Page 36 of Hot Pursuit
Hell, he’d tried everything else already.
By the time they’d hopped back on their eighth tour bus, Nate was pleading for reprieve. And Jo finally relented. They hopped off for a final time near an entrance to Central Park and had been wandering the tree-covered sidewalks ever since.
“So, you were recruited fresh out of grad school?” Jo asked.
Her gaze slid curiously to the baseball game happening in the middle of the field they were walking by, and Nate’s followed. Young kids, early teens maybe, judging by their size. A scrawny left-handed batter stepped up to the plate. The pitcher threw. Andbam!The ball flew over the shortstop, shooting deep into right field. A cheer erupted from the row of beach chairs set up behind home plate, bringing a soft smile to Nate’s lips.
“Uh, yeah,” he murmured, trying to focus on the question instead of the Little League memories floating to the surface. His father coaching from the dugout. His mother nervously watching from the bleachers. His brother complaining that he was too young to play. His sister obliviously doing cartwheels along the sidelines. His family had spent many a Sunday morning on the baseball field…until suddenly, that all stopped. The fun stopped. For a long time, at least.
Nate blinked and shook his head, turning back to Jo. There was a silent question in her gaze. “Yeah, I graduated with my master’s in criminal justice. My mother wanted me to go to law school, but I always knew I wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps and join the bureau. So that’s what I did.”
Jo dropped her gaze to the pavement beneath their feet and then lifted it back up, but this time her eyes were brighter, more intense. Probing. “Can you tell me about them? Your family, I mean? You said you have a brother and a sister?”
They’d been keeping it relatively surface level since leaving the hotel, nothing too personal, nothing too deep. There was a line they couldn’t cross, not yet. Not unless he got her a deal and she agreed to it. Jo wasn’t stupid enough to incriminate herself. He wasn’t stupid enough to give her any ammo she could use against him. But that line was as deep as the Grand Canyon, and there was a whole mess of exploring they could do without having to cross it. If they wanted to. If they dared.
Nate’s attention slipped back to the baseball game as another cheer erupted, but the sound made his gut tighten into a knot, coiled and painful and uncertain. He kept his memories on lockdown, carefully stored and bolted shut. Or at least he had, before today. Before Jo and her questions undid all his defenses.
“My mother is a gentle soul,” Nate began slowly, returning his focus to Jo and the green of her eyes, a green that was becoming less and less like hard, unbreakable jade, and more and more like a shadowy forest inviting him to come inside and explore its secrets. “Couldn’t hurt a fly. My father had always been the enforcer, and my mom the shoulder to cry on. She gives and gives and gives without ever taking. I truly believe there’s nothing but love in her heart, no capacity for hate or even anger really.”
I had to learn how to do those things for her, Nate silently finished the thought, frowning. He had to hate the people who killed his father so one day justice could be found. He had to get angry when his brother got in fights, when his sister broke the rules. He had to learn discipline and dole it out, because his mother had never known how. But he took those burdens on willingly, before he fully understood them, because even as a boy he knew he never wanted his mother to change. He didn’t want to live in a world where her soft heart learned to harden.
Jo studied him.
Nate coughed and kept his eyes forward. “My brother, Chris, was a terror as a teen, but he eventually got his act together. Now he owns his own construction company building houses in Virginia. Married with a little girl and a baby on the way. And Caroline, my sister, only graduated from college about a year ago, so she’s still figuring things out. For now, she’s working as my mom’s interior design assistant and helping her at home.” He shrugged, turning back to Jo, who had stars in her eyes. “Just your typical family.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said with a sigh.
Nate snorted.
Jo snapped her head in his direction. “What? Itiswonderful.”
“Oh, sure,” Nate commented, unable to completely remove the sarcasm from his voice. “Wonderful. I’m just happy I got them both through college alive.”
Her lips twitched, but the reproachful expression remained. “I always wanted siblings, you know. And I guess I did have one, in a way, with Thad.” Jo swallowed quickly and looked away. She clasped her fingers by her waist, fiddling with her thumbs in a way that didn’t match the confident woman he was used to. And then she looked up, directly into his eyes. “I moved to the island with my dad right after middle school—no friends, really, not much family except for Thad and his father, who were only around over the summer and on vacations. It was, well, a bit lonely at times, you could say. I used to spend hours wondering what the classmates I’d left behind were doing—going to the homecoming dance, to football games, to prom. Applying for college, maybe going to summer camp, or to the movies over the weekend, or the mall to gossip about boys. I mean, I’m fine with how I grew up. Not everyone has a beach for a backyard and anything else they could ever want, but you shouldn’t knock typical. Typical is just fine. To some people, typical is the dream.”
Jo turned back to the baseball game. Nate kept his eyes on her, studying the subtle downturn of her red lips, the graceful way her fingers lifted to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear. Was that why she’d become so good with computers? At hacking? Because the internet had become her only interaction with the outside world? It was hard to connect this assured, teasing, poised woman with a lost teenager struggling with loneliness and lack of self-worth. Had crime helped her find her way? Given her a purpose? Or was she always meant to be someone else, something else, and life got in the way?
The questions bunched in the back of his throat, but Nate stuck to his agreement—no work, only play. For now.
“What about the girls you were talking to on your phone?” Nate asked.
And then immediately cringed.
The only reason he knew about them was a wiretap on her cell phone. A wiretap he’d ordered. Because he was a Fed. And she was a thief. And it always came back to that in the end.
Jo turned to him with a brow raised in amusement but didn’t go for the obvious taunt. Instead, her lips widened into an honest, energetic smile. “McKenzie and Addison? They’re the best. Just, the best. The only girlfriends I’ve had in a long time who understand me. I met them online a few years ago in a chat room about this baking show, and we’ve been close ever since. Bouncing ideas back and forth, sending each other recipes, boosting confidence when needed, that sort of thing. I hadn’t really talked to anyone about my cooking since my mom died, but as soon as I connected with them, I realized how much I missed sharing that part of me with other people, you know?”
Nate nodded. He understood exactly what she meant. No one in his life growing up had understood his drive to join the agency, his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps when those footsteps had led him to an early grave. But when he joined the bureau, Nate had felt accepted. Surrounded by so many like-minded people, he understood it was where he was meant to be, what he was meant to be doing.
“But they don’t know…” He trailed off, biting his tongue because he wasn’t supposed to ask questions she couldn’t answer. Not yet.
Jo cut him a sharp look. “No.”
And that was that.
Shit.
He hadn’t meant to throw off the vibe, to make her shut down. Not when she was finally opening up. Not when he, much to his surprise, was actually enjoying this side of Jolene Carter—the honest, real woman instead of the vixen. Though…the vixen wasn’t half bad either.
