Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
CROIS
After a while, when the food was done, he packed the dishes away and looked at Harmony. She looked like she was in a happy mood, a quiet smile on her face. “Better?”
She tipped her head to the side and sighed. “Much better.”
“Good.”
He looked at the door to her apartment. “Uh… I’m going to… uh, go and let you relax.”
There.
He did it.
He was being a good guy.
Not pressing his luck.
Good.
That’s when he realized that his legs were a little numb.
Sitting cross legged wasn’t something normal for him. Lifting himself up, he put a hand on the top of the coffee table and unfolded one leg.
A moment later, he felt a hand on his back and another on his arm.
He looked over and saw Harmony beside him, on her feet, but crouched down.
“Here,” she grinned at him, “let me help you.”
He wasn’t a man who blushed. His skin didn’t usually hold color like that unless he was boxing and he was sweating up a storm, but he felt heat in his face.
“I… I’m not used to sitting like that.”
“I had a feeling.” Her smile was bright now, her eyes sparkling with humor.
Beautiful.
Harmony looked beautiful, incandescently so.
“Here,” she tucked herself up against his side, “let me help you.”
He leaned against her and got his other leg under him and tried to stand.
Tried.
And failed.
He stumbled, leaning even more against her.
Her arms wrapped around him and his arm looped around her shoulders.
“Oh,” she staggered a little.
And feeling a mix of shame and worry, he straightened up, pulling her closer.
“Crois?”
Well, that’s what he thought she said.
Her voice was a little muffled against his chest.
Crois adjusted his hold, lowering his arms so they were around her, but his hands were against her lower back. “Thanks for the save.”
She laughed and he felt the vibrations moving through both of them. “I didn’t do much.”
He leaned in, putting his forehead against hers. “You did a lot.”
She sighed and he drew in a breath.
“I know I should let go of you,” he sighed, “but you feel so good.” He smiled at the feeling of warmth that surrounded him. “That, and I’m afraid my legs are going to fold the moment I let go.”
She stilled for a moment and he wondered what would happen next.
She adjusted her arms around him, her hands smoothing up his back.
Her touch was gentle, but the movement of her hands stirred up emotions that he knew he shouldn’t show. He didn’t want to push.
“You can stand right here with me.”
He felt her breath move over his arm, blowing over his skin.
He wasn’t about to argue with her words.
He was enjoying himself more than he should.
“Am I too heavy?”
Crois bit the inside of his cheek after he asked the question.
The last thing he wanted to was let her go and for her let him go as well.
“You’re tall,” she explained, “but I can take the weight. Vega and I have carried more than you without getting winded.”
For a moment he tensed, but his brain took over where his instinct was causing a problem.
Harmony was just saying it like it was.
Something he wasn’t used to.
Women, at least the women he used to spend time with, liked to flatter him just to get into his good graces or to get closer to him.
That flattery had become worthless and he couldn’t take it seriously anymore.
“Well,” he smiled as his legs were gaining strength, “I’m glad I’m not squishing you.”
She laughed softly and he took that as a win.
A big one.
“I… I have a question for you.”
“Hmm?” Her voice sounded like she was enjoying the warmth of their embrace as much as he was. “What’s that?”
There was a moment of internal debate in his head.
Not because of Harmony.
She was the right one to ask.
The only one he wanted to ask.
He just didn’t want to push too much, too fast.
“My partner-”
“Pilar?”
He hummed under his breath. “Mmm hmm. She’s getting married.”
“Yeah!” Harmony’s excitement lifted his worry to almost hope. “Everyone is talking about it.”
“I was wondering,” he let out a breath and pulled another in. “If you’d like to go.”
She stilled in his arms.
“With me.” He added, realizing that he’d omitted that bit of information. “Like… like a date.”
“Like a date?”
He heard her tone but he didn’t understand it.
She hesitated and he saw her nibble on her lower lip. “I’d like it to be a date.”
“Then, it’s a date,” he clarified with a smile. “I wanted it to be a date. I just didn’t want to push.”
Her smile lit up her face and his heart. His mama would be so damn happy.
Harmony moved her hands against his back, warming him all over. “I think the way we work together is that you do a little pushing and I give myself a chance to open up.”
“And I‘ll try to hold myself back from… from wanting you.”
Her cheeks reddened all the way to the tips of her ears and he found he’d never seen a prettier sight. “Wanting… me?”
She shook her head. “I know what I am and what I’m not, Crois. I’m plain. Like stucco plain. You don’t have to pretend that I’m someone you’d want.”
“Oh, honey,” he couldn’t help how strained his voice sounded, “you’re exactly what and who I want.”
She tensed and he wanted to push past the wall she’d just put up between them.
“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, Harm.”
She frowned a little more. “Harm? Why do you call me that?”
“It’s jut a nickname. If you don’t like it, I’ll stop.”
She shook her head. “I don’t dislike it,” she frowned, “It’s just taking time to adjust to it.”
“Has anyone ever called you a nickname before?”
Her eyes closed and her chin tipped forward. “Only names to make fun of me.”
“Well,” he moved his hands to cup her face and lift it up so he could see her eyes, “I’m not making fun of you, but maybe we can find a nickname that you can like from the start. I don’t want you to make yourself ‘okay’ with it.”
Her eyes were fixed on his, but they moved a little here and there as if she was searching for something.
“You called me honey just a few minutes ago.”
Crois watched the subtle movements of her features, the lift of the corners of her mouth. He smiled, too. “You like that?”
She nodded. “I like that.”
“Honey,” he liked the way it felt calling her that, but even better was the way she seemed to glow when she heard it. “I’m going to go and give you time to rest and relax. And… I’m going to send you the information on the wedding. If you want to, I can take you out to get a dress.”
The idea of watching Harmony try on dresses made his heart pound against his ribs.
She put a hand against his chest. “I can get a dress.”
He smiled at the smile in her voice and the one on her face. “Let me know if I can help.”
She rolled her eyes and gave him a little push.
Nodding, he stepped back and gathered up the bags with his empty dishes. “I can’t wait to take you to the wedding.”
“I can’t wait to go. I… I mean that.”
It sounded like she did.
And that, was everything he could hope for.
The next day when he showed up at work, he found someone waiting for him.
Someone he didn’t want to see.
The woman sitting at his desk stood up the moment she saw him and suddenly he felt a dark cloud settling over his head. “Valerie.”
Her bright smile fell into a frown. “It’s Veronica, silly.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He didn’t want to apologize even if he knew it was the right thing to do. He just wanted her gone.
“I made you something to apologize.”
She gestured at a box on the desk like she was on The Price is Right or Deal or No Deal.
“Ta Da!!”
He blinked at her and looked at the box as if it had Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in it. “Whatever it is, you can take it with you. I’ve got to get to work.”
He looked up at the clock on the wall and inwardly groaned. He’d gotten to work with plenty of time before the roll call and that was going to be a problem.
If he had to walk away from his desk because the meeting was about to start that was one thing.
But he had time, more than fifteen minutes before the start of the shift meeting. He didn’t have that excuse.
And the woman staring at him likely knew it.
Her uncle, after all, was one of the big wigs at the Center City Police Department. He may have been the one to arrest her, but he still had to be civil.
Especially because someone up on high had managed to vacate the arrest.
The last thing he needed was to upset the Catalano family and that included the woman standing at his desk.
“Look, Cross, I’m trying to apologize for all the trouble I caused you. ‘Kay?”
He smiled at her but it was thin-lipped stretch. “It’s Crois.”
“Hmm? Sorry?” She blinked at him. “What?”
“My name,” he clarified, “is Crois. Not Cross.”
“Oh…” her laughter was thin and sounded like cheap wind chimes clashing against each other. “I thought it was Cross. Cross,” she reiterated, “is sexier. But… I don’t mind calling you Crois if it makes you happy.”
“You can call me Officer.” He didn’t want to leave her any room to argue. “Now, if you’ll-”
“It’s donuts!”
She actually stomped her foot, her dangling earrings catching on her hair.
“I brought you two dozen donuts!”
She glared at him, her lips pursed as if she’d just tasted something sour.
“Why are you so ungrateful?”
“Ma’am-”
“Miss,” she hissed out, “I’m not a ma’am. I’m young,” she grinned at him her earlier frustration falling away, “beautiful, and I have a vibrant personality.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t going to argue with her. “That’s nice.”
Her expression changed again.
Instead of a big grin, she was now batting her eyelashes at him and she folded her hands over her chest.
It was then that Crois noticed how she was dressed.
She was wearing a dress that looked like someone poured it on at a latex store. The V-neck was cut low enough that he could have seen a bra, if she was wearing one.
She had a chain of some sort wrapped around her hips and heels that had her teetering on the linoleum floor of the bullpen.
If someone slammed the right sequence of doors in the building the resulting wind tunnel might just knock her off those spindly heels and onto the floor.
Damn.
Crois really didn’t have the patience for this woman.
“So, Crois…” She drawled his name out like she was coaxing him with her sweetness. “I really feel bad about that night.”
He knew his smile had thinned and he was casting his gaze around the room, looking for someone to help him get out of this hell. There were a few officers around the room, but they were all studiously looking down and avoiding his gaze.
Crois knew that none of them wanted to help.
They’d all heard about his run-in with Veronica Catalano and they wanted nothing to do with it.
Not a damn thing.
“So I was wondering,” she moved closer, reaching out to touch his arm, “if I can take you out to dinner and make it up to you.”
“Thank you, but-”
“Officer St. Cyr.”
Crois turned at the sound of Kate’s voice and barely resisted the urge to grovel at her feet and kiss her serviceable shoes. “Sergeant?”
Kate smiled at him, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It held the full weight of her rank. “I think you need to get into the room for roll call. Unless you’re planning on being written up.”
He knew that the other officers in the bullpen were all due to be in the roll call meeting at the same time, but Kate wasn’t calling on any of them.
Not that he would argue with her.
She was giving him the only out he could hope for.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
He started to walk away and felt a hand close around his forearm.
He hissed at the sudden prick of pain on his skin.
Looking down, he saw that Veronica had long acrylic nails that were pressed into his forearms.
Inwardly he shook his head.
In the past, he would have noticed nails like that.
He would have probably enjoyed the lengths that she’d gone to to apologize to him.
Well, not after her uncle had vacated her arrest and basically put a rather ugly target on his back.
“Let go.”
Veronica seemed to dig her heels in.
That, and her nails, too.
“Look, lady.” She’d turned her focus on Kate. “I don’t know where you get your nerve ordering him around! He’s a police officer!”
The whole room around them went silent.
Even the lookie loos who’d been pretending to be busy to listen in were suddenly, shamelessly staring at the developing scene.
“Yes,” Kate answered, “he is a police officer, but I am his commanding officer. Sergeant Kate Turner, Miss Catalano.”
Veronica heard the words but they didn’t seem to affect her at all.
“Who?”
Kate’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. “Excuse me?”
Veronica seemed to take Kate’s question as a sign of weakness. “You,” she lifted her chin to look down her nose at Kate, “are excused.”
Crois heard more than one person suck in a breath.
Kate might be a petite woman in many ways, but she was by no means a pushover. “Everyone who wants to keep their jobs as police officers should get into the room for roll call.
The officers around the room left like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Crois hesitated because he wanted to be there to support Kate, but Veronica still had a hold on him.
Kate closed the space between them and squared up to the other woman. “Miss Catalano. You need to let go of my officer and leave. He has a job to do.”
Veronica didn’t seem cowed in the least.
She smiled at Kate as if she had discovered the answer to a secret. “Wow. Is this a cougar thing?”
Crois swallowed his tongue.
Kate narrowed her eyes at the other woman.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t act dumb!”
Kate exhaled. “You are not welcome in the Precinct, Miss Catalano. Please,” Kate’s voice was hardly polite, “take your hand off of my officer’s arm. And leave.”
Veronica wrenched his arm up and he ground his teeth together to keep from making a sound even though he could see that Veronica hand drawn blood.
His blood.
“Just you wait until my uncle hears about this.”
Crois saw stars at that moment.
It wasn’t because he was hurt that badly, he was worried what Kate might do.
She wasn’t a hot head. Her step-brother Walker had been the one with that personality trait.
Still, Kate was known for being protective of her officers and at the moment, she seemed to smell blood in the water.
Or the blood on his arm.
Kate looked at Veronica and smiled.
Crois felt his blood go cold.
“Let go of his arm, Miss Catalano. He has a job to do.”
Veronica dug her nails in deeper and Crois sighed. He didn’t need scars, not from her.
The entitled woman beside him looked Kate right in the eye and grinned. “Make me.”
Oh boy.
With a single movement, Kate grasped Veronica’s arm and did what the other woman demanded.
She made her let go.
This wasn’t going to be good.