The Thing About Love

by Julie James

“I would expect you’ll get official word of the committee’s decision late in the day on Wednesday.” Blair’s voice dipped lower. “And then you and I will have some business to settle.”

  “If we get that call from the committee,” Jessica emphasized, because Ashley was hardly the kind of businesswoman to travel halfway across the country based solely on a man’s word, “Dave and I will be on a plane the next morning.”

  “There is no if, Ashley—this is a done deal. I told you, in my city, I always get what I want.” Blair left it at that and hung up.

  Jessica checked to make sure the call was disconnected, and sighed.

  Turning and returning to some secret place inside.

  Yep. That song was going to be stuck in her head all day.

  23

  After leaving the conference room, Jessica bypassed her cubicle and headed for the stairwell, so she could update John and let him know that they likely would be traveling to Jacksonville on Thursday. Sure, she supposed she could call him, or even simply send him a text message, but she felt like giving him the news in person. It was . . . a chance to stretch her legs. Get some exercise. Very important, that, when one had a desk job.

  She took the stairs two flights down and then followed the hallway into the main office area. Having never been on the fifth floor before, she looked around curiously. For the most part, it looked the same as her own floor: a large open space filled with cubicles that were broken into groups, floor-to-ceiling windows, and various whiteboards and bulletin boards with case information lining the internal walls. Tucked into the corner, with windows that looked out over the group, was a small, private office belonging to the squad leader.

  She passed by several cubicles, looking for John’s, and smiled to herself when she spotted his nameplate above a currently unoccupied desk by the window.

  JOHN M. SHEPHERD

  SPECIAL AGENT

  Interesting . . . John M. Shepherd. She made a mental note to find out what the middle initial stood for. Michael, perhaps. Or maybe Matthew?

  Inquiring minds wanted to know.

  Tabling that issue for the moment, she headed over to see if John’s squad mates knew where he was. There were five of them—all men—in the nearby cubicles. Busy working, they didn’t notice as she approached.

  “Excuse me. Do any of you happen to know if John is around?”

  At the sound of her voice, all five agents peeked their heads over the tops of their cubicles. There was a split-second silence as they looked at her, and then three of the agents stood up, as if to introduce themselves.

  The tall agent with light brown hair got to Jessica first, extending his hand with an easy grin. “You must be Agent Harlow. Ryan Hannigan.”

  Someone behind him cleared his throat.

  Without looking back, Ryan gestured in the direction of the other guys. “Agents Choi, Samuels, Botsch, and Lanarrelli.”

  In turn, each of them smiled and said hello.

  “Actually, we met a couple weeks ago, in the elevator.” Botsch, the youngest-looking of the group, paused as if searching for more to say. “We were both going up.”

  Agent Choi rested his arm on the cubicle wall. “We heard you’re from the Los Angeles office. What was it like there?”

  “Warm,” Jessica said.

  The five of them laughed like this was the funniest thing.

  She smiled with them. Yeah . . . she was quickly getting the impression they didn’t have a lot of female agents on this squad.

  “I was hoping to talk to John about a development in our case.” She checked her watch and saw that it was four thirty. “Is he gone for the day? I can always just try his phone.”

  “He took off a little early—said he was heading to the gym,” Ryan said. “That was only about twenty minutes ago, so I’m sure he’s still there.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check it out.” With a friendly nod good-bye, she headed in the direction of the elevators and hit the button for the second floor, where the building’s state-of-the-art gym was located.

  Currently, the gym was relatively quiet—not unexpectedly for this time of day. A few agents ran on the indoor track, and two more were using the cardio machines. No sign of John, so she headed toward the weight room.

  She found him there, working the heavy bag.

  Wearing a fitted gray T-shirt and athletic shorts, he moved around the bag while throwing different combinations. Each punch was powerful and controlled, a fluid movement of hips and shoulders and arms and footwork. Sweat made the T-shirt cling to his broad, toned chest, while his strong forearms and biceps flexed and strained gloriously with each hit.

  And she had slept with this man.

  Her lips curved in a private smile.

  Damn right she had.

  His eyes met hers in the mirror behind the heavy bag, and she regrouped. Right. Work first; ogle her hot partner later.

  She crossed the room and leaned against a rack of dumbbells. “Your squad mates said you cut out a little early today.”

  He grunted in response and kept hitting the bag.

  She spotted his phone on the mat, saw that he had the timer going, and assumed he was doing some sort of interval training. Forty-six seconds left, according to the clock.

  She’d wait. The view wasn’t half bad, after all.

  He hit the bag with a punishing right hook, so forceful she half expected it to go flying through the air.

  Actually, the view was pretty darn fantastic.

  He moved the way he would in a real fight, his footwork active as he worked a variety of shots, hitting from different angles and changing speeds. He focused intently on the bag, striking hard in two- and three-punch combinations.

  As she watched, she sensed that something was off. Granted, she hardly expected the man to smile and giggle as he kicked the shit out of a hundred-pound bag, but still, he looked . . . aggravated.

  The timer on his phone went off and he ended the interval with another right hook that had some truly bad intentions behind it. Stepping back from the bag, he glanced her way, then yanked open the strap of one of his gloves with his teeth.

  She walked over to his phone, bent down, and hit the button to stop the beeping timer. Next to his phone was a water bottle, so she picked it up and handed it to him.

  “Thanks,” he panted.

  “You’re welcome.” She watched as he chugged the water, beads of sweat trickling down the sides of his face. “How many rounds do you do?”

  “Ten. Three minutes each.”

  She waited for the expected teasing comment or quip, but instead he took another sip of water.

  Something was definitely off.

  “You seem irritated,” she commented.

  “Yes. Somebody interrupted my workout,” he shot back.

  Hmm. Good poker face, and he sounded flip enough, but she wasn’t buying it. So she simply cocked her head and waited.

  He scoffed. “What is this, the good-cop routine?”

  “Do I need to break out the good-cop routine?”

  He gave her a look, and she raised an eyebrow.

  He sighed resignedly. “It’s no big deal, Harlow. I handed over my biggest case to another agent today. Armenian street gang. Extortion, violent crimes, illegal firearms deals, narcotics—you name it, these guys are guilty of it. We’ve been running wiretaps on twenty-four different phone numbers, and I just convinced a man on the inside to flip. Took me months to make that happen—he put a lot of trust in me to keep him and his family safe.” He shrugged. “The new agent will take care of him, I know that. It’s just . . . very unsatisfying to walk away.”

  Jessica nodded. She’d recently been in this position herself, when she’d transferred from Los Angeles to Chicago and had to give up all of her cases. Agents spent months on investigations, often longer, and sometimes the wor
k became very personal.

  But there was a bright side. “There are plenty of bad guys where you’re headed, John. And lots of people in really terrible situations who will be kept safe because you were there to make sure of it.”

  He seemed momentarily surprised by the sincerity of her tone. Then he looked at her, taking in her high heels and tailored suit, and held out the gloves.

  “Want to go a round?” The teasing gleam was back in his eyes.

  Cute. “The last time we faced off on a boxing mat, that didn’t go so well for you.”

  “You distracted me last time. But now I know your tricks.”

  She smiled coyly at that. “I think I could still find ways to distract you.”

  Their eyes met, her words lingering in the air as two agents walked into the weight room.

  Back to business.

  “Blair called me this afternoon,” she told John.

  “He called you directly?” His less-than-enthused expression reflected his opinion on that, but he made no further comment. “What he’d say?”

  She filled him in on the situation. “Blair seems confident the committee is going to approve our variances. I’ll call Leavitt when I get back to my desk and bring him up to speed.”

  “I’m around this evening if he wants to talk to us both.” John glanced at the two agents over by the bench press, then looked back at her. “You getting out of here soon?” His tone was casual—just an agent making chitchat with his partner at four thirty on a Friday afternoon.

  But there was a warm look in his eyes as he held her gaze.

  “I shouldn’t be here too much longer. Probably another hour.” She let that sit for a moment, and then she smiled. “I’ll let you know if Leavitt says anything noteworthy. Otherwise . . . have a good weekend, Shepherd.”

  She turned and left the room, nodding at the two other agents on her way out. When back at her desk, she called Leavitt, who was understandably surprised to learn that he was out of the loop.

  “Blair called you directly? He’s stepping up his game,” Leavitt said.

  “Lucky me.” They discussed the logistics of Thursday’s meeting, and then Jessica booked her hotel room and began looking into flights to Jacksonville.

  As she was checking out the available seats on the plane—a window for her, an aisle for John, per usual—it hit her that this was the last trip the two of them would take together.

  When do you leave?

  Labor Day weekend.

  “Everything okay?”

  Jessica blinked, realizing that she’d been staring at her computer screen for who-knew-how-long. She turned around and saw one of her squad mates, Vaughn Roberts, standing in the aisle with his briefcase in hand.

  “Yes. Just finalizing some travel plans.” She smiled—relaxed, not too bright. Nothing to see here. “Heading out?”

  She chatted with Vaughn for a few minutes—nice guy, new dad, had lots of funny stories about all the ways in which his two-month-old daughter was keeping him and his wife on their toes—and then, shortly thereafter, she called it quits, too.

  As she was walking across the parking lot, heading to her car, her cell phone buzzed with a new text message.

  From John.

  What’s your address?

  She didn’t have to ask why he was asking—that was obvious. She glanced around the parking lot, feeling a little clandestine to be trading these kinds of messages with her partner while still at work.

  500 W Superior, she typed back, and hit send.

  She waited for her inner pragmatic to tell her this wasn’t a good idea, that what happened in Jacksonville should stay in Jacksonville, blah, blah.

  But instead . . . silence.

  Jessica smiled to herself.

  Apparently, her inner pragmatic had enjoyed the view of John in his sweaty T-shirt, too.

  24

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has indicated it’s now safe for you to use all approved electronic devices. In a few moments, the flight attendants will be making their way through the cabin to offer you . . .”

  Next to John, Jessica pulled her laptop out of her briefcase as soon as the announcement was made.

  “No trusty e-reader today?” he asked.

  “Unfortunately, I have to write two 302s. I was supposed to do them earlier in the week.”

  “Falling behind in your paperwork? Tsk, tsk, Harlow. I think that’s grounds to be stripped of your high mark in academics.” He put a hand to his chest. “As the first runner-up, I happily accept the award instead.”

  Eyes on her computer, she was already typing away. “Never going to happen, Shepherd. Learn to live with the disappointment.”

  He fought back a smile, his eyes roving over her slim-cut black pantsuit and heels. They hadn’t seen each other since he’d left her place early Saturday morning, and being with her again—just the two of them, trading jabs on a plane—felt good.

  Really good, actually.

  Between her work schedule and his personal commitments, he and Jessica seemed to have been going in different directions this week. On Saturday, he and Wes had driven two hours out of the city and camped at Starved Rock—a tradition of theirs, the same thing they’d done before John had left for basic training, and then again when he’d been assigned to the Detroit field office. Sunday, he’d gotten back into town just in time for dinner at his dad’s house, and then he and his brother had spent the evening shooting hoops at Foster Beach, on one of the illuminated basketball courts.

  During a break, John had sat on one of the benches by the water, checking out the nighttime skyline in the distance.

  “Think you’ll miss it?” his brother asked, sitting down next to him.

  “Of course,” John said. Just because there were bigger opportunities out there for him didn’t mean it was easy to say good-bye to everything he was leaving behind.

  Nate was quiet for a moment. “You know I only make the superhero-camp jokes because I don’t like saying good-bye, right?”

  “I’ll be back.” John paused. “And actually, I kind of like the superhero-camp jokes.”

  “Of course you do. Fucking egomaniac,” Nate muttered, under his breath. He looked sideways at John, and then they both started laughing.

  After a comfortable silence fell between them, John glanced at his brother. Despite all the joking around, and the fact that much of their relationship was based on trying to annoy the crap out of each other, they’d always been close. So as a parting gift, he decided to give Nate something he would cherish for years to come.

  The satisfaction of being right.

  “I had sex with Jessica Harlow.”

  Nate’s eyes widened. “I knew there was something going on with you two. When?”

  “Last week, when we were traveling. And then again a couple nights ago.”

  Nate gripped his shoulder. “Aw, this is huge. After six years, you finally got her to sleep with you.” He squeezed John’s shoulder in congratulations. “So? Was she worth the wait?”

  John took a sip of water to cover his smile.

  Clearly, his brother had never met Jessica Harlow.

  • • •

  Halfway through the flight, Jessica took a break from her writing and stretched her arms over her head. She looked at the files stacked on John’s tray table.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I pulled the debriefing reports for some of HRT’s biggest missions. Figured it can’t hurt to know my history before I show up for NOTS,” John said.

  She leaned over, checking out the report on his lap. “Waco? Not exactly light reading, that.”

  No kidding. Eighty-six people dead, including four federal agents, in what was one of HRT’s most well-known—and controversial—missions. “So, what’s this new case you had to travel for?” he
asked, more interested in talking about her than an operation that was over two decades old. He’d texted her on Monday to see if she wanted to get together, and she’d shot him back a message saying she’d gotten a last-minute assignment out of town and would be gone until Wednesday evening.

  He’d understood, of course. But still, he’d been disappointed.

  “It’s an investigation being handled by the Columbia field office,” she told him. “The solicitor of Lexington, South Carolina, reached out to them regarding a complaint he received against one of the city’s police officers.”

  “Lexington, South Carolina?” That was a new one. “What’s the complaint?”

  “A woman claims she was sexually assaulted by a police officer who responded to her 911 call. Apparently, she and her boyfriend had gotten in an argument earlier that evening, he beat her in their home and then took off when she called the cops. She says that when the police officer arrived, instead of helping her, he took her into a bedroom, fondled her and exposed himself, and then arrested her for making a phony 911 call.”

  John shook his head in disgust.

  “I know. It’s awful,” Jessica said. “The solicitor believes she’s telling the truth, which is why he brought the case to the FBI—so we could investigate the potential civil rights violations. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to corroborate the victim’s story. And to make things more complicated, she’d been drinking that night. You know exactly how that will play out in court—especially when she’s testifying against a police officer with a clean record. So to alleviate that problem, the case agents in Columbia put together a plan to try to catch the cop red-handed. That’s where I come in.”

  “What kind of plan?” John asked, even though he had a pretty good idea where she was going with this.

  “I’ll pretend to be a domestic assault victim—fake bruises, overturned furniture on the scene, the whole works—and we make sure this cop gets my 911 call. We’ll put cameras and mics all over the place, I’ll act like I’ve been drinking, and when the cop arrives . . . we’ll see what happens.”

  He looked her in the eyes. “Meaning, you’ll see if he tries to sexually assault you, too.”