She glanced cautiously across at him. He was staring at the TV like he'd never seen one before. He must be weirded out, too. If the silence between them didn't end soon, she knew they would never get back in the mood.
Desperate for the sound of his voice, she said, "Do you always work the night shift?"
He didn't look at her but kept stroking Bogart. "Most K-9 patrols do." He paused to chuckle at something Lucy Ricardo did. "We patrol an area each night, unless there's a special event we need to attend during the day."
Shay cocked her head to one side. "You sound like a night watchman."
That drew a smile from him. It was exactly how his sister Allyson had sized up his career path, night watchman with a pooch. Her spouse was a narc.
"It's a little more complicated than that. I don't just rattle doorknobs. You get to know your areas, the people, the look and smell of places. There's a feeling when something's not quite right. On top of that, we can be called out for any reason on any day, even our days off, for anything from crowd control to tracking a criminal, for a search-and-rescue operation, whatever support we can provide."
"Like finding the baby tonight. That was so cool."
"Yes." The memory gave James a happy buzz. "From the first I prepared to become more than a patrol officer. I got a bachelor's in criminology with a minor in psych and trauma studies before I attended the police academy. How about you? Where'd you go to school?"
She swiveled her head toward him. "Why?"
James kept his expression bland. "I share. You share. It's called conversation."
"North Carolina State." The words sounded as if they'd been mined from somewhere deep. "Community college first. It took me six years because I worked my way through. I don't like owing anybody anything."
"You don't have any debt?"
She glanced at him warily. "No, why?"
He shrugged. "I'll be paying off student loans for a while, especially since I'm enrolled part-time again."
She looked down, shielding her very expressive gaze.
He clicked off the TV. "So, it's time to tell me about Eric."
Shay glanced at him. His voice sounded normal, too normal. Law enforcement calm. Her hands began to tremble with frustrated desire. How could he sit there so proud, so closed, so unemotional? She felt as if she'd been caught up in a class 5 erotic twister that left her bereft, unfinished and unsatisfied.
She snuggled back into the sofa cushions, needing a little more space than she anticipated from him.
Bogart whined and lifted his head, dark molasses eyes staring into hers. Of course he could detect the tension. The air practically vibrated with it, like the moment before a lightning strike.
"Shay?" James's expression was closed, shutting her out. But his gaze still scorched her skin. She could feel it sizzling under his blue-eyed stare. "You need to tell me about Eric. Why you've let him rough you up and make threats, and yet have never called the police for help."
The accusation stung. "That's not true. I did call the police. Once."
"Want to tell me about that?"
Shay bit her lip and shook her head. If she did tell him, she suspected he would walk out and never come back. Damn it to hell. Eric was still ruining her life. Or maybe she'd done that all by herself a dozen years ago. If James was going to leave, maybe it was better he did so now, before she began to count on his being around.
She turned to him suddenly, her chin cocked in defiance. "Fine. What is it you want to know?"
Everything. Yet. James realized she was moving out of her comfort zone by even offering to talk. He'd take it slow. "Let's start with how you and Eric met."
She took a deep breath. "A little over a year ago I was working a job at Halifax Bank, the main office. I was doing a real IT job, not just answering phones like now. Eric is the area manager for a dozen Halifax Bank branches in the state. We met when he came in to meet with the Operational Risk and Compliance team. He asked me out to lunch with the team. The next time he came through he asked me to dinner, alone."
She quickly went through their get-together time. She'd been flattered by the attention of a senior member of the bank. The fact that he was mature, thirty-four and divorced, and sophisticated made it thrilling for her to flirt back. She was a temp, after all, not a full-time employee who would have to worry about interoffice consequences if the relationship went nowhere or, worse, went bad. Besides, she didn't think he could seriously be interested in a twenty-five-year old still looking for job security.
James waited until she took a breath. "Did you ask any of the other staff about him?"
"Not really. I didn't know them. I wasn't permanent. Besides, I thought he'd stop asking me out when I left."
"Why did you continue to see him?"
She looked away. "He had invited me on a trip." Memory kicked in, reminding her of how charming Eric was in the beginning. Quite charming.
Eric had stopped by her desk at closing her last week on the job.
"You got a passport?"
She did, from a senior trip to Mexico.
"Pack light. Two nights, two days of sun, sand, surf, and me."
She had thought he was teasing. But then he'd laid a plane ticket on her desk. When she opened it she saw it was for the Cayman Islands.
"He said he was supposed to go with someone else. But the person canceled at the last minute so this was my lucky day."
James's voice was calm, nonjudgmental. "So you went."
Shay nodded. "We went on several trips even after I no longer temped there. He was nice, at first."
"Bought you things?"
She glared at him. "Showed me things. Took me places. Let me experience how the wealthy live and play. Stuff I could never have seen or done on my own. He was really kind, at first."
"But there must have been signs. Or were you so grateful you overlooked the other things?" She nodded so slowly that he knew she didn't like his characterization of her motivation. "But that changed."
Shay glanced down. "I feel so stupid. How could I not see what was coming?"
James turned to stare at a spot halfway between the sofa and the TV. "What happened?"
Shay surprised herself by telling him. The many little humiliations. The way Eric could twist her words. How he stopped complimenting her but always found something wrong, however trivial, with her appearance. She even told him about their last trip, about the exhibitionist dancing that ended with his rage. That was the first time he forced her to have sex against her will.
When they got home he became distant. He hardly ever called her or took her anywhere. Then a month ago, he'd invited her to his apartment where he'd set up what he called a special evening for them. That was the night she called the police.
"He had S and M stuff, whips and sex toys and … stuff." Shay closed her eyes. "I thought he was joking. He just … "
She glanced furtively at James. He was no longer looking at the floor. His eyes were riveted on her. She would have thought telling so intimate a story to this man would be the worst humiliation possible. Yet the way he just sat there, not touching her but watching with an intensity that surrounded her in a cocoon of intimacy, walled off the pain for the moment.
Even so, she was whispering at the end. "When he let me go to the bathroom I palmed my phone and called the police."
James's gaze flickered with curiosity.
Shay shook her head. "It didn't help. Eric had a story ready that made everything sound plausible. It was my idea. I'd been reading those ‘50 Shades' books and wanted to try something kinky. He was so sorry. He'd never done anything like that before so he didn't realize he was really hurting me. I wasn't beat up or anything, and I could tell the police officers believed him. So I changed my mind about pressing charges."
James was silent for several seconds but his gaze never left hers. "Law enforcement doesn't always get it right. Domestics are hard to sort out. But I'd say they did less than their best by you. You should have asked for a female officer."
Shay looked away, a little shocked by his neutral tone. "It doesn't matter now."
"It matters."
Bogart suddenly got up and left the sofa. He resettled under the TV, his gaze directed at his partner, as if to say, I've done what I could. You're on your own.
James watched Shay closely for signs of emotional overload. She had twisted her arms together under her bosom. Did she know how nakedly her emotions shone on her face when she looked at him? He ached to reach for her but that wasn't going to happen until they finished this. Even so, he couldn't resist sliding closer to her until they all but touched as they sat side by side. "When did you break up with Eric?"