Never, if things were different…if they were different. “Now. I called Anita. She wants to speak with you.”
“I realize she does. I haven’t answered her calls. She likely has crafted a rock-solid defense for her meddling, but I’m not in the mental state to tolerate it.”
“I informed her that I’m officially off this assignment.”
Joey stepped away from the counter and stopped just in front of him. Red rimmed her eyes and her chin trembled. “Assignment? I’m Josephine. I’m your Jo. How could you call me yours when you never wanted me?”
“I did want you.” There it was—honesty after all was said and done, and he was on his way out the door. “I do want you.”
“It’s too late, Zaf. I kissed another man.”
Zaf had no claim, no leverage, no room to throw his weight with her. But that didn’t stop him from swearing through the initial blinding pain. “That was fast, Jo.”
“Well, why waste a moment getting over you?”
It was meant to cut him off at the knees, but he returned, “You were rinsing your mouth at the sink when I came in here.”
“So you’re only exceptionally perceptive when it’s convenient? If you were consistent, if you’d paid attention to me all this time, you would have known the moment I fell again. The last time, years passed before I let another man touch me. Years.”
He hadn’t meant to reappear in her life, resurrect her love for him and leave her at square one. “Holding you like that wasn’t my plan.”
“Plans sure go awry for us, don’t they?”
“Yeah, damn it, Jo. They do. I didn’t plan to hurt you or come back and see you open up to me again. I didn’t plan this. But you loving me? That’s my friggin’ blessing and curse.” Touching her was a gift he didn’t deserve, but he grabbed it, anyway. He took deliberate steps, finally cupping her shoulders. “I didn’t ask for love or forgiveness.”
“I gave it to you, anyway. I can’t shut off my heart. I’m not like you, Archangel.”
In that moment Zaf despised his code name and everything he’d done in that role. The deceit, the plotting, the killing—no matter how necessary, no matter the cause. Joey had restored his humanity and his faith that this was still a world of miracles and forgiveness and, yeah, love.
“Kissing someone else felt strange. Wrong. You push me away, say you don’t want to hold me, but you keep pulling me back.”
“I’m not pulling you back,” he muttered. “This is.” He brought her hand to his chest, flattened her palm over his heart. “I love you.”
She untangled her hand and went to the living room to muscle his duffel bag to the floor. “You don’t get to do this to me, Zaf. You can’t come here on a lie and then say you love me when you’re packed and ready to walk out.”
He slung the duffel’s strap over his shoulder.
End it here. Don’t ever come back. It’s over.
“Great, keep walking, Zaf.”
But the note of dark grief in her voice cuffed him, holding him still. The strap slid from his shoulder, the duffel hit the floor with a thud.
Turning, he heard her breath catch before her hand knotted in his shirt and he seized her mouth. His tongue swirled in deep, and picking up the flavor of the candy and a bitter undertone of dish soap, he wanted to replace the taste with his.
“I love you, Jo,” he said, unzipping her dress and peeling it off. “I didn’t want this. I wanted to lie until I made it true.”
“We’re not easy. We’re a mess.”
“But good together.”
“In this way.” She pushed up his shirt to kiss his pecs, tongue his nipples and nuzzle his chest hair. “When we touch each other, we don’t lie.”
So they didn’t talk. Zaf carried her and her cane to the first room he saw with a bed. He set her down and stripped her naked. She watched him, asking for nothing as he threw off his shirt and jeans.
When he joined her on the bed, she flipped to her side and he couldn’t see her face. But he could feel the dampness of tears as when he brushed back her hair and his cock nudged into her from behind.
She reached back to clasp his head, and rocking with her, he said into her ear, “The love’s not new. It’s not something I lost and picked up again. I never stopped loving you, Josephine.”
Nodding but not speaking, she tightened her hold on him and let him bring them to a point where nothing existed but the love soaking their bodies, riding on their moans and fusing them together.
Afterward Joey slipped away to the kitchen for a drink of water, and Zaf spread out over the bed, running his hand along the sheets. Her heat remained there. If he missed her when she was only on the other side of the house, how would he get by without her?
His phone rang from the pocket of his jeans, and he sprang up to get the call. The conversation was short—no salutations, just information.
It was time to go.
Zaf was pulling on his shirt when he found her perched on the counter. “How’d you manage that?”
“I functioned in this kitchen with its tall cabinets and high shelving before you came along, Zaf.” Noticing that he was dressed, she asked, “You’re not unpacking that duffel, are you?”
“Anita called again. A sting’s being set in New Mexico—”
“Pote?”
He came to her but turned away, and her legs parted to make room for him as she kissed the back of his neck. “This is it, Joey.”
“Call me Jo, until you’re out the door.”
“I don’t think I should walk out the door. I don’t want to leave you when you’re still on DiGorgio’s list.”
Zaf felt her sigh against his skin. He was only one man—one flawed, conflicted man. He couldn’t go to New Mexico and stay in Las Vegas. He couldn’t avenge Raphael’s death and still protect Joey.
“Go, Zaf. Finding justice for Raphael is why you wear the ring and it’s the reason I was brought down. My mother’s usually spot-on about these things, and if she says now is the time for you to be on the move, then listen.”
“Jo…”
“Don’t say it, whatever you’re thinking. It’ll just make this harder.”
He turned around, held her gaze. “So what is this?”
“Goodbye.”
Chapter 12
“I have your man.”
The Slayers’ random drug testing had commenced several days prior, and while three members of the squad had tested positive for marijuana—two veterans who’d rolled the dice and tried to use a masking agent that failed, and a rookie who hadn’t put enough stock in the severity of the Blues’ penalties for policy violation—Joey hadn’t been convinced that the search was over.
Nor had she been quick to consider her job concluded when she’d heard that drug paraphernalia had turned up in TreShawn Dibbs’s Vegas home.
The Blues had suspended him from team activities and prohibited him from commenting to the press and signing autographs, and the findings had been reported to the league. However, it seemed to fall into place too neatly and presented itself as a frame job.
Charlotte, who’d been hurt on a personal level, since her friendship with TreShawn had begun during the previous season’s camp, eventually was resigned to accept that the man had backslid and shouldn’t be granted preferential treatment. She, along with the head coach and her parents, had urged Joey to drop her quest to implicate someone else.
But justice was floating out there, waiting to be revealed, and she’d been unable to let it go.
Just as Zaf was unable to abandon his hunt.
From behind a colossal desk at Slayers Stadium, Marshall Blue put his hand on top of the folder Joey had placed there. He rolled his dark eyes to his wife then authorized, “Give us the name.”
“Duncan Torsay.”
“Duncan?” Tem echoed. “He’s a veteran on this team.”
“So were two of the players who got caught in the test,” Joey pointed out. “Duncan offered me cocaine. He’s hosti
ng an after-testing party tomorrow night. I was invited. According to him, his supplier will be there, providing meth and some synthetic drugs.”
“Let’s get Ozzie Salvinski on the phone and have him set up something with the authorities for this party,” Marshall said, already reaching for his desk phone.
Joey cut him off, slapping her hand over the unit before he could make contact. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” Tem demanded.
“Ozzie’s the supplier.” Mind still spinning to process the truth, she indicated the folder. “I asked an independent source to check up behind me. Independent source says I’m right. My supervisor’s been providing drugs to Duncan Torsay, who’s been using and selling.”
The following night Ozzie was arrested in a bust. Joey, who’d refined her research skills under his tutelage at ODC, hadn’t been able to stay away from the precinct.
“Why?” she asked him.
They sat under dim whitish light, with a blank table between them. Not so long ago they’d sat at Nickel’s, chatting as friends. He wasn’t the man she thought he was.
Ozzie’s eyes were like amber-colored stakes driving into her soul. He blamed her.
She tried to accept the circumstances for what they were, because so many criminals felt a compulsion to blame investigators and whistleblowers and witnesses instead of allowing themselves to be humbled with remorse.
“Why, Ozzie?”
“You’re asking me that when the Blues have you driving a million-dollar car?”
“I returned the car.” She had driven to the police department in her Camaro and was done trying on the Blues’ ornate lifestyle. “And what you’re saying is you’ve been selling drugs to Torsay because of the money he’s offered.”
“Money isn’t a number in a bank account. It’s power. It makes decisions.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“Whether or not a man’s wife sticks around or whores herself out to a guy with fatter pockets.”
Joey didn’t let her face reveal a reaction, but inside she cringed. Ozzie’s wife had left him and set up a life with someone wealthy. “Funneling drugs to NFL players doesn’t affect your ex-wife and it won’t bring her back to you.”
Ozzie shot out of his seat the way he had at CUT. The hair-trigger rage had been there then, and she hadn’t known that to question his integrity wasn’t an insult to his pride but merely something that aggravated a secret truth.
Uniforms guided him from the table, and Joey watched a man she trusted be led away. Outside the interrogation room, she waved to someone familiar.
Parker Brandt appeared unsure for the first second that their eyes met. So much attraction had crackled between them once, but that time was an unreachable memory now. He crossed the hall to her. “Hey.”
“I had visitation with Ozzie Salvinski.”
“I heard. How’re you doing?”
“My mind’s blown, but…”
“Aside from Ozzie.”
Terribly. I’m in love with someone and miss him. “Scooting along as I do.”
“Try to take care of yourself, Joey. I mean that.”
“Appreciate it. Listen, Parker, there’s a man named Cliff who hangs out in front of CCL.”
“Homeless?”
“Fairly certain. He doesn’t seem keen on handouts, so I wonder if you and the gang here might watch over him for me.”
Parker raised a brow. “Going someplace?”
“Thinking about it.” She couldn’t stand going past the guest bedroom in her house and seeing it empty. The love that lived in the place while Zaf was with her had left with him, as though he’d packed it in his duffel bag, too.
With a parting smile, Parker headed back across the hall. “Take care of yourself, Joey.”
She intended to. On her own with herself to lean on, she had no other choice.
*
TreShawn knew who to thank for the restoral of his team privileges, but he wasn’t taking his truck out on the city streets to search for Joey de la Peña.
An apology waited on his tongue and dominated his mind. Minako wasn’t speaking to him—and he didn’t blame her.
He was a dense SOB, but she had forgiven that.
He’d neglected her friendship, but she had forgiven that, too.
He had shown up at her old-fashioned pharmacy and confronted her with accusations that she’d used her access to pharmaceuticals to set him up for drug possession. That, she hadn’t forgiven.
TreShawn’s jersey was secure and his name cleared. Still, he was miserable. He’d spoiled himself, taking for granted the neighborhood girl with the arrogant Doberman pinscher.
Now she wouldn’t answer his calls, open her balcony doors or let her dog lead her down TreShawn’s street.
At the pharmacy again, the place where he’d for certain broken Minako’s heart, he waited in queue at the consultation booth.
The place looked like an old-timey apothecary. Weird, but practical and charming. Like Minako.
“You don’t fill your prescriptions here,” she said when the folks in front of him left the counter.
“You know where I fill my scripts. You know lasagna’s my favorite meal. You know how to pull me back when I’m on the verge of self-destructing.”
Minako slowly looked through her plastic-framed glasses to the colleagues on the left and then on the right. Then, “Next in line!”
“Wait, Min.” TreShawn hopped up onto the counter. People in queue and milling through the pharmacy’s aisles began to stare.
“Please move your ass. Customers fill out forms on this counter.” When he complied, she asked, “What are you trying to accomplish?”
“This is my grand gesture,” he told her. “You say you’re not a romantic person, but you love Breakfast at Tiffany’s and poetry and books that have people ready to do it on the covers.” He braced his arms on the counter. “Min, I watched the movie and read one of those books.”
“You read a romance novel?”
“Just the sex, but yeah.” At her eye roll, he sighed. “Damn, I’m messed up without you. I’m sorry I could think you’d set me up. I’m sorry for not seeing how you felt about me, or how I felt about you.”
In response, Minako clamped her mouth shut and left the consultation window.
Hell. That hadn’t worked. “Sorry,” he said to the establishment in general, and started for the door.
“TreShawn, now you wait.”
Minako had slipped off her white coat and was coming toward him. “First, your grand gesture skills suck.”
“I get it, Min. I’ll leave you alone.”
“Second,” she said, grabbing hold of his arm then hugging him around his neck as she kissed him with peach-balm-scented lips, “I’m on break and was thinking you could demonstrate the just the sex you’ve been reading lately.”
It took him a solid ten seconds to trust he’d heard her correctly. But when the bell jingled over the door, and he saw her walking out, he caught her on the sidewalk, lifting her and spinning her until she laughed.
This time he wouldn’t let her go.
*
Joey came home past midnight following Charlotte and Nate’s rehearsal dinner. The wedding excitement was enough to keep her busy and almost distract her from the fact that once again she’d be coming home to an empty house.
Empty house, empty arms, empty heart. Zaf had taken up so much space in each, and she missed him with a yearning that’d leave her sick if she dwelled on it too long.
The man had been gone for days, but to her it felt as if a few lifetimes had passed since he’d been inside her.
It would ease, though, and she’d get on with someone new, because she was tough that way. But getting there, moment by moment, only worked if a person wanted it to.
She didn’t want to get over Zaf. Not now that honesty was on the table. He loved her—had always loved her. She loved him, too, yet they were apart.
“Story of my crazy life,” she mu
ttered, nosing the Camaro into the garage. She pulled her thoughts back to the flurry of maid of honor duties directly ahead. After the ceremony and reception, Charlotte and Nate would be off to the luxurious, sensual beaches of Aruba. There’d be plenty of time to contemplate her sad excuse for a love life then.
Inside she yawned all the way to the hamper that held her freshly washed pajamas, changed and started to remove her earrings as she padded with her cane to the kitchen.
At the dinner she’d had champagne, then coffee, and now needed about a pitcher of iced water.
The phone rang. Odd, as absolutely no one dialed her landline after midnight. “Hello?”
“Josephine.”
“Ma—”
“Shh! Listen to me carefully, Josephine,” her mother instructed, and the heavy puff of her breath on the line raised the fine hairs on Joey’s skin. “Talk as if I’m one of your friends, okay? We have been tracking Gian DiGorgio’s known vehicles—”
“Okay, you have to stop meddling. I’m going to hang up now. I’m tired.”
“Josephine!”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Buenas noches—”
“He’s near your home. I don’t know exactly where. I’ve called the police—”
“You didn’t.” So the only thing more nerve grating than having a hovering mom was having Agent 99 as your hovering mom. Now the neighborhood could add police cruisers to the list of unusual vehicles found at Josephine de la Peña’s property. She wouldn’t be surprised if the neighborhood petitioned her immediate relocation.
“You’re not pleased with me, I know. But, Josephine, I’m your mother first. Always.”
“Sure, Mamá.” She could see this leading to a drawn-out discussion and figured she’d need more water. “Hang on a sec.”
Joey set the phone down and went for the pitcher.
Which she dropped to the floor when Gian DiGorgio stepped into the kitchen through the mudroom.
And now she was pissed.
“How the hell did you get in my house?”
“Through the garage,” he said in a cavalier, mocking tone, gesturing to the mudroom. “You opened the garage and I thought it’d be easier than going through the hassle of front entry in this quiet neighborhood of yours. Please, have a seat.”
One More Night with You Page 19