“Be right back.” He vanished and reappeared minutes later with two steaming cups. “I’m fairly good at making coffee.”
It smelled fresh, rich. “A man of hidden talents.”
He nodded, and a smile curled his lips as he raised the cup to his lips. “Sugar or milk?”
“No, thanks.”
He motioned for her to sit and if she’d been left alone, she’d have stood. Too much energy buzzed in her body. But if she stood, so would he.
She sat in the chair and watched as he sat and angled his seat away from the table so that it faced her. “Can I have a look at the sketch?”
“You don’t want to wait for your partner?”
“No.”
She hadn’t been away from the Force so long that she’d forgotten how to read a tense vibe. “There a turf war between you two?”
His fingers tensed a fraction as he sipped from his cup. “No. I just don’t feel like waiting.”
“You ooze tension, Morgan.”
The next smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t know what you’re seeing.”
She opted not to press. “Long as it doesn’t interfere with this case, then I don’t care.”
“You talk about it as if it were your case.”
“It is. Not officially, of course, but I’m invested. I want her killer caught.” She opened her sketchbook and flipped past several pages filled with sketches of half-drawn faces.
He studied her a beat. “You miss the job, don’t you?”
“Sure. I miss it.”
“Why’d you quit?”
Ah, there was the question. The elephant that danced in the room each time they were together. “I didn’t quit. I took leave.” He’d turned the tables on her. “Does it really matter?”
“Not in the big scheme but I’m curious.”
“Just needed a break.”
He shook his head. “That’s a lame answer, Thompson.”
Just because he asked, didn’t mean he deserved an answer to the question. “Didn’t you take a break after you were shot?”
“A bullet to the hip forced the time off so I gave school a try while my body healed. Matter of time before I returned.”
“We should all be so lucky to have your clear vision.”
Jenna shifted, her discomfort growing like a flame fed with dry kindling. “Let’s look at the sketch.” She opened her sketchpad, more than ready to be finished with this conversation.
As she flipped through the pages his attention was drawn away from her to the page filled with eyes. “What’re those?”
“I’m always drawing. Often, I’m intrigued and work on a face and then I lose interest and don’t finish it.”
“You got a thing for eyes.”
“They’re the mirrors to the soul.”
“You believe that?”
“I do.”
“Seems odd that you wouldn’t finish the sketches. Or maybe that’s kinda your thing. Not finishing a job.”
“Damn, Morgan, does your brain only entertain one thought at a time?” Irritation burned under her tone.
“I’m like a dog with a bone.”
Did he just want her gone from Nashville? “I didn’t come here to talk about me. These partial drawings are a part of the drawing process.”
“Whom are you trying to draw?” he said, pointing to the eyes.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You don’t know?”
This close, his energy radiated. She offered another shrug of her shoulders to soften another incomplete explanation. “Artists and their quirks.”
She quickly flipped more pages; aware he watched each page and sketch as they passed. When she found the page featuring the little girl, she carefully folded the sketchpad so that this was the only image he saw. She turned it to him, nerves biting at her. There was always a rush of worry when she showed any work for the first time. And for reasons she couldn’t explain she wanted Detective Rick Morgan to approve of this job.
A deep frown furrowed his brow as he reached for the sketchpad and then hesitated. “May I?”
“Yes.”
He lifted the sketch and studied the image. The little girl smiled back revealing an uneven crooked tooth. Her eyes were hazel green, her face round, and angel-soft hair haloed dimpled cheeks. She wore a soft pink collared shirt that enhanced her glow.
“She’s beautiful.” He spoke softly, his voice thick with emotion. “I can almost imagine hearing the sound of her laughter.”
The knot in her chest unfurled just a little. “I wanted her to be pretty because I think she must have been very sweet.”
“Why the smile?”
What he didn’t say was that he feared, as she did, that the little girl had had little to smile about in her short life. “She deserved to be seen by the world smiling. I’ve also another sketch of her. In that sketch I drew her with a closed-mouth expression. I realize she might not have been a happy child.”
He didn’t bother to flip the page but continued to stare at the smiling image. “This is excellent, Jenna. Really some of the best forensic art I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m one of the best.”
He lifted his gaze to her. “I believe it now.”
“You didn’t before?”
“If you were so good, why’d you end up in a bar seven hundred miles from home, drawing pictures on the street?”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t have a credible answer for him or for herself.
“I can’t believe you walked away from this.” When she opened her mouth to correct him, he held up a hand. “Took leave.”
A shrug.
He sat back in his chair and stared at her with a keenness he had to reserve for suspects. She realized he knew why she left Baltimore. Not surprising. Made sense that someone would check up on her. She’d have checked up on her. “Who did you talk to in Baltimore?”
His hand rested on the conference table, his thumb tapping. “Not me. Georgia. She’s a suspicious sort.”
That jostled a laugh. “Smart gal.”
Any humor evaporated like ice on a hot Nashville day. “Why the leave?”