Page 45 of State of Alert

She wokein the morning to his lips on her back.

“Wake up, babe.”

“Not yet.”

“What time do you have to work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Kids to get ready for school and shift change at eight, right?”

“I think.”

“Samantha.”

She forced her eyes to open. The bedside clock read six twenty. “Ten more minutes.”

The next thing she knew, he was kissing her shoulder as the citrus scent of his cologne washed over her in a comforting cloud of home. “Your ten minutes are long up.”

“Why are you being so mean to me today when I was very nice to you last night?”

He laughed. “Because I don’t want you to get fired. We don’t need the headlines.”

“They need me too much to fire me.”

“You worked a double yesterday. You could technically take the day off.”

Sam turned over so she could see him, handsome and dressed for another day of world domination. “I would, but we caught a new case right as I was leaving last night.”

“That your team can more than handle without you.”

“They’ve been covering for me too much lately. I want to save that for when I really need it.”

“Gonna miss you when I’m gone this week.”

Just that quickly, her entire mood changed. “Where you going again?”

He rolled his eyes in pretend annoyance. “You know exactly where I’m going—three days and two nights out west.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head, despondent at the thought of it, as ridiculous as that was. “Don’t wanna.”

“You could come with me.”

“I can’t on such short notice.”

“In fairness, I told you about this last week.”

“I blocked it out.”

He chuckled. “Of course you did.”

“What are we doing about Juan’s funeral?”

“His mother said they’ll schedule it around my availability. In light of what I know now, I’ll be unavailable until later next week. Do you think that’ll be enough time?”

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