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Baker half turned toward her. “This is where you tell me to look at the positives and list them out. Because that’s the only way I see a way out of this.”
“I don’t think I can do that.” Her voice seemed to scratch up her throat. “Truth is, the longer I’m with you, the more I realize my positivity has been nothing but toxic. For my team, for the people down there relying on us, for Maverick, even. I told myself if I could just focus on the good things going on in my life, they would be enough to drown out the bad, but partnering with you... I don’t want to pretend anymore. But at the same time, you’re right. There isn’t anybody here who would talk to me about my husband, about what it felt like to lose him.”
“You haven’t told any of them.” He wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, but he knew it to be truth the moment he voiced it.
“No,” she said. “But I’m sure Ivy knows. She runs extensive background checks on all the operatives. It’s her job to ensure the safety of the team. It makes sense she would know about the threats each of us carry.”
“Grief isn’t a threat, Jocelyn.” The irony of that statement wasn’t lost on him. Because he’d buried his, too. He’d taken everything he remembered about his sister and replaced it with a dark hole that vacuumed up any unwanted emotion so they couldn’t hurt him.
“Isn’t it?” She faced him, and Baker suddenly found himself missing that wide smile he caught her with every time they’d come across each other in town. “Losing our loved ones altered our entire beings. There are studies that prove traumatic events such as ours physically change our genes and can be passed down through our prodigy. It lives within us, clawing to get free at any chance our guard is down. It waits for just the right moment to sabotage us, and I can’t afford for that to happen in the middle of an assignment.”
“So you keep it to yourself. Pretend it doesn’t bother you.” Just as he’d done all this time. Though it was becoming clearer every day he stayed away from the barn that he and his sister had built with their own hands that Linley deserved better. She deserved to be remembered. The good and the bad. No matter how much it hurt. Because living as an entirely different person obviously hadn’t worked out the way either of them had hoped. “What if tonight, we don’t pretend anymore?”
“What do you mean?” Her hesitation filtered into the inches between them, thick enough for him to reach out and touch.
“I read Maverick’s dog tags.” Baker skimmed his thumb along her jaw, picking up the slightest change across her skin through touch alone. It was all he needed for his brain to fill in the gaps. As though she’d become part of him. “I know he was your husband’s bomb-sniffing dog up until he died. DHS most likely wanted to retire him after your husband’s death, maybe even send him to a shelter, but you brought him back home.”
Jocelyn didn’t answer for a series of calculated breaths. “When Miles was admitted to the hospital for the last time, it was because he collapsed in the middle of an assignment. The cancer had gotten into his bones, and there was no treatment—nothing—that would reverse the damage. Maverick was the one who got him to safety, then lay by Miles’s bed until his final moments.” She swallowed hard. “He wouldn’t obey the commands of any other operatives. It got to the point Maverick became aggressive if anyone came close to my husband’s body. Even handlers he’d worked beside in the field, but most especially the nurses. He hated them.”
Her laugh slipped free and settled the anxiety building in his chest. “The hospital wanted Animal Control brought in so they could remove the body without getting bitten, but Mile’s superior asked them to hold off as long as possible. Looking back, I think Maverick was waiting. For me.”
Her voice warbled, but the dim lighting kept Baker from seeing her tears. “He waited there without food, without water or sleep. Protecting the one person who loved him most in the world, and I will always be grateful for that. It’s hard to imagine he has any of those same feelings for me, but after Miles died and we were learning to live without him in our lives, I got so sick. To the point I couldn’t get out of bed most mornings. I wasn’t eating or sleeping or able to live up to my duties. Maverick was the one who pulled me out of the darkness and gave me the courage to take an opportunity we could both benefit from.”
“One that brought you to Socorro,” Baker said.
“Yeah.” She craned her head to one side, presumably watching the German shepherd sleep in his too-small dog bed set up in one corner of the room. “He helped me get back on my feet. Though we both knew we couldn’t go back to the way things were. I’d never be able to leave him behind if I got called up, and he couldn’t go back to DHS, even with a handler he knew. We both had to figure out a way to move on. Without Miles. And for all the trouble he gives me, I know he loves me, too.”
Baker angled his hands onto her hips and dragged her close as a feeling of empathy and desire and attachment burst through him. He notched Jocelyn’s chin higher with the side of his index finger and pressed his mouth to hers. “Does this mean I’m competing for your affections with a German shepherd? Because I feel now is the time to tell you I’m not really a dog person.”
Chapter Eleven
Today she would live in the moment. Unless it was unpleasant. In which case she’d eat a cookie. Jocelyn stretched her toes to the end of the bed, coming face-to-face with the man tucked beneath the sheets beside her.
Sensations she hadn’t allowed herself to feel since her husband’s death quaked through her as memories of her and Baker’s night surfaced. It’d been perfect. He’dbeen perfect. Respectful, careful and passionate all at once. They’d held each other long past cresting pleasure and fallen asleep secure in the moment.
She’d done it. Taken that first step toward moving on. For the first time since receiving the news Miles had passed, she felt...liberated. The weight of guilt and shame and judgment had lost its hold sometime between when Baker had kissed her and now. She’d almost forgotten how to breathe without it.
Early morning sunlight streaked across the sky, and while she normally liked to lie in bed to take it in, she couldn’t tear herself away from the harsh beauty of the man beside her. The bruising around his temple was starting to turn lighter shades of green and yellow. The tension had bled from his expression. No longer the high-strung chief of police, she was getting a full view of the man beneath the mantle. Just Baker.
Jocelyn traced her thumb along his lower lip, eager to feel his mouth on hers once more. But she’d let him sleep. That seemed to be the only place he felt safe after everything he’d survived. His skin warmed under her touch, as it had last night, and she couldn’t help but lose herself in this moment. One where they had permission to be still—content, even. Where the world didn’t demand or push or threaten. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just let herself...be. Always afraid the bad thoughts and feelings would find her if she slowed down enough to let them in.
It’d taken a while to figure out that keeping her hands busy and her mind engaged distracted her from the heaviness she carried. It’d been a lifeline for so long, she couldn’t actually remember what it felt like to live in the moment. But this... This was different. This was easy. Comfortable. Watching Baker sleep somehow hijacked her brain into believing she was safe here. With him. Her chest incrementally released the defensiveness always taking the wheel, and for the first time in years, she let herself relax. Because of him. Because of his willingness to take on her grief, to share it with her, to lighten the load.
And she’d done the same for him. Listened to his stories about his sister, of the two of them growing up back east and all the trouble they’d gotten into being so close in age. Only eleven months apart. About how once their mother had passed, their father had remarried and started his life over with a new family. Forgetting what he’d already had.
Maverick’s dog tags rang through the room.
“Oh, no. Maverick, stop!” Jocelyn tossed her covers and hit the floor to intercept the shepherd. Too late. The overly loud ping of Maverick’s bell pierced through the silence. And she froze.
“I’m up!” Baker shot upright in the bed. Every delicious muscle rippled through his back and chest as he reached for the weapon stashed beneath his pillow, and he took aim. At her.
Jocelyn raised her hands in surrender, her heart in her throat. “We’re not dying. It’s just Maverick. He needs to go out.”
“Maverick?” Seconds split between heavy breathing and the pound of her pulse at the base of her neck. His gun hand and weapon collapsed into his lap. “For crying out loud.”
“Sorry. I tried to beat him to it.” She twisted the bedroom door deadbolt and let Maverick into the hall. He’d find his way outside through one of the dog doors before heading to breakfast with the other K-9s. Closing the door behind her dog, she padded to Baker’s side of the bed. “I wanted you to be able to sleep a bit longer.”
He leaned back against the pillows, and she went with him. “Well, that’s out of the question now.”
