Aslen couldn’t put her finger on it. Murray had always been intense, protective and…well, occasionally aggressive, but him bursting onto the scene and bulldozing her fellow rangers this morning had reached a whole new level of absurd. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve said Murray had gotten scared. Except the man had never been scared a day in his life.
Even though she’d showered, she still caught whiffs of smoke and decomposition clinging to her skin. It would take a miracle and a whole lot of tomato juice to get rid of it. Exhaustion weighed on every muscle in her body. She’d trained for this job and kept up on her physical fitness but couldn’t shrug off the weight pulling at her shoulders.
Her phone vibrated from her pocket for the hundredth time with an incoming message. First Danny, then a couple of the other firefighters in her unit. She didn’t know how to respond to any of them. They all wanted to know the same thing: What did the lead ranger of Zion’s law enforcement division want with her?
“You want to make a deal. To do your job.” The lack of tone in Murray’s voice, one that he’d used many times when showing all that disapproval over the years, squeezed her insides. It was an automatic reaction that left her empty and full of shame, though she had nothing to be ashamed about.
He wanted her involved in this investigation. He could tell her it was for her knowledge of arsonist behavior and motivation, but she knew the truth. His experience in law enforcement gave him all the information he needed to track down this suspect, and she was sure there was someone far more qualified he could reach out to—hell, even in her own department—to get the job done. No. He didn’t need her help. He wanted to keep an eye on her.
To be fair, there’d been more than enough times he’d done just that. Not just that first time a classmate had tried to cave Aslen’s face in for showing up to school wearing the sweatshirt she’d left in their shared locker, but countless other nights. The ones she’d tried to forget when she closed her eyes. Murray had been there through almost all of them. Defending her. Comforting her. Giving her a safe place to hide. Fighting the battles she couldn’t win.
But she was never going to be able to make it through this life on her own with him standing in her shadow. No matter how much she appreciated his efforts.
“I want to get something out of this arrangement.” It took everything she had to keep her face expressionless and face off with him from across the two-person round dining room table that’d come with the house. Deep regret carved through her at even the thought of what she was about to demand, but they’d done this dance long enough, hadn’t they? Her wanting more. Him rejecting her over and over. There was only so much she could take, and after facing off with that fire this morning and witnessing the power he held over the rangers in this park, Aslen had reached a breaking point.
Murray waited with that legendary patience he’d never been able to teach her.
“I’ll lend my expertise for your investigation to find the arsonist.” She sucked in a deep breath, her hands shaking oneither side of the plate of food he’d made her. “And after you’ve made the arrest, you’ll let me go.”
As much as he fought to keep his own expression clear, she couldn’t help but note the slight tightening around his eyes. Murray leaned forward in his chair, anything but relaxed, as he interlaced his hands on the table’s surface. “Go where?”
“Anywhere.” That single word hurt more than she wanted to admit. He’d sacrificed everything to keep his promise—to protect her—but now it was time for him to let her go. She’d wanted nothing more than for him to look at her the same way she looked at him since she’d been thirteen years old, but that wasn’t ever going to happen. No matter how many times she tried to convince herself otherwise, Murray Simpson wasn’t capable of that kind of love. And she deserved to find it for herself. “I want a choice, Murray. I want to make my own decisions and make mistakes, even if they get me into trouble. And I want you to trust that I know what’s best for me.”
He didn’t have an answer for that, didn’t even seem to breathe as that dark gaze pinned her frozen in her chair. Muscles flexed in his forearm, and he tore his gaze from hers.
Aslen couldn’t hold back the compulsion to touch him. Sliding her hand across the table, she slipped her fingers over his scarred knuckles. Knuckles that had given a beating when her first boyfriend had gotten too handsy at the back of the movie theater despite her protests. Or when her foster mother had come at her with a broken wine bottle one night, and he’d stepped in front of her with his hand raised to take the hit. “I know you feel the need to watch my back until the day I die, but you’ve been teaching me how to take care of myself for years. Remember all those times I managed to use your momentum and weight against you and had you pinned? Or when I accidentally sliced open your hand by using the knife skills you drilled into me for days on end?”
She traced her thumb over the jagged scar tissue, back and forth, trying to bring his attention back to her, but wasn’t that what she’d been doing for the past twenty years? It didn’t matter how hard she’d pushed herself, how many times she’d aced her classes or that she’d gotten the job of her dreams—it wasn’t enough to impress him. And she never would. But she couldn’t stay in this limbo, waiting for something that would never happen.
His body heat threaded up into her fingers and down her arm, working its way into her chest. The physical weight grounded her, giving her all the more courage to see this through. She loved him. Always had, but he wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment after everyone he’d lost. The moment his brother had vanished, Murray had closed himself off to anything but casual one-night stands and whatever he considered her. And she was afraid that wouldn’t ever change.
“Knowing how to defend yourself and being able to do it in a real-world situation are two different things.” Murray shifted his thumb over hers, the rough calluses dragging against her skin. He redirected his attention to their hands, hers reaching across the table, his close to the edge, and wasn’t that just the perfect representation of their relationship? Her always reaching for him. Him tolerating her effort. What she wouldn’t give for him to ask her to stay, to tell her all the things she’d wanted to hear from him so badly, but it hadn’t worked when she’d told him about her taking this job, and it wouldn’t work now.
“But it’s a start.” She could feel his resolve cracking. “How am I supposed to prove all that time you spent training me is worth anything if you keep coming to my defense?”
He hadn’t pulled away as he had so many times before, as if he needed the physical connection as much as she did in the face of what this deal would mean for both of them. Still, her brain rushed to fill the silence with outlandish and impossiblescenarios to counter the pressure in her chest. He could turn his hand over, drag her into his lap, thread his fingers into her hair at the base of her neck just before he kissed her senseless. She’d imagined what that moment would be like so many times, she could practically feel the sweep of his lips against hers from the other side of the table, taste the mint of his preferred toothpaste on her tongue.
Murray retracted his hand, taking his body heat with him. “All right. You have a deal.”
That…that was it? A sense of acceptance echoed through her head, throwing her back to the day she’d threatened to take the firefighting position in Zion. She’d known exactly how he’d feel about her coming here, to the same national park rangers and police believed to be the last whereabouts for his brother Jackson, but she hadn’t felt like she’d had any other choice to get him to dosomethingat the time.
The weight of his statement nearly crushed her, but she couldn’t back out. Murray Simpson had always been this presence in her life—almost as far back as she could remember—but right then, she saw the pain of losing one more person in his expression. Summoning the last of her reserves, Aslen pulled her own hand back, tucking it beneath the table out of sight with a false brightness in her voice. Her stomach clenched, but the thought of eating only made it worse. She pushed the plate a few inches off to the right. “Guess that means you’re off the hook. Promise fulfilled. What are you going to do with all the free time you’re going to have?”
The joke was meant to lighten another round of heartache threatening to crush her from the inside, but Murray simply shoved away from the table.
“You done?” He unpocketed his keys, fisting them tight as he stared down at her, bringing her attention to the familiar switchblade he kept within hand’s reach since she’d gifted it tohim when he’d made the cut as an officer for the Salt Lake Police department. “We’ve got work to do.”
Aslen could only nod. She’d thought this time would be different, but her optimism was running out when it came to Murray Simpson. As much as it would hurt to lunge into a world she knew nothing about with no backup or support, it was the right thing to do. For both of them. “Okay.”
She made quick work of discarding the omelet he’d made—the couple bites she’d taken sitting in her stomach like a rock—and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. Her phone vibrated again, but she didn’t have the energy to answer Danny right now. This was happening. She would consult Murray and his law enforcement rangers throughout the investigation and then…she would be on her own.
A tremor of excitement skittered through her as Murray held the front door open for her exit. She’d always wanted to travel. In a few days—maybe a couple weeks—she’d have her pick of location. The Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean. Oh, maybe she’d head straight to Scotland. She had the funds. She’d taken a job the minute she’d turned sixteen, gotten scholarships for school and packed a brown-bag lunch every day of her life other than when she and Murray had something to celebrate. Losing everything in the fire and then having nothing to her name in that foster home had taught her to be frugal and save everything she made outside of monthly expenses.
She could do this. No. Shewas goingto do this.
Taking her keys, Aslen locked up once they were outside, then headed for her crappy four-door sedan that had more miles on it than she wanted to admit and a glowing engine light she hadn’t told Murray about for months. “I’ll meet you at headquarters.”
A large, familiar hand slid between her rib cage and arm, directing her toward his truck. Her heart skipped a couple beats at the contact, but she wouldn’t let it show. “We ride together.”
