Page 20 of Only You

“Jesus, who would do that to a kid?”

She looked up at him. “You wanted to name your kid Sam. With the last name of Francisco.”

“That’s classy. Besides Marguerite said no. She rules the house.”

“Hey, guys.”

She cringed the moment she heard Bryan’s voice. Why the hell was he hanging around the place on a Sunday morning?

“Heard you caught the murder case.”

She nodded. “Yep.”

“Should we head over to Fitzpatrick’s?” Eddie asked loudly. He didn’t like Bryan. Now that she thought about it, not many people liked him since they had both started at the department. He had his group of bro dudes, those guys who still acted like they were twenty-two years old while in their thirties and forties. They drank beer, made condescending comments about women, and were gross. They all seemed to think they should get preferential treatment. All of them were legacies, just like her, but she worked twice as hard to prove herself. Those idiots were lazy, and many would probably never move up—unless a family member got them a leg up.

She shook her head. “Yeah. They do a late brunch, so they should have people there now.”

He rose out of his chair and smiled. “I love how you have a connection to food. You always know where to go for a meal.”

She rolled her eyes and didn’t tell him why she frequented restaurants as much as she did. That was her little secret, and only her family knew she couldn’t even boil water.

“You’re driving,” he said, tossing her the keys. She caught them and followed him out the door. She was about to become part of a bad day for everyone at Fitzpatrick’s.

She realized neither of them had said goodbye to Bryan when they stepped outside. They walked to the car, and once she started it up, she asked. “Why don’t you like Bryan?”

“He’s an asshole. I don’t think he deserves to be detective, either. There have been complaints.”

Eddie’s wife was an Assistant DA, so he would have heard. “Yeah?”

“Not just from people he arrested. There were a few other uniforms who were uncomfortable working with him.”

She thought about it as she drove. “I guess I could see it. He did not like when I beat him on a lot of stuff at the academy.”

“I don’t understand how you two dated.” He shook his head.

“I was twenty-one.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I didn’t make the best decisions then either.”

With a sigh, she pulled out into traffic. Today was definitely going to suck.

Declan rolled his shoulders,trying to work out the knot between his shoulder blades. He really hated it when he got that tense. It was like a sixth sense thing. Bad things always happened when he felt like this. Of course, it might be that he had about three hours of sleep, and bouncing back after that amount of sleep wasn’t something that had been easy since he’d hit thirty.

The worry came from Irene ghosting him. She had never been late for work since he’d hired her. The woman showed up early, stayed late, and was one of the best damned managers. When Adrian had called him to tell him she hadn’t shown up, he’d been dead to the world and in the middle of the most amazing dream about Eileen.

Just thinking about it had his cock twitching and his entire body heating. Which, of course, was totally inappropriate. His brothers were right to chide him, though. He was taking too longbefore asking Eileen out and if he wasn’t careful, some other guy would realize how wonderful she was.

“Hey, Declan, you said we’re doing the red velvet pancakes today?” Sandy Howard asked him. His head chef was four years older than him, with three kids, a husband she adored, and a sarcastic sense of humor that matched his own. She’d been with him for over a year and ran the kitchen. Someday, he hoped he could promote her to take over everything, and he would just run the behind-the-scenes things. He loved to cook and plan menus, but he worked twelve-hour days at least six days a week and needed a break.

“Yeah. I also made extra cookie butter icing for the cakelets today.”

“Fantastic. Thanks. Have you heard from Irene?”

He shook his head. “You?”

He knew the two women were close since they had hit it off after Irene started working at Fitzpatrick’s.

“No. It’s not like her, although she did have a date last night.”

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