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As he moved on to another board, he shot her a cautious look. “Are we going to sneak around for a while, you think?”
She felt strangely reluctant to commit to that, so she just smiled and pretended not to notice that he’d asked a serious question. Luckily, the next board tilted out when he tugged on it, and Tessa breathed a sigh of relief as Luke turned his full attention to the fence.
He pulled again, and the board popped off. Luke slipped latex gloves on and tested the next board. It slid out so easily it almost slipped to the ground.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just need one second.”
“Carry on. You’re hot in detective mode.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe I’ll show you my handcuffs later.”
She knew it was just a slightly distracted joke, but Tessa felt a shiver of nervous delight at the thought. Maybe indeed.
One last board slid loose, and then Luke disappeared to the other side of the fence. She peeked through to see him take a few pictures with his phone. He walked slowly around the dead end, then bent to pick up a crushed cigarette box. As if he carried a portabl
e crime lab with him at all times, he tugged a clear plastic bag from the pocket of his coat and dropped the box in there. A few minutes later, he stepped back through the opening and began knocking the loose boards back into place.
“Could I ask one more huge favor?”
Tessa would’ve gladly said yes to anything at that point. Her knees were still weak. Her sex still swollen.
“Could we stop by the department for just a minute? I want to have this printed.”
“Absolutely.” In all honesty, she was curious about his job. Who wouldn’t be? The man solved crimes for a living.
But she tried to act dignified when they got to the police department. She tried not to grin at the uniformed police officer who manned a desk near the door. And she hid her gawking behind casual glances around the big station room as they filed past the few people working the evening shift.
“You can sit at Simone’s desk. This’ll just take a second.”
Tessa sat down and tried not to clap her hands and squeal. Instead, she leaned back in her seat and clasped her hands in front of her, pretending to be a cop. She watched Luke past her lashes as he marked up the evidence bag he’d brought in, then walked off to grab some paperwork. None of his charm was on evidence here. He frowned, his gaze far away and cool. Tessa couldn’t help but think of him in the shower, and how rough he’d been just when she needed it.
She shivered and rocked farther back in the chair.
She couldn’t imagine working in an office like this every day. She’d never done anything like that. Before turning twenty-one she’d occasionally worked weekends at restaurants, just to get the feel for it, but even that hadn’t been common. Mostly, she’d taken care of her brothers. She’d learned how to cook and bake when she was fourteen, and she’d made a meal for them nearly every night, because that’s what their mom had done. The idea of letting that kind of thing go…it had terrified her. Eric had been living in his own place, but he’d moved back home to live with them. He’d given up his privacy and freedom, the least she could do was feed him. She’d begged, cajoled and browbeaten Jamie into doing the yard work. They hadn’t had a mother and father, but they’d had a nice home. And she’d managed to graduate with straight A’s in high school, and nearly a 4.0 in college. But this kind of a normal nine-to-five office life was foreign to her.
Not that it was nine to five, obviously. Luke wasn’t the only one here at 7:00 p.m. Tessa glanced over at the guy two desks to the left and found him staring at her. “Hi,” she said.
He lifted his chin in greeting, then shot Luke a narrow look when he walked back into the room. “Got a date, Asher?”
“None of your business,” Luke replied without looking up from his papers.
“You sure she should be sitting in your partner’s place?”
Luke’s eyes rose to meet Tessa’s for a second, then he turned a snarl on the other detective. “Watch your mouth, Morrison.”
Tessa started to get up. “I can move. I didn’t know I was—”
“That’s not what he meant, Tessa.”
“Oh.” Oh. The other cop was referring to the rumors about Simone’s baby. She felt a hot flush climb up her neck.
“Hey, Morrison, how about you apologize for being a dick?”
Morrison just grunted and bent back over his work.
“Asshole,” Luke muttered as he stapled papers together and copied something from the paper onto the evidence bag. After digging through his drawer for something, he closed it and came around to Simone’s desk. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s no big deal.”
