“The hell we can’t, Detective,” Hawthorn said. “We do it all the time. You do it all the time. Sorenson’s going back in. Get some sleep, get your head screwed on straight. I don’t want to see you before noon.”
Shoes in hand, Sorenson slid off the trunk of the car. They waited while Hawthorn left, then Sorenson looked at him. “I hate these shoes,” she said conversationally, turning over the heels so the jeweled straps glittered in the lights. “My feet hurt, my back hurts, and my toes feel like they’ve been crammed in a sardine can. Next time you go undercover, do it at an old folks’ home so I can wear comfortable shoes.”
“I’m going back in through the storeroom,” he said in response.
Matt jogged around the back of the bar and through the storeroom door, struggling to remain calm. Objective. Inside the bar the DJ was leading everyone in some arm-waving, swaying chant, the atmosphere was back to rockin’ and rollin’. He needed to find Eve. Size and strength, not finesse, powered his progress through the room.
He found her down a short hallway, in front of the small alcove housing a relic from the twentieth century, a pay phone. Hands on her hips, her pursed lips and frown better suited a librarian, not the sexy woman dressed like a high-class call girl. A quick glance in the circular mirror high in the corner of the alcove revealed a brunette alternately shoving her skirt down her thighs and buttoning up her blouse behind a red-faced, tight-lipped man with his hands on his hips.
Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to shake the cop’s sense of humor, so he smiled as he came to parade rest behind Eve and folded his arms over his chest, giving Eve some consequence in case the guy got belligerent. “Need any help?”
“No, thank you, Chad,” Eve replied, decorum dripping from her voice. “Our friends are either going to get another drink and enjoy the music, or continue their conversation outside.”
The man nodded, taut frustration evident on his face, and the girl finally got her blouse buttoned. With the same gesture she’d used to send Lyle on his way, she extended her hand toward the main room, a wordless invitation to return to the bar, or leave. They scurried back into the wall of humanity and sound, leaving him alone with Eve.
To his surprise Eve spun around to face him and crossed her arms. The flirtatious bar owner was gone. “Where the hell were you?”
The brusque demand startled him. His job was to not react, keep situations calm, so words were the right answer in this situation, apologetic, explanatory words that smoothed over a rocky start to a relationship he needed to keep her safe, not let the department down. Instead, he used what he knew worked. He reached out and gripped the nape of her neck, holding her still as he searched her eyes.
His possessive move sparked a quick intake of breath, but she didn’t shy away, never broke eye contact. His forearm lifted her hair so it slid forward, against the curve of her cheekbone, hiding her expression. With his other hand he impatiently brushed it back, saw awareness flare in her green eyes as his palm lingered along her jaw.
“Fine,” she said, rising to his silent challenge, and stepped close enough for him to feel the rise and fall of her breasts with each quick breath. Her hands dropped to his hip bones then slipped under the hem of his T-shirt to brush against his lower abdomen, turning his efforts to control her into a challenge. The pulse at her throat leapt in response to the involuntary tightening of his grip; while she made no move to break his hold, she was anything but pliant under his hand. Color crept into her cheekbones, softening her lips, and her eyes went that shade of ocean green that made him think the wall in the alcove looked pretty good as a flat surface …
Get your head back in the game, Dorchester. Forget slow. He needed her trusting him, into him, safe with him, and he knew exactly how to go about getting what he needed.
Three giggling women emerged from the restroom and tottered down the hallway. The spell shattered, and Matt let his hand drop, his abused knuckles tingling from the silky slide of her hair against the back of his hand.
Eve stepped back, came up short against the wall. “That was fun,” she said, “but I asked you a question. Where were you?”
“I needed a break,” he said. But breaks were authorized by Eve or Natalie only, and only when things were slow.
“You better not have been in my parking lot,” she said, anger and just a hint of hurt vibrating under her skin.
He went rigid before his brain jerked into high gear and he remembered that to her, “parking lot” meant back-of-pickup-truck liaisons, not a rendezvous with two cops. “I saw a friend leaving, a male friend, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time,” he improvised.