Committed (26 page)

“But for now?”

Beep, beep, beep
.

“Shit,” Damien muttered.

He studied his phone again. A frown tugged on the corners of his mouth as he read whatever message he’d received. Poppy’s heart sank. She knew what that meant without ever having seen it happen before. It was just an innate knowledge that this was it. She got up, giving him space, and retreated into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. There’s this other case we’ve been working on that was really overshadowed by Huck—I mean, Emilio’s case, and it looks like we’re going to move on it now.” Damien followed her, taking her hands in his. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“It’s okay. Go. Save the world.”

He cupped her cheeks and kissed her. She could feel him smiling through the kiss and it kicked her heart a little.

“Okay, I’ve got to go.” He stroked her face and hair for a moment before backing away.

“Wait, what about your stuff?”

“I’ll come back for it.” Damien tossed a dazzling smile over his shoulder and closed the
door.

Mario strolled into the kitchen, sat at her feet, and meowed at her. When she didn’t respond he pawed her leg.

Poppy picked up the big cat and retreated to the sofa, curling up with her head on the armrest. In a matter of moments, both cats were curled up on various parts of her anatomy, purring away, happily content to weigh her down.

She was in love, and she didn’t know if she could handle it.

Damien slanted his gaze toward Matías as he waited for the light to turn green. The streets were deserted this late at night, but the hour didn’t register to Damien. Adrenaline from the bust still had him amped up better than any coffee. “How are you still here?”

“I requested to be temporarily moved here while my cover is refreshed.” Matías shook his head. “I’m getting too old for this stuff.”

Damien laughed and accelerated through the intersection. “Man, you’re what? Thirty?”

“Thirty-five. This undercover stuff changes you, though. I think it’s time I got out, which is why everyone’s happy to have me parked here while they figure out how to wrap up some cases I’ve been working on.”

“I’ve done some, but not like what you have. How many years has it been?”

“Since I was eighteen. I worked with border patrol at first, but DEA picked me up real fast. I was maybe twenty. Twenty-one when I did my first deep-cover mission. I pissed my pants every time someone even glanced my way, sure they would know I wasn’t real. Now, it’s weird to be me, and that’s not good. You lose a sense of who you are.”

Damien rolled Matías’s words around in his head. Their job was all-consuming at times, but what Matías did was miles above the sacrifices Damien had made. And yet he still ate, slept, and breathed this life.

“What about the sweet piece you were talking about the other day? What’s going on with her?” Matías asked.

Damien shifted in his seat as he turned the car, driving back to the office mostly on autopilot. “She’s good.”

“Oh come on, man.”

“What? I don’t want to jinx nothing.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Today. I was at her place when they called and said they wanted to do this bust.” Technically, they didn’t need Damien or Matías to handle this, but since there were a number of new field agents that needed experience, Gio had requested they come in to corral the excitement.

“And you just left her?” Matías shook his head and muttered something in Spanish, too
low for Damien to make out.

“What was I supposed to do? Tell Gio I’m sorry, but I’m too busy tying up some chick to come in to do a bust? No, thanks. I do not want to ever have that conversation with her.”

“Yeah, but man, I’ve seen you almost every fucking day. When do you have time to see this chick? Priorities, man. Work is work, it’s not your whole life, and if you don’t pay a woman the attention she deserves, you’ll lose her.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

“I do. I had a girl in my twenties I wanted to marry, but the jobs gave me such a high I couldn’t say no. I’d be gone for weeks, months at a time, and one day I come back and she’s boxed up all my stuff and sent it to my mother’s. Erased me from her life because I was never around, and she was right. She’s got a man in her life now, and four kids. I could never have given her that.”

Damien opened his mouth, but had nothing to say. Bits of memory flashed in his mind.

The phone call at House Surrender.

Poppy tied to a ladder.

Getting in his car to go to the Huck Finn site.

Seeing Poppy in the library, all that hurt and torment on her face for one brief moment.

Poppy hesitant to even speak to him.

Poppy’s protests, her numerous attempts to keep him at arm’s length.

Matías was right.

“Fuck,” Damien muttered.

The federal building the DEA offices were housed in loomed ahead, one never-sleeping hubbub of activity.

“Are you going to the office or home?” Damien asked.

“I’ve got paperwork to do.”

“Can I let you out here?”

“You aren’t doing your reports tonight?”

“No, man. I’ll do it Monday if Gio asks. If Cooper says anything, tell him to go fuck himself.” He eased to a stop at the curb.

“Huh. Someone’s growing some balls.” Matías grinned at him and opened his door. “Tell her I said hi, okay?”

“Fuck you,” Damien said, without heat.

Would Poppy have packed up his bag and left it in the hall?

Damien backtracked to Lake Shore Drive and headed north, tapping the steering wheel and resisting the urge to blast through the speed limit. He was guilty of tunnel vision. His mother had pointed it out early in his career, how he’d let the job take his focus so much that he’d completely missed his grandfather’s failing health until he was on his deathbed.

One day he’d been shooting pool with his grandfather, tossing creative insults back and forth, the next Damien had held his hand as he took his last breath.

A string of brief girlfriends flitted through his mind. Had they left him because of the job, too? None of them had been keepers, not like Poppy, but he’d been incapable of maintaining the kind of steady, long-term relationship many of his peers had. The women in his life were either companions or play partners, until her. Poppy fit. But was he screwing up before they’d begun?

Damien spent the drive to the north side of town chasing questions in his head and fidgeting with the radio. His phone buzzed, but seeing Gio’s name on the screen, he ignored it.

Not tonight.

Nearly twenty minutes later he exited into Poppy’s neighborhood. The streets were dark and quiet, lined with cars. He passed by the brownstone building that housed her apartment. Not a parking space anywhere.

He cursed his luck and circled the block, and still no available space to park his SUV. There were a few small spots, maybe big enough for a compact car, but nothing to accommodate a vehicle of this size. He backtracked and went in the other direction, but nothing opened up. Now he understood why Poppy didn’t drive. There wasn’t anywhere to park a car if she had one, as silly as that was.

Damien looped around again, growing more anxious to end the parking game, when he saw a small group of people exit a brownstone and amble down the sidewalk. They split into two groups and got into not one, but two cars, parked one behind the other.

He said a silent prayer of thanks and waited for both cars to pull out before sliding easily into the generous space.

He tucked his gun into his pants under his jacket, and nearly jogged the two blocks to Poppy’s apartment. He took the stairs two at a time and pounded on the door. If she were in her bedroom, she’d never hear him, so he knocked a little harder.

Why wasn’t she answering? Had she gone to her mother’s to make amends? To a friend’s house? The club?

His stomach rolled at the idea of her going to the club without him, and without even asking his permission. But they hadn’t discussed the boundaries of their relationship. Hell, he
didn’t even know if this was a relationship to her. He’d fallen into it from the beginning as if it were meant to be.

Damien pulled out his phone and looked at the time.

“Shit.”

The lock clicked and the door swung inward.

Poppy leaned against the wall, her hair disheveled, wearing a fuzzy, pink robe with gold crowns all over it. She rubbed her eyes and blinked at him.

“I’m sorry. Shit. I didn’t even think about what time it was.” So much of his life didn’t operate on a standard day.

“It’s okay,” she mumbled.

I can leave
. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He’d driven halfway across Chicago to be with her, so why leave?

He crowded her back into the apartment, closed and locked the door behind him.

“Everything okay?” Poppy asked.

“Meow.”

He glanced down at a blue-eyed cat staring up at him with an air of expectancy.

Sorry dude, scratches later
.

“Everything’s fine now.” Damien wrapped his arms around Poppy and tucked her head under his chin. She hummed and hugged him back. Holding her settled him. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I didn’t even think about it when I headed over here.”

After a pause, she said, “It’s okay.”

The hesitation stood out to him. Had he fucked up before they’d begun?

Emilio dropped the car he’d boosted earlier that evening in an alley and had to double-time it to keep Special Agent Moana in sight. The streets were deserted, which made this more risky. All it would take was a glance over his shoulder, a footstep echoing at the wrong moment, to totally give him away. Except his prey didn’t seem that concerned about anything but his destination. In fact, Emilio had to almost jog to keep up with him.

Where was he going?

Emilio was determined to ferret out the man’s secrets, find out what mattered most to him—and destroy it, just like the man had killed Valentina.

One block, then two.

Emilio glanced over his shoulder, the skin between his shoulder blades prickling more the
farther they went. Was this a trap? Was that why his quarry didn’t once glance over his shoulder?

While Emilio didn’t have any respect for officers of the law, most of them at least checked their tail a few times, out of habit, but Moana didn’t seem to care.

Moana slipped between two cars and jogged across a well-lit street.

Emilio stuck to the shadows on the other side of the street, with its tree-lined sidewalk.

Moana bounded up a set of stairs and let himself in to a brownstone apartment building, the kind with maybe six rentals in it.

Interesting
.

Emilio leaned against a railing and waited.

Who lived in this building? Who was making a seasoned agent forget his training to such a degree?

Someone Emilio needed to meet.

Poppy shut the bathroom door and stared at her reflection.

What was he doing here?

She’d wallowed in her pity party until a call from Nikki kicked her out of it. A short dinner with her best friend had lightened her mood and put her day in perspective. Damien and her mother weren’t the whole of her life. She had a job, friends, and a community that loved her. While Damien spoke to her in a way no other man had, he also wasn’t the only man who had ever made her panties wet.

Poppy shook her head and reached for a brush to tame her hair a bit. She wasn’t ready to close the book on what she could have with Damien, but he already had a big piece of her, with hardly any effort on his part.

But he’d come back. He hadn’t just left, never to return again. He’d done what needed to be done, and now here he was, in her bedroom.

“Meow.”

She sighed and glared at the door. “Yoshi, I’ll be out in a minute.”

Mario meowed at people, while Yoshi meowed at doors.

She finished up in the bathroom and opened the door. As soon as there was room, Yoshi stepped through, back arched and his green gaze on her.

“Aren’t you just pitiful?” She scooped up her yowling monster and snuggled him for a moment.

Poppy carried Yoshi into the bedroom. Mario lay curled up on Damien’s chest, head
tossed back in feline ecstasy as Damien scratched just the right spot. As big as Damien was, the cat still hung off one side. Maybe her cats were giants, but she loved the furballs.

It warmed her heart a bit to see how readily Damien took to her cats. He didn’t begrudge their perceived right to anyone who entered the apartment, or their greedy ways when it came to getting attention.

If her cats loved him, could he be so bad?

She slipped in next to Damien and put Yoshi in his customary spot at the foot of the bed. Despite having spent the previous night with this man, her nerves jangled hard enough that she clenched her teeth. She was too rattled to sleep now, which was the only downside.

Poppy turned off the lamp and tried to find a comfortable spot.

“Sorry, buddy, you had your turn,” Damien said in the darkness.

She felt the bed dip and move, punctuated by Mario’s distinct meow of discontent.

A warm hand wrapped around her forearm.

Damien
.

“Come here,” he whispered.

Her heart fluttered as she complied. He cuddled her close and brushed his lips across her forehead. It was nice. Sweet, even.

“I’m sorry for leaving so abruptly earlier and waking you up. I’m a tool.” His voice was a low rumble in the darkness.

“It’s okay.” But was it? Was she playing to her dreams even now?

“You say it’s okay, but you don’t really mean it.”

She held still. Was he some kind of mind reader, too?

Damien sighed and stroked her back. “I haven’t given you much of a reason to believe me, but I will.”

He spoke with such conviction that it softened her heart. She propped her chin up on his chest. Enough light came through the windows that she could make out his darker shape against the pale-purple pillows.

“I want you to prove it to me. I want to believe you. I hate that I don’t.”