Page 137 of Fierce-Zander

Yep, he wanted to stay, but she didn’t offer it to him on Monday or yesterday. And since they weren’t talking much, it didn’t feel as if he could just invite himself there and make them both uncomfortable.

Not that he was all that comfortable with the fact that his employee was bringing up Regan’s name every five minutes that he was in the office.

“Are you going to apologize or not?” Betsy asked, crossing her arms. “I think this has been going on long enough. You’re being stubborn and if you don’t apologize she is going to kick drop you.”

“She told you?” he asked, his jaw open. She’d said she wouldn’t tell anyone about that.

“She broke up with you?” Betsy asked, her eyes filling with tears.

Yeah, he felt the same damn way right now. “No. At least I don’t think so.”

“Then what are you talking about?” Betsy asked.

He let out a sigh. If he didn’t tell his assistant she’d hound him all damn day and probably blow his phone up at night too.

That was what he got for assuming something without thinking through the context of the statement.

“After I took her to the gun range?—”

“Which was nice of you and she gave in and conceded even though she didn’t want one.”

“Miles told you that?” he asked.

“He did. See, compromise between you two.”

His shoulders dropped. “Yes. It was. I wanted to show her some self-defense moves. Every woman should know them.”

“They should,” Betsy said. “I remember everything you taught me.”

It was one of the things that were a deal breaker when he hired her if she’d said no. He could show them to her or pay for her to take a few classes. But in this line of work, you could get some irate clients and he wanted to know she could handle herself.

Aside from the small pistol she kept in her drawer.

“I’m glad,” he said. “When we got back to her place, before I could even show her a thing, I wanted to let her know what I was doing and came up behind her, the next thing I know I’m on the floor on my back and sucking in air.”

“She knocked you down?” Betsy asked, laughing. “Good for her.”

“Not just knocked me down,” he said. “But knocked my knee out and then flipped me over her shoulder hard.”

Betsy was roaring with laughter. “Taught you a lesson to not assume, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“All the more reason to go apologize to her that you were wrong.”

There was no winning here. He knew that. “I should.”

“You know,” Betsy said. “I know deep down you always worry you’re going to let someone down. That you let your parents down that you didn’t stay on the police force.”

“I should have never let that slip years ago,” he said. His guard was down and Betsy had a way of getting him to talk.

“I’d like to consider us close enough that you could trust me.”

“I do,” he said. “But I know when you’ve got another agenda you could throw me to the dogs like you sneak my leftover lunches to Rocco when I’m not around.”

Betsy laughed. “I do that. But my point is, Regan can take care of herself. She’s a bright intellectual strong woman. She has a job that puts her in positions of knowledge that aren’t always great, but she can talk her way out of it. You know that well. You do it often.”

He didn’t need that pointed out to him. That Regan was even fast on her feet and closed the case with Justin and Tricia.

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