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I tipped a fake salute to the grinning fool. “Once I get out, Ronan, you’re a dead man walking.”
Chapter 2 – Freya
The place was a mess when I walked in.
Cluttered desks, papers flying, phones ringing, and loud murmurs from my colleagues created complete chaos. I knew what their excuses would be; they were ordinary detectives like me, just trying to be efficient, doing their jobs—being the crime-fighting superheroes of Los Angeles—trying to disrupt the drug trades that poisoned our city’s dark streets.
My response?
Absolute nonsense.
There were neater ways to get the job done.
I marched past a few aisles, raising my nose to look away from the clutter. Occasional laughter and keyboards clacking broke up the blaring barks from one man or another, yelling some information from his office.
I carefully turned around the cubicles, heading to my desk. To my left, Mila had her head buried in more heaps of paperwork. Thick brows were drawn while her nude-painted lips moved inaudibly.
She smiled when I craned over her section to pry into what she pored over. It was a surveillance transcript.
I faked a yawn and backed away. “Boring.”
“Morning to you, too, Freya.” Beaming, she raked clipped fingernails through her brown pixie cut and inclined in her chair.
Playfully, I aimed a finger gun at her. “It’s Detective Fox to you, lady.”
She lifted her hands in mock surrender with a chortle and stretched forward to resume her surveillance transcript review. “My apologies,Detective. I’ll remember to tell the barista that the next time I ask him to put a label on your cup.”
With a wink, I asked, “What’s today’s flavor?”
“Macchiato.”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
She flashed an appreciative smile as I strutted over to my desk. The aroma of delicious coffee wafted through the air, mingling with the sweet scent of freshly printed papers. I settled into my chair, the worn leather creaking in protest, and skimmed through the color-coded sticky notes alongside documents neatly piled on my desk.
Reports, reports…and a few unfinished reports. Sighing, I dropped back against the seat, and my gaze swept across the room, taking in the familiar landscape of my colleagues’ workstations.
Across from me, John’s eyes were intensely fixed on his computer screen. Locks of trimmed blond hair fell over pretty blue eyes, and toned muscular arms leaned on his desk close to the computer.
I took a sip of my macchiato.
“Morning, Officer,” I greeted rather loudly. On purpose, of course, just because I could.
It was our little routine, greeting each other like strangers every morning, just to tick each other off. He liked it; I knew he did. Else, he wouldn’t have looked up from the screen with that charming smile that got me every damn time. The man could pass as a model, and he wasn’t even trying.
I lifted the cup to my lips again.
So, here was the thing: I didn’t have a lot of “friends,” and there was a time in this office when Ididhave a crush on that galoot. I couldn’t be blamed, not when he was a heartthrob who looked like another Malibu Ken. Even if, technically, blonds weren’t my type.
What is my type, though?
Another sip from the cup.
I didn’t even have enough experience toknowif I had one.
“Spacing out again, Detective?” he chimed from his desk with a slanted smirk. “You seem to be doing that pretty often these days.”
He wasn’t lying. I had been zoning out a lot rather frequently. But how could I not when I desired a life more exciting than heaps of reports and different flavor tweaks of macchiato every morning? No offense to Mila or the barista.The coffee tasted amazing.
