“Holy shit! Crowe put me down!” I yel ed.
I figured he was going to hurt me; no way was he going to climb up steps and get me into my bed without slamming me into the ceiling. The hal way ceiling was low, the bed area was an elevated alcove, the ceiling high, there was only a smal gap to get in and a lot of that was taken by the bed. Even I, after living there five years, stil conked my head on the hal way ceiling at least once a month.
I shouldn’t have worried. This was Vance Crowe we were talking about. He climbed, bent nearly double, shoved his torso through with me around his shoulders, not even scraping the ceiling. He released me, rol ed me in and came up behind me, snagging me under my armpits and hauling me up the bed. He lay down on his back and pul ed me up over his body.
I was too shocked to move and staring at him in disbelief.
God, he was good.
“Now we can talk,” he said, his arms wrapped around my waist.
“Why do you want to talk up here?” I asked.
“I like it up here.”
I rol ed my eyes.
Whatever.
Time to get this over with so I could go out and annoy bad guys.
“How do you know my alarm code?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, just smiled.
“Crowe! I want to know.”
“You wanna know, I’l show you. Later, not tonight.” I blinked at him. “Seriously?” I asked, so wanting to learn that I completely forgot that tonight was our only night and tomorrow I was going to figure out a way to get Vance Crowe out of my life for good.
“You wanna know, I’l show you,” he repeated.
“Wow. Thanks,” I was stil forgetting.
“I like Nick,” he said conversational y.
I couldn’t help myself, I smiled. “I do too.”
“What do you cal him?” he asked what I thought was a strange question.
“I cal him Nick.” I replied.
“No, he isn’t your Dad, but he is, so what do you cal him?”
I stared at him. “How do you know that?”
“He and I talked.”
I went stil . “About what?”
“About him raisin’ you, about your family dyin’, your granddad dyin’, your aunt dyin’.”
I gasped. I did this partly because Nick had apparently shared a great deal of information about me but mainly because Nick never talked about Auntie Reba, not to anyone, but me.
“He told you about Auntie Reba?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t know what to do with that because I felt it said something about Vance that Nick would trust him enough upon first meeting him to mention it. It freaked me way, the hel , out.
I shirked off my freak out and forged ahead. “What else did he tel you?” I asked, feeling uncomfortable with the knowledge that he knew way too much about me.
“He told me I was your first date in five years.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. I was going to kill Nick.
“And he told me your birthday is Thursday.” I decided to be quiet and hoped that our talk wasn’t going to be a long one. After two minutes I was over it and wanted to shut down, move on, fil my mind with something else, anything else, but Vance.
Vance watched me. I kept silent.
“Tel me about Park,” he demanded softly.
“No,” I said instantly and pushed away. The conversation was official y over.
His arms tightened, he came up, twisting me to my back and his body rol ed into me so he was half on me, his thigh thrown over both of mine, pinning me to the bed.
He looked down at me. “You already know we investigated you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a busy woman.”
I stared at him and kept silent.
“Even before this shit went down with Park your name is al over police records. You worked at a battered woman’s shelter, got involved in a couple of messy cases. You got mentions in a number of kids’ files, comin’ down to the station when they got into trouble, puttin’ in a word for them.
Got ‘em out and into King’s.”
I stayed silent.
“Park was different,” Vance said in a way that I knew wasn’t a question.
I sucked in my lips and stayed quiet.
“So are Roam and Sniff, aren’t they?”
I couldn’t keep it up. “They’re my boys.”
He watched me, his eyes scanning my face and something came over him, not the sexy something, something else. Something that looked an awful lot like concern.
“Jules, you know, you gotta keep a distance. You don’t, it’l destroy you.”
“I can keep a distance.”
“Yeah? Like spendin’ your nights puttin’ your ass on the line, makin’ drug dealers pay for what they did to Park?” My eyes slid to the side. “Um…” I mumbled.
“And runnin’ around lookin’ after two teenage runaways like they were your own flesh and blood?”
I brought my eyes back to him and stayed silent.
“That shit with Roam today at Fortnum’s… Jesus, Jules, you aren’t his sister, you’re his social worker.”
“I know that.”
“Didn’t look like it to me.”
“Don’t tel me how to do my job,” I clipped.
“I’m tryin’ to talk some sense into you.”