“All right. I’m sure you did the best you could in the few seconds you had. You can leave and head back to the station. Get your report filed, and head back out. I want to get the son of a bitch who did this.”
“Chief, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay with my partner.”
Placing his hands on his hips, he glared at Colby. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. Get back to the station, and do your damn job. That’s an order!”
Colby got up from his chair without argument and quietly walked down the corridor, leaving the emergency department. For the past several weeks he’d been getting a bad vibe about how close Leah and Colby had seemed to be getting. It was no secret in the station that most of the men thought she was hot. Several times he had walked in on men talking about her with a locker-room mentality. Despite him making it clear to the entire department that she was an officer just as they were and there was a no fraternization policy, he knew damn well any one of the horny bastards would make a move on her if given half the chance.
Minutes later, the doctor and nurse exited the curtained area and motioned him inside with as much kindness as they showed before. He took a deep, calming breath, trying to steel his nerves against the emotions that had wracked his body in the past twenty minutes since he’d gotten word Leah was injured.
Fuck! How he hated that she insisted on being a cop. She had a college degree, was intelligent and capable of doing thousands of other things. Still, he had promised her brother, his best friend, that he would take care of his baby sister. His vow to do just that was something he took seriously, but damn he hated how fucking stubborn she could be.
The only saving grace was that he had talked her out of joining the Marines and following in her big brother’s footsteps. No longer in the corps and now in law enforcement, Cole knew he stood a better chance of keeping an eye on her as an officer of the law than as some corporal off in butt-fuck middle of nowhere getting shot at by the Taliban.
“Are you going to come in here now? Or you going to stand out there stewing and rehearsing your speech to me about how dangerous this job is?”
He shook his head and couldn’t hold back the grin at her calling him out, knowing exactly what he was thinking. She was a piece of work, that one. Pushing his smile aside, he thought back to the moment when he got the call. There was no way he was going to walk in there with anything but a stern look so she knew just how serious this was.
Pushing the curtain aside, he walked in. “I wasn’t going to say that, but since you bring it up, we might as well get into it.”
“Or we could not, because the argument is growing tired.”
“Better to be tired than dead, Leah.”
She let out a growl of frustration and stood up from the bed. After just one step she lost her balance and started to sway. He went to her, wrapped his arms around her, and held her up.
“Jesus, would you sit the hell down? Let me get the doctor.”
“Stop it! I’m fine. They gave me a shot of morphine for the pain. I just stood up too fast and felt a little light-headed. That’s all.”
Cole looked at her lying down against the wide hospital bed. The contrast in size made her seem so tiny. He couldn’t help but remember a time four years earlier when she’d been lying just like this after a car accident. The only difference was that night she had cuts all over her face from the impact with the windshield. Her parents had held it together fairly well in spite of the trauma they’d endured. He didn’t handle it as well. She had scared the shit out of him that night.
It was the day after her brother’s funeral. Her whole family struggled with the loss of their only son, but Leah had taken it the worst. Even though they were ten years apart, Dex and Leah shared a special bond. She was his little pip-squeak and he her hero.
Cole still missed him, too. He’d been one of the best snipers the corps ever had, and Cole was his spotter. While a bullet had always been his method for taking out an enemy, in the end an IED was what had taken him from them.
Eighteen at the time, Leah was already at a sensitive time in her life. The death of her brother sent her over an emotional edge. In the blink of an eye she went from daily correspondence with her brother to never being able to speak to him again. She never outright said it, but he knew she was angry with him. Mad that he’d chosen to serve in a war over being home with his family.
All of it proved to be too much for her, and she stole a bottle of whiskey from her parents and headed toward the lake she used to fish at with Dex. Several hours and a third of Jack Daniel’s later and she wrapped her small Honda Civic around a telephone pole.
He fought the chills as he remembered the pictures of the vehicle from the accident scene. It was a miracle she’d survived. An angel in the form of a marine had been with her that night, he was sure of it. There was no way Dex had left her. He may not be with them in the flesh, but he was there and would always be watching over his baby sister.
“Cat got your tongue, Chief?”
Her sarcasm brought him back to the present. “Damn it, Leah. Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn? Can’t you just take it easy? You were shot, for crying out loud.”
“Don’t baby me, Chief. I’m an officer just like any other on the force. If I was a man, would you tell me to take it easy?”
Fuck. Shit. Damn.
He wanted to scream she was so infuriating. So what if he coddled her a little more than the other officers? He had known her for thirteen years, since she was a child, and watched while she grew up from a little obnoxious girl to a beautiful young woman. All the more infuriating was that she was right. He wouldn’t have treated any other officer the way he did her. How could he though?
“Do you really have to pull the woman card today? I think you’re over your quota on that one, and besides a bullet wound does give me a right to worry. Let me just take you home and get you settled. It will make me feel better, and then I can focus on finding the bastard who shot you.”
“I’ll stop pulling the woman card when you start to realize and respect the fact that I have a badge and earned it regardless of my lacking in the penis department.”
He looked up and prayed to the good Lord above to grant him the serenity to deal with her antagonizing ways. It drove him mad when she talked like that. Ever since she’d been sworn in and received her shield and gun, she’d been on a constant mission to prove she could hang with the boys. She was too blind and naïve to realize that their department was essentially filled with a bunch of male chauvinist pigs who couldn’t see past her petite frame and generous curves. Not to mention how much it pissed him off that even he noticed how good of a body she had. Between her lingerie-model physique, rich dark-brown hair, matching chocolate-colored eyes, and olive skin, she was every man’s dream.
More than once he’d wished she didn’t have a natural and alluring beauty about her. Some tomboyish features and less eye-catching curves and the other men wouldn’t even notice her. No such luck though. Leah was one of those women, a knockout with very little effort on her part, and she didn’t even know it.
“Would you cut the tough talk out, already? I get it. You are woman. I hear you roar. Can we go now?”
“Thanks anyway, but I’ll have Darren take me home,” she replied.
There it was. The one thing that was sure to send his nerves over the edge to the absolute fucking breaking point. Darren? She was calling him Darren now? His name was Officer Colby. Not fucking Darren.
He knew it was a mistake partnering her up with Darren Colby. Well, that wasn’t totally true. The fact of the matter was Colby was the best option he had at the time. The kid came from a good family and didn’t have the reputation of being a womanizer, so Cole figured he would be the safest choice. All the other officers would’ve tried to get in her pants in the first week. Of that, he was positive. Damn it all to hell. Now he was going to have to worry about this shit, too.
“Darren? Oh, I assume you mean Off
icer Colby. Yeah, well, your partner left.” He tried to keep his tone even and calm despite his unsteady nerves.
“He left? I can’t believe he didn’t stay to see if I was okay.”
The disappointment he heard in her voice was even more evident on her face. She liked her partner, and now her feelings were hurt. He ignored the uneasy feeling that knowledge gave him. Surely she would eventually meet men and start to date. She was nearly twenty-four years old. He couldn’t keep her in a protective bubble forever. Could he?
“There’s work to be done, kiddo. In case you haven’t heard, a car load of gangbangers opened fire on some officers today. Kind of takes priority over carting your stubborn ass home.” He said it with a smile, hoping to cut through some of the tension between them. He hated fighting with her.
“Fine. Would you please take me home, Chief Bottego?”
“I suppose. No one else is going to do it. Lord knows you’re a damn handful and a half. Come on.”
He put his arm around her waist to steady her as she rose from the bed. A few steps and she seemed to be doing okay. The same nurse who made it clear she wasn’t his biggest fan rushed to them. She pushed a wheelchair toward Leah and insisted that she had to be escorted out of the hospital in it. She stated her reasons, something about policies and procedures that Cole cared little of hearing about. He waved her off and continued down the long corridor to the parking lot.
Once he ushered her into the Tahoe, he went around to the other side. Stopping just behind the driver’s side taillight and taking a deep breath. The realization that things could have gone very differently and she could be dead right now finally hit him like a ton of bricks. The thought shook him to the core. Hell, everything about her shook him to the core. He was constantly worrying and thinking about her. The first week she was on patrol he hadn’t caught a minute of sleep. He ignored the uneasiness and got in behind the wheel.
“Everything all right?” she asked.
“Other than you getting shot? Yeah, everything’s just peachy,” he answered without looking back at her, afraid his eyes would give him away.
Pulling out of the lot, he glanced back to check for cars before changing lanes. In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of her bandaged arm. It wasn’t a bad wound. He’d sure as hell seen bullet wounds worse than that more times than he cared to remember during his years in the corps. So, why in the hell couldn’t he get past the gut wrenching thought of a bullet penetrating her tiny body?
They drove to her house in silence. He couldn’t speak for her lack of words, but he could find none to say. None that she would want to hear anyway. The only thing that sat on the tip of his tongue, just dying to be heard, was that she needed to quit. He wanted her to find a nice, safe line of work, something that didn’t involve guns, violence, and crime. Anything but being a cop.
A common phrase from the corps came to mind. Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see what fills up first. He knew all the arguments in the world wouldn’t change the fact that she was bound and determined to wear that badge. She was on some sort of a mission to live up to her brother’s memory. He wished she would realize that this was the last thing Dex would have wanted for his baby sister.
That which does not kill me only makes me stronger. Or some kind of bullshit like that.
Chapter 2
Leah rolled her eyes as Cole shouted at her. His audacity was unbelievable. Who gets screamed at for showing up for their scheduled shift? He’d been over the top lately with his protective nature. She knew he’d made a promise to her brother to look after her, but she was growing tired of him treating her like a child. She’d graduated the academy at the top of her class, worked hard, and had done everything in her power to earn his respect. Even though he may not see her as an officer of the law, she was one.
“Don’t you roll your damn eyes at me either, Goddamn it! I’m tired of that shit. You say you want to be treated with respect and like an officer of the law, but then you stand in front of your superior, rolling your eyes like some sort of a spoiled brat.”
“Chief, with all due respect, I have been medically cleared. The shot was a clean through and through. You know this. You saw the discharge report. There’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be able to return to work.”
“And now you’re questioning my authority? Fine, have it your way. You want to return to work, have at it. Far be it for me to stop you.” He waved his arms wildly, accentuating his anger.
She looked at him, stunned. He gave in way too easy for someone as overbearing and controlling as he was. The smug grin on his face told her he was going to have the last laugh in this latest battle of wills. “Thank you, Chief. I’ll just go find Darren and we’ll get—” She stopped when he interrupted her.
“You think you’re going out on patrol?” He let out a boisterous laugh. “No, kiddo. You plant your stubborn ass in one of those chairs out there. You’re on desk duty until I say otherwise.”
Her face heated in anger. Desk duty? There was absolutely no reason or possible justification he could offer for such a decision. Still, she refused to give in and bite back. She wasn’t sure why, but she sensed he was trying to teach her a lesson of some kind. Ignoring her instinct to scream back at him, she remained calm. “Of course, sir. You are the boss.”
He eyed her curiously. It was all she could do to not smile. Her obedience and sudden respect obviously threw him for a surprise. She was enjoying the confusion etched in his brow.
“Just like that?” he asked.
“Yes. Just like that. If there isn’t anything else, I’ll be on my way, sir.” She purposely kept her voice cool and laced with military precision.
They stood there staring at one another for several moments. She wanted desperately to smile, but refused to give in to her moment of glee. Very rarely did she come out the victor in one of their arguments. She was enjoying the hell out of seeing him off balance.
“No. There’s nothing else. Get to work.”
Walking out of his office and closing the door, her smile which had been lingering below the surface finally broke free. A few of the other officers standing nearby witnessed her grin and returned the gesture. Cole always had been domineering, but lately he’d been on a rampage with the entire department. It was common when he wasn’t around for everyone to try to figure out what his problem was.
She sat down at the large two-sided desk she shared with Darren. He had been her partner for the past few months since she’d started on the force. She was the newbie. The rookie who everyone loved to razz, but Darren was different. He always treated her like an equal partner when they were on duty together. She appreciated that more than she’d ever outright admit. Lately, though, she’d sensed he was flirting with crossing the line between partners and something more, but she did her best not to read too much into the little gestures which left her thinking that.
“Hey, how are you feeling? I tried to call you last night. Did you get my message?” Darren asked, sitting down across from her.
“Morning. Yeah, I did after I woke up. I went to bed early. That morphine had me loopy all day. So, I finally just crashed.”
“No worries. Feeling all right? You ready to head out? You missed roll call. Come on and I’ll fill you in on the latest as we head out.”
She motioned toward the chief’s office. “Yeah, well, about that. Looks like I won’t be going on patrol with you today. I’ve been put on a time-out by the big man.”
“What? What do you mean a time-out?” he asked.
“As in I’m riding the bench until further notice. Chief’s got me on desk duty until he says otherwise. It seems the medical clearance I got from the ER doc isn’t good enough for the big man.” She rolled her eyes.
Darren raised his brows and looked behind her. “Yeah, I’ll leave you to that then, and good luck. Have a good one, Leah.”
He walked away. The expression on his face told her that the same boss man she had just been mocking
was probably standing right behind her. She could feel the anger radiating from him as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Cole leaned over her, reaching his arms on either side and placing his palms on her desk. “Are you having fun mocking me, Officer Allbright?”
Clearing her throat, she ignored the feel of his breath whispering across her neck and responded politely. “No, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
Slowly he retreated, vacating her personal space he’d just invaded. His close proximity had effectively knocked her off balance, though she remained sitting safely in her chair. She did her best to hide her reaction to him being so near, but feared the heat she felt flush her face betrayed her.
It wasn’t the first time she had felt a twinge of awareness when he was near. Now she came to expect it and constantly kept a distance between them in an effort to avoid him at all costs. After several incidents, she realized it wasn’t going away. Admittedly, it was partially the reason she was so defiant and argumentative with him. The mere thought of allowing him to get close to her and leave her with nothing but frustration grew tiring. It caused far too many sleepless nights with him on her mind.
She could still remember the first time his closeness caused a stir. It caught her by surprise and nearly knocked her off her feet. She had been on the range, practicing for firearm qualifications. Still a cadet then, she’d been having a hard time controlling the recoil that always seemed to pull her shots slightly up and to the right. He agreed to offer her pointers and meet her for a practice session after hours. She was never sure why, but she suspected he was keen to her anxiety about shooting poorly while the other cadets stood by teasing her about being a tiny woman trying to shoot a man’s gun.
Several times since that night she’d found herself trapped in situations beyond her control, times when she wanted to reach out and touch him. She had always had a little girl’s crush on him growing up, but ever since her brother died he’d seemed to be a constant part of her daily life.
When Promise Meets Passion Page 2
