Page 45 of S.O.S. Billboard

There was no need to play coy, because, duh, she’d already made that perfectly clear. But still, she dove in.

“AndI’m waiting for a certain someone to extract his head from his ass, and decide there’s something special between us.” Her frustration boiled over. “Can’t you feel it, Billboard? It’s not just the physical draw. It’s…more.” It amazed her that he couldn’t see it, but maybe he’d never thought of a woman as both a friend and a lover before. “Our connection is exciting, titillating even, but at the same time it’s as comfortable as an old bathrobe.”

He snorted, but didn’t agree or disagree.

Good. Because it was true. She could talk to him all day, and never tire of it. She loved picking his brains, seeing how he interacted with his teammates, his mother. O’Shea was beginning to appreciate every bit of Billboard’s personality.

On the other hand, did she want to kiss the stuffing out of him? Climb his big body like a rock wall? Impale herself on his…?

Uh,hell yes, but the former is what she should concentrate on right now. She needed to get the ball rolling from the right direction.

She cleared her throat. “I want to know stuff about you. Mundane stuff. Do you have the same curiosity about me?”

“I do,” he admitted without hesitation.

“Then ask,” she stated pointedly.

“Okay, old bathrobe, old friend,” he conceded with a bit of sass. “Let’s talk.”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“How old were you when you learned to ride a bike?” he began, but didn’t stop there. “What’s your favorite food? How many boyfriends have you had? And when did you know you wanted to be a cop?”

Whew.That was a lot, but she’d told him to open the door. It was pure luck that he hadn’t hit on the one question that was her trigger: her name.

O’Shea answered. “I was kind of old when I learned to ride a bike. Six, actually. Neither of my parents were…what you’d call good examples of adulting. They weren’t interested in buying us kid’s bikes, teaching us how to ride, or showing us much of anything. Eventually it was up to Cedric to make things happen.”

Billboard waited patiently, but his jaw tightened. She’d mentioned previously that she didn’t have the close relationship with her parents that he had with his mom, but this was the firsttime she’d told him that her mother and father were useless. He’d probably chew on that for a while before coming to some conclusion he’d share.

O’Shea continued. “Cedric couldn’t have been more than eight that summer day when he found two bikes on the curb. The discarded items were clearly there waiting for trash pick-up, but he spied a teenager in the yard playing basketball, and being the polite kid he was, he asked the teenager if they were there for the taking. The teen, who’d clearly long since outgrown both bikes, not only agreed, but he helped my brother fix them up, getting them safely operative again.

“Cedric had already learned to ride on a friend’s bike, but when he proudly brought the two blue ones’ home, he patiently set about teaching me.”

O’Shea sighed at the happy memory. “I earned a few bumps and bruises to start, but before I knew it, I was cruising the neighborhood on the old thing. Believe it or not,” she chuckled, “with a little TLC, I had that bike until I was fifteen. That’s when I got a job at the local grocery store as a bagger. I rode that bike to my job every afternoon until I’d earned enough to buy myself a new one. My Trek was the very first thing I ever bought with my own money, and it felt really good.”

Times had been hard, but between her and Cedric they’d managed—having each other—to enjoy fairly normal teen years. As long as they ignored their parents, and O’Shea was able to stay clear of her grandmother, things were good. When she couldn’t avoid the woman…

Before O’Shea went down that mental rabbit hole, she answered the next of Billboard’s questions.

“My favorite food is easy. Anything étouffée,” she told him with enthusiasm, pushing thoughts of Karen from her brain. “It can be chicken, or shrimp…any kind of seafood, really, as long as it’s really blackened and hot as hell.”

Billboard snorted. “I’ll reserve judgement. I’ve never had it.”

O’Shea’s eyes widened. “You haven’t?” She immediately spied a grocery store off to their right. “Stop! There. I need to buy ingredients.”

Billboard laughed, but complied, pulling over to make a U-turn. “Seriously? I didn’t mean you had to cook it for me tonight.”

“Why wait?” she replied heartily. “You’re how old? Thirty-two? Thirty-three?”

“Thirty-four,” he answered.

She shook her head and made tsking noises. “Thirty-four, and you’ve never had étouffée. It’s a crime.”

Billboard turned the Bronco around and pulled into the store’s lot where he parked.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she informed him as she opened her door, “and to answer your other two questions, three, and sixteen.”

O’Shea got out before Billboard could wrap his head around that info.

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