“How come you’re ‘Eve’ and I’m ‘Counselor’?” Caleb asked after she left.
“I didn’t come on to her in front of her male lieutenant and colleagues,” Eve answered. “Matt told me once that he’d never hit on her because if he did, he’d be dead to her. I’d say you’re dead to her. Regretting your runaway mouth for once in your life?”
“There’s no such thing as a lost cause,” Caleb said, still staring at the doorway into the bar. “Speaking of Detective Dorchester…”
The name hung in the air for a second before Eve could breathe in and answer. “No, I haven’t seen him,” she said evenly.
“He’s an idiot,” Caleb said matter-of-factly.
“No, he isn’t,” Eve countered. “When he does something, when he commits, he commits forever, and with everything in him. He takes his responsibilities seriously. I love that about him.” She paused but kept her gaze trained on the rubble filling her alley. “I love him. But I don’t want to be an obligation. I want to be his partner, his lover, someone who helps him shoulder his burdens. If he can’t let me in, then I’ll just have to move on.”
Caleb had no response to that, and she was grateful. She missed Matt so much she ached, and while the bruise was fading, her longing wasn’t.
Her brother turned to go, then said, “I almost forgot. No dinner tonight. Mom caught me as they were getting in the car and said Dad’s too tired from all the talking. He needs to rest. We should come over for lunch later in the week.”
“Fine by me,” she said. “I could use a night off.”
He bent and kissed the top of her head. “Take care, sister mine.”
Silence settled into the storeroom after Caleb left. The package with the concert tickets and the newspaper announcement should have arrived three days ago, but she hadn’t expected him to come to the demolition. The gift was for her as much as for him. It was closure, or it would be, when she felt it.
Behind her she heard the scritch-thump-scritch-thump of hard-soled shoes. Natalie, who’d stayed behind on her day off to handle the cleanup process while Eve finished off the last of the interviews. She’d buy Nat tickets to the New Kids on the Block reunion concert as thanks, maybe even go with her.
“Check out that view, Nat,” she said with a quick peek over her shoulder. “It’s—”
“Beautiful” died on her tongue as a tall, broad-shouldered figure disappeared from the light of the bar into the storeroom’s darkness. Her heart leapt in recognition, fierce joy surging inside her, but in a split second her brain discounted her body’s visceral response.
Suit, tie, wingtips. Audible approach. Not Matt Dorchester.
Probably a reporter, or one of the city councilwoman’s peach-fuzz assistants. She turned to face the newcomer and got the same electrifying jolt she felt every time their eyes made contact, sending her heart rate into the stratosphere and cutting off her breath.
Matt Dorchester.
In a suit and tie and wingtips, his badge clipped to his belt, his service weapon visible on his right hip. In his left hand he held a rectangular box wrapped in shimmery green paper. He stopped by the doorway, his gaze taking in her sleek hair and shadowed eyes, the fading bruise on her cheekbone, her conservative pantsuit and sensible heels, flicking over her as if afraid to linger.
Transfixed by one detail of his appearance, she didn’t hesitate to stare. “Your hair,” she said. It was cropped close to his head, gladiator-style.
“Regulations,” he said. He ran a palm over it, crown to forehead, the move practiced and automatic, and for a split second the aura of uniform, helmet, and rifle hung around him like a mirage. Then it disappeared, and in its place stood a man. Just a man. An all-too-human cop, a brother. Maybe, just maybe, a lover. “I’m done undercover. My face was all over the internet and the news. They’ll figure out what to do with me after IA clears me and McCormick for the shooting.”
Jo had already told her as much, but despite the fact that their efforts to stop Lyle Murphy had cost him the work he loved, he didn’t seem all that upset, or locked down, for that matter.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked cautiously.
He looked out over the rubble. “It’s the right thing for the department.” Another one of those quick, skating glances, then he added, “And for me.”
Oh. “That’s good, then,” she said. Her heart thunked against her chest, and heat rose into her face, making the still-tender spot on her cheekbone throb a little more acutely.
“Nat’s inside,” he said nodding over his shoulder. “Want me to get her for you?”
“No! Ah, no,” she said, striving for the same cool attitude he projected, as if seeing him walk back into the bar didn’t fulfill the other half of her dreams.
“Good,” he said. “She told me I was six kinds of asshole for lying to her and to you, and if I thought I could drink free because I was a cop, I had another thought coming.”