And maybe that was part of his appeal. She was free to imagine anything she wanted, to invest him with all kinds of magical qualities. He could be the man of her dreams.
Harmless enough, as long as she kept him a fantasy.
“Don’t you need some kind of proof first that he’s involved?”
“I’m not going to drag him in and beat him up,” Jack said stiffly. “But there’s nothing to stop me from approaching the guy on the street and starting a conversation.”
He looked so hard and dangerous. He made her feel so safe.Jack Rossi to the rescue.
She fought a shiver of longing.
He must have caught the movement, because his eyes narrowed. “What?”
As if she were accusing him of police brutality when in fact she admired his ability to do his job within the constraints of the law. “I’m just wondering where you draw the line between your personal and professional life.”
His jaw set. “I don’t.”
He still sounded stiff. Defensive. Her insides squeezed in sympathy.
She nodded, emboldened by her understanding. “I guess that’s something we have in common. It’s hard sometimes to maintain an appropriate emotional distance. I mean, you have to care to do your job.”
He was looking at her oddly. “I meant I don’t have a personal life.”
“Oh.” She was embarrassed. “I find that hard to believe.” He was so attractive.
“Then you haven’t ever dated a cop.”
She didn’t date. She hung out. She hooked up. But never with a cop before.
“Cops can’t have personal lives?”
“When? Days I’m on, I work split shifts, do the rounds in the morning, another at the end of the day. So I don’t get home ’til seven, eight o’clock. I work weekends. I’m on call nights.”
“You must get some time off.”
“Sure. A couple hours in the afternoon to do paperwork, run errands.” A corner of his mouth kicked up. “And I made it a rule that if I get called out in the middle of the night, somebody better be bleeding or somebody’s going to jail.”
She smiled. “Setting boundaries.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m not very good at that.”
Another sidelong glance. “You got problems with your fans?”
“My... Oh, my readers? No, not really. My readers are wonderful. Aside from the occasional creepy guy at book signings. I was talking about my clients.”And Ben. But she never talked about Ben.
The peaked roof of the Pirates’ Rest emerged through the trees. They were almost at the inn. Disappointment curled inside her. Her moment-out-of-time with Fantasy Man was almost over.
“My wife was a cop,” Jack said out of the blue.
My wife.
The two words punched into her midsection, robbing her of breath. A doorknob moment, they called it in therapy, when a client dropped a major bombshell admission on his or her way out the door.
Was. Past tense.
“She’s not...” Lauren trailed off tactfully.
