CHAPTER THIRTEEN
City Hall, with its tall white pillars and brick colonial architecture, reminded Marti of Grant’s enormous house when they drove into the slanted parking space. Marti moved to get out, but the door remained locked and could only be unlocked by Grant. But he was just sitting there.
Then he looked over at her. According to her credentials she was thirty-seven years old, and although she looked every bit of her age, if not older, those years gave her a maturity about her, a sophistication, that he found appealing. He fooled around with women of all ages, but lately he’d been messing with women in their twenties who knew how to bring it in bed but exhausted him otherwise. The neediness. They clinginess that he didn’t tolerate. The greed. It was all getting to be too much. He wondered if her independence was his attraction to her. Her toughness. Her bluntness. The fact that she could take care of herself. Qualities in a woman he had grown unaccustomed to seeing. Qualities that always turned him on.
But not just that. She turned him on. The way her natural eyelashes curved down around her large eyes that gave her a look so sexy that Grant often found himself staring at her. But what was even sexier to him was that unlike every woman he’d ever been with, she didn’t seem to realize the effect she had on men. Or on him . “Mayor Rickter is an asshole,” he said to her. “Just so you know.”
Marti smiled. “If I had a dollar for every asshole I’ve been around, I’d be a rich girl.”
Grant smiled too, something he rarely did. “Just so you know,” he said, unbuckled, and opened the door.
Marti started to protest that he needed to unlock her door since he apparently had it set that way in his car’s computer, but then she saw him walking around to the passenger side of his car and she decided to let him do his thing. He didn’t come across to her as the kind of man that would bother to open car doors for ladies, but he did so at the station and was doing so at City Hall. He was opening doors for her. This after he had literally left her in the dust the first time they met. But that was Chief McGraw. He was like a rollercoaster ride. Up and down with him.
He opened her car door, she thanked him as she got out, and they made their way across the sidewalk to the front entrance. But when they were about to enter City Hall’s revolving doors, and he stepped aside to let her enter first, he once again placed his hand on her lower back: something she recalled him doing at the station. It gave her a tingle when he touched her like that, but she pretended she didn’t notice. Her purpose there was singular and she wasn’t going to let some gruffy, moody police chief sidetrack her.
They entered the building and made their way onto the elevator. On the elevator, Marti noticed how Grant moved to the back while she stood up front. And although three other people were riding up with them, she could feel his stare. When the elevator dinged just before the doors slid open, she quickly glanced back and confirmed her suspicion: She caught him staring at her butt.
Grant’s eyes did not behave as if he cared that she caught him assessing her body. He even looked up into her eyes. When their eyes met, it was Marti who seemed caught off guard. It was Marti who hadn’t been with a man in so long that the very idea of it terrified her. It was Marti who couldn’t wait to get off of that elevator.
To make matters worse, when they did step off of the elevator on the top floor, a beautiful woman was about to get on. Until she saw the chief.
“Grant!” She seemed taken aback to see him. “What are you doing here?”
“Meeting with Dooney. What are you doing here?”
“Meeting with the budget director about the Ball. You haven’t returned my calls.” Then she glanced over at Marti. “I was wondering why. Am I on the outs again? And if so, who’s in?”
Marti could hear Grant sneer. “That’s none of your business,” he said to the woman.
She actually smiled, although Marti could tell she was also pissed. “Same old Grant. The big news is which lady are you taking to the Ball this year.” She glanced at Marti again. “I’ve never known you to go for the Cinderella type.”
Grant’s jaw tightened when she took that swipe at Marti. “Apparently I do,” he said. “I took you one year, didn’t I?”
Marti couldn’t suppress her smile, and didn’t try to. The woman tried to laugh it off herself, but her eyes gave her away. “I’m still waiting for my ask,” she had the nerve to say.
“Keep waiting,” Grant said, placed his arm on Marti’s lower back again, and escorted her away from the elevator. When Marti glanced back, the woman was staring hate daggers. But not at Grant, but seemingly at Marti!
“That woman looks like she wants to kill me,” Marti said to him as they walked away.
Grant didn’t bother to look at her again. “She knows the rules,” he said, his hand pressing harder against Marti’s slender back when he said it.
But Marti wanted to know what rules he was talking about. Did he mean that he and that woman had an open relationship with no attachments? With no commitments? Or was it a private relationship and they were supposed to have no public displays? She wanted to ask him all those questions, but she knew he would tell her it was none of her business just like he told that woman. And he’d be absolutely right. She said nothing.
They made it to the Mayor’s office and were told that they could go right in.
Dooney Rickter was seated behind his desk and didn’t bother to stand up when they walked in. He didn’t even bother to look away from the computer screen in which he was staring.
“Sit down,” he said to both of them.
Marti moved to sit down, but Grant pulled her back up. “You haven’t been formally introduced.”
Dooney looked up at him. “Who says I wanna be?”
“Mayor Rickter, this is Lieutenant Nash, our consultant.”
“ Our consultant? You mean Chauncey Devere’s consultant. I know what that governor of ours is up to. She’s more like our spy.”
“I don’t spy for anyone,” Marti corrected the mayor.
He gave Marti a nasty look. Then he gave her that assessing look-over. “Tell me this, Miss Nash, how many sleepovers did you have with Chauncey to get this gig?”
To Marti’s shock, Grant angrily reached over that desk, grabbed the mayor by his suitcoat, and pulled him up until they were face to face. Marti could tell the mayor was shocked too. So much so that he didn’t have the words to say.
“Watch it, Dooney,” Grant warned him.
But even Grant was surprised by his own actions. He released the mayor.
The mayor straightened his suitcoat angrily, and for some reason he looked over at Marti as if it was all her fault. But Marti was still reeling from Grant’s reaction to the mayor’s putdown of her. It had been a long time, too long to even remember how long it had been, since anybody stood up for her. And to the mayor no less? This man Grant McGraw continued to amaze and baffle and infuriate her all at the same time.
“Have a seat,” the mayor said to them again.
“Apologize to the Lieutenant.”
“I’m not going to--”
“ Apologize !” Grant said it so angrily that it made the mayor wince. “You will not ever disrespect this lady as if she’s some low-grade slut, and expect no retribution. Because you will get it.”
“From you?”
“You better believe it.”
“Why?” the now-confused mayor asked his police chief. “Since when did you care about some female?”
But it was a question Grant couldn’t answer. And didn’t try to answer.
“I could fire you,” the mayor said to Grant. “You know that?”
“You’d better apologize to her. I know that.”
The mayor’s anger flared. “Who do you think you are talking to me like that? Are you out of your got damn mind?”
Sometimes Grant wondered if he had a screw loose. Why else was he so offended by some jerk like Dooney Rickter disrespecting a woman he barely knew? He’d never gotten that heated for women he knew for years. But for this one he was all bothered under the collar? It made no sense! But Dooney still was going to apologize. Grant was not allowing that level of disrespect against Marti to stand. Not that level.
Somehow Mayor Rickter knew it too. “If I offended you,” he said to Marti, “I apologize.”
Marti and Grant both knew it was an apology erroneously couched in an I believe everything I said to you, but if you didn’t like it then I’ll say the words you want to hear to put an end to it excuse. But it was better than nothing.
“No worries,” Marti said.
Then the mayor, once again, invited them to sit down. This time, they sat down.
Dooney sat down too. “It leaked,” he said as soon as his butt hit the chair.
Grant instantaneously knew what he meant. Marti had a good guess.
“What’s the fallout?” Grant asked him.
The mayor leaned back in his chair. “They want you gone,” he said.
“That’s nothing new,” Grant said. “You never wanted me in the role anyway.”
“Damn right I didn’t.”
“Did you leak it?”
“Fuck you, McGraw! Like I’m gonna leak that shit that’ll take me down right along with you. We’ve gotta contain it.”
“How?” asked Grant. “We’ve got a mass casualty shooter still on the loose. We’ve got more DVs than any other police department in this entire region.”
“And we’ve got Governor Devere’s spy in our midst!”
“I’m nobody’s spy, Mayor Rickter,” Marti corrected the mayor. “I don’t do that.”
“Then what are you here for?”
“To review the issues in this department and see what tools could be used to correct them.”
Dooney smiled. “Whatever floats your boat.” Then he looked at Grant. “Touch me again and I’ll fire you.”
“Then fire me,” Grant responded. “You think I enjoy this shit?”
That was news to Marti, although she didn’t know why it would be considering how poorly run that police department was. But it did surprise her.
Dooney looked at his chief. “It’ll be my pleasure,” he said to him, “but the BOBs won’t allow it. You’re their horse and they’re riding with you all the way until they destroy me.”
Marti noticed a theme with the mayor: It was always all about him. And who on earth were the BOBs?
“There’s a press conference Friday,” he said as Grant’s phone began ringing. “I expect you to be there.”
Grant looked at the Caller ID.
“I’m not going through that fire by myself,” Dooney added.
But Grant answered the call. “What?” Then he frowned. “Are you serious? Where?” Then he jumped up. “All available units over there now! I’m on my way.”
Marti jumped up too.
“Now what?” the mayor asked him.
“Another mass shooting,” Grant said as he began hurrying for the exit. Marti hurried behind him.
The mayor was floored. “Not another one! Where?”
“Near here. Karney’s,” Grant said as he placed his hand on Marti’s back and hurried her out of the office.
They raced for the elevator.