Page 38 of Floodgates

Cord snapped his head up.

“We’ll be in touch.”

“Yep,” he agreed, his gaze back on me seconds later. “You didn’t ask me if it was true.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t ask me if I was telling you the truth about Breckin’s affair with Celia Hughes,” he said gruffly.

“Oh,” I grunted. I threw the covers off my legs and swung them over the side so I was facing him. “Why would you lie? You don’t lie. That’s not one of your many faults. In fact, the opposite may be true—you’re too damned honest.”

He chuckled before giving me a devilish grin. “I guess with me you always know what you’re gonna get.”

“Yep,” I agreed, raking my fingers through my hair. “Unless I was dating you, of course,” I added. “People you date don’t get to hear that one night is all you’re after.”

“That’s what you think?”

“That’s what I know.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m just—Man, did I fuck this up.”

I squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Just—listen,” he began, sitting down beside me so we were shoulder to shoulder. “I want you to call me if anything at all weird happens, okay?”

“Sure,” I said stoically. “I’ll call you.”

He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and gave me a card with his name and number on it. “I wrote my cell on the back of that for you.”

“Oh, okay.” I was confused. “Why didn’t you just leave it with Alex this morning? You didn’t have to stick around and tell me all this stuff. He could’ve told me.”

“It’s okay, I wasn’t busy.”

“Liar,” I grunted even though I was completely numb. “You’re always busy. You’re a homicide inspector, for crissakes, and this is the big city.”

“It surely is,” he agreed as he put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed me up tight against him. “But I will always make time for my friends.”

“Are we friends, then?”

“We have more history than you obviously remember.”

“Oh, I remember it all right,” I said wryly, leaning my head against his collarbone. “I just usually see and speak to my friends more than once every couple of years.”

“We don’t run in the same crowd.”

“The understatement of the year,” I assured him.

“But you could invite me,” he said softly, grazing my jaw, curling his fingers around my throat as he tilted my head up with his thumb. “It wouldn’t kill you.”

I scoffed at him. “And do what with my friends? They’re all paired up. No one for you to fuck and forget.”

“You’re right: in the past I haven’t done relationships,” he acknowledged. “I haven’t seen the merit.”

“Right now I don’t either,” I said miserably, turning to look out the window at the rain. “I feel like I got the crap kicked outta me.”

“You did get the crap kicked outta you,” he said affectionately.

“Yeah,” I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest, shivering suddenly.