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“You’re right,” she said. “At least, not any time soon. I need a little time to adjust to all this. Things have happened pretty fast.”
“That’s an understatement.”
She leaned her head against his arm and rested there, her eyes on the ocean. “I’m a cop—just like you, Gideon. I’m not giving it up to have babies and knit and make cookies and wait at home while you do what you do. Cops have kids just like everyone else. We’ll make it work.”
“You’ll distract me.”
“So learn to deal with it.”
“Why should I learn to deal with it when I have more than enough money for you to quit?”
“If money had anything to do with it, you wouldn’t be doing the job, either. What we do is about more than a paycheck.”
His lips thinned slightly, and then he said, “I know you think you’re like every other cop, but you’re not. You’re mine, and I don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m tough,” she said.
“You’re fragile.”
“I am not,” she argued.
“Precious things are always fragile.”
She didn’t have an immediate response, since he’d stolen her breath away with that statement. Precious was not a word she’d thought he could ever speak, and yet he’d used it, however reluctantly.
He added, as if to turn her mind away from the subject, “In the beginning, I slept with you so you’d request a transfer.”
“I know,” she said without rancor.
“We’ve just upped the ante, Moonbeam. You can’t be my partner anymore, and I don’t trust you with anyone else.”
Hope took a sip of her coffee. “Let’s don’t fight, not today.”
His stony expression relaxed just a bit. “I thought you said I was cute when I got mad.”
She laughed. “You are. I still don’t want to fight with you today.”
“Why not?”
The truth. Nothing but the truth. “Right now I feel too good, and I don’t want to spoil it.”
He wrapped an arm around her. “There are gifts that come with giving birth to a Raintree baby, gifts that are a part of being Raintree. You’ll heal faster, live longer, be healthier. You and whatever children we make will have protection charms, I’ll see to that. And still, if I could, I would lock you up in a place where you’d always be safe. A place where no one could ever hurt you or Emma.”
“Exactly where is that place, Gideon?”
He didn’t answer, because there was no answer; there was no such place.
“Besides,” she said, “I have to help you put Frank Stiles away. Knowing is fine, but we need evidence.”
He seemed perfectly willing to turn the conversation toward business. His business of stopping monsters. “There’s not any. He burned the house down after he killed Johnny Ray Black. We’ve got no evidence.”
“Then we need a confession or a witness.”
“I haven’t been able to obtain either.”
She smiled at him. “You haven’t given me a chance to try yet. I’m very good at getting confessions.”
He almost smiled. “I just bet you are.”
