Page 104 of Hot Cops

He waited at a stoplight, the red light giving him a chance to look at her, to show her he wasn’t going to let the subject drop.

“Once,” she admitted quietly.

Landon frowned. “One time? You’ve only seen it once?”

“I was there,” she said, her words a weak defense. “I saw it all in person. Why do I need to watch the video?”

He didn’t have a clue what to make of that confession. Sunnie had approached the whole viral thing with an unbridled enthusiasm, enjoying the limelight.

So why wouldn’t she embrace the video that brought her that fame?

Sunnie’s gaze darted away a split second before the light turned green. The reaction told him exactly why she hadn’t watched it.

She was afraid.

What hedidn’tknow was what had spooked her.

The kiss?

The look?

Or had she realized the same thing as him?

That nothing between them was make-believe, and he would never think of Sunnie as a sister ever again.

CHAPTERELEVEN

Landon saton a padded chair on the sidelines of the high school gym where the charity basketball game was about to start, looking hotter than any man had the right to in gray Under Armour shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt.

He hadn’t seen her yet, which gave Sunnie a minute to try to get this strange initial reaction to him under control. She’d noticed that every day since they’d started pretending to be a couple, there was this brief period of honest-to-God nervousness right before he arrived at the pub to pick her up. It was an insane feeling, considering it was Landon who was making her feel so…twittery.

It was the only word she could come up with to describe it.

Pushing that aside, she fluffed her hair and turned to Yvonne. “You ready for our grand entrance?”

Yvonne nodded, while Jessica, one of the nurses from the hospital, tried to tug down her skirt and said, “We should have told them we were planning to do this.”

Sunnie grinned. “Ruins the surprise if you warn people.”

Yvonne laughed as Sunnie led her squad into the gymnasium. Both teams had just claimed their half of the floor for warm-ups when the cheerleaders entered.

Sunnie had managed to come up with six uniforms and Aunt Lane had helped her emblazon three of them with the Baltimore police emblem, the other three with the firefighters’. They shook their pom-poms, lining up on the end of the court where Landon and his cop buddies were taking turns shooting layups.

Landon froze mid-shot, nearly falling down when Miguel, who hadn’t seen them yet, ran into him, expecting him to shoot and move.

“What the hell, man?” Miguel said before spotting them. “Sweet Jesus. My high school wet dreams just came to life.”

Landon dropped the ball, walking toward her. Sunnie gave him a pretty decent herkie, shaking her pom-poms as she did so.

“We thought the game could use a cheer squad,” she said as he got closer.

He didn’t acknowledge her comment with words or a wave. Instead, he just kept coming.

Gripping her by the waist, he pulled her to him and gave her a kiss that definitely would have gotten both of them sent to the principal’s office if they were really in high school.

It took a second before either of them heard the whistle that continued to grow louder. Landon released her two seconds before her dad—the coach—gave him a slap to the back of the head.

“What the hell are you doing, boy? We got our asses handed to us last year by the firefighters. I don’t intend to lose again. Get out there, warmup, and pay attention to the ball!”

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