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Aiden is six foot three inches of delicious, greek god-ness wrapped up in an expensive suit that hugs his muscular frame in a way that would affect even the most devout nun. Combine that with his dark hair and piercing blue eyes and it’s a recipe for disaster. One that I must never indulge in. I first met Aiden just a few weeks before I started working here at the radio show when he witnessed me verbally eviscerating a man who had pissed me off at a bar. Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you the guy’s name or what he did to make me so angry but I very clearly remember Aiden approaching me a few minutes later to strike up a conversation. At first, I assumed he was interested in taking me home and let me tell you, one look at him and I was in but when he offered me a job instead, it complicated things. Had I met him anywhere else, in any other circumstance, I would have been climbing him like a tree in minutes flat but he is my boss and that is absolutely a line I will not cross.

Not that Aiden has gotten the memo.

He meets my gaze and his eyes heat. I suck in a breath as he drags his tongue along his bottom lip and his eyes trail down my body, taking in the tight leather pants and black booties I picked out for this evening. A string of profanities rush through my thoughts.

“Got any plans tonight, Izzy?” he asks, hope in his eyes and a few more curse words fly through my head. God, the man is smoking hot with the promise of mind-blowing orgasms in his eyes but I cannot allow myself to succumb to his charms. The sex would be good - amazing, even - but mixing business and pleasure is never a good idea and it turns out, I love this job more than I ever expected to so I refuse to do anything to jeopardize that. But I respect Aiden and I appreciate the opportunity he’s given me so I won’t tell him off like I would any other guy, which means I’m walking a very precarious line between giving into the chemistry between us and making sure he doesn’t fire me.

“Yeah, I’ve got a hot date tonight.”

Of course, it’s with a carton of lo mein and my television but he doesn’t need to know that. Let him think I’m having wild, crazy sex with someone so he’ll let this attraction of his go. His face falls and my stomach clenches. It’s not because of Aiden though. Thoughts of hot sex always makes me think of someone else, someone I’ve been actively avoiding thinking about for months now and I blow out a breath as I struggle to keep him out. When I was a kid, I dreamed about meeting the love of my life, getting married, and having a family just like all of the other girls. It was a fairy tale and unrealistic and when it was ripped away from me, I spent a lot of years being angry and hiding it from everyone before I made the decision to take control of my emotions. It’s what led me to the rules I have now for dating and there has ever only been one man who made me question my lifestyle and even that was short lived before I buried the ridiculous notion back in the deepest pit of hell, where it belonged.

“That’s exciting,” Stella adds, pulling me out of my thoughts as she looks up from her bag, oblivious to Aiden’s disappointment and the tension suddenly filling the booth. I can’t understand how she doesn’t notice when it feels like it’s choking me. “It’s been a while since you’ve been out with anyone, hasn’t it?”

I nod. “A little while, yeah.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it then,” Aiden says as he turns to leave. “See you Monday.”

“Bye, Aiden. Have a good night,” I call, wondering if I should just be upfront with him but in my experience, men like Aiden see something like that as a challenge and I can’t have that. There was a time in my life when I would have bucked the rules and slept with my boss anyway and I would have loved making him chase me but so much has changed in the last few months that I honestly don’t even recognize myself anymore. Aiden doesn’t even glance back at me as he leaves the booth and heads up the stairs to his office. Once he’s out of sight, I sigh and stand up to grab my bag off my chair.

“Want to walk out with me?” Stella asks, pulling her head out of her purse and standing up. I nod, throwing my bag over my shoulder as she does the same and heads for the door. I follow her out of the booth.

“Have a good night, Casey,” I call and he flashes me a grin.

“You, too, Izzy. See you in a few days.”

Stella and I make idle chitchat as we walk out of the building, but my mind is still consumed with everything I’ve been trying to forget, everything that’s been messing with me lately and I barely hear her as she goes on about wishing she could find a good man.

“Have a good night, girls,” Daryl, the security guard stationed outside the front door, calls as we walk past him and we turn back, offering him a smile as we wave. Aiden insists on having security by the door at all times, not only to watch over the station but Stella and me since our show ends so late. Despite that, Stella is super vigilant and always asks me to walk out with her since we park right next to each other when we arrive to host our show. Also, I’m ninety percent sure she’s got pepper spray and a mini taser in her purse, just in case all else fails. When we reach her car, she unlocks the door before turning back to me and flashing me a smile.

“Thanks for walking with me.”

I nod. “Of course. Have a good night.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” she shoots back with a smirk. “Have fun on your date and I can’t wait to hear all about it Monday night.”

I laugh but it feels insincere. “I’ll be sure to take notes for you.”

“Perfect,” she answers before slipping behind the wheel of her car and she waves to me as she pulls out of her parking spot. I watch her pull out of the lot, my stomach churning as my mind swims with all of the secrets I’m keeping and the fact that I’m lying to almost everyone in my life right now.

Chapter Two

Diego

“R U Mine?” by Arctic Monkeys spills out of the speakers and I sigh. My eyes burn as I stare down at the case file on the desk in front of me, the words blurring to the point that I can’t even pretend to make out what it says on the page anymore. Not that it matters much. I’ve been staring at this case for a week straight and I have the whole damn thing memorized backward and forward. The information inside, which is limited, hasn’t been doing me a bit of good and it’s driving me to fucking madness. I have no witness statements, no evidence that should have been collected at the scene, and the rape kit that was performed at the hospital just after the attack has “magically” disappeared. As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, I have no way of digging into this and getting the proof of guilt I need to do anything worthwhile without turning it into more of a mess than it already is. Sighing, I scrub my hand over my eyes, squeezing them shut in the hopes that it will ease my pounding head. It doesn’t and I clench my teeth.

Fuck.

I used to be a damn good detective, one of the best in the city - something my mother would tell all of her friends with pride anytime the opportunity arose - but that feels like a damn lifetime ago. Since leaving the force and coming to work for Devil in the Details Investigations, the P.I. business run by my club, it seems like I always end up right back here, staring at a case file and hoping to discover something I missed in the first hundred read throughs. Is this just the nature of investigative work? You just stare at the same damn shit, racking your brain for an idea or a lead until, miraculously, you catch a break?

No…

I know that can’t be true because, like I said, I used to be good at this shit. I used to see things in a way nobody else could. I used to close cases and put the bad guys away before everything fell the fuck apart. When I first joined the police academy a couple of years after graduating high school, I had this vision for my life and a purpose that I felt so deeply in my soul that I never questioned it. I wanted to help people and I was so sure that when I reached the end of my time on this earth, I would look proudly on my life and tell people about the good I achieved. And in the beginning of my career, I truly think I did make a difference, but as the years passed and I worked my way up through the department to detective, things became so fuzzy. Men that I admired, idolized as the epitome of justice and truth, turned out to be just as dirty as the criminals I was putting away and by the time I walked away, I didn’t recognize myself or my life. I was so far away from the man I set out to be that I was certain I had to be moving onto something better but just sitting around like this, trying to think of a direction to look in, is for the fucking birds.

I need action.

I need direction.

I need something to do because being stuck in this office is making me lose my goddamn mind. Letting out a humorless laugh, I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling. Who the fuck am I kidding? My life has been an absolute shit show for so long now and this small annoyance, this insignificant irritant is not going to be the thing that breaks me. I’ve been through hell already and I refuse to let this be the nail in my proverbial coffin.