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“Mine too. Except…”
Brown waited for her to go on.
“He left his…unit. Resigned.”
Sitting even straighter, Brown stared at her. “Why?”
“I think,” she said slowly, testing the flavor of the words on her tongue, “because of me.”
The statement tasted bad. With a moan of despair, she dropped her face into her palm. “Oh, what am I going to do? I can’t let him make this choice.”
“Does he have some other plan in the works? CIA or FBI?”
She shook her head and picked up the marker on her desk. “Neither. He received another offer and was giving it consideration, but he hasn’t mentioned it in weeks. Either the offer’s no longer on the table or he turned it down and didn’t tell me.”
“Let me guess. He’s restless. Bored.”
She groaned. “Those things and worse. He can’t sleep. He thinks he’s snowing me over, but I know. I wake in the night and if he is even in bed, which isn’t often, I can feel the tension rolling off him.”
“What about counseling? Surely there’s some VA program.”
“He needs to talk to someone, that’s for sure. But I’m not certain a therapist could guide him in a direction.”
“No, that has to come from him. But talking could help.”
She pushed out a slow sigh. “I guess now I just need to find someone to fill that role.”
Brown planted his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet. “Well, don’t look at me. He doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true.”
He cocked a brow.
“Since he figured out that you’re not a love interest, he hasn’t growled nearly as much.”
Brown leveled her with a stare. “What about Robert? Did you see him when you came in?”
She shook her head. “When I do, I’ll have the talk. Though after he saw AJ at my place and a month has passed, I’m pretty sure Robert knows our brief path toward dating led to a cliff.”
“Your heart has already spoken.”
She gaped at him. “I never knew you were so poetic, Brown.”
He grunted. “I’m not. I’m just observant. And you have hearts written all over you.”
He moved toward the door. “I’ve got a call in a few minutes. I’ll be back afterward and we’ll start on those files.”
“The files that were also destroyed in the bombing?”
“Yup. That’ll be the last time I spend hours copying shit for you, Devi.” With that, he walked out.
She sat back in her seat, a smile on her face. Damn, it felt good to be back in the swing of life again.
The hours seemed to fly by. After an extensive briefing from Brown and lunch at her desk with him while poring over cases, she took a break and texted AJ.
How’s your day so far?
He responded quickly. She pictured him on the sofa, watching bad daytime TV and wasting time until he could pick her up.
