Break for Me (2 page)

Dean tensed, something ugly building in his throat.

Jensen’s eyes went tight around the corners, something so minute, gone in a blink.
She turned her head, the sleek fall of her hair shielding her face from him as she
looked at Sims.

“Well, you see, that’s the difference between you and me, I guess, Jeb,” she drawled,
her voice cool and lazy, like she didn’t give a damn about anything Sims had to say.
“You see, I was focusing on the man, the meth lab, the laws … and the safety of his
family. I’m a cop, you see. To serve and protect. The size of the bust wasn’t the
issue. The safety of that kid and his mama were my number one concern.” She shrugged
and looked away. “And don’t get too concerned about my panties, either. I’ll take
care of them.”

“I just think—”

“I think you need to not worry about Bell’s cases,” Sorenson said, his voice mild.
The look in his eyes was anything but. “Don’t you have some of your own to deal with
anyway, detective?”

Jeb’s face went a slow, ugly shade of red, but he pasted a wide smile on his face.
“That, I do. Sir.”

He ignored Dean completely.

After Sims moved out of the area, Dean tried to catch her eye but she looked directly
at the chief. “I’m done for the day. You have a nice night.”

“You did good work today,” Sorenson said.

She nodded at him, tried to avoid looking at Dean.

You are not just going to completely ignore me
. He moved to intercept her.

Her mouth flattened out.

“If you’ve got a minute, detective?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m afraid I don’t have many of them. I need to wrap things up for the
day. I’m meeting my family in a bit.” She edged around him, moving to her desk with
fast, easy strides.

He doubted he was the only one who noticed the looks the two of them got—not that
anybody made any effort to hide them. Nosy fools. Ignoring the cops loitering in the
area, he waited by her desk as she collected some files, moved them into her bag.

“It won’t take but a minute. I’ll just walk you to your car.”

Something flashed in her eyes, but she gave him a tight smile and strode past him.

He matched her quick strides easily. She moved damned fast, he’d give her that. Five
foot two, he’d bet, and she moved like the entire world was an obstacle course she
had to conquer and she only had a finite amount of time to do it. They hit the doors
and he paused to see which way she’d go.

They were outside in the brilliant light of the summer sun in a moment and he fell
into step beside her as she headed down the street.

“You made a clean arrest.”

A withering look came across her face.

“I’m well aware of that, Mr. West. But thanks for the seal of approval. It means the
world to me.”

Ouch
. She had a bite to her. Another thing he found all too appealing about her.

There was very little about her he
didn’t
find appealing. That just served to make moments like this harder. Sometimes it felt
like they were playing on opposite teams.

He reached up, slid his own glasses on. The heavy weight of his dreadlocks hung in
a neat tail at his nape, and already sweat was collecting there. It had been a murderously
hot summer, punctuated with frequent, ugly thunderstorms and all he wanted was to
see some sign of fall.

And maybe, have her look at him with something other than antipathy.

“You realize he has information that we need,” he said as she rounded the corner.

“I do realize that.” She reached the edge of the small parking lot where the city
cops kept their cars. One hand moved to her hip and behind the shield of his lenses,
he found himself eyeing that soft swell, wondering how hard she’d hit him if he reached
out, caught her other hip in his hand, drew her to him. “Just as I realize we do want
to get those other sons of bitches in jail.”

“Then why are you looking at me like something you just found on the bottom of your
shoe?” he asked, taking one step closer.

With a serene smile, she replied, “Am I doing that?”

Nonplussed, he waited.

Fuck, why was he wasting his time here?

She’d made it pretty damn clear—

Abruptly, she sighed and turned away. “Dean, look. It’s nothing personal. You did
the same thing any other DA would have done, I guess. Hell, Hal Murray couldn’t have
gotten that much information out of him if he tried for a month straight.”

Hal Murray, the DA he’d been brought in to replace, had dropped dead of a heart attack
a few years earlier. Supposedly, he’d been busily engaged in some strenuous activity
with a pretty young girlfriend—very pretty, very young—in her early twenties—at her
apartment in Louisville. He’d been putting her through college. She’d been putting
him through his paces. It hadn’t worked out well for either of them when he collapsed
on top of her.

“Hal would have tried, you know. For all his … other faults, he was a good lawyer
and he tried his best,” Jensen said sourly, shaking her head. “But Pruitt would have
wheedled and whined and Hal wouldn’t have been able to push him half as hard as you
did. I figure in the end, this would have gone to court and maybe he would have been
found guilty, maybe not. I just…” The strap of her bag slid down her arm and she let
it, the weight of it sending it in a rapid descent down her arm.

Without even thinking, he moved forward, caught it. She frowned at him, but he already
had it secured over his own shoulder. And the damn thing weighed a ton.

“What are you carrying in here, baby elephants?” he asked.

Slanting a look at him, she shrugged. “How did you guess? I breed them—my second job
in case this cop thing doesn’t work out.”

“Cop thing.” He laughed softly. “Yeah. I can see that. Not really. You bleed blue,
Jensen.”

A soft breath gusted out of her. “I know. I’ve bled blue since I was a kid. And that’s
the problem. There was a child there, running in and out of that barn, Dean. Do you
have any idea just how
wrong
this could have gone?”

She turned to look at him and he saw the knowledge there, written all over on her
face. “He was twenty feet away when I first started eyeing that barn, driving by every
now and then. Had to use my dad’s car, so he wouldn’t notice me, ya know? That kid
played out by that barn,
all the time
. If that place had gone up--”

“It didn’t.” Instinct had him moving in, and the same instinct kept him from reaching
for her, although that was all he wanted.

Everything he wanted.

Wariness was stamped all over her features and despite the fact that he wanted to
tug her sunglasses away, despite the fact that the need to touch her was even stronger
now than it had ever been, he kept his hands to himself as he said again, “It didn’t.
You got the warrant, you shut him down. You protected that child. His mom did the
smart thing—she’s leaving that idiot. If only they all turned out this well.”

“Yeah. If only.” Then she shook her head and held out a hand for her bag. “I need
to go.”

Reluctant, he turned it over, wished he could think of some way to make her give him
five more minutes.

But she had places to go, things to do. Things that didn’t involve him. It grated
on him how much that bothered him.

“Take it easy, Dean,” she said softly, hiking the bag up onto her shoulder. Then she
was moving down the sidewalk, never once looking back.

He stood there, watched as she climbed into her car.

He continued to stand there, even after he could no longer see her car.

Chapter Two

They had a table, tucked in the back.

Their younger sister, Chris, had somehow managed to hold it for them on a Friday night,
a feat that was either miraculous or scary, Jensen hadn’t decided yet.

Brooding over a pint of Angry Orchard, she stared at the table and tried to figure
out if she wanted to wait for her brother to show or just go home and fall asleep.

The sooner today ended, the sooner tomorrow could start … and end.

Then the next day, and the one after that.

She only had six more days to get through and then it was behind her, for another
year.

That really wasn’t much time at all.

Six days could pass in a blink.

Or they could take forever.

She knew that for a fact. Days could crawl by endlessly, especially when you waited.

“Hey.”

She looked up and wasn’t terribly surprised to see Tate standing there with his arm
around Ali. Surprised, no. But it did add to the ache inside.

“Ali.” She nodded at one of the empty seats. “You here to help us get our brood on?”

The brood-a-thons weren’t a planned thing, exactly.

But somehow they found themselves here. Each and every year, as the days drew closer
and closer. It was like a countdown, one that passed easier when they weren’t alone.

Ali settled down in the seat between Tate and Jensen, a smile on her pretty, sweet
face. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m just peachy.” She lifted her glass, tipped it toward them. “Six more days.”

Ali reached out, touched her shoulder.

The tears that she usually managed to keep in check tried to rise up, but she pushed
them back.

Wood scraped again, and she turned her head, watched as Guy Miller settled into his
customary spot. Although not technically part of the family, he might as well be.
One of Tate’s best friends, he’d grown up not too far from them and their house had
been more of a home to him than his own. He’d been there with them as the days turned
into weeks, and the weeks into years.

Now he waited with them, too.

“Do I need to catch up?” he asked, nodding to Jensen’s drink.

“Nope.” She lifted it to her lips. “I just got started. I have vague plans of getting
plastered. Celebrating.”

His lip curled. “Yeah. You got a reason to celebrate. What did he get, two years?”

Ali looked confused. “Cop talk,” Tate said, brushing a thumb down her cheek.

Jensen slumped in the seat, staring upward. “Two fucking years. Don’t you just love
the wheels of justice?”

“Here you go, Guy.” Chris Bell, the youngest of the family, appeared out of the crowd,
putting two beers down in front of Tate and Guy, looking at Ali with a cocked brow.
“I don’t know what you see in that man, Ali. Need a drink so you can stomach him all
night?”

Ali laughed. “Sure. When do you get off?”

Chris checked her watch, a silver Tinker Bell one that should have looked out of place
with the black tee she wore tied tightly at her back, revealing a tightly toned abdomen
marked with tats. The tats were echoed on her arms, climbing to twine halfway up her
neck, where the blooms of flowers and roses stopped. “Thirty minutes. Don’t drink
yourselves under the table before I get back—you want your normal?”

Ali nodded and as Chris was swallowed by the crowd, they lapsed into silence.

A moment later, Tate broke it, leaning forward and raising his voice to be heard over
the laughter of the table next to them. “I told Dad we’d be here. Asked him … well.
Said he could join us.”

Jensen sighed. “Dad doesn’t go out. Barely leaves the house.”

She knew that—Chris knew that. Tate was just now mending a broken relationship so
she wasn’t surprised he didn’t know.

He shrugged. “Yeah. I kinda figured. But it’s not good for him to sit around brooding
all the time.”

“He doesn’t brood.” She traced the rim of her glass, looking away. “He’s just tired.
Lonely. Leaving the house isn’t going to change that.”

She went to take a drink and then froze as a familiar figure appeared in the corner
of her eye.

“Nine o’clock,” Guy said helpfully, tipping his bottle toward.

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, her wish hadn’t come true. She hadn’t miraculously found herself
at home. Alone. Where she wouldn’t have to see him. Son of a bitch.

“Hey.”

Sighing, she took a deep, long gulp of the cider in her glass and then tipped her
head back and found herself staring up at the almost too sexy face of DA Dean West.

*   *   *

The sight of her sitting with Guy Miller, one of the deputies with county, had him
wanting to chew nails. Dean kept an easy smile on his face as he nodded at everybody,
noting that Guy sat next to Ali, leaving a vacant spot between him and Jensen.

Maybe they weren’t there together.

Didn’t keep him from wanting to do something stupid, like put his hand on her shoulder,
beat his chest, anything to make it clear he had an interest here.

Not that it was returned.

Jensen’s eyes, caught between brown and green and glinting with a sharp edge in that
moment, met his and she lifted a brow. “Hello, Dean.”

The chill in her eyes would have sent a smart man running. But Dean supposed if he
was smart, he wouldn’t still be chasing after her, hoping against hope that something
inside her would soften, that he’d get an opening—that the interest he’d seen spark
in her eyes once or twice would flare. Just a chance. That was all he needed.

The slightest opening.

So instead of making small talk for a minute—easy for a lawyer to do with two cops—he
nodded at one of the vacant chairs and said, “Mind if I have a seat?”

There was an awkward, stilted silence. He had that moment again, asking himself just
why he was doing this. It wasn’t Jensen that broke the silence, but the brunette sitting
next to her brother.

“Go ahead,” she said, nodding at the seat open next to Jensen. “We’re waiting on one
more, but she won’t be here for a while yet.”

Ali, he thought. Ran the pizza place—a den of sin if he’d ever come across one. One
trip there had him spending an extra hour a week pounding the pavement. Sliding into
the seat next to Jensen, he flashed Ali a smile. “They let you out of the restaurant?
How do they manage that place without you?”

She smirked. “Badly. But they’ll get by.”