Page 69 of Hot Cops

“He made you get out? Here?” he asked, glancing around the dark street. Derek, the latest in a long line of occasional boyfriends, had dropped her off in the middle of a sketchy neighborhood. “I’m going to kill that motherfucker,” he muttered.

His words had come out more serious, more deadly than he’d intended. The tone obviously caught Sunnie by surprise yet again.

She looked up at his face and laughed. “Wow. Dial it back a notch, Landon. That Rambo thing is a serious turn-on.”

He closed his eyes, praying for patience…and to calm down. He hadn’t quite forgiven her for being so reckless.

They really were polar opposites, always had been. Sunnie had personality to spare, while Landon was the quiet one. Calm, stoic. If she was the queen of overreaction, he was lord and master of composed. This time, the roles felt reversed.

He stood up, helping her rise as well. She winced slightly, leaning heavily on him.

“What the hell?” he asked, looking down.

She grimaced. “Okay, well, now, don’t get pissed again…but I appear to have twisted my ankle.”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

She shot him an incredulous look. “I’ll get laughed out of the E.R. if I show up asking them to take care of something this silly! It’s fine.”

“Sunnie,” he started to insist.

“I’m a nurse, Landon. Trust me.”

She’d graduated from college a month earlier, jumping right into work from her residency after wowing the doctors and her professors. She was a born caregiver, her humor and bedside manner making her the perfect nurse.

A year ago, she’d expressed an interest in pursuing oncology nursing after serving as a bridesmaid in her cousin Padraig’s wedding. Padraig had married a beautiful woman named Mia, who’d died a few months after the ceremony.

Sunnie had always lived life with wild abandon. However, after Mia died, she took the pursuit of her career, the way she wanted to help others, more seriously.

What she hadn’t managed to tone down was her party-girl image, the way she spent her free time with losers like Derek.

“Okay. No hospital. But we really do need to go to the precinct, file a report.”

“Hell no.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Please don’t make me. Dad will kill me.”

He shrugged. “That doesn’t sound so bad to me. After the stunt you just pulled.” It was clear he hadn’t made much headway on showing her the error of her ways. Maybe Aaron could.

“Please, Landon! Can’t we just keep this between ourselves? There’s no reason to upset everyone.” He noticed her hands were shaking, and it suddenly occurred to him that as the adrenaline wore off, shewasstarting to get it.

“Sunnie, what you did was reckless.”

She leaned closer, batting her big blue eyes at him. If she were a stranger, he might have been charmed. But this was Sunnie, and he knew all her tricks when it came to getting her way. “Do you mind just taking me home?”

It was against procedure. A crime had been committed. A report needed to be filed, questions needed to be answered. They needed a description of the assailant. Landon was a rule follower. He always had been.

“Sunnie,” he started again.

“Landon,” she cooed.

“You realize that will never work with me, right?”

She straightened up, the fake sweetness evaporating, the real Sunnie emerging. Funny how he preferred the sass over the sugar. “Oh my God. I have had the shittiest night in history. Please, don’t play Boy Scout tonight.”

Her words tweaked his temper. Sunnie constantly cast him in the eternal do-gooder role, while throwing herself at bad boy after bad boy.

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