Chapter 4
The second Tyler’s hand flew up to cup Chloe’s bare shoulder, he knew he’d made a massive tactical error.
Her lips parted in surprise, her copper-colored lashes fanning all the way upward as her palm splayed over the front of his T-shirt to steady herself.
The move had the exact opposite effect on him, and fuck, he needed to stop touching her, fast.
“Sorry,” he said, recalibrating and making himself remove his hand from her shoulder and step back to a respectable distance that didn’t involve knowing how good she smelled or how hot her hand felt on his chest.
Her fingers dropped along with her surprise, her expression growing wary. “What are you doing here?”
Tyler kept his face perfectly neutral despite the unexpected pinch of her question. “I caught Xander in the lobby and he brought me up to wait for you. I’m your ride, remember?”
Addison, the goddess of great timing, brought him all the way back to reality with her presence. “Hey, Tyler! Chloe didn’t tell me you’d brought her here.”
“I thought he was just dropping me off,” Chloe said, her smile just the slightest bit stiff.
Tyler had considered it. For Chrissake, he’d brought her to one of the safest places in the entire city in broad daylight. She was perfectly capable of asking Addison for a ride or calling a ride-share to get back to her car, and anyway, he really needed to avoid her.
But something about not sticking around for her had rankled, deep in his gut, and so here he was. Right back in her orbit, despite his better judgment. “Your brother would’ve kicked my ass if I’d left you here without a ride, and anyway, I promised you breakfast.”
Addison’s brows lifted in a way that reminded Tyler she was not only a detective, but a damn good one. “You guys had a date?”
“No.” The word flew out of Tyler with more speed than he’d intended, and shit. Shit. “Nothing major. We were just going to talk about, you know, wedding stuff.”
Addison’s eyes lit with happiness despite her obvious fatigue, thankfully distracted from his reaction to the D-word. “Oh, yay! I’m so glad Ryan finally asked you to be his best man. I know we kind of sprung a lot on you guys, what with moving the date up and everything.”
“We’ve totally got this,” Chloe promised. “Seriously. No worrying allowed.”
“Well, good, because I’m not sure I have time. Speaking of which, I should…” Addison tilted her head toward the Intelligence office behind Tyler, which was buzzing with the sort of activity that only went with a big case.
“Go,” Chloe said, and Addison murmured her thanks, starting to move toward the action.
“I’ll call you later about Esme. And Tyler?” She turned back to drop her gaze to the bottle of cranberry juice and package of mini cinnamon rolls he’d forgotten he was holding. “Nice pick.”
“Right,” he said, waiting until she was fully out of earshot before thrusting both in Chloe’s direction. “Here.”
Confusion filtered over her pretty face. “What’s this?”
“Breakfast.” Okay, so these cinnamon rolls had come from the vending machine and both their integrity and their size might be a tiny bit questionable, but Tyler knew they were still Chloe’s favorite breakfast pastry.
“We didn’t have a chance to eat before we got here, so I figured you might need something to tide you over. You’ve been here for a while.”
Chloe’s cheeks flushed. “Oh, no, thanks. I’m fine.”
“If you haven’t eaten anything, your blood sugar could drop pretty fast,” he said, still holding the juice and cinnamon rolls out for her to take. She might be tough, but come on. Physiology was scientific fact.
Infuriatingly, Chloe doubled down. “Really. I’m good to go.”
Her stomach chose exactly that moment to let out a very toothy, very traitorous growl, and Tyler’s brows arched.
“Sounds like it.”
She released an exhale that signaled an argument was going to follow, and whether it was her stubborn refusal to take the offering or the knowledge that they had to buddy up for a bunch of fairy-tale wedding activities, he couldn’t be sure, but something made his composure slip.
“Look, Chloe. I’m not trying to force-feed you.
But I’m also not interested in you getting dizzy or passing out unnecessarily.
Then, we’ll have no choice but to call an ambo.
You’ll have to go to the ED, deal with a bunch of tests and at least two exams, all so they can tell you that breakfast is, in fact, the most important meal of the day for a reason.
So, could you do me a favor and just take these?
At the very least, you’ll save yourself the trouble of having Addison call Ryan to tell him you keeled over in a police precinct. ”
Chloe scowled, but—yessss—she took the pastries and juice. “You are very infuriating, you know that? Also, low blow bringing my brother into it.”
“Maybe, but I’m not wrong.”
“Wow, you’re really leaning into the infuriating thing, huh?
” she asked. Still, she tore open the package and pulled one of the tiny, glaze-covered rolls free from the rest. She made a big show of it, too, holding the thing up so he could see it before polishing it off in a single bite.
She’d have proven her point if a smile he’d bet was involuntary hadn’t spread over her lips, her eyes fluttering shut and a barely audible happy-sigh issuing up from her chest as she chewed, and Tyler pulled in the deepest breath he could find.
He waited until she’d eaten three more, then walked her through the Intelligence office toward the door before asking, “So, is everything okay?”
“Peachy.” Apropos of exactly nothing, she asked, “Did these come from the vending machine?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly, his brain catching up to the conversation on a solid three-second delay. “But if you’re still hungry, we can just go to breakfast like we planned.” As crazy as this morning had been, they did still need to divide up a bunch of to-dos for Ryan and Addison’s wedding.
“They’re not for me,” Chloe said, swiveling her gaze over the second-floor hallway until she spotted the vending machines at the opposite end. She walked toward them with purpose, scanning the options before pulling her phone out of her back pocket to tap her digital wallet to life.
Tyler should have said nothing. Hell, he should have let her go about her business on her own, in the first place, without sticking around. So, he really, really wanted to kick himself square in the nuts when he said, “Are they for Esme?”
Chloe froze, her hand hovering over the buttons on the vending machine. “How do you know about Esme?”
“Xander and Capelli were working on the case while I waited for you. Xander didn’t tell me much, only that it’s pretty brutal, but I picked up enough details to get the gist of what’s going on.”
As a squad firefighter, Tyler had been involved in plenty of incidents that resulted in loss of life or massive property damage, so he was used to working with various law enforcement agencies.
Statistically speaking, very few of those cases had ended up involving foul play.
But between the string of God’s-honest arsons they’d responded to earlier that year, the handful of times they’d put out fires set by criminals to destroy evidence, and the one bomb threat a few years ago that hadn’t been an empty threat, he understood how sensitive case details were.
Which Xander and Capelli knew he knew, since most of Tyler’s assists had been on Intelligence cases.
Otherwise, his ass would’ve probably been stuck waiting for Chloe in the lobby.
A flicker of something—worry? Fear? Moved over Chloe’s face and landed directly in Tyler’s chest before it disappeared. “Yep. Brutal is a good word for it.”
Chloe tapped in the code for the cinnamon rolls, then repeated the process for a second package plus a bottle of water.
Popping the last of her own breakfast into her mouth, she tucked her juice under her arm to liberate the new items from the machine.
She didn’t elaborate on the case, though—or her role in it—so Tyler didn’t have much of a choice but to fall into step with her as she headed back to the Intelligence office, handed the water and pastries over to Addison, then turned back for the exit.
“Sorry you lost your morning waiting around for me. I’ve got to pass on breakfast, but like I said, I’ll make it up to you with the party planning.”
“You don’t need to do that,” he said, but she waved him off, “I insist”-style.
“It’s no big deal.” She added just enough of a polite smile to sell it. Well, to anyone who didn’t know her like the back of their hand, a.k.a., him. “Are you headed back toward Seventeen? If not, I can totally call a ride-share.”
“No. I mean, yes.” Fuck, why did everything about her put his composure in a blender? “Yes, I can take you back to your car. No, you don’t need to call a ride-share.”
“Great. Did you park in the visitor’s lot or on the street?”
“In the visitor’s lot.”
Tyler matched her strides toward the lobby, through the precinct, then past the doors and into the midday sunshine.
Fine, so he could let breakfast go. Chloe was an adult.
He didn’t have to make sure she ate a full meal, even though those cinnamon rolls had been one step up from microscopic and she still hadn’t touched her juice.
That look on her face, though? The one she thought she’d hidden when he’d asked about Esme?
That, he couldn’t ignore. No matter how much he needed to keep her at arm’s length.
He waited until they were most of the way to his Mustang before trying again. “It’s been a crazy morning. Do you want to talk about this case?”