Shades of Passion

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE NEXT MORNING, SIMON was back at Nina’s house, standing on her porch with coffee, bagels and a friend. Nina recognized the other man immediately.

“Detective DeMarco. How nice to see you again.”

DeMarco smiled and tipped his head in a gentlemanly gesture. “Nice to see you, as well, Nina.”

“I was expecting to meet Simon at SIG but—” She closed her eyes. “Oh, right. I forgot I left my car...” She smiled brightly rather than let her thoughts linger on why the police had impounded her car and taken Six’s body, as well. She’d have to make arrangements to have her cremated... “Are you going to be joining us today?” Even as she asked the question, she noted that Simon, just like yesterday, was wearing standard detective garb—slacks, a button-down shirt and a jacket. DeMarco, on the other hand, was wearing a casual shirt and jeans.

“Actually, it’s my day off. Simon here asked me to shore up your security seeing as you don’t really have any and he couldn’t do it himself today. If I can’t fix your current system, I’ll install a new one. It’ll be basic but reliable. Is that okay with you?”

Her startled gaze jerked first to Simon, then back to DeMarco. “He needn’t have bothered you. After—after what happened yesterday...” She paused, assuming Simon had filled DeMarco in.

DeMarco nodded.

“After what happened,” she explained, “I scheduled an appointment with a security company for this Thursday.”

“Well, I’m already here. No sense having them come all the way over when I can get the job done today. Assuming you’re okay with that, of course.”

She sighed. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m not a fool. Someone’s threatening me. I need better security.” Now she looked at Simon. “I just wish Detective Granger had seen fit to talk to me before he bothered you.”

“It’s no bother. Simon and I are friends, not just coworkers.”

“Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Please let me know how much I owe you. And—” she interrupted his automatic denial “—I’m afraid I can’t let you continue unless you’re willing to bill me for both your expenses and time.”

DeMarco grinned. “No problem.”

She looked between them suspiciously. It had been a little too easy to get his acquiescence.

“We need to stop by SIG on our way out,” Simon said. “I want you to look at the video surveillance we have. It’s grainy, but you might be able to catch something that we couldn’t.”

“Sounds good.”

When they got to SIG, Jase Tyler greeted her warmly, as did Carrie Ward. Simon took her to a small room with a television screen and DVD player and played the security tape. It showed exactly what he’d said it would. A man wearing a bulky jacket, the hood covering his head, his back to the camera, his arms cradling what she knew to be Six’s body and then depositing it into her backseat after he’d easily popped the driver’s side lock.

“I can’t tell whether he’s wearing gloves,” she said.

“He must be. We had them dust for prints while I drove you home, remember? They’ve come up empty so far.”

Just like the threatening letter. “Right. Well, I’m afraid I won’t be much help. I don’t see anything in the video that you haven’t.”

“It was a long shot, but one I needed to explore anyway.”

“Of course,” she said.

As they left and walked back to his desk, Simon said, “I haven’t heard back from Charleston P.D. yet. And while I’ve done some preliminary searches, I haven’t found any evidence that Davenport has traveled to California in the past few days. I’ll obviously keep checking on that.”

“Thank you.”

“I wish I could do more. In fact...I was thinking. Do you want me to make arrangements. For Six, I mean?”

He’d taken her by surprise again. “You’d do that?”

“Of course. Have you thought about how you wanted to...?”

“I’m going to have her cremated. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the ashes yet, though.”

“How about I have someone from the coroner’s office take care of it? I promise I’ll entrust her to someone reliable and you can pick up her ashes when you’re ready.”

She hesitated. Then said a quiet, “Thank you.”

He patted her arm in an absentminded gesture that, despite everything, made her smile. “Would you excuse me for a second? I want to call DeMarco.”

“Sure.”

A couple of minutes later, he was back, but he had a frown on his face.

“Something wrong?”

“What?” He shook his head and his expression cleared. “No. It’s just...I asked DeMarco to help out at your house and we agreed that we’d get that drink he’d talked about after we were done here today. I wanted to firm up where we were going to meet, but he apparently forgot. He said he’s got a date.”

“And you’re angry that he’s blowing you off for a woman?”

“No. If I needed him, I know he’d drop everything for me.”

“But?”

“But I want to make sure he knows the same thing. If he needs to talk to me, I want to be here for him.”

“He knows you’re here for him. You planned to have a drink with him. He’s the one who changed the plan.”

“I know but—” He shrugged, unable to give voice to what was making him uncomfortable.

“You’re worried about him?” she asked.

His gaze jumped to hers. “A little. He seemed fine this morning. And just now on the phone, too. Yet I can’t shake the feeling something’s bothering him. He’s worked some tough cases in the past few months. We all have. And then there’s what happened to Lana...”

“Was he close to her?”

“They were friends. Everyone at SIG liked Lana.”

“Well, safeguards are put in place for a reason. You don’t have to always handle things alone. You know that. You’ve talked to Dr. Shepard. Maybe DeMarco needs to talk to someone, too?”

Maybe, Simon thought, then blinked. What the hell was he thinking? He’d fought seeing Shepard and he had no doubt DeMarco would do the same thing. No, if DeMarco needed to talk to someone, he didn’t need to see a shrink. Simon was here for him. The entire SIG team was here for him. He knew that.

He shrugged and smiled, hoping to dispel the serious nature of the conversation. “Actually, he probably just needs to talk to a friend. Either that, or get laid. Er—I mean—”

“It’s okay,” she said with a laugh. “So maybe seeing this woman tonight is the best thing for him, after all.”

“Yeah. I’ll connect with him when we get back. And thanks for not holding that comment against me.”

“I’m sure you’ll make others that will give me that opportunity. You’re a nice man, Detective Granger.”

“Not nice enough to have warranted an invitation to stay at your place last night, though?”

“Plenty nice enough. Just smart enough not to.”

“It wasn’t a matter of being smart. You asked me to leave. I left. But if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have.”

She stopped walking. “Simon, I told you before. We can’t sleep together.”

“Whatever you say,” he said lightly.

They were almost to the outer door when a man dressed very similarly to Simon jerked his head in greeting. “Hey, Granger.”

Simon nodded. “What’s up, Hooper?”

“Not much. I heard you’re gunning for a captain position again. Just so happens that I am, too. Maybe with me on board, things like the retired annuitant program won’t be cut.”

“Good luck with that,” Simon said mildly. Nina heard nothing confrontational in his tone, but Hooper reacted as if he did.

“Won’t need it, but can’t say the same for you. You already went that route once before, right? Look how that worked out. What makes you think it’ll work out any better this time around?”

Nina gasped, wondering if she was reading Hooper right. Was the man actually referring to Lana’s murder?

Maybe not, because Simon just chuckled. “F*ck you, too, Hooper.”

Hooper grinned, shot Nina an assessing look, then gave Simon a mocking salute before walking off.

Only when the other man turned his back did Simon allow a sliver of emotion to show on his face. He hid it quickly, but Nina saw the wave of anger wash over Simon’s face as he stared at Hooper.

“Well, he’s certainly obnoxious,” she said lightly, wondering how Simon would respond.

His jaw remained tight but the tension eased a bit from his eyes. “He’s an ass. But he’s also insightful. He’s just telling things the way he sees them. My last stint in management didn’t actually work out very well.”

“Maybe that’s because you left it. Sounds like you won’t be doing that again.”

“Sounds like it. But who knows? Maybe I’ll get there and realize I’ve made a mistake yet again. Maybe I’ll realize running from the streets wasn’t in my best interest, after all.” He closed his eyes in disgust. “Shit. Forget I said that, would you?”

“I’d rather not.” She knew she was pushing, but she added, “It’s okay to move on to something that is safer, if that’s what you really want. It doesn’t make you a coward.” She should know, she thought, but held back from sharing her own situation.

This time, Simon’s laughter sounded harsh, without any forced cheer. “Safe was never my M.O. With work or with women. That seems to have changed and I’m beginning to wonder if I really am a coward.”

“Simon—”

His beeper went off and he glanced down at it. “We’ve got a call. Local SFPD are at the park, dealing with a disturbance between a man and a woman. Let’s go.”

Nina followed him down the hall, perfectly aware that his face had reflected relief when his beeper went off. Saved by the bell, she thought, knowing he’d resent her thinking it. He’d resent the idea that he needed to be saved from anything remotely emotional.

Physical safety was one thing. He apparently thought his need to feel personally safe in his career amounted to cowardice.

She guessed that made two of them.

* * *

AFTER ATTENDING TO the call, which had been a simple drunk-and-disorderly, Nina found herself impressed with how Simon had handled himself. He’d stayed cool and calm as he’d talked to the man and his girlfriend, despite the fact that the man had gotten insulting at one point. Now, however, as she walked side by side with him back to his car, past the Scottish pines in Golden Gate Park, she took note of his intense concentration, of the tightness in his shoulders and how his hands were jammed in his pockets.

“I know you hate it when I try to psychoanalyze you, and I swear that’s not what I’m doing. At least, not more than I can help. But I’m curious,” she said. “How did you feel when you were talking to that drunk couple?”

Hands still in his pocket, Simon shrugged. She had the feeling he was doing all he could not to roll his eyes at her, and she appreciated that. It actually made her smile, in fact. He really was a good guy.

“I felt fine,” he said.

She snorted.

He turned his head and caught her gaze with his, taking in what she knew was her best derisive expression, and then his face softened. The smile lines at the corners of his eyes grew deeper. “All right then, not fine exactly. The call was routine. Seemed minor from the outset. Two people in the park in the middle of the day, hollering at each other, beer cans strewn around them, no weapons in sight and so drunk they swayed when standing.”

“But?”

“But as you know, something that starts out relatively minor can escalate into something pretty dangerous really fast. Drunks react quickly. You push them too hard and they can blow.”

Just like someone with mental illness might. The question was whether Simon would automatically apply the same techniques to someone that was mentally ill as he would to someone who was drunk. Most cops normally didn’t. Mental illness was harder to spot. Often interpreted as aggression or willful defiance as opposed to something outside the person’s control.

“It’s better to give them a chance to wind down,” he continued. “Talking to them helps. Gives them a chance to sober up just a bit. So we talked to them. Me and the patrol officer. But even as we did so...”

“What?”

“On the streets, you can never completely let your guard down.”

No. She imagined cops kept their guard up while on the streets the exact same way she and her coworkers kept their guard up while in the hospital. Even when she was working with her dementia patients, she couldn’t relax completely. But she could certainly relax more than when she was dealing with a patient suffering psychosis. “Is that why you’re applying for a management position?” she guessed. “So you can let your guard down during the day once in a while?”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

“Let’s have it again,” she teased.

He frowned heavily and for a minute she thought she’d angered him. Eventually, however, he sighed. “Do I want to be captain so I can let my guard down? If only it were that simple.”

“What do you mean?” When he didn’t answer, she changed her gait until she was close to him, then nudged him with her elbow. “Anyone ever tell you getting you to open up is like pulling teeth?”

He barked with laughter. “Yeah, well I hate the dentist. A lot.”

She snorted, but didn’t push. He glanced at her, smiled, then sighed. “What I meant was that making captain wasn’t what I thought it would be. Oh, I knew it would come with a whole new set of challenges, of course, but I didn’t think it would completely mess with my confidence, either.”

She practically held her breath. What he’d just revealed was huge. He was allowing himself to be vulnerable, to appear less than totally together, and for a cop, for him, to do that...

“I wanted to be higher up. But when I got there, I missed the action. Missed the adrenaline—that high every cop gets when pursuing a suspect or a perp.”

“That’s to be expected.”

“I didn’t expect it. I was so sure of my decision. Wondering if I’d made a mistake? That shook my confidence. I’d never doubted career decisions I’d made in the past.”

“Did anything else shake your confidence? Besides missing the streets more than you’d thought?”

He didn’t respond. Given he was such a straight shooter, she took that to mean something else had shaken his confidence, but he didn’t want to talk about it.

They exited the park and when they reached his car, he opened the door for her. She got in and watched him walk in front of the car, his legs long and lanky, his stride smooth. The view of his rear was a sight to behold.

Damn, but Simon Granger had one fine ass.

She couldn’t help thinking of the bawdy conversations she’d had with Mrs. Horowitz before she’d died. She’d often teased Nina about needing to work less and socialize more. With good-looking men, in particular. If she was here now, Mrs. Horowitz would have tried cajoling Nina into watching that porn and then putting the moves she learned about to good use with Simon.

And maybe she would, she suddenly decided. Well, not exactly the porn part. But putting the moves on him suddenly sounded too tempting to resist.

What was the harm? He was clearly interested. And although they were connected by the job right now, she was a private consultant—not part of the police department. Once her observation period was over, she would go back to her own life. Simon would go back to his. The kiss he’d given her before had made her insides liquid. Imagine what his mouth could do to the rest of her body?

He seemed willing enough to have a temporary fling. And maybe she’d had the right idea all along. Maybe instead of fighting the attraction between them so hard, she should let it run it’s natural course. It would burn out eventually. The sexual tension between them was only ratcheting higher and higher the more they resisted it.

Simon flung himself into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, then inserted the key in the ignition and turned the car on, but instead of putting the car in gear and heading back to the police precinct, he dropped his hands to his lap and stared ahead. Her erotic thoughts were quickly swept away by concern.

“What is it, Simon?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “Absolutely nothing.”

Yet more avoidance. But he obviously didn’t know her at all if he thought she’d simply take his denial and walk away like a good little girl. She gave him a few more minutes of silence, but when he still didn’t pull out, she couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

“Hmm,” she said softly. “I can tell how absolutely nothing is bothering you by the superb manner in which you are driving.”

He dropped his gaze down to his hands, still sitting idly in his lap, and barked out a quick laugh. “Looks like you got me, Doc.”

“So before you put us in traffic, you want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

Simon stretched an arm across the seat, setting his hand on the headrest behind her, and turned to face her. “Remember what you said about not getting all shrink-y on me?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

He drew in a quick breath through his nose, then spoke. “I said earlier that I doubted myself when I started my job as captain. Because I missed the action of the streets. But you’re right. That wasn’t the only thing that shook my confidence.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. Because as much as I missed the action on the streets, there’s a whole new set of action that comes with being a captain. A whole new set of responsibilities. Suddenly I just wasn’t responsible for my own safety, or even that of my partner. I was making decisions that were going to affect public policy. Policy that would impact the lives of citizens and cops alike. A lot of them. Hell, I hadn’t been captain for more than a week before I shut down a key program, leaving ten officers without jobs.”

“The program that man back at SIG mentioned? What did you say his name was? Hooper?”

“Yes. And yes, that program. It had to be done for budgetary reasons, but still, what if even that decision f*cked up someone’s life?”

Simon paused and Nina gave him a few moments to breathe.

He focused his gaze somewhere in the distance. “I freaked. I was afraid I was going to mess up and make the wrong decisions. Screw up lives. Get people killed.”

His words hit her hard. She wrenched her gaze from his face and looked at her own hands in her lap, fingers now tightly wound together. How well she knew what he meant.

“I didn’t face my fear before, but I’m trying to now. I can’t keep stumbling around, avoiding the fact that someday my actions may kill someone,” he continued, oblivious to her pain. “So I’m going to take a chance and try management again. Whether that makes me a coward or one of the bravest men in the world, who knows?”

“It’s not an easy answer, is it?” she said. “It’s hard to even know what you’re feeling, let alone what it means.”

“Hard for me, maybe. It must be easier for you to analyze your feelings, right? You’re a shri...I mean, a psychiatrist.”

She laughed shakily. “No, it’s not easier for me. It’s kind of like operating on yourself. Or representing yourself at trial. You can’t be objective. You can’t see things that would be so easy to see in others. What’s that saying? That a person who represents himself has a fool for a client?” She shook her head. “I struggle with the same fears that you do, Simon. But all we can do is trust our instincts, remember? Move forward. Do the best we can. You applied to be captain before for a reason. There’s a reason you’re doing it now. Trust yourself. You’ll make a wonderful leader.”

“Even given my issues with psychiatrists?”

“Even then. Because you’re a straight shooter. You don’t hide who you are. What you believe. And you have an open mind. Allowing me to shadow you proves it.”

He shook his head. “You’re giving me too much credit. Commander Stevens said he wouldn’t recommend me for a promotion unless I agreed to partner with you.”

“And we both know that if you really didn’t want to work with me, if you really hadn’t wanted to talk to Kyle Shepard the day that I first met you, that you wouldn’t have. Right?”

“What are you? A psychiatrist or something?”

“Something,” she agreed. “What are you, a detective-soon-to-be captain or something?”

He shifted in his seat and turned to face her. Hesitantly, he reached out, then absentmindedly wound his fingers through her hair. “That’s the plan. But you know what they say about getting what you wish for.”

At his touch, tension seeped out of her bones. Her fingers’ own grip relaxed and her hands drifted apart. Her breath grew easy and soft. Simon stroked her hair then ran his fingers up the base of her neck and massaged her muscles with a light touch. He stared at her, intently, his lips parted. His chest rose and fell heavily with each breath he took.

“We’re all afraid of screwing things up,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of screwing things up. But I believe in you. That might not mean anything to you, but I do.” Unencumbered by the seat belt, she twisted, rose up and kissed him, tangling her tongue with his, matching him breath for breath. Heat slid from her chest to her core, followed by a wet sensation between her legs. A delicious slickness she hadn’t felt for a long, long time. Until Simon had come into her life.

“Nina,” Simon murmured against her lips.

Emotion, not just passion, swept through her like a tidal wave. And that scared her enough that she pulled away. Being open to a temporary fling was one thing, but she’d been kidding herself. She really did believe in Simon. She liked and respected him. And as much as she wanted physical intimacy with him, she craved emotional intimacy with him even more. He’d just given her huge insight into himself, and it wasn’t enough. She wanted more. And the more emotional intimacy she wanted from him, the more she felt herself backing away from the physical. She was swamped by the same insecurities that they’d been talking about. That she only thought she was ready. That her instincts were misleading her. And that she was going to screw things up for both of them.

She wasn’t ready to have sex with Simon—not yet. Maybe not ever. But he’d opened up to her. And given her the chance to open up to him as well, even if she hadn’t shared as much as he had. She was grateful for both.

With a hand, she stroked his cheek and then cupped his jaw. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what came over me.”

He tipped his head and kissed the palm of her hand, then grinned at her. “I don’t know what came over you, either, but I liked it.”