ROUGH RIDER (22 page)

In that moment, Nathan had me… Body, heart, and soul.

I
hadn’t fooled
around like this since I was a teenager. The bed was a wreck, my skin singing with joy at the caress of the wonderful cotton beneath me. No wonder Nathan brought these sheets. They probably cost more than I spent on my entire bedroom set at home, but I didn’t care. I wanted to spend the rest of my life wrapped in this stuff, living in this dirty little apartment with the billionaire who had brought me such unfathomable bliss.

I glanced over at Nathan. He was quiet, his chest rising and falling slowly. We’d spent most of the morning right here doing everything
except
fucking. I’d worn the man out, and truth be told, he wasn’t the only one who was exhausted. Even now I had slipped a finger between my thighs, just remembering all the wonderful things his tongue had done to me.

But it was no use. I couldn’t conjure the same sensations that Nathan had inflicted upon me only a few hours ago. I sighed in frustration, looking over at him once again. “This isn’t fair, you know,” I murmured, knowing he couldn’t hear me.

No man deserved to be this good in bed - especially not one born into an unholy pile of money and such a god-awful handsome face. In the past, our sexual encounters were fast and furious, but the last few hours had been completely different. Nathaniel Hale hadn’t fucked me. We had made love…

Ordinarily, I’d have felt lucky to land him, but a little voice in the back of my head kept asking if maybe this was only happening because we were stuck together.

I shook the voice out again, ignoring it. Nathan made me feel things no man ever had. If he was using me, well, I was happy to use him right back. Maybe this would last a week, maybe it would last longer, but right about now, I didn’t care. Our futures were uncertain in more ways than one.

And that meant I was going to need to do a little shopping.

Nathan was going to stay put, but I could slip out for a few minutes to pick up some supplies. Besides, I was starving. I climbed out of bed, and a few minutes later I was presentable enough to hit the corner store. I smiled at myself in the mirror, barely even recognizing the sparkling eyes staring back. It had been awhile since I was this happy.

It was a strange feeling—happiness. It was something I’d denied myself for what felt like forever, just another self-inflicted punishment in the wake of my Jenny’s death. That was the thing about loss: instinctively, we all wanted to hold someone or something responsible. There had to be accountability. It was an intrinsic part of the human grieving process. Nobody ever wanted to hear, “accidents happen,” because then it meant there was no one to blame.

You had to direct all those feelings somewhere. All that anger and anguish and rage—you had to let it out. Unfortunately for me, I was the only one who could bear that burden, and at the time, I’d thought I deserved it.

What had changed? How could a night with Nathaniel Hale absolved me of the guilt I’d carried?

On the way down the hall, a man inside one of the rooms watched me pass through an open door. I recognized the rookie immediately, and gave him a little nod.

“Babysit him for a few minutes,” I said quietly. He stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. “I’ll be back in fifteen. Going to grab some breakfast and a few supplies.”

The rookie nodded as I walked past him. He wasn’t about to question a detective, and that was all the better for me, because Captain Pierce probably wouldn’t appreciate my little store run.

It didn’t take long to reach the ground floor, and although the shitty little Honda wasn’t much to look at, it was comfortable enough on the drive up the street. I flipped on the radio, letting a little music fill the cabin. Its helped me clear my head.

“What are you doing, Sandra?” I asked myself, gripping the steering wheel a little harder. Sure, it was fun to mix a little business and pleasure, but I’d worked damn hard to make detective. It had taken years before the men around me gave even the smallest amount of respect. Was I really going to risk that for another ride on this man’s billion dollar dick? What would they say if they found out Detective Williams had slept with a witness?

My own self-doubt wasn’t stopping me from grabbing the biggest box of condoms from inside the glass case at the supermarket.

I finished my little shopping trip with a few bags’ worth of groceries. We now had all the fixings for a few days of properly good breakfast, a handful of quick microwaveable dinners, and plenty of bread and lunch meat. I would have loved to do more, but this wasn’t going on the police budget, and first year detectives aren’t exactly rolling in the dough.

I was on my way up the stairs to the room with the heavy bags straining my arms and digging into my fingers when I realized something was wrong. The rookie wasn’t in the hall where I’d left him, and he didn’t respond when I rapped quietly on his door.

Fuck.

I lay the bags down on the floor, pulling my gun from the ankle holster beneath my jeans. I’d only been gone twenty minutes. Twenty-five, at most. I stepped up to a window along the hall that was streaming light into the cramped space with the row of apartment doors. Out on the grounds, I could still see a few of Nathan’s security team, but that was no guarantee that someone hadn’t slipped by.

I did the only thing I could do. I burst into a run, barreling down the hall toward the farthest door. There was only one job I was supposed to be doing, and I’d went and screwed it all up for some grub and a lousy pack of condoms.

As I came to the door, I saw it was slightly ajar. I kicked it in as I swept the gun across the room, immediately feeling embarrassed as the rookie and Nathan both sat quietly on the little couch with their hands in the air.

“What are you doing in here?” I asked the rookie, about ready to strangle him for scaring me like that.

“Sorry, detective. I had to report to Captain Pierce that you’d stepped out. He said we have a credible threat on Nathaniel Hale’s life and asked me to move rooms until the threat was over.”

“There’s no room in here!” I protested, glancing from the rookie to Nathan.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make do with the floor. Captain says it should be safe to leave you two alone in a few days. Three days, tops.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As I stepped back into the hall and went back to retrieve my grocery bags, there was a definite feeling of contempt rolling through me. Captain Pierce had it out for me, and he’d been orchestrating this whole thing as a way to embarrass and harass me. I should have seen it coming. I should have seen past the heartfelt speech he’d given me, past the mock attempt he’d made to get me to say “no.” It had all been a lie, every last word of it. I wasn’t held in any higher esteem now than when I’d joined the damn force as a wet-behind-the-ears rookie.

And now, what little enjoyment I was getting out of it was going to be ruined by some stupid kid just out of the academy sharing a few hundred square feet of living space.

“Fuck,” I whispered as I lifted the bags and started back toward the room. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. The angel on my shoulder was telling me shacking up with Nathan again was a bad idea. And the devil on my other shoulder? Well… she was telling me we could make it a few days and still get what we wanted.

That happy thought didn’t make the time pass any quicker.

The next few days were impossibly dull. The three of us made do, sharing the couch and watching what few channels the antenna on our shitty little television could pick up. In the meantime, I took shifts with the rookie, keeping an eye on the grounds. Nothing changed except for my discomfort. The kid was a snorer, and his proximity to my couch made bedtime a real bitch. Thankfully, Nathan had a spare set of expensive earplugs in his bag-of-many-tricks, and by the end of day three, things had improved from a hellish nightmare to marginally tolerable.

I went to bed as usual, sprawling out on the couch and shooting one final glance over at Nathan. He was watching me, a smile plastered across his handsome face. “Soon,” I mouthed, smiling back as he gave me a little nod.

I shoved the plugs in my ears, drowning out the buzz-saw laying on our floor, and in no time at all, sleep found me.

I
woke
up to much more favorable circumstances. My eyes fluttered open and filled with visions of a room full of flowers. Every kind and color were strewn about, bright bursts of warmth and romance in an otherwise dismal space. The smell of impeccable floral arrangements filled my nostrils as I found myself nearly blinded by light streaming in through the unfettered windows, the curtains drawn to reveal the magnitude of the beauty around me.

It should have been special. It should have made me happy.

Instead, the pretty flowers put a cold coil of dread in my stomach.

Nathan was sitting on the end of the couch, a triumphant smile on his face as he watched my eyes open and focus on the innumerable vases and bouquets around me. “I couldn’t guess your favorite,” he told me, “but after the last few nights, I figured you might need a little pick-me-up to remind you that world’s not such a bad place, after all.”

I stared at him, my mouth dry. “Where’s the rookie?”

“Gone. The captain moved him back down the hall early this morning. I thought you’d be happy,” he said, his head tilting to the side as he studied my obvious displeasure.

“Nathan… you didn’t charge this to the card the department gave you, right? I mean… there’s no way it’s loaded up with enough money for this…”

He frowned at me like I was insane. “Of course not!” he laughed. “I used my personal one. I’d never put your job in jeopardy like that.”

I sat up, clutching the blankets to my chest and the semi-sheer cami covering it. “Your
personal
card? You aren’t supposed to
have
a personal card! You just put
yourself
in jeopardy, Nathan, and right now, my job
is
you! Jesus fucking Christ, have you lost your damn mind?”

“It’s a card for a subsidiary business. There’s almost no chance anyone could track the purchase back to me…” His face fell as he watched me. His lips parted as if there was something more he wanted to say, but I ran him over before he could get the words out.

“Did you have them delivered? Please tell me you did.”

“Well, yeah. I couldn’t just carry them by myself…”

“You ordered online? Over the phone?”

“No. I wanted to see what they had. I took a drive down there myself.”

I groaned and covered my face with my hands. He couldn’t possibly have done something so stupid!

“What’s the big deal? It’s not like the Paddies are hanging around at flower shops…” Nathan said.

“Let me guess: you went to the closest one, right?
Leslie-Anne Floral Designs
?” He nodded, and I snorted in disgust. “And what’s her shop across the street from?
McFadden’s
-fucking-
Pub
! Or didn’t you notice when you were ignoring everything the Captain tried to drill into your skull before we came to the Peachtree Overlook to spend seven miserable days together?”

Nathan recoiled as if I’d physically struck him. I damn sure felt like it, but it almost looked as if what I’d said had stung him worse than any slap ever could. What can I say? I’m not normally a morning person.

“Sandra, I just… I just wanted to be good to you. I wanted to do something nice—”

“Then you should have listened!” I raged. “You shouldn’t have put both our lives in jeopardy, and by extension, my fucking job!” This was a disaster. All my panic, my self-doubt, and the pent-up frustration I’d been carrying around with me exploded, showering Nathan with the hot ash of my rage. “You think the men out there didn’t notice two thousand dollars’ worth of flowers being carted up here? The whole damn neighborhood probably watched it happen! What do you think the Captain is going to say about this?” I shook my head, flinging off the blanket and pulling a shirt out of my duffel bag. “Just when I’d thought you’d started to change…”

“I don’t get how buying you gifts is a bad thing,” Nathan said, standing up and following me. “Okay, so I took a risk. But I wasn’t followed. I made sure of it. I…”

“You don’t get to hear me say ‘no,’ and then do it anyway,” I snarled, whirling on him so fast our noses almost collided. “That’s not being
nice
, Nathan. That’s being a fucking entitled asshole who thinks they know best, even when he oh-so-clearly doesn’t. That’s deciding that what
you
want to do matters a hell of a lot more than what others want. That’s the spoiled rich kid in you coming out to play, and I don’t think it’s fucking cute
.
”

“Sandra—”

“No! Absolutely not!” I turned back to my bag and stuffed my blanket into it. I didn’t give a shit that I was still in my pajama bottoms, and I didn’t care that there was a big part of me that just wanted to jump into bed with this man and fuck the life right out of him. I was done. I couldn’t do this. Staying here could cost me everything I’d worked so hard to achieve, and Nathaniel Hale wasn’t worth it.

I stepped out into the hall. “Hey!” I shouted. “Hey!”

I waited to see who opened their doors. Nathan once again followed me, staring at me from the threshold, his face losing all color as he realized what I was doing.

“Sandra, please… Please don’t go.”

I looked at him over my shoulder. “I can’t be here with you. I could
never
be with someone like you. And I won’t waste my time on an man who puts my life in danger on a fucking whim. I should have never…”

I looked away as one of the doors down the hall opened. Despite his casual attire, I recognized the officer behind it and strode up to him so anyone else listening wouldn’t be able to hear.

“The witness has been compromised. I’m heading back to the station for reassignment. He’ll need to be moved as soon as possible.” Before the officer could argue, I began to walk away from him. “Oh,” I threw over my shoulder, “and he’s got a personal credit card still on him. You might want to confiscate that before he puts anyone else’s life in danger.”

I didn’t even look at Nathan as I took the stairs two at a time to the shitty Honda waiting for me in the parking lot. I didn’t bother to see if he was still standing there where I’d left him as I backed out of the space and shifted into drive. I didn’t glance in my rearview mirror to see if he still looked as broken as he had when I first walked out.

Those were things I didn’t want to see, because I was sure that if I did, I wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done.

Nathaniel Hale was bad news. I’d let my guard down for a man who didn’t give two shits about anyone but himself. I’d let his sweet nothings and handsome face cloud my judgment again and again. I’d let him convince me that I could be
better
with him around. I’d lost sight of myself, and for a cop, that was just as dangerous as letting a perp get the drop on you.

Hell, maybe it was even
more
dangerous.

I had to protect myself, and serving Nathan wasn’t going to let me do that. It was time to put some distance between us. I let him have his way with me once, and I couldn’t believe I’d almost made the same mistake twice…