by Nicole Helm
“Not that I’m complaining, because I have been a cop for almost as long as you.” He shifted, trying to get a read on her expression. “But why the sudden change of heart about my week of just watching?”
She flipped on the siren, eyes and mouth grim. “Because it’s my father’s apartment complex.”
Marc didn’t have a clue what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Since she didn’t seem surprised and was having him handle it, it meant she thought her father was involved, and since she didn’t seem panicked, he had to guess her father was the one armed.
Yeah, really didn’t know what to say about that, so he just watched the road and tried to figure out how he was supposed to handle the armed father of his FTO.
CHAPTER FOUR
TESS TRIED TO keep her limbs steady and her expression strong and impenetrable as she pulled onto the street in front of her father’s place. A crowd had gathered in the tiny parking lot, and Tess’s stomach turned.
This was bad. Like high school when Dad had been locked up for three days bad and she’d been so sure that was it. She was on her own. Forever.
“I’ll handle it.”
Odd that Marc’s calm assertion was a touch comforting. She couldn’t remember anything ever being handled for her. Ever.
Which also made it uncomfortable. But there wasn’t enough time to analyze her feelings here. Not enough time to do much of anything except lean over and lay a hand on Marc’s arm before he could get all the way out of the car.
He waited, eyes resting on her face. Serious and unreadable, the exact expression she was trying to affect and probably failing at.
“If...if possible, see if you can talk everyone out of filing charges.”
He paused, then gave a curt nod and was gone, disappearing into the crowd.
Tess tried to breathe through the panic swirling in her gut. This was her dad and she was letting some guy she barely knew take care of it. Some guy she’d practically had to browbeat into introducing himself to the department.
How could she do that?
Because right now, she wasn’t Thomas Camden’s daughter, she was a police officer. The fact she had no doubt it was her father out there, drunk and armed and so damn out of control, meant her objectivity was skewed and she had to be strong enough to keep herself out of the equation.
Why can’t you help me, Tessie?
Tess had to squeeze her eyes shut against her father’s imploring voice. He did that so well, sounding like someone in desperate need of help, a help he refused to see he had to give himself.
But the way he pleaded, desperate and sad, always pulled against reason, coiled around her heart until her brain shut off.
Sometimes she thought she was as bad as he was. Sometimes she was certain of it.
She watched the clock, counted seconds, did everything to keep herself from pushing out there. She would not be able to go out there and handle things the way they needed to be handled, because no amount of armor would make her not that man’s daughter.
She was bound to him, to this, and if there were any way out she would have found it by now.
The finality, the heavy, depressing realization was too much. She had to get out of the car. She had to act. Because if she didn’t, she’d cry, on the job, and that was worse than losing her objectivity.
The crowd had dispersed somewhat, and Marc was standing in between her weaving father and a skinny young man who had drug user and/or dealer written all over him.
Tess’s stomach sank farther. Dad had only gotten into drugs once, and it had been bad. Lately things had been bad. But how would she have missed that? She would’ve picked up the signs, the signals.
“I can search you if you’d like,” Marc said equitably to the jumpy guy while Dad stood, arms crossed over his chest, face mottled red.
“He attacked me!”
“Witnesses say you started—”
The moron started swearing, but one hard look from Marc and he was swearing his way across the yard and to the door on the corner of the building.
“That little punk stole from me. I want what’s mine,” Dad demanded.
“I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, Mr. Camden. He may have started it, but witnesses weren’t singing your praises, either. You did have a deadly weapon.”
“It’s a butter knife.” Dad stumbled toward Marc. “I want it back, you thief!”
“Dad.”
Her father jerked, bobbled as he turned to face her. He scrunched his face up at her uniform. “I thought I told you not to come here like that, Tessie.”
“I’ve told you not to have cause for any of us to come here.” She took his arm, forcing herself to look at Marc in the most professional way she could muster. “No charges?”
He merely shook his head.
“Then I’ll get him inside. Be back in five.” Tess forced herself to act like a police officer, not like a daughter. She was in uniform, and she would make sure he got inside and didn’t have anything in his apartment and then...they’d go right back to work.
No tears. No guilt. No pain. This just was what it was.
Marc didn’t say anything, he just looked at her. With that hooded, unreadable expression. Then his gaze dropped to her arm and she knew he was putting two and two together. He wasn’t the strong silent type because he didn’t know what to say—it was because he sat back and watched and understood uncomfortable truths.
Her father was the source of the gash on her arm last week. A purposeful, violent outburst. And here Tess was helping the man who’d physically attacked her—a whole lot more than once. She refused to let the quiver of self-disgust into her voice. “I’ll be back in five.”
He nodded, then handed her the butter knife, handle first. It took a few seconds for her brain to engage enough to take it, but when she did, he headed for the patrol car without a word. Tess swallowed down the tears and led her father back to his apartment.
“Why can’t you fix this, Tessie? Why can’t you make it all right?”
She wished she had a clue.
* * *
MARC HADN’T KNOWN what to say the rest of the day, and one thing the incident with her father had done was shut up Ms. Chatty Pants.
He wished he could feel glad about that, but there was an uncomfortable weight in his gut. The weight of knowing Tess was every bit the mess he’d expected, and instead of being able to judge her for it, he felt sorry for her.
Her own father was not only a total ass, he’d hurt her. After witnessing the violence in the man this afternoon, Marc had no doubt the broken-glass excuse was bullshit. Tess’s father had hurt her on purpose.
It made him sick, and he didn’t know what to do about that. He’d seen a lot of crappy things in his career, worse than a lousy father, worse even than an abusive one, but what little he knew about Tess and seeing the way she’d carefully helped her father back into his apartment—yeah, it really made him nauseous.
She pulled her patrol car up to the apartment complex and Marc still didn’t know what to say. What he was supposed to do.
Maybe nothing. If he’d been the one in her place he’d want nothing except for her to pretend it had never happened. She hadn’t said anything since aside from the basics that had to be said to get their job done for the day.
She stepped out of the car and he followed suit, stomach tightening uncomfortably in the face of a situation he had no idea what to do with. He tried to avoid that feeling at all costs. It had been such a damn constant growing up, he’d found all the ways to distance it from himself.
But none of his self-preservation instincts kicked in. He felt drawn to the feeling inside, into figuring out some way...some way to help.
This is not the kind of thing you fix.
He knew
way too much about those things.
They reached the top of the stairs and Tess slowed her pace as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Well, it was an interesting day.” She didn’t meet his gaze, which was unusual for her. This closed-off, shifty way of standing, looking. Discomfort.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out oddly hoarse as he stood by his door.
“Thanks.” She finally met his gaze and the way she oozed embarrassment and pain had him stepping toward her. For what? He had no idea.
“Anyway, good night.” She gave a little nod, looking at the floor, but the slumped posture and the defeat in her spine made him act against every sensible thought in his head.
“Tess.” He didn’t reach out to her, but that’s what he wanted to do. Why the hell did he want to do that?
“The fact of the matter is I’m going to have a good cry, and if you don’t want me to do that all over your shoulder, you better get in your apartment ASAP.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled and the tears were already shimmering in her eyes.
Yes, he should get inside the safety of his apartment. He wanted nothing to do with a crying woman who was his coworker and kind of flinging her life all over his. Her this-precinct-is-a-family edicts and this stuff with her father and making him talk when he normally wouldn’t and...everything.
But he didn’t move to his door. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder, because there was only so much visceral pain he could see in someone else without trying to help.
Not at all smoothly, he pulled her into a hug. He figured it’d be awkward. In the grand scheme of things, he’d never found hugging people anything but awkward.
But she leaned into his shoulder, resting her head there, her fists trapped between his chest and her collarbone. Her breath hitching occasionally.
He wasn’t sure anyone had ever cried on his shoulder before. In particularly tragic situations he dealt with at work, he’d occasionally offer a hand, a shoulder pat, something solid to hold them up.
But never like this.
“A pity hug from you. I am pathetic.” But she didn’t pull away—she sniffled into his shoulder, and it was such a strange sensation. Holding and comforting someone he barely knew. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this for someone he did know.
“How long has he been like that?”
She stiffened. A question she didn’t want to answer, and inevitably the question that got her to pull herself together and step away.
Because the impulse to touch her face, wipe away the tears there, was shockingly strong, he shoved his hands into his pockets. There was something all wrong about this whole exchange, and it wasn’t her crying or pulling away. It was him. His reaction to it. The wanting to understand and fix wasn’t unique; he felt that a lot.
But he never felt compelled to act. Never acted against the voice in his head telling him to put up a barrier or step away. He had learned his lesson from childhood, damn it.
“Look, um, thanks. Really.” She wiped her face with her palms, let out a shaky breath as she looked around. “Can’t say I’ve ever broken down in a hallway before.”
“Where do you usually do your breaking down?”
“Alone.”
Christ.
“But those big broad football shoulders are good for crying on.” She ran her fingertips down his chest, and this was a completely inappropriate time to think of anything sexual, but he could not force himself to be appropriate.
She pulled her hand away and the way she looked at him, he had to wonder if she felt it, too. The little zing of heat and inappropriate attraction.
She took a full step back, eyebrows drawing together. “Anyway. Hopefully you won’t be put in that position again. It isn’t...normal.”
“It isn’t?”
The vulnerable bafflement on her face immediately changed, blanked. “Enjoy your day off tomorrow, Marc. You earned it.”
“I only did my job.”
She cocked her head. “You did a little more than that, Captain Quiet.”
Before he could argue with the obnoxious moniker again, she stepped inside her apartment and shut the door.
He found himself here far too often, wanting to understand more, with a door shut in his face. When he should feel nothing but relief, he felt the exact opposite.
CHAPTER FIVE
TESS SCOOTED FARTHER down into the cooling bathwater. It was her day off and she didn’t want to face it. So much so, she’d taken a bath, something she almost never did. Infrequently enough she didn’t even have bubbles. She’d squirted some shower gel in there and now she was lounging in tepid, bubbleless water.
It seemed terribly appropriate.
At least she didn’t have to face Marc. Small mercies. Her embarrassment wasn’t likely to fade anytime soon, but maybe she could get a better handle on it with a day in between sitting in a car with him for eight hours.
Eight long hours knowing he’d seen through her so easily. All the bravado, all the work she’d done to create this persona, and it’d only taken her father threatening someone with a butter knife and her asking Marc to keep people from pressing charges.
Marc saw her for what she was. A scared little girl with daddy issues so wide no submarine could cross.
She thought about the way she’d cried all over his shoulder then commented on the broadness of said shoulders. It was so out of character. At the very least when she flirted with a guy she didn’t do it in the middle of a good cry.
And she did not flirt with cops. Attraction didn’t matter. She’d seen enough to know if she got together with one cop, all the hard work she’d put into building her reputation would be for nothing. It was rare these days someone rolled their eyes at her simply for her gender.
She wasn’t undoing all that work for an impressive chest. Except she’d already done it with tears and Dad.
It was an impressive chest. What was the harm in a little fantasy when he wasn’t here, and she was in the bath, and—
Nope. Whole lotta harm. Because she had to share a damn patrol car with the guy for weeks upon unending weeks, and she did not need actual fantasies in her head.
Which was enough impetus to get her out of the bathtub. The only problem was—now what? She should go see Dad, check his place for signs of drugs, figure out what was going on.
She should. She should. What else might he do if she didn’t?
I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.
She was over the crying and the hurting. So she’d do the only thing that ever helped that—run her ass off.
She pulled on her running gear and slipped her apartment key in her shoe. She purposefully left her phone on the kitchen counter, strapped her MP3 player to her arm and stepped into the hallway.
There was Marc.
Well, hell.
She mustered her best I-did-not-wipe-snot-on-your-shirt-last-night smile.
“Morning.”
“Um, morning.” He cleared his throat, looking around the hallway at everything but her. “I was, um, going for a run.”
She could see that. Despite the cool March temperatures, he was in shorts. Showing off legs. Long, muscular, powerful, strong legs. A whole lotta adjectives for legs.
She had to stop looking at his legs. “I was, too.” Run till her brain exploded. Hopefully her libido, as well. But not in the fun way.
“Ah.” He nodded, looking at some point behind her on the wall.
“Yeah.” She scratched her head, pointed awkwardly at the stairs. “Um, after you.”
He gave one of those little Marc nods. She could not think of anyone else who could pull off that terse, distanced demeanor and still be something of a marshmallow on the inside.
Marc Santino had hugged her while she’d
cried last night even after she’d given him a total out. No getting around that marshmallow move. Which was not something she had a lot of experience with. Which meant she should be wary, not interested.
“I should...get to it.”
Tess nodded. Not interested. Not interested. Not interested. Her eyeballs weren’t getting the message, because they were homed in on his butt as he walked down the stairs in front of her. Granted, in the loose athletic shorts she couldn’t get a good butt vantage point, but she’d seen it plenty in his uniform pants.
And had apparently unwittingly committed to brain space that it seemed very tight and firm and—yikes.
He paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you know any good...running routes?” He was so stiff and uncomfortable, not making any eye contact.
Tess gave up. “Pretending last night didn’t happen is way more awkward than acknowledging it.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” he muttered.
“Well, maybe it’s just as awkward, but you’re being too weird. I can’t take it.”
“How am I being weird?”
“You’re staring at a light fixture.”
His frown deepened and he purposefully moved his gaze to her. And, zowie, she needed to stop dwelling in Attraction Land. But his eyes were all light brown and mesmerizing and...
Briefly, his gaze dropped, not to the floor, but more like boobs, floor, then quickly back to her face. Wait. Had he just checked her out?
Oh, they were in some trouble.
Focus on the running thing. Now. “I usually run down the waterfront then up the bluff. There’s a path, pretty secluded without being creepy and a nice view.”
“That’s got to be at least four miles.”
“Run until your legs fall off.” She forced a sassy smirk. “Surely you can handle it?” Because there was no doubt about Marc being in fantastic shape. His T-shirt was loose enough in the stomach area, but around those arms? And the shoulders, perfect for snot crying?