“I was the one who convinced you you’d be great at this PI thing. I think you owe me a thank you.”
She gave me the cutest sideways look. Maybe it was supposed to come across as intimidating or whatever, but all I saw were those fucking lips twisted in a frown, and I wanted to kiss the hell out of them.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“So, you’re saying you don’t remember me telling you that lying fucker you used to date was full of it and that you had what it takes to make it happen as a PI?”
“I do not recall that conversation,” she said with an upturned face.
Chuckling, I took another sip of my coffee. “Yeah, all right. As long as you didn’t listen to that no good, lying sack of pubic hair.”
She burst out laughing. “What?”
“Your ex. You heeded my words over his, so it’s fine. Actions speak louder than words.”
She didn’t respond but the grin that played at her lips was all the satisfaction I needed.
“Hey, I was thinking,” she started. “I might not be able to look into it today, but what if we’re approaching this case all wrong?”
Squinting, I lowered my coffee mug to the countertop and folded my arms across my chest. “How so?”
“From early on, we’ve had it in mind that this is a firefighter, but what if it’s not? What if this is, like, the victim of a fire that you guys were called on? Or maybe the family member of a victim? I mean, as an officer, you hear all the time about family members threatening the police officer or DA who arrested or put away their family member.”
“I’ve already looked into that angle.”
She gave me a surprised look, and I debated on whether to tell her about the call I’d made to Hallease. It had taken a week for her to get back to me with the list of cases.
“Carter suggested the family member angle,” I said. “I did a little research to look into past calls when a person was badly injured, or someone died. Aside from the cases that I suspect the arsonist is involved in, none of them stood out.”
“You weren’t going to tell me?” she griped.
My cock jumped in my jeans in response to her anger.
Shit.
“I could’ve had Hallease look up those cases. We could’ve gone back a decade or more. Are you sure there wasn’t something there?”
A thread of guilt wound around the muscle inside my chest, and I wanted to kick my ass for what I was about to say. “I was going to tell you,” I defended when she appeared as if she was going to let me have it. “I checked into it as soon as I thought about it, and it panned out fairly quickly.”
“You could’ve called me, or told me at some point in the last two weeks we’ve seen each other.”
I moved closer and lowered my hands to her hips. She’d changed out of the shorts and replaced them with jeans, but the heat between our closeness burned the same.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead and then ran the tip of my nose down her cheek. She shivered in my arms, and I smiled against her soft skin. Damn, she felt good.
“We still need to look into Rogers. He’s our best bet. I can feel it.”
“Captain at Station Two?”
I nodded, my face still pressed against hers. I didn’t want to pull away.
“I-I can run a background on him.”
The tremble in her voice spoke to my insides. Try as she might, I knew I had as much of an impact on her as she had on me. I’d known it ever since that night we’d spent walking around and talking for hours. It’d been years since I’d had so much fun with a woman with all my clothes on.
“I’m craving one of those spicy sausages on a roll again,” I mumbled. “What are you doing Saturday night?”
“Don...”
