Page 7 of Welker

He watched her shadow disappear to the rear of the house, before a scant minute later he spotted Moira walking toward him, glancing dispassionately at the broken things in her yard.

He heard her cluck her tongue, before her voice emerged, pragmatic. “Nothing that can’t be replaced,” she stated.

“You want to go inside and take inventory?”

Welker walked toward her, feeling at a loss. If this were any other woman of his acquaintance, he’d put an arm around her for comfort and tell her everything was going to be okay. But Moira wasn’t just any woman. She’d never once invited that kind of overture from him or any one of the team, and wouldn’t change her spots, now.

She grimaced. “Since the Penobscot Sheriff’s Department has jurisdiction here, and that’s my outfit, I suppose I could catalogue the damage. But I think I’ll wait for Mase. That way the investigation will remain impartial.”

Welker caught a slight warble to Moira’s words, but nothing that told him of her real feelings.

Ah, hell. How should he proceed?

In the end, Welker fell back on teasing; the one, tried-and-true way he always interfaced with the prickly woman.

“Look on the bright side, Bliss. Once your insurance kicks in, you’ll have some awesome shopping trips ahead of you,” he offered cheerily.

She sent him a hard look that would have shriveled a lessor man’s balls. But…damn. Her eyes were a rich, deep coffee brown as she stared him down.

“I hate shopping.”

CHAPTER THREE

Now what?

Moira didn’t know what to do, standing side-by-side with Welker in her weedy-assed driveway. Never one for small talk, she was always particularly tongue-tied around her glib, handsome-as-fuck squad leader. Where the hell was Mason when she needed him? She had no trouble conversing with the chief.

Welk cleared his throat, probably attempting to come up with a rebuttal to her abruptly clipped assertion that she hated shopping; something that the majority of the female population loved to do.

“Okay,” Welker backpedaled. “I’m, uh, pretty sure then, that you can get some of our teammates to help you buy new stuff.” He added a charming grin that Moira knew was meant to disarm her.

Right. Not happening.

Worse than shopping would be forced into making small talk with some random work-associates over a long period of time. Moira was a-okay when the topics at hand were SWAT related; she could review bad-guys and strategy all day. But try discussing something outside of work; something even as innocuous as the weather, and… Crickets.

Moira didn’t kid herself. She knew exactly where her dearth of conversational skills came from. It was nothing she’d ever had to puzzle over. When she was young, at home, she’d been…extra. Her patriarch’s reminder of things gone wrong. She’d learned, early on, to make herself scarce; never interfacing with her father or any of his ne’er-do-well friends who frequented the house as if it were their pad to crash.

Yeah. She’d avoided her boozing, gambling father at all cost, choosing to prowl the house late at night; eat whatever leftovers she could scavenge after he’d passed out for the evening. It had been a hell of a lot easier than sharing space with the self-centered man.

She supposed from the outside, Moira’s upbringing looked pretty cushy. They lived in a huge house, had many expensive cars, and she’d had a string of bimbo-nannies who were there to supposedly take care of her. Although what they’d really been taking care of was her old man’s skanky dick.

There’d been plenty of money, thanks to a grandfather she remembered fondly. Not that, back then, she’d ever seen more than a few dollars here or there, other than what her father eked out for her schooling. And he’d only done that to get rid of her during the academic year.

The private institution where she’d boarded, K-12, had labeled her quiet, and odd, which had been fine with Moira. By keeping her head down, nobody had bothered her throughout those quiet, educational years.

Then there’d been college. So many people. So much campus. It had been extremely easy for Moira to hide in plain sight as she earned her degree in Criminal Justice.

But the summers she’d still spent at home? Contentious. She disappointed her father with the way she looked, with everything she did, and he’d let her know it. When she needed to approach him for money to buy clothing, her choices had always been met with his disdain.

She blamed his constant censure for her lack of confidence regarding her taste. Which meant she always presented a frumpy, almost androgenous persona to the world, sticking with bland colors and baggy styles. Moira couldn’t count the number of times she’d been labeled “dyke”, but she hadn’t cared. Dressing down? Appearing plain? It suited her purposes. It kept attention off her, which was when she felt most comfortable.

Once she turned twenty-one, her first year working for the Penobscot Sheriff’s Department, she’d found out that her grandfather had left her a fairly decent sized trust. The money hadn’t particularly thrilled her, since she had few wants, but she’d sure as hell used it to get the fuck out from under daddy-dearest and buy a home of her own. A remote house where she didn’t have to bother with neighbors or friends.

Until she’d joined SWAT.

The sheriff’s department where she worked didn’t demand anything of her except to execute her job competently, which she did, so she’d expected the same from SWAT. But those teammates didn’t seem to get ruffled by her brusque ways, and attempted to include her in everything; on and off the job, taking no offense when she didn’t often hobnob with them after hours. Which was fine, but…Welker. She’d never felt easy around him. The man vexed her. He looked at her too deeply, forced her to engage in conversation too frequently, and refused to leave her in the carefully constructed box she’d built around herself years ago.

And now…

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