Falling for the New Guy

“Well, it’s new.”

“But you had to press it, right? It comes all creased in the package.” She looked at him, got tricked into looking him in the eye. Kind of a really light brown. Like amber or something. Mesmerizing.

You are not serious right now, brain.

He looked away. Thank God. “I did it myself.”

“You? You?”

“It’s a lot cheaper than getting it dry-cleaned.”

“Well, yeah, but jeez. What’d you do? Intern at a dry cleaner? That’s unholy.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched the grungier side of town get a shade more sparkling as they drove up and away from the river, toward the police station.

She concentrated on the road and he was silent. This was only her third time field training someone, but the other two guys had been different. Talkative, easygoing. Even if she’d wished Granger’d shut up most of the time, silence was weird. She wished for Granger’s grandstanding BS in the face of heavy, awkward silence.

“So, um, what brings you to Bluff City?” She flicked a glance at him to gauge his reaction. Nothing on his face changed, but as she moved her gaze back to the road she noticed his hand had clenched around his knee.

Hmm.

“Family,” he said at length. He didn’t say it in a way that made it sound positive. Well, that she understood.

“You grow up around here?”

“No.”

That was it.

Man, it was going to be a long three months.

* * *

AFTER NINE YEARS of being on the road, three months of field training was frustrating. Marc understood why it was necessary. Different laws, procedures, protocol.

But sitting shotgun in a patrol car that smelled like...hell if he knew. Something feminine and flowery. All shoved into an uncomfortable seat he couldn’t recline because of the cage in the back. Being pelted with questions by Chatty McGee FTO lady.

He would prefer clawing his way out and jumping from the still-moving vehicle.

Was everyone at BCPD going to be so damn chatty? At his old department there’d been a group of guys who were chummy, but they’d let him be. He was respected. Maybe a little feared, but he preferred that kind of distance to Tess’s cheery interrogation.

“Soooo.” She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, eyes on the road. She’d driven them around their zone, talked about landmarks and the like. Things he’d already known because he’d memorized the Bluff City map. Because he wasn’t some rookie who didn’t know how to handle himself.

“We don’t have to talk, you know.”

She frowned over at him. “We’re going to be sharing a lot of space here. You want to sit in silence for three months?”

“Silence is better than...”

“Than?”

He shifted uncomfortably. This woman put him at some serious unease. Small talk was not something he’d ever excelled at. He preferred quiet. Assess a situation, a person before weighing in.

He preferred being careful and not making people damn uncomfortable. Tess did not have the same beliefs, it seemed.

So, turnabout was fair play, right? “Okay, you want to chat? What happened to your arm last night?” Because he didn’t give a crap about her taste in music or her favorite restaurant, but he was kind of desperate to know what the hell happened to her arm.

As he’d predicted, she closed right up. Gaze hard on the street. Fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “It was nothing.”

“Sure, everyone goes home at night crashing into things, cursing, bleeding onto the hallway floor.”

Her mouth quirked at the corner. “Well, I thought so.” She glanced at him again. “So, Mr. Stiffy has a sense of humor?” She closed her eyes, cheeks blotching pink. “Oh, that sounded...not how I meant.”

Only then did he get what she was embarrassed about. Only then did he feel a matching embarrassing heat flood his face.

This was turning out to be a hell of a first day.

“Anyway. I was visiting my dad. Glass broke. Caught me in the arm.”

He wondered if she had any clue what a shit liar she was. First of all, the story was too vague. Second, the tenseness in her shoulders meant she wasn’t comfortable with the subject. As did the way she restlessly pushed the car into Reverse.

“Let’s go grab some lunch, huh?”

He didn’t verbally respond, just gave her a nod. He wondered if his chatty FTO was in trouble, and if it would affect him.

Unfortunately, he was all out of patience with other people’s lives affecting his, and he had a bad feeling about Tess Camden.

CHAPTER TWO (#udb2297f5-d66a-5df6-90be-c4f963d006db)

“CAMDEN. FRANKS WANTS to see you.” The radio crackled and then shut off.

Tess glanced at Marc, who was, of course, still staring out the window. She’d switched tactics from trying to be friends with the guy to focusing on work. Third day in, he still barely said a word and barely seemed to listen.

He did catch on quick, though, which was kind of a pain in the ass.

Tess grabbed the radio and muttered into the speaker, “En route.” To Marc she said, “Should only take a few. You can poke around the station. Check out the gym or something.”

He nodded.

She really hated that nod. His silence. His stoic blankness. She hated that it made her wonder. No personality? Woman hater? Deep dark secrets?

She had enough on her plate without trying to figure out Mr. Stiffy. Yeah, she’d said that back on the first day. Jeez. Maybe she needed to practice some of this guy’s stoicism.

And quick, if Franks wanted to see her.

She pulled into the station lot, rolling her shoulders to rid herself of the heavy rock of dread knotted between them. Franks rarely called someone into his office for anything positive, and she really hadn’t done anything to garner positive lately.

“You know where everything is?”