Page 46 of A Brambleberry Summer

“Tell me,” she murmured.

“It was a murder-suicide. A domestic. A father who had lost a custody fight because of drug use and mental illness. Instead of accepting the court ruling or trying to fix his problems so he could have visitation, he decided that if he couldn’t have his son, the mother wouldn’t, either. He shot the boy and then shot himself. The kid was only five. A kindergartener. Younger than Logan.”

At the despair in his voice, her heart cracked apart. She could only imagine how excruciating it must have been for Wyatt, who did everything possible to make his son’s world better, to witness this kind of a crime scene.

Aching for him, she could do nothing but tighten her arms around him. “I’m so very, very sorry,” she murmured.

He clung to her for a long time, there in the apartment, and she felt invisible threads between them tighten. Finally, he eased away, looking embarrassed.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it like that. I’m...not sure why I did.”

She suspected he had no one to share this kind of pain with since his wife died, which made her heart ache all over again.

“You hold too much inside,” she said softly. “It cannot be easy, what you deal with every day.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.” He studied her, his expression intense. “This helped. More than I can ever tell you.”

“I am glad. So glad. If you have another bad night, you know where to find me. Everyone needs someone to hold them when the world seems dark and hard.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome, Wyatt.”

Something flashed in his gaze, something hungry and fierce. “I love the way you say my name.”

All of the breath seemed to leave her in a whoosh. She swallowed as an answering heat prickled across her skin. “I do not say it in any way that is special.”

“It is. It’s unlike the way anyone else says it. Don’t get me wrong. You speak beautiful, fluent English. I wish I could speak Spanish as well as you speak English. But sometimes your native language comes through on certain words.”

The heat seemed to spread across her chest and down her arms. “I am sorry.”

“No. Don’t ever apologize. I like it.”

He looked embarrassed that he had said anything, even as the first hint of a smile lifted the edges of his mouth.

He liked the way she said his name. She couldn’t hear anything different in her pronunciation, but she wasn’t going to argue.

“Wyatt,” she repeated with a smile. “If it makes some of the sadness leave from your eyes a little, I will say it again. Wyatt. Wyatt. Wyatt.”

His smile widened, becoming almost full-fledged for a brief moment, and Rosa could feel those invisible threads go taut.

After a moment, his smile faded. “What am I going to do about you?” he murmured.

She swallowed again. A smart woman would leave this apartment right now, would turn and hurry up the stairs to the safety of her own place. “There is nothing to do. We are friends. Friends help each other. They lean on each other when they need help.”

He gazed down at her, his expression one of both hunger and need. “Do friends think about kissing each other all the damn time?”

Chapter Ten

Wyatt knew he shouldn’t have said the words.

As soon as they were out, he wanted a do-over. Not because they weren’t true. God knows, they were. He thought about Rosa Galvez constantly. Since the last time they had kissed, thoughts of her seemed to pop into his head all the time. She was like a bright, beautiful flower bringing happiness to everyone around her.

He was no exception. Thinking about her made him smile. Since he was thinking about her all the time, he was also smiling more than he had done in years. He knew it was becoming a problem when even other police officers had remarked on it.

Not that he really had anything to smile about. He and Rosa could not be together. Yeah, they had shared a brief, intense embrace. But that was the end of it.

If he could only get his brain to get with the program, he would be fine. But every single time he thought about her, he thought about kissing her. And every time he thought about kissing her, he tried to remind himself of all the reasons why it was not a good idea for him to kiss her again.

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