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“He’s freaking me out,” said Silas as he blotted blood from the edge of dumpster and dropped the swab into a vial. “He’s just standing there like a buzzard, watching us work.”
“Who?”
“Your buddy, Stone.”
She glanced over her shoulder.
Inspector Stone was watching them, standing at the edge of the crime scene, outside the
yellow taped lines, his arms folded over his chest, dressed in a pair of jeans, a pressed oxford and a suit jacket. He needed a shave. Or not.
She’d wanted to go home and change. Thanks to Shelby, she still wore her track pants and a t-shirt, although she’d pulled her CSI vest from Silas’s car. Silas was dressed like she should be—in his uniform, a pair of jeans, white shirt, his CSI vest.
“He was stabbed. That probably makes a guy a little pre-occupied with justice,” she said, not sure why she was defending him.
She needed to get this stupid man off her brain.
Not that she was making any marked progress. Even now she felt it, the little stir of attraction that would only lead to her noticing how he walked, breathed and shoot, wishing he’d look her way.
Like he did today at the gym.
Stupid Shelby. Of course they’d gone to the gym where Burke worked out. And at o-dark hundred hours, too. Sheesh, the woman was on the trail hard after Burke.
“I can see the appeal,” Shelby had said as Rembrandt walked away, glistening with sweat, his dark hair disheveled, wearing a sleeveless shirt and a pair of boxing shorts, all hard-bodied and male. Eve fled to the locker room.
Rembrandt and Burke had left by the time they emerged, but Shelby had Burke on her radar, and after hearing him call in the attack on her scanner, she practically dragged Eve off the elliptical by her hair.
Okay, admittedly, Eve didn’t drop to the ground in protest, but still…
Turning away from him, Eve zoomed in on the edge of the dumpster.
The sky was high over the scene, glinting off the metallic diner and gilding the parking lot. An assembly of onlookers had multiplied as the morning drew out. Burke and Rem had interviewed most of the patrons from the diner, as well as any other onlookers while she waited for Silas to arrive in their CSI truck.
“He’s pre-occupied with your backside,” Silas muttered, bagging some hairs found wedged into the edge of the dumpster.
Oh, hardly. Because he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to find her after he was released from the hospital a month ago.
She felt like a fool, running to the hospital and sitting in his room like a groupie, or worse, a girlfriend, after he’d been stabbed. Sure, he’d been pale and broken, hooked up to oxygen, but when he’d opened his eyes and looked at her, he acted like he barely knew her.
Or didn’t want to?
So what—they’d shared a kiss.
Okay, not just a kiss. Something that reached into her soul and took a hold of her.
Oh, she was stupid. Because she’d been warned.
By her father.
By her brother.
By Silas.
And by nearly every woman in the police force.
Rembrandt Stone was an enigma. A charming, handsome, dark haired, blue-eyed enigma, but the kind of man who might drive a woman like her, an investigator born to dig into mysteries until she solved them, crazy.
So she’d walked away. And her phone hadn’t rung, not even once.
