffered a concussion but will return home today. Eric’s in stable condition.”

“Has it hit the news yet?”

“No. I’ll issue a statement later this afternoon. For now, good work. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Ms. Risk, but from what Mandy’s said, she’s a keeper. Don’t screw it up.”

Rhett smiled despite the little jab. Jackson was a devoted husband to his wife of forty years. He’d never shown a soft side on the job, so hearing the old romantic warmed Rhett’s bones. He turned to see Peyton standing in the doorway. His blue T-shirt hung down to her knees and her wild, strawberry-blonde locks framed her face and curled over her breasts.

His heart stopped. Lieutenant Jackson’s voice fell away from him and the world tilted beneath his feet. Peyton was his forty years, his forever.

She just didn’t know it yet.

He hung up with Jackson as she crossed the kitchen. She picked up one of the mugs and sipped. “Ah, you’re a god.”

He grinned and pulled her against his side. Her soft scent filled his nostrils and her body fit into his side like the perfect puzzle piece. Damn, he was getting soft. He dipped his head and brushed a kiss against her temple. “That’s what you said last night.”

“Ha.” She nudged him and sipped. “That’s yet to be determined.”

He drank from his mug and tried to catch the twirling words in his fog-thickened brain. “So, your place or mine?”

She knitted her brow together and her golden eyes, no longer streaked with pain and fear, settled on his face. This close, he could study the splattered freckles over the bridge of her nose.

“To live?”

“Yeah.” The sound slid easily off his tongue, hiding the tightness in his throat.