Page 19 of Misadventures in Blue
“I have pride too, you know,” she says. “Cop pride is not exclusive to people with penises.”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That I’d like to have a few rounds in the ring with Hougland until he started treating you with respect.”
This seems to please her—fine little lines bracket the corners of her full mouth and spread out from her eyes. “Young man,” she says again, but this time she says it with fondness. With affection.
I don’t realize how long our gazes are locked in this sort of baffled, lustful fascination with each other until she clears her throat and looks down.
“Jace, about today,” she begins, and my stomach sinks. I know that tone of voice. I know it because I’m usually the one to use it. Usually the one to tell someone I just fucked that it’s been a great time and now I’ll get them an Uber.
I don’t help her along with this because I don’t want it. I know I almost got her fired just now by screwing her in her own police station. I know this is nuts, but dammit—I don’t care.
“You know what I’m going to say,” she says tactfully, gently. “I am…rather charmed by you, but I think you also charm me out of all reason. And it doesn’t make sense anyway.”
“What doesn’t make sense?” I genuinely don’t understand. I find her wildly sexy, wildly intelligent, and I want to fuck her every chance I get from now until…well, I don’t know until when, but for a good long time. What else does there need to be?
Her eyelashes sweep down in a dark fan over her cheeks as she chooses her words carefully. “Me and another cop. I haven’t dated another cop since Frazer, and I shouldn’t start now.”
“Why?” The word is out of my mouth before I can really process that she just brought up her dead fiancé and that I should proceed with diplomacy.
She’s still looking down as she thinks. “What happened when he died—I can’t live through that again. I barely survived it the first time.” She meets my gaze again, and I’m nearly rocked back by the emotion simmering in her blue-green eyes. “I know what they say about me. That I’m incapable of grief or love or any feeling at all. The Ice Queen. The truth is I wanted to die with Frazer that night, and a part of me did. And what’s left won’t survive if it happens again.”
“So no cops…because they might die? Hate to tell you this, Cat, but everyone dies. In every profession.”
She presses her lips together. “It’s not the same. And cops are reckless, risky, and rough. They get hard. Now that I’m older and know that, I don’t know if it’s what I want in my future.”
“I didn’t hear any complaints about my getting hard earlier.”
She looks like she wants to roll her eyes. “And you’re young, Jace. Inappropriately young.”
“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “The difference in our ages doesn’t bother me at all.”
She looks away. “It will.”
“Why?”
She still won’t look at me. “Because you’re young and sexy and you’ll have equally young and sexy girls raining from the sky. You deserve better than wasting your time on me.” She stands up to leave.
I stand up too, not willing to let this go. “Cat—”
She holds up a hand. “It’s enough, Jace. It’s enough to make it a bad idea. I’m thirteen years older, and you’re the kind of man I’ve sworn to stay away from anyway. Maybe you can fuck the same person over and over again without feelings getting involved, but I look at you and I know that’s not going to be possible for me.” She takes a deep breath and meets my eyes. “I look at you and I think you might be capable of breaking my heart.”
And with that bombshell, she crosses to the door without so much as a goodbye and leaves me alone in the meeting room. The room that still smells like us.
Chapter Seven
Cat
It’s quite frigid between us after that.
Perhaps the frigidity is all on my side. Perhaps I’m the one making it cold, because more than once this week, I’ve caught him staring at me with a heated need that nearly made my skin catch fire.
He still wants me. And fuck all if I don’t still want him.
But life isn’t that easy, and after the close call of Kim and Hougland nearly walking in on us, I’m reminded of what matters most.
