Page 52 of Nothing At All

When I walked in, she stood in the living room, putting in her earrings. “You’re the best.”

I snorted. “You’re only saying that because you’d forget and it’d still be sitting there next week.”

“Absolutely I’d forget.” She grinned, eyes bright with humor. She was so damn pretty, and when she smiled, my heart always made this weird thump against my chest wall.

“You ready?”

With an affirmative hum, she pressed the bakery box from the coffee table into my hands and picked up a bunch of flowers. She pointed at the box. “Do Chuck and Deanne like those?”

“Chuck eats anything that won’t eat him first.” I peered through the cellophane at the chocolate-and-pecan cookies. “But these are Deanne’s favorite.”

“Oh, good.” With a sweet smile, she tucked her arm through mine, untangling long enough to lock the front door. I helped her into the truck and stood in the door until she fastened her seatbelt. With the box of cookies on the back seat, I jogged around to the driver’s side.

She fiddled with the edge of the seatbelt while I backed out of the drive, and I caught the look she flicked at me beneath her lashes. The awkwardness surrounded us again, and I hoped we wouldn’t be this way long.

I shifted to drive. “How was your day?”

“It was good.” She rubbed her thumb along the belt edge again. “I locked down the Calhoun Regional sales.”

“All right.” She’d been working on that account for weeks. I squeezed her knee, like I would have before.

“What about you?”

“I’m still answering the phone and bored.” I slanted a smile at her. “Dix is thinking about pairing me with Vic, like an investigator and patrol partnership.”

“Oh. Okay. That sounds interesting.” With her hands now twined together in her lap, she glanced sideways at me once more. “Are you interested in that?”

“Investigations? I don’t know. Maybe. I didn’t plan to be a cop at first, but I like it.” Braking for the stop sign, I cleared my throat. “Where I go with it might depend on us.”

This time, her look at me was straight-on and wide-eyed. “On us?”

“Well, yeah.” I waited for an SUV to fly by too fast for the road then turned left. “If we end up long term, you have plans, and I’d fit my career around those.”

“Wait.” She turned sideways in her seat. “You’d fit around my career.”

I shrugged. “Cops are needed everywhere. I might be choosy about what department, but yeah, I could go anywhere. Haven’t decided about going GBI or GSP yet, so I might just stay on the road somewhere.”

“You’d move for me.” She spoke slowly, like she tried to wrap her head around the idea.

“Yeah, baby.” I shot her a sidelong grin. She didn’t get it. At all. “I’d move for you.”

“Really.”

One corner of my mouth quirked. I was grateful smiling no longer hurt like a son of a bitch. “Really.”

“So like if I got a promotion or an Atlanta sales route, you’d want to be where I was.”

“I would.” I lifted my thumb from the wheel in punctuation. “Might want to commute out to a smaller department or something if we were in Atlanta, but yeah. I’d want to be where you were.”

“Do you want to be married?” Her gaze lay on my face like a weight, as serious as her voice. “To have kids?”

“You proposing?”

“Dan.”

A chuckle worked up from my throat. “See, this is the talk we should have had. Yeah, eventually, I want to be married. I’m okay either way with kids. How about you?”

“I want a marriage like my parents.” A pause stretched between us. I slowed for the traffic light at 19. “I think I want at least one. But not more than two. My cousin has three and it’s a lot.”