“No. I’m just bitching because I hate sitting through meetings when I’d rather be doing something else. Anything else.”
Jason’s eyes lit with a look that told me I wouldn’t like whatever idea he’d hatched in his head, so before he could verbalize what his stare communicated I cut him off.
“The answer is no,” I told him. “I took my med discharge because after the explosion I was facing a desk job in the Navy and not looking forward to three years staring at intel reports and sitting in on briefings.”
“Worth a shot,” Jason muttered. “And since you hate intel reports, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Dylan was putting a file on your desk when I passed by your office.”
“The case Ethan punted us,” I offered. “I asked Dylan to run some of the names again.”
Ethan was another Lenox. He was a detective and one of the last holdouts. He and Jackson Clark weren’t ready to come aboard and work the family business. Though if I had to guess, Ethan would make the move before Jackson, who was living his childhood dream of being a fire fighter.
“The cold case?”
“Yeah. After reading the reports, I agree with Ethan. The original investigation was botched. The detectives were so focused on the family they didn’t look at much else.”
“The girl was taken from her bed—no signs of forced entry—and found buried in the backyard of a vacant rental property the parents owned,” he told me something I knew.
And Jason knowing it meant he’d read through the files as well.
“Didn’t say the family wasn’t a good place to start, just that the investigation shouldn’t have ended there.”
Jason’s phone chirped again and he sighed.
“I gotta go. But I wanna see what Dylan came up with.”
“We’ll talk later.”
As soon as Jason left the gym, my thoughts wandered back to Shiloh. Not the news her dad’s a cop killer. Not that she has a six-foot-five brother named Echo and two other brothers besides. I didn’t wonder about the four Kent siblings and how they all are in law enforcement.
Nope. My thoughts went to where they’d gone every time I’d thought about Shiloh in the last few days—to how my palms had itched to linger a little longer when I was straightening her hips. Her quick quip about buying her dinner first. How nicely her ass would fit in my hands when I cupped it as she rode me. Dirty thoughts that invaded and made my cock twitch. Fantasies that would go unfulfilled.
I shoved all thoughts of Shiloh back into the closet marked Do Not Enter and went back to my workout. An hour later I was in the shower when pretty blue eyes and gleaming blonde hair came to mind. The way the honey locks would look against my black sheets. How those pastel-colored eyes would darken with lust. My imagination was running wild with possibilities, my cock thick and ready. With no relief in my future, I slapped the spigot to cold and endured an icy hell until my dick was soft and my balls had crawled up to find warmth. Only then did I exit the shower, dress, and get to work.
Six hours later my desk was covered in background checks Dylan had run. I was reminded how much I hated intel reports. This was not my specialty. I was a door kicker, then I was a sniper. I had zero patience for reading reports. Send me out into the woods and I could lie motionless for hours. Silently stalk my prey for days if necessary. But sit me behind a desk for eight hours and I’d come out of my skin.
Luckily for me, it didn’t happen very often. As in rarely. But Ethan had been hung up on this case since another detective in his department had retired and the cold case hit his desk. Ethan seldomly reached out to Triple Canopy. That wasn’t to say TC hadn’t in the past contracted with local law enforcement from time to time but Ethan didn’t like to use the family resource unless he truly needed to.
And after combing over everything he’d given us I could understand why he needed help. The case was ten years old. No suspects were identified other than the parents. It was Ethan’s belief the parents were innocent. But the glaring question remained; how did the parents not hear an intruder? The mother’s reason satisfied the detective. She was under the care of a sleep doctor, had been for years. Her medical records showed she’d had insomnia going back to childhood. Two years prior to her daughter’s death she stopped driving after she was in a car accident that was her fault. She’d fallen asleep behind the wheel. The night the little girl was taken, the mother had taken a heavy dose of a sleeping aid that was prescribed by her doctor. But the husband? The master bedroom was twenty-three feet down the hall.
Why didn’t he hear?
My wonderings were interrupted when the landline on my desk rang, the sound so foreign it startled me. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d heard it ring in the months I’d been at TC. Everyone called my cell.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Luke?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Sunny.”
Shiloh. And she sounded out of breath.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. God, I must sound like a huffing bull. It’s pouring rain and I’m parked on the far end of the lot. I made a run for it but had my gear too…and…I’m rambling. To answer your question, yes, I’m fine.”
Fuck, the girl was cute.
“Anyway, I was calling because the other day I left in a hurry and forgot to ask you if you wanted to meet for a drink sometime.”
Grateful I was alone in my office and there was no one there to witness my body’s reaction to her question. Stiff would be an understatement.
“Not dinner?” I returned.
Stiff turned into throbbing when her burst of laughter came through the phone.
“Luke, Luke, Luke, are you trying to get into my pants again?”
Damn, she was funny.
“I don’t believe in trying.”
“Then you won’t take offense when I turn down your offer to dinner.”
No, baby, I won’t take offense. Dinner will be an unnecessary waste of time.
I wisely didn’t share my thoughts.
“When would you like to meet for drinks?”
“Tonight?”
Was that hope I detected in her tone?
I glanced over my desk, happy to call it a day. I started to collect the papers.
“Works for me. When and where?”
“There’s a bar called Balls on Havenhurst. An hour give you enough time?”
My lips twitched and I again bit back a wisecrack. Though I didn’t stop myself from thinking I liked she was eager to see me and didn’t bullshit and play games.
“I know the bar. I’ll see you in an hour,” I told her.
“Later.”
Shiloh disconnected and I wasted no time cleaning up my desk and closing down for the night. With traffic, it would take thirty minutes to get to the bar—Balls. How apt since later I’d be going home alone with the same blue balls I’d had since I’d met her.
Drinks weren’t a good idea.
Dinner was out of the question.
Getting into her pants was not something I was going to do.
Yet ten minutes later I was in my truck driving to a bar to have drinks with a woman who was a temptation. A woman I wouldn’t allow myself to have.