Chapter 9 Kyle
KYLE
If I moved too quickly, she might realize she was staring, and she’d be mortified.
Sure, we were reasonable adults and we could both recover from that, but I worried it might claw back the progress we’d made toward being at ease in each other’s company.
Well, that she’d made, since I’d been comfortable with her even when I’d thought she might be a dognapper. Which, technically speaking, she was.
I casually dropped one hand and held the towel over my nether region.
Her gaze snapped up to my chest and she blanched. “I should have knocked. I’m not used to...” She backed up, right into the doorjamb, hitting it with a thud.
I reached out my free hand. “Are you—”
“Fine.” She stepped sideways and backed out through the doorway.
“Sorry, I should have locked the doors,” I said.
“No, I’m sorry.” She reached for the door handle, missed it, and fumbled after it again, finally grasping it and slamming the door closed behind her. “I’ll start coffee,” she called from the other side.
“I already...” I heard her pulling out dresser drawers. I shrugged in Bella’s direction. “She’ll figure it out.”
The pup wagged her tail in agreement.
Five minutes later, totally dressed, I joined Cami in the kitchen.
She was wearing mint green scrubs despite having the day off.
I had to admit, while I’d been looking forward to seeing her in her cute pink tennis skirt or something similar to it, she was awfully damn cute in baggy cotton, too.
She’d taken out coffee mugs, plates, and silverware, and had plugged in her countertop griddle.
The fact that she had a countertop griddle lent credence to Gina’s text listing blueberry pancakes as Cami’s favorite breakfast food.
“I’ll handle that.” I picked up the batter.
“Thanks. This is my favorite breakfast, by the way.”
“I know.”
“How?
I glanced over my shoulder at her. “You haven’t checked your messages, have you? Gina texted us both. Something about sleeping in after being up late, and that the least I could do is be a gentleman and make you breakfast.”
“She didn’t,” she whispered.
I grinned. “She did.”
She turned away from me, but I could imagine she was blushing. Again. “I can’t...” She shook her head. “Can I pour a cup of coffee for you?” She stood with her neck craned in order to look up at me, appearing determined not to drop her gaze below my face.
Continuing on my quest to be a gentleman, I didn’t mention it was a little late for that, since she’d stared at my naked body long enough to have memorized the important parts.
I hoped those images haunted her later that night when she was alone in bed.
Hell, I hoped she spent the entire day fantasizing about being naked with me, under her rainfall showerhead.
Those thoughts kept me grinning as I spooned out batter on one side of the griddle and lined up bacon on the other.
“I’d love a cup of coffee,” I answered. “After all, you did keep me up most of the night, according to Gina. Any reason she would think that, by the way?”
“No idea.”
“Hmm. I like to think maybe she’s rooting for me.”
Cami pointedly ignored me as she set the table.
Bella whined and bumped against my leg, pulling me out of my fantasy. Cami coaxed the dog back to her blanket with treats and spent a few minutes examining her.
“She did well overnight,” she said, slipping easily into professional mode. “She didn’t rest as much as I would have liked, but she was probably just excited about having someone in the same room.”
Yeah, I’d be hard-pressed to sleep if I were that close to Cami, too. “I heard her three different times,” I said. “Maybe I should have set up her crate in the guest room.”
“No, I think it was good for her to know someone was close by on her first night in a strange place. Maybe she can have a room of her own tonight.”
Tonight, Cami might replay this morning in her head and decide she, too, wanted some human company.
I flipped the pancakes and bacon, glad to have something to keep me busy so I didn’t do something stupid like stare longingly into her eyes.
It was attraction, pure and simple. That’s all it could be since we hadn’t even been acquainted for a full rotation of the earth.
But the way Bella wagged her tail and watched us both, you’d think the three of us had been amigos for ages. I liked the way that dog thought.
“Can she have some bacon?” I asked Cami.
“Absolutely not.”
I filled our plates and we ate at the small, circular kitchen table. Bella, undeterred by the vet’s directive, trotted over to me and laid her head on my lap. I shot a pleading look at Cami, who shook her head. I patted the dog. “Sorry, girl. Boss lady says no.”
Bella bark-whined, then lay down at my feet.
“See, it’s not even about the food,” Cami said. “She just wants the love.”
I stared at the beautiful woman across the table from me, the hot blonde who was so much my type that my team had been worried she might be an enemy agent sent to entrap me. Yeah, I wanted the love, too, although there were other names for it.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I asked as Cami polished off her bacon.
“Probably. Maybe.” She shrugged.
I grinned. “Come on, now, it seems only fair, since you’ve seen me in my birthday suit.”
Her cheeks turned pink again, making her gorgeous face glow, and, ass that I was, I didn’t feel bad about it. “It’s about the photos on your living room wall,” I said.
She was chewing and listening, but didn’t immediately respond. Then again, I hadn’t really asked a question. I wasn’t a great interrogator, as that task typically fell to other members of my team, but I usually wasn’t this shitty at it.
“I was just wondering what made you choose those particular ones to hang,” I glanced at them. “For some reason, I feel like they tell a story.”
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow as she, too, looked at them. “Maybe they do. I asked my mom for three or four family photos to enlarge and print in black and white for my wall. She chose those and sent them to me.”
“Is it your mom’s story, then?” I’d noticed that her mom looked ill in the first one, worse in the second, better in the third, and healthy again in the final one. Her dad’s face and expressions had followed a similar path, while his hair had thinned and grayed.
“Well, the first one was taken when I was nine, so my sister Lizzie was thirteen.” She sipped her coffee, then chewed her lower lip, deep in thought. “It was taken on our summer vacation, two months before my mom was diagnosed with her first brain tumor.”
“Cami, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It was tough. We all handled it in different ways. By the time the second photo was taken, I was twelve. It was Lizzie’s sixteenth birthday.
I’d spent the morning calling all her friends, including ones Mom and Dad didn’t know she had, to find her and convince her to come home.
She was smoking and snorting all sorts of crap by then, and disappearing for days at a time. ”
My stomach churned. I regretted starting this conversation, making Cami relive such a painful past.
“The third one, with just Mom, Dad, and me, was taken at my high school graduation.” She smiled and I knew that one was a happier memory. “You might have gathered that from my cap and gown ensemble.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Eh, I don’t know. I throw on a cap and gown every now and then when I’m feeling saucy.” I leaned forward and whispered. “The trick to pulling it off is to go commando underneath.”
“Stop it!” She laughed as she turned bright red. “You’re never going to let me live down this morning, are you?”
There was that laugh again. Pulling it out of her felt good. “And the final picture, with all of you together again?”
“Another graduation. It was at the end of Lizzie’s last stint in rehab. That was four years ago. She’s been clean and sober ever since.”
“That’s great. I’m happy for her. And for you.”
Cami stared at the photo. “I had a feeling that time would finally be the one that took. It was the first time she made the decision to go. It was her suggestion, and she asked me to help her find a facility out west, somewhere farther from home so she could start fresh.”
“Is she back in Maryland now?”
“No. She stayed in Arizona. She went back to school, got her degree, and now she’s an addiction counselor.
” She frowned, but covered it quickly. “I miss having her close by, but I’m proud of her and happy she’s found her path.
” She narrowed her eyes for a minute as she looked at the collection again.
“It’s also the story of Mom’s illness and recovery. ”
“And your dad’s journey with her.” As I said it, I knew what had been bothering me about the pictures. “But you look the same in every shot. Growing up, of course, but the same pose, the same smile.” I turned my attention to her. “Where’s your story in those pictures?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That is my story. My job was to hold steady, to keep it together no matter what was going on around me.”
Jesus, who gave that job to a nine-year-old? Or a teenager or even the twenty-something she would have been after her sister’s final stint in rehab?
“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was the only thing I could say.
“About what?” She shook her head. “They’re all fine now. Everyone’s fine.”
“I wasn’t sorry for them,” I said.
She stopped with a forkful of pancake inches from her mouth and stared at me. That’s when it hit me. No one had ever told her they were sorry for her, for what she went through. I felt like I was peering into her mind and memories and pain for several heart beats.
Then a protective veil fell back into place. “I’m fine, too. What about you? Any siblings?”
I gave her a quick summary of my own childhood, but kept it light and easy because that had been my family job. “One brother, two years younger. Parents divorced when I was ten. Dad remarried when I was in college, and Mom is still blissfully single.”
“And your brother? What’s his name?”
“Jamie. James now, to anyone outside the family.”
“Are you close?” she asked.
“We are. He was always a good kid, and he’s a great adult. He’s a high school math teacher in upstate New York, and he’s getting married next year.”
“Nice. And your parents, are you close?”
I sighed. “According to my mom, I don’t call enough, but otherwise, we’re all in a good place.”
“That’s how moms are.” She finished her pancakes, then pushed her empty plate a few inches away from her and rested her forearms on the table. Her face was serious and I worried we’d touched another raw nerve. “Speaking of parents, I have a question for you.”
Fuck me. I hoped she wasn’t going to ask whether I wanted kids.
The truth was, I didn’t know. I’d never thought much about it until Hayes, who was my teammate but also one of my best friends, had announced his wife’s pregnancy.
I was a definite maybe. If this was a screening question for a potential date, I would tell her exactly that.
No misleading a woman one way or the other, no matter how badly I wanted to see her naked.
“Ask away,” I said when I realized she’d fallen silent.
“Okay. My question is, would you consider adopting Bella? I thought you might be interested in being her person.”
Adopting Bella. I turned the words over in my head, making sure I’d heard correctly and absorbing the realization that this conversation wasn’t about dating or sex or anyone getting naked.
Once my little head got over that disappointment, the other one took over the thinking.
I looked down at the very good girl at my feet.
Cami continued. “I know it’s a lot to ask, a big responsibility, but—”
“Yes. I’m saying yes to the pup. You’re right, I want to be her person.”
Cami smiled and her shoulders dropped. I was no tactical agent and I didn’t have the extensive training in reading people that they received, but I understood the basics.
My answer had shifted something in her. It had changed her view of me.
She was less wary, more open. All that and a dog I already loved. Hot damn, this was my lucky day.
I patted Bella’s head and she stared up at me with liquid brown eyes. “I do have to travel sometimes for my job. Maybe you’d know someone who could help out with her when I do.”
“I’ll do it,” she said immediately. “Bella can stay with me anytime. I’ll take her to work with me so she won’t have to be alone.”
“I’d appreciate that.” And I liked that it meant Cami would stay in my life long after the current situation with Scott and the drugs and what appeared to be a coming clusterfuck were behind us. Holy shit, I didn’t realize how much I wanted that until I heard her agree to it.
I dropped my gaze and stared at her mouth, pink and puffy and ready to be kissed.
Her tongue darted out and licked her lower lip.
I was hard in a split second. I knew she would taste like blueberries and syrup and lust. I slowly lifted my gaze back to hers.
Her eyes were wide, her pupils blown, her breath coming in quick pants.
I mustered my patience and waited for her to make the next move.
After that, I would pull her into my arms and wrap myself around her petite, curvy body and make her pant even harder.
But first, I needed to know if she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
She leaned closer, her lips now inches from mine, and closed her eyes.
Pounding on the door made us jump. Her forehead crashed into my jaw. Bella whined. I was on my feet and headed for the door when the asshole outside banged again. I stopped by the small table that was inside the apartment door, where I’d placed my stun gun for easy reach.
“Police! We have a warrant! Open the door!”
I peered through the peephole and my heart sank. My lucky day was blown right out of the fucking water. It really was the cops, and I had a sinking feeling I knew why they were there.