Page 56 of Burning Love
“I’ll place the call now, if you’d like to wait.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Why don’t we go into the conference room,” Jace said.
Talia held her smile, nodded, and followed him to a room a few down, then shut the door for privacy.
“Sorry about this. If you’d given me a heads up I would have warned you.”
Her hand landed on his arm and ran up and down, then ended on his hand, their fingers meshing for a minute.
He hadn’t realized how touchy feely she was but found he was craving the contact as much as she might have been.
“I’m used to this but didn’t want to put you on the spot.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t come with one of those big cardboard checks. I’ve seen pictures of you with them.”
“Have you been searching me online?” she asked, winking at him.
“Maybe.”
“Some places like big checks like that. I thought this could be a little smaller. I do live in the area.”
Which he hadn’t considered. “You can tell Chief no to the interview.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I need to get it out there, the work we do. But I also didn’t want it to seem as if I was doing it for that.”
Jace nodded. “So you only gave this donation for publicity?”
She rolled her eyes. “If I was doing that, I’d be dropping checks at all sorts of places in the area who would gladly accept them. If you remember correctly, my mother set this up.”
“Don’t remind me. Or how we met.”
“I haven’t smoked anything since. I’m very careful now.”
“Good to know.” The door opened, Chief Rogers stepping in. “The local paper is sending someone over. They said it’d be about twenty minutes. Is it okay to get some pictures before they get here? I’m sure they will take some too, but we like to have a few of our own to put on our website.”
“Not a problem,” she said.
“Jace, can you go grab Cheryl, then come back to get in the picture too?”
“You want me in the picture?” he asked.
“Yes. You’re the one who got this started,” Chief Rogers said.
“You’re not going to say that, are you?” He saw Talia’s smile drop. He’d have to dig out of this hole. “They might not know why and it could alert everyone that West Carlisle’s mother lives in our district.”
“It’s fine,” Talia said. “Anyone could look up the property information to find that as well. But I appreciate your concern there. I’d like you in the picture also. A friendly face.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that and left Talia there while he searched out Cheryl.
He returned a few minutes later to see Talia laughing with his boss.
“Talia was telling me what caused the alarms at her house. Cookies and thawing chicken. That’s quite a story to get us this donation.”
“Sometimes funny fate things land in our lap and work out perfectly,” she said.
Jace knew a double meaning when he heard one. She was really putting him on the spot.
