Christmas Male(53)

“Pizza and fast food. My brother and I would have loved that. To tell you the truth we hated working in the kitchen at first. Not manly enough. But my mother insisted on being an equal opportunity employer.”

Fiona thought of the woman she’d met at the skating rink and believed she could grow to like her.

“Once the water boils, we’re on a nine-minute timer. So we can squeeze in a little more date talk.” He leaned his hip against the counter and picked up his glass. “Why don’t you ask me a question? There’s got to be something about me you’re still curious about.”

She was, but she hadn’t allowed herself to ask before. There was something about having a man making a mess in her kitchen that undermined her defenses. “Your leg. What happened?”

“I was finishing up my last deployment in Iraq. A shop owner had been under surveillance. He was under suspicion for supplying insurgents with guns. My partner received a call from an informant telling us that he could give us proof—that a deal was going down right then. We had parked down the block, and the bomb went off just as we reached the shop. Perfect timing. David was killed and my leg took some collateral damage. I had a lot of time to think about it when I was lying around in hospitals.”

Something tightened inside of Fiona. “You played the blame game.” She’d done the same thing after her partner had taken a bullet in that alley. At least she’d had the job to come back to. D.C. hadn’t.

She imagined what it might have been like to have nothing to do but stare up at a hospital ceiling and think about all the could haves and should haves…

The image had her sliding off the stool and joining him on the other side of the counter. She slipped her arms around him and felt his wrap around her. Then she simply held on. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to open that up for you.”

“It’s all right.”

When he ran a hand down her hair, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to lay her cheek against his chest. For moments the silence stretched between them, marred only by music and the hiss of a flame beneath a pot. Though she knew she should, she didn’t want to move.

“How did you get past it?” she murmured.

“By finally remembering what my father used to say. Omniscience doesn’t come with the uniform. That goes for cops, too.”

“Yes.” Something she hadn’t been aware of eased inside of her. She continued to hold on to him, baffled by her need to comfort. To be comforted?

This time it wasn’t the snap and sizzle of desire that she felt, but something warmer and sweeter. Everything inside of her tilted, and she recognized it for what it was. Emotion. That was what had her finally pulling away and taking a cautious step back.

Life had taught her that everything was temporary. Wanting more, dreaming of having more had never worked for her.

D.C. leaned a hip against the counter. It was the first time she’d voluntarily touched him. He wasn’t sure she was aware of that. He was. Just as he was aware of how right she’d felt in his arms. He wanted to pull her to him again and hold her just like that for hours.

The lieutenant guarded her emotions closely. Even now, she was regrouping, gathering her reserve. When she finally met his eyes, that reserve was as firmly in place as it had been in the sculpture garden when she’d pointed her gun at him.

The temptation to shatter her control flared as bright and hot as the flame under the nearby pot. He wanted very much to grab her and kiss her. But he wouldn’t stop with a kiss. And that wasn’t the plan. He’d promised himself that tonight they were going to share a meal, and then he was going to seduce her. Slowly.

So when he caught the first sound of the water rolling into a boil, he shifted his attention to the stove and added salt and oil to the pot. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”

“How’s your leg now?” she asked.

“On the mend. They had to rebuild it and there’s a lot of high tech stuff in there.” He patted his thigh. “I was hoping for super powers.”

“Leaping over skyscrapers in a single bound?”

“Something like that. Turns out that kind of thing only happens on TV shows. I’ll have to be satisfied with around eighty-five percent of the mobility I used to have. The good news is that I’ll be able to ditch the cane.”

“And the bad news?”

He glanced at her as he picked up a package of linguine. “My general’s pushing me to put in for a desk job at the Pentagon.”

He saw shock and concern flash into her eyes.

“Are you going to do that?”

He lifted a brow. “Would you take a desk job?”