Page 63 of Second First Kiss

“Take everyone else out of the equation and tell me what you want.”

A partner. She didn’t have the time nor was she in a position to entertain one now, but a girl could still dream. And Kat’s dream was that, one day, after things were more settled, she’d find a man who could put up with her bullshit and ballbusting. A man who could handle everything that came with dating Kat Rhodes.

Nolan wasn’t the man and today wasn’t the day. Hell, it wasn’t even the year.

“I want to give Tessa a good life, I want to not be drowning in debt, and I want to have a job that I love. And I want to finish my degree.”

He tapped a finger over her heart. “But in here. What do you want in here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do, you’re just too scared to say it,” he said in such a gentle voice that it felt like a caress, almost making up for the fact that he’d called her a coward. Almost.

“You want honest? I don’t want to promise you things that I can’t deliver on.”

With that she turned to walk away. He held on to her hand for a brief moment, then released his grip, letting her go. The moment she got her freedom she wished he’d held on.

16

This was a case of too much, too soon, Nolan thought as he walked behind the bar at Bigfoot’s Brews on Wednesday afternoon. He hadn’t heard anything from Tessa, but he’d still pressed the judge for a warrant to search the Locke residence. He’d only been granted access to R. J.’s room. If he’d just waited, found more evidence, then they might have been issued a warrant to search the entire residence.

“I think this calls for a shot of whiskey,” Nolan said to Eli, who was already there, sitting on a barstool.

Eli had texted him about an hour ago and wanted to meet. Nolan was almost home, and in desperate need of a hot shower and a cold brew, when the phone pinged.

Eli: We need to talk. Meet me at Bigfoots in an hour.

That was it, but Nolan didn’t question. He already knew what his former partner wanted to talk about. Nolan screwing the pooch and possibly blowing up the case. While Eli was no longer his partner, Nolan knew he was still invested in what had been his last case. So he’d answered that he’d be there.

“Maybe two shots,” Eli said, with that same irritated expression Nolan had come to learn meant he was worried. There was a small frown marring his brows, and his lips were tilted down at the corners. The grimness in his posture was a perfect match to what Nolan was feeling.

Nolan looked around the quiet bar. There were a handful of regulars scattered around and a few ski bums who were trying to catch the last runs of the season. Tim and Lena were working the bar without Kat, which put him in an even worse mood.

When they’d come up empty-handed, all he thought about was how great it would be to get home and have someone there waiting to hear about his day—to distract him from his massive screwup.

That someone hadn’t had a face for over a year, but lately it had been that of the prickly and opinionated Kat.

Nolan grabbed two tumbler glasses from beneath the bar and their top shelf whiskey. He looked at the glasses and laughed. It was going to take more than a couple fingers to get him out of this funk, so he poured three shots’ worth, then set the bottle on the bar top between him and Eli.

“I should have listened to you,” Nolan said. He felt like he had that night Eli had been shot. Eli had wanted to wait, but Nolan was so hell-bent on catching R. J. he pushed for them to enter the premises before anyone showed. From the moment they entered the remote cabin turned lab, his spidey sense had gone on high alert.

The cabin was empty. The lab equipment was still there, but it was like the crew knew they were coming and had cleared out moments before Nolan kicked in the door. They hadn’t even had time to turn off the burners.

Nolan had run out the back and Eli had taken the side exit. He caught sight of a shadow zigzagging toward the woods and went in pursuit. He’d barely made it ten feet when he heard two shots fire in rapid succession.

It was as if time stood still. So many thoughts penetrated his head all at once, his instincts at odds, forming a big, complicated mess in his gut. Follow the perp or go and check on his partner? Determined to get to his partner’s side and have his six, he stopped chase and hightailed it in the direction the shot had originated.

When he arrived, Eli was sitting up against a tree trunk holding his shoulder and his chest, with no one else in sight. Nolan saw the blood coming out of his partner’s body and immediately feared that it was a chest shot. Then he remembered they’d put on their vests before heading in, so a chest shot would have left nothing but a nasty bruise and maybe a cracked rib.

The blood was from a hit to the arm, but Nolan would never forget how helpless and angry he’d felt. Helpless because his partner had been shot, and angry that his partner had been shot on his watch. Nolan had made a risky decision going in and it hadn’t paid off.

“How were you supposed to know that the kid had enough brains to either have lookouts or someone on the inside? Or that he’d have enough time to gather most of the supply and dump or hide it,” Eli said.

“I know enough about R. J. to bet that he wouldn’t dump the supply. He’s too arrogant to think he would get caught. It was probably hidden somewhere in his daddy’s place.” Nolan lifted the glass to his lips and downed it in three swallows. Then he refilled the glass.

“That’s twenty-five-year-old whiskey. Not some cheap shit to get trashed on because you had a bad day,” Eli said.

“Today wasn’t bad. It was shit.”

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