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This attraction thing was getting really annoying.
“If you ever see my apartment, you’ll know why that’s laughable. Now, can we get going, or what?”
“I’m not late.”
“We will be if you keep chitchatting.”
“I’m never late.”
“Never late. Never drunk. Boy Scout Captain Quiet to the rescue.”
“You’re irritating in the morning.”
“You’re hungover.”
“You were irritating yesterday morning.” She would be irritating every morning. What with the cheery demeanor, smug grin and smelling-like-flowers shit.
And he talked too much around her, under the influence or not. That needed to stop. So he waved her out of his apartment, grabbing his utility belt, going into his closet and unlocking his gun safe.
Tess, of course, watched instead of shooing out like he’d asked her to.
“Man, I know a lot of cops who own a lot of guns and I’ve never seen anyone keep them locked away like you do. Code and key?”
“Safety.”
She shook her head, finally taking that stupid flower smell with her as she stepped into the hallway. “I’m pretty well versed in gun safety. That, my friend, is what we call gun paranoia.”
“Well, you and my sister can share your penchant for unlocked firearms sometime. I will remain staunchly prosafety.”
“You have a sister, huh?” She side-eyed him as they walked down the stairs.
Talked. Too. Damn. Much. Why did she have that effect on him? No one had ever had that effect on him. Top-heavy mouth, queen-of-the-world attitude, really amazing ass or no. He was a bastion of silence. She was screwing that all up and it had only been about a week.
She slid into the patrol car and he placed his travel mug in the console before attaching his gun belt and sliding into the passenger seat.
Just had to get through today and then he got a break from her. Then four more days until he’d at least have his own car, even if she was there. He hated this two-week watch thing BCPD did. He wanted to be behind the wheel. In charge. Maybe then he would feel as though he had some control, because today, with headache pounding and mentioning Leah, all he felt like was a helpless...amoeba.
“So, what’s she like?”
“Who?”
“Your sister. I always wanted one, and I can’t picture you doing a lot of playing with a sister. Although, in fairness, I can’t picture you as a kid.”
“Leah and I didn’t do a lot of playing.”
“Big age difference?”
“No.”
“You’re too macho and manly to have played with girls?”
“No.” He squeezed the coffee cup and lifted it to his lips. He wouldn’t engage. Not on this. He was not elaborating on his pathetic family situation.
She picked up the radio, seeming to have given up on him explaining. “Ten forty-one,” she said into the speaker.
Now they were officially at work, which meant he was officially not thinking about her mouth in any way aside from official officer-to-officer...mouth things.
He focused on the window. He drank his coffee and kept his mouth otherwise firmly shut. She whistled, off tune, to some terrible ’80s power ballad in between answering some minor calls.
Luckily his headache subsided, the sloshing in his stomach abated. He felt almost human by lunchtime.
Just as they were about to take lunch, a call came through the radio. “Domestic disturbance at the Meadowview apartment complex on East Main. Front yard. One of the participants is armed.”
Her whole demeanor changed. Granted, so far all the day shift calls they’d run together had been easy, nonthreatening. A fender bender. Blown-out tire blocking the road. Disturbances with weapons were a lot more serious, so it made some sense, but there was something about her expression that made him wonder.
She clutched the radio. “En route.” She flicked a glance at him then back at the road as she turned around. “When we get there, I’m going to need you to field this one,” she said, a kind of steely, grave note where usually nothing but ease lilted.
“Not that I’m complaining, because I have been a cop for almost as long as you.” He shifted, trying to get a read on her expression. “But why the sudden change of heart about my week of just watching?”
She flipped on the siren, eyes and mouth grim. “Because it’s my father’s apartment complex.”
Marc didn’t have a clue what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Since she didn’t seem surprised and was having him handle it, it meant she thought her father was involved, and since she didn’t seem panicked, he had to guess her father was the one armed.
Yeah, really didn’t know what to say about that, so he just watched the road and tried to figure out how he was supposed to handle the armed father of his FTO.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_0e625c67-937b-503f-b5b8-9f1bffde2244)
TESS TRIED TO keep her limbs steady and her expression strong and impenetrable as she pulled onto the street in front of her father’s place. A crowd had gathered in the tiny parking lot, and Tess’s stomach turned.
This was bad. Like high school when Dad had been locked up for three days bad and she’d been so sure that was it. She was on her own. Forever.
“I’ll handle it.”
Odd that Marc’s calm assertion was a touch comforting. She couldn’t remember anything ever being handled for her. Ever.
Which also made it uncomfortable. But there wasn’t enough time to analyze her feelings here. Not enough time to do much of anything except lean over and lay a hand on Marc’s arm before he could get all the way out of the car.
He waited, eyes resting on her face. Serious and unreadable, the exact expression she was trying to affect and probably failing at.
“If...if possible, see if you can talk everyone out of filing charges.”
He paused, then gave a curt nod and was gone, disappearing into the crowd.
Tess tried to breathe through the panic swirling in her gut. This was her dad and she was letting some guy she barely knew take care of it. Some guy she’d practically had to browbeat into introducing himself to the department.
How could she do that?
Because right now, she wasn’t Thomas Camden’s daughter, she was a police officer. The fact she had no doubt it was her father out there, drunk and armed and so damn out of control, meant her objectivity was skewed and she had to be strong enough to keep herself out of the equation.
Why can’t you help me, Tessie?
Tess had to squeeze her eyes shut against her father’s imploring voice. He did that so well, sounding like someone in desperate need of help, a help he refused to see he had to give himself.
But the way he pleaded, desperate and sad, always pulled against reason, coiled around her heart until her brain shut off.
Sometimes she thought she was as bad as he was. Sometimes she was certain of it.
She watched the clock, counted seconds, did everything to keep herself from pushing out there. She would not be able to go out there and handle things the way they needed to be handled, because no amount of armor would make her not that man’s daughter.
She was bound to him, to this, and if there were any way out she would have found it by now.
The finality, the heavy, depressing realization was too much. She had to get out of the car. She had to act. Because if she didn’t, she’d cry, on the job, and that was worse than losing her objectivity.
The crowd had dispersed somewhat, and Marc was standing in between her weaving father and a skinny young man who had drug user and/or dealer written all over him.
Tess’s stomach sank farther. Dad had only gotten into drugs once, and it had been bad. Lately things had been bad. But how would she have missed that? She would’ve picked up the signs, the signals.
“I can search you if you’d like,” Marc said equitably to the jumpy guy while Dad stood, arms crossed over his chest, face mottled red.
“He attacked me!”
“Witnesses say you started—”
The moron started swearing, but one hard look from Marc and he was swearing his way across the yard and to the door on the corner of the building.
“That little punk stole from me. I want what’s mine,” Dad demanded.
“I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, Mr. Camden. He may have started it, but witnesses weren’t singing your praises, either. You did have a deadly weapon.”
“It’s a butter knife.” Dad stumbled toward Marc. “I want it back, you thief!”
“Dad.”
Her father jerked, bobbled as he turned to face her. He scrunched his face up at her uniform. “I thought I told you not to come here like that, Tessie.”
“I’ve told you not to have cause for any of us to come here.” She took his arm, forcing herself to look at Marc in the most professional way she could muster. “No charges?”
He merely shook his head.
“Then I’ll get him inside. Be back in five.” Tess forced herself to act like a police officer, not like a daughter. She was in uniform, and she would make sure he got inside and didn’t have anything in his apartment and then...they’d go right back to work.
No tears. No guilt. No pain. This just was what it was.
Marc didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. With that hooded, unreadable expression. Then his gaze dropped to her arm and she knew he was putting two and two together. He wasn’t the strong silent type because he didn’t know what to say—it was because he sat back and watched and understood uncomfortable truths.
Her father was the source of the gash on her arm last week. A purposeful, violent outburst. And here Tess was helping the man who’d physically attacked her—a whole lot more than once. She refused to let the quiver of self-disgust into her voice. “I’ll be back in five.”
He nodded, then handed her the butter knife, handle first. It took a few seconds for her brain to engage enough to take it, but when she did, he headed for the patrol car without a word. Tess swallowed down the tears and led her father back to his apartment.
“Why can’t you fix this, Tessie? Why can’t you make it all right?”
She wished she had a clue.
* * *
MARC HADN’T KNOWN what to say the rest of the day, and one thing the incident with her father had done was shut up Ms. Chatty Pants.
He wished he could feel glad about that, but there was an uncomfortable weight in his gut. The weight of knowing Tess was every bit the mess he’d expected, and instead of being able to judge her for it, he felt sorry for her.
Her own father was not only a total ass, he’d hurt her. After witnessing the violence in the man this afternoon, Marc had no doubt the broken-glass excuse was bullshit. Tess’s father had hurt her on purpose.
It made him sick, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He’d seen a lot of crappy things in his career, worse than a lousy father, worse even than an abusive one, but what little he knew about Tess and seeing the way she’d carefully helped her father back into his apartment—yeah, it really made him nauseous.
She pulled her patrol car up to the apartment complex and Marc still didn’t know what to say. What he was supposed to do.
Maybe nothing. If he’d been the one in her place he’d want nothing except for her to pretend it had never happened. She hadn’t said anything since aside from the basics that had to be said to get their job done for the day.
She stepped out of the car and he followed suit, stomach tightening uncomfortably in the face of a situation he had no idea what to do with. He tried to avoid that feeling at all costs. It had been such a damn constant growing up, he’d found all the ways to distance it from himself.
But none of his self-preservation instincts kicked in. He felt drawn to the feeling inside, into figuring out some way...some way to help.
This is not the kind of thing you fix.
He knew way too much about those things.
They reached the top of the stairs and Tess slowed her pace as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Well, it was an interesting day.” She didn’t meet his gaze, which was unusual for her. This closed-off, shifty way of standing, looking. Discomfort.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out oddly hoarse as he stood by his door.
“Thanks.” She finally met his gaze and the way she oozed embarrassment and pain had him stepping toward her. For what? He had no idea.
“Anyway, good night.” She gave a little nod, looking at the floor, but the slumped posture and the defeat in her spine made him act against every sensible thought in his head.
“Tess.” He didn’t reach out to her, but that’s what he wanted to do. Why the hell did he want to do that?
“The fact of the matter is I’m going to have a good cry, and if you don’t want me to do that all over your shoulder, you better get in your apartment ASAP.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled and the tears were already shimmering in her eyes.
Yes, he should get inside the safety of his apartment. He wanted nothing to do with a crying woman who was his coworker and kind of flinging her life all over his. Her this-precinct-is-a-family edicts and this stuff with her father and making him talk when he normally wouldn’t and...everything.
But he didn’t move to his door. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder, because there was only so much visceral pain he could see in someone else without trying to help.
Not at all smoothly, he pulled her into a hug. He figured it’d be awkward. In the grand scheme of things, he’d never found hugging people anything but awkward.
But she leaned into his shoulder, resting her head there, her fists trapped between his chest and her collarbone. Her breath hitching occasionally.
He wasn’t sure anyone had ever cried on his shoulder before. In particularly tragic situations he dealt with at work, he’d occasionally offer a hand, a shoulder pat, something solid to hold them up.
But never like this.
