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Calloway gave him one last look before turning away and walking out of the Thirty-Third. Roman closed his eyes, keeping them shut in an effort to hide the emotions he knew must be churning there.
When he opened them a beat later, they landed on Camila Garza.
She was staring right at him.
Roman’s instincts warned him to break eye contact with her and turn and walk out of the precinct. Yeah, the move would be borderline rude—not that he hadn’t pulled one disappearing act on her already when he’d run from their not-quite-a-night together last year. But she was standing not even ten feet away from him, watching him so intently that there was no chance she’d missed at least part of hisnonversation with Calloway.
Which meant she’d seen far more than he’d meant to show anyone, least of all her. He needed to escape her too-curious, too-beautiful stare. He needed to make her forget she’d seen anything at all. He needed to put the demand coming from his defenses into action and burn a path out the door, leaving Camila Garza firmly in his rearview.
His legs, which were clearly double agents working under orders from his dick, refused to move even a little bit, and God damn it, could this day go any farther south?
“Hi,” Camila said, having crossed just enough of the space between them to bring her into his orbit.
The sight of the adhesive bandage on her temple and the bruise peeking past its borders dumped him back to the moment. “You have a head injury. Shouldn’t you be at home, resting?”
She folded her arms over the front of her sweater dress, a maneuver that Roman should definitely not find sexy, and yet here he was, prepping his hand basket for a one-way trip, destination: hell. “Nope. In fact, Tess said I was perfectly fine to come down and make a statement.”
Relief spilled through Roman’s chest, although he kept it far from his face. “You’re on a first-name basis with the doctors in the ED?” For fuck’s sake, was she tight with every first responder in Remington?
“Yes. Well, only a few of them, but cops and firefighters and doctors tend to cluster together, so I met her through Matteo. You know how it is.”
He was tempted to point out that, actually, he didn’t—not anymore, anyway—but parading that little tidbit out loud would only prompt a whole bunch of questions he didn’t want to answer. “I’m glad you were cleared.” She’d been through a lot, though, and not just the physical trauma. If the adrenaline letdown was messing with him, Roman could only imagine what it was doing to Camila, who was far less trained to handle it. “How are you doing otherwise?”
Now it was Camila’s turn to blank her expression, and fuck if that didn’t grab his notice. “Actually, I was coming over here to ask you the same thing. You looked a little…unhappy just now. Is everything okay?”
“Yep.” He punctuated the lie with a nod. “Totally fine.”
“Right. Me, too.”
A beat passed, then another. Finally, just when Roman thought maybe the awkwardness in the air would crush them both, Camila shook her head. “Actually, no. You know what, that’s not true.”
Okaaay. “It’s not?”
“No,” she said, a different version of the same mettle he’d seen from her in the bank flashing over her pretty face. “A handful of hours ago, we were held at gunpoint in a freaking bank robbery. Which is the sort of thing I thought only happened in action movies until this morning, but as it turns out, they’re super real and super terrifying.”
She paused, but only long enough for a quick breath before she kept going. “I want to be fine. Believe me, I do, because if my brother catches me saying I’mnotfine, he’s going to call our parents and siblings and possibly the National Guard, and they will all baby me until I go insane. But since Matteo is currently not within earshot and my stiff upper lip is pretty much tapped out, I think I can safely admit the truth. Someone pointed a gun at me. That person could have very easily ended my life in a blink. So, no. I am definitely not okay. And now that I’ve just placed the cherry on the top of my shit day by barfing my feelings all over a guy who doesn’t evenlikeme, I am going to get a drink. If you’ll excuse me.”
Chin held high, she turned toward the door, clearly intent on leaving him behind. Roman’s rational brain told him he needed to let her—Camila was an adult, and after the day she’d had so far, if anyone deserved to day drink a little, it was her. But the rest of him screamed in protest. She might be a perfectly capable adult, but she was also clearly smack in the middle of some serious adrenaline letdown. That alone probably dictated that if she was going to have a drink, she should also eat something to keep her blood sugar steady. Add that knot on her head to the mix?
Roman’s conscience wasn’t about to let her go without making sure she was okay.
“Wait.” The word was out before he could trap it, and Christ this was a bad idea. “I’m going with you.”
She stilled, turning back to ask, “Why?”
He didn’t know much, but shooting straight from the hip? Nowthatwas in his skill set. “Because I know better than to try to get you to go home to rest, and frankly, I could use a drink, too. Also, I’m hungry. And I’m betting that, like me, you also haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”
Her expression alone told him he had her dead to rights. “Tess did say I should eat something.” Of course, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “But that’s not what I meant. What I meant was, why do you want to go withme?”
“Because,” Roman said, and here, he had to tread with care. He’d lowered his guard around her once and a repeat could not, underanycircumstances, happen. But her mind was clearly made up, and if she wasn’t going to go home to rest, the least he could do was make sure her adrenaline or her head injury didn’t get the best of her until she did go home. It was just a drink—in public, no less—and hopefully he’d be able to convince her to eat like the doctor had advised, too. “We’ve both had a hell of a morning and you sound like you could use a little solidarity.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” she said, one dark brow arching up, “but the last time I saw you, you were running away from me like your hair was on fire and I was the one holding the matches.”
Roman should’ve known better than to think she’d get shy about it. After all, she’d gone toe to toe with a bank robber pointing an AR-15 at her. But since popping off with “actually, I bolted that night because you made me feel things that only my dead wife has made me feel before, only a hundred times more intense, so yeah, that scared the fuck out of me,” wasn’t really an option, he went with, “Like I said, solidarity. We were both caught up in the same bank robbery and we could both use a drink.”
For a second, he thought she’d argue, and damn it, he couldn’t let his emotions enter the equation. He already felt things for Camila that he could neither control nor explain.
But then her stomach let out a low growl, prompting her to sigh. “Suit yourself.”
