by Jo Goodman
Sullivan’s eyebrows lifted, his expression at once amused and curious. “No. I don’t. Is that a problem?”
“You don’t have a cleft either.”
Now his brow beetled. “It’s a fetish, right? You have a thing for chins.”
Ramsey blinked. Could she sound any more inane? Because she was afraid the answer was yes, she didn’t speak.
“I don’t believe anyone’s remarked on my chin before. Not even my mother.” Sullivan turned his head sideways, gave her his profile. “Is it noble?”
She pretended to give his question serious thought while she studied him. “Tilt your head a notch.” When he did, she placed a fist against the soft underside of his jaw. “Noble and an easy target.”
Turning his head, Sullivan caught her wrist and lowered her arm to her side. She offered no resistance, and she didn’t look away when he stared her down. “You definitely have a thing for chins.”
“Mm.” She watched his eyes slide from hers to her mouth. Oh yes, she thought as heat blossomed in her belly. Yes, please. And then her lips parted infinitesimally.
All morning there had been the muffled background noise of Glocks and Walthers and Sig Sauers and Colts. Concentrating as she had been on her own shots, and with the suppressing benefit of ear protection, Ramsey barely heard what had seemed so loud when she arrived at the range. It was only much later that she would wonder why she was deaf to the sounds of intermittent shooting now. She should have flinched. She never did. Not once.
His mouth was warm, fixed. There was nothing hesitant about his touch, nothing calming. It claimed; it confirmed. She realized he was still holding her wrist. It struck her as odd that she didn’t mind, and even odder that she was able to put it from her mind.
He lifted his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers and whispered something that she could not make out. She felt certain it didn’t matter. When his mouth touched hers again, the slant had changed and somehow seemed more intimate. She responded, her lips set at new angle, still parted, still inviting. The tip of his tongue touched her upper lip and retreated. She inhaled sharply but not soon enough to suck him into her mouth. Ramsey raised her free hand, the purple ear protection dangling from her fingers, and slipped her arm around his neck. She stepped into him.
The kiss deepened, humid and a little unsettling. There was something else, too, something she felt pressing against the cleft of her thighs, and even though she wanted more of the kiss, she leaned her head away from it. When there was space enough to speak clearly, she said without any hint of humor, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”
Sullivan stared at her for several long seconds. The dark centers of his eyes slowly contracted as his thinking brain began to engage. He released her wrist at the same time she withdrew her arm from around his neck. “Right,” he said, his voice husky. “Right.”
“Yeah.” She looked past his shoulder in the direction of the gun hut. “We should probably head back.”
He nodded, threw his jacket over his shoulder, and put their guns, spent magazines, and what was left of their ammunition in the canvas bag Theo had given him. “Ready?”
She said that she was. It would have been unfair to tell him otherwise. Lengthening her stride, she stayed at his side on the walk back.
13
Sullivan ordered a gyro and Greek fries for lunch. Ramsey chose the Greek salad with lamb and the house dressing. They both had Yuengling. Sitting across from each other at a table, they sipped their beer while they waited for their food. Ramsey searched for a topic that would jump start conversation. Not encouraged by the difficulty in finding one, she realized it was the kiss that made things awkward.
“Not a good omen,” said Ramsey.
Sullivan frowned, his bottle halfway to his lips. “How’s that again?”
She shrugged. “Thinking aloud.”
“I’m pretty sure I preferred silence.”
“This. Us. It was feeling uncomfortable,” she said. “I figured it was the kiss that did us in. Tell me you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed, but I didn’t go straight to bad juju. I was thinking that with more opportunity, more practice, we’d lick this thing.”
She’d like to lick him and was grateful that being mildly tongue-tied and the arrival of their food prevented her from saying it. “Thank you,” she said to Anna when the salad was placed in front of her. “It looks delicious.”
Anna smiled and put Sullivan’s gyro plate down. “Enjoy.” She dropped a hand on Sullivan’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Don’t be a stranger.” She didn’t linger long enough for Sullivan to make a reply.
Ramsey settled her napkin over her lap and tucked in while Sullivan built his gyro. “I think she likes you,” she said between bites.
“Yeah. She does.” He added a healthy dollop of tzatziki sauce to his layered lamb, tomato, red onion, and feta cheese. Pleased with the look of it, he folded the pita. “I like her too.”
“You’re not dense. You know what I mean.”
“Sure, but I didn’t really want to go there.” He regarded her over the gyro as he lifted it. “Are you okay with that?”
She nodded, looked away, and continued eating.
Sullivan managed a large bite without dripping the contents onto his plate. He chewed, swallowed, and set the gyro back down. “Maybe I don’t really prefer silence after all. I like to think Anna and I are friends.”
“You don’t have to explain,” said Ramsey. “I should have kept the observation to myself.”
He ignored her. “We never dated. What you think you saw, you didn’t see, or rather you misinterpreted it. Anna’s grateful to me, so affection’s grown out of that. It’s returned.” He took another bite of his gyro. “I can see you’re working up to asking the obvious question. You want to know why she’s grateful.”
“I do, but maybe you don’t want to tell me, and I can be satisfied with that.”
Sullivan’s regard was skeptical. “Really?”
“No, of course not, but I thought I should say it, make me seem more mature than I am.”
He chuckled shortly and then sobered. “All right. She thinks I saved her life.”
“Did you?” She watched him shrug, body language that was somewhere between careless and modest. “Does it have something to do with why your money is no good here?”
“What?”
“Something Little Theo said back at the shack. You wanted to pay and he told you your money’s no good here. Now I’m thinking that it’s more than Anna who’s grateful.”
“Yeah, well…” Whatever thought he had remained unsaid. He pushed his bowl of Greek fries to the middle of the table, offering to share.
Ramsey plucked a warm fry lightly sprinkled with a Mediterranean dressing and feta from the bowl and finished it in two bites, then she speared a forkful and tossed them onto her salad. “You better pull that bowl back before I get serious.”
Grinning, Sullivan left the fries right where they were. “Good, right?”
“Better than good. Why am I only finding out about this place?”
“Couldn’t say. You have any friends who shoot?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have any friends who know I own a gun. I don’t advertise it. I suppose that explains it.”
“Where do you practice?”
“Sportsman’s club.”
“And no one there mentioned it? That’s a little surprising.”
“Maybe not. I pretty much keep to myself when I’m there.”
He nodded. “That’s not surprising.”
“Why do you say that?”
Sullivan let one arched eyebrow speak for him.
“What? I have friends. I’m not unapproachable.”
The eyebrow didn’t budge.
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “Perhaps I don’t want to be approached.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You made the effort.”
“Yeah, but I
was wearing Kevlar.”
Ramsey was not proof against that. She grinned and stole another fry. “Did you ever think that maybe I’m shy?”
Sullivan managed not to choke as he swallowed his beer, but only barely. “No,” he said when he could speak. “I never thought that.”
“Then what did you think?”
“Guarded. Careful. Protective.”
“Oh. Good call.”
“That kiss at the range aside, you’ve built fences.”
“Yep. Electric.”
“I was thinking razor wire ribbon.”
“Another fine choice,” she said carelessly, forking more salad.
“It begs a particular question.”
“Don’t ask why. Taking a page from your book, I’m not prepared to go there.”
It was what Sullivan had expected. “All right. Then I won’t.”
Ramsey frowned slightly. “You gave up awfully easy.”
“Respecting your wishes.”
Suspicious, she said, “I pressed you harder. Are you trying to teach me a lesson?”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Yeah. I can’t spar with a reasonable, even-tempered, equanimous partner. I require a horse’s ass if there’s going to be a fair match.”
“Is that self-deprecating humor?”
“That’s honesty.”
“I can be a horse’s ass.”
“Probably, but you haven’t been. Not with me.”
He considered that. “Give me time. Sixth or seventh date ought to do it.”
“We haven’t agreed on a third.”
“I thought we kind of did. You know, the kiss and all.”
“There did seem to be an unspoken agreement,” she said, thoughtful. “All right. We can do a third. You know my record is two, so that’ll be a first for me.”
They finished their meal haggling over the next venue and possible dates to do it. They went through almost four weeks before they found something. The end of August suddenly seemed a long way off. With the help of a phone app, Ramsey scored tickets to a Bruno Mars concert at the PPG Paints Arena for a day Sullivan was not on duty. Without a schedule for herself yet, she would have to ask Paul for the time or—and she disliked doing it—call in sick if he refused. She didn’t mention this last part to Sullivan. It might bring unnecessary cognitive dissonance to his Dudley Do-Right frontal lobe, and she did not want to be responsible for that.
Ramsey pushed her mostly eaten salad aside, set her elbows on the table, and folded her hands in a single fist. She regarded him candidly. “I promised myself that I’d get around to asking you why you didn’t show for traffic court. Now that we’re on a second date and a third is settled, it seems like something I should know.”
“You’re asking now? I didn’t exactly hear a question.”
“I’m asking now.”
“It’s not complicated. My fellow officers advised against it.”
“Really? Why?”
“That’s a little more complicated. They had trouble getting their heads around the fact that I cited you in the first place.”
“I don’t know why,” she said. “I was speeding; you were doing your job.”
“Exactly. That’s what I told them. Trouble is, they knew I was kind of, well, kind of interested in getting to know you, or at least participating in a civil conversation. Am I blushing? I think I might be. My face feels warm.”
He was a little pink-cheeked, but Ramsey didn’t tell him. He probably didn’t want to hear he looked adorable. Hell, she didn’t want to think it. “No,” she said, straight-faced. Adorable.
Sullivan went on. “Since they knew about my leanings, they figured I was an idiot for giving you the ticket and there’d be no chance of ever getting in your good graces. In a weak moment, I asked them what I could do about it. They told me not to show for court.”
“That must have gone against your grain.”
“It did. Maybe not as much as it should have.” He lifted his hands, palms turned up, and pretended to weigh his options. “A speeding fine to fill the city coffers.” He shifted the imaginary weight in his palm scales. “The chance of being on the receiving end of a smile from you. It wasn’t that much of a contest.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You could have smiled just then. I set you up for it.”
She did. Brilliantly.
“Whoa,” he said, rearing back in his chair. “Rein that in.”
Ramsey laughed. “Fool.”
He resettled himself in the chair. “I didn’t realize what I was unleashing.”
Her mouth flattened as she gave him her best contemptuous stare.
Sullivan did not need her to clobber him. A chuckled rumbled deeply in his throat. “All right. Done now.”
Anna Constantinides called over to them from behind the bar. “Dessert?”
Ramsey shook her head. Sullivan placed his hands over his middle and indicated he was full. When Anna announced the baklava was still warm from the oven, they both found room.
At the end of the meal, Sullivan tried to pay and was turned away. “Let me,” said Ramsey. She took some bills from her wallet, but Anna would not accept them either. Not one to accept defeat or a free meal, Ramsey spied the tip jar on the bar and stuffed the money in there. She grabbed the sleeve of Sullivan’s leather jacket while he was collecting their helmets. “Run!”
Grinning helplessly at Anna, Sullivan allowed himself to be pulled along. He and Ramsey were still laughing when they reached the Harley. Ramsey took the helmet Sullivan offered, but before she put it on, she glanced back at the door to Shoot and Shots in anticipation of Anna following. “Clean getaway,” she said when the door remained closed.
Sullivan nodded. “You took her by surprise. Well done.”
They were both hugging their helmets in front of them. Ramsey tapped Sullivan’s helmet with hers and looked up at him. “This was nice. As surprises go, this was a good one, but as Anna pointed out when we arrived, I’m not fond of them.”
“Already noted.”
“I appreciate that, and thank you for this. I had a lovely time.”
“I want to get you home safely and then you can tell me.”
“I might forget.”
“You won’t. I don’t think you forget anything.”
He was right. She didn’t forget, even when she wished she could. The things she didn’t want to remember were the memories that were hard-wired now, the ones that made her believe that razor ribbon fencing was vital.
Sullivan started to lift his helmet, stopped, and lowered it again. “I was reaching for a six pack in one of the refrigerators at the back of a Grab and Go when some knucklehead tried to rob the place. I stopped him from waving his gun in Anna’s face and making off with thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents, plus the pennies in the leave one, take one tray at the register.”
Ramsey nodded slowly. “Good to know. Precious short on details, but still good to know.”
“You heard me say thirty-seven dollars and eighty-four cents, didn’t you? I don’t know how many pennies there were.”
“I heard. Not exactly the most important element of the story.” She patted one of his forearms lightly. “It’s all right. You can reveal the particulars at your leisure, Scheherazade.”
“And save my life?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but it’ll get you more dates.”
“Oh, goodie.”
14
At work a week later, Ramsey haunted the aisles, looking for nefarious goings on, or at least for something interesting to happen. There was the harried mother with three little ones who didn’t notice that the two who were not in the buggy seat were pulling items off the shelves in her wake. Ramsey did some clean up and politely suggested the child care center for the rascals. Mom did not appreciate the suggestion and let her know it. Ah, Ramsey thought, it was going to be that kind of day.
She wandered into the light bulb aisle and looked ar
ound, but after a few minutes she gave up trying to work out what fascinated Sullivan about the place. Maybe she’d ask him. Maybe not. It was early days yet, and she figured a little mystery was a good thing. Sure, she had yet to learn the specifics of the Grab and Go robbery, but the mystery of why the Constantinides family wouldn’t take his money was essentially solved. He hadn’t asked for anything from her in return, not then, and not later when he dropped her off at home. She told herself she should be grateful; what she was was suspicious.
Ramsey stopped a couple of ’tween boys from trying to lift bargain DVDs and saved herself doing paperwork by warning them off before they had their spoils secured in the kangaroo pouches of their hoodies. She loitered outside the Starbucks, sipping a latte and watching the self-checkout registers. Every shopper was scrupulously honest today, which was good, but boring.
She tossed the latte cup and worked her way over to hardware. Nothing much ever went on over there so she was surprised when she saw a cluster of young men, twenties and thirties, gathered in the home improvement aisle examining paint samples and looking over the cans. Mason Calabash was standing at the stirrer waiting for someone to select something so he could shake it up and make a blend.
Ramsey sidled over to him. “What’s the appeal?” she asked, thrusting her chin in the direction of the men.
Calabash, a former construction worker and master carpenter, shrugged narrow shoulders. He scratched behind one ear and shook his head. He had thick iron gray hair that had a tendency to stand perpendicular to any part of his scalp that wasn’t covered by his yellow ball cap. The cap was slightly askew so that the Southridge logo was tipped at a non-regulation angle.
“They’ve been looking around for nigh on twenty minutes now, trying to make a selection,” he told her. “I made myself available, but to a man, they said they didn’t need me.”
“Huh.” She counted five customers milling about. Another young man came around the end cap and joined them. They didn’t say much to one another, and when she could catch a snippet of conversation, it wasn’t about paint. It was about football. For once it wasn’t the NFL that occupied their minds; it was local high school football, which was now in conditioning mode. “Is Paul running an unadvertised sale?”
