More Than Friends (2 page)

“Hey, Fisher, I got you a present.” He held up a small-caliber handgun encased in a plastic evidence bag. A smile softened the hard lines of his face, and his thick black brows lifted.

“Where’d you find it?”

“Your buddy here had an ankle holster.”

“Thanks, man.” She nodded and took the bag.

Part of her assigned district contained an interesting mix of refurbished historic homes owned by artsy types. But more than half of her area was known for drug activity. She’d found guns on suspects before, but like every other time, she forced herself not to think for too long about what could have happened if he’d gotten his hands on that gun while they struggled on the ground. She chose not to concentrate on things she couldn’t control and, instead, focused on the training, strength, and instinct she’d accumulated in the past decade on the job.

*

Evelyn pushed through the door of the Third Street Bar and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. She didn’t need to make out the faces around her to locate her friends. She wove through the tables in the center of the room to their usual booth in the back.

The waitress arrived at the same time she did, so she ordered a beer, then slid into the bench opposite Kendall and Melanie.

“Hey, guys.”

“What happened to your face?” Melanie asked.

She silently cursed the pendant light hanging over their table. A shower after her shift had eliminated the mud and grime, but scrubbing her face had only made the blossoming bruise stand out even more. “You didn’t tell her?”

Kendall shrugged.

“What happened?” Melanie repeated, moving from her side of the booth to Evelyn’s. When she didn’t make room, Melanie shoved against her shoulder until she relented. She turned away, but Melanie grasped her chin and forced her head around. Melanie’s green eyes raced over her face, assessing the damage.

“It’s just a black eye. No big deal.” She minimized the injury, despite the painkillers she’d downed after her shift. When Melanie pressed against her cheek, she flinched. Melanie’s eyes narrowed, but she lightened her touch.

“Did you get it looked at?”

She pulled her chin away. “Of course not.” She glanced at Kendall. “Would you tell her it’s nothing, please?”

“Mel, leave her alone,” Kendall said halfheartedly.

Melanie shook her head. She caught a wave of honey-brown hair as it fell in front of her face and swept it behind her ear. “You two are just alike.”

Evelyn forced a smile and leaned back in her seat. She and Kendall had been friends for five years, since being assigned to the same precinct, and she both admired and respected her. But she didn’t like being so dismissively compared to Kendall. From her tomboy adolescence to her years as a female police officer, she had grown used to people making assumptions about who she was. But she expected Kendall and Melanie to see her as an individual.

Melanie returned to her side of the booth, but before she could slide into the seat, Kendall exited.

“Gotta pee,” she said as she brushed past Melanie. “Order me another drink if she comes back around.”

“Just one more, okay? It’s been a long day. I’m ready to get home and crawl into bed.” Melanie had spent the entire day in the unusually warm fall sun trying to finish a big landscaping project. If she hadn’t been on such a tight deadline, she might have cut her crew loose early. Instead, she made sure they drank plenty of water and took adequate breaks under the nearest shade tree.

“Do you have your next job lined up?” Evelyn asked.

She nodded. “I start at the new site bright and early tomorrow.”

“Saturday?”

“It’s the only time the owner could meet with me to approve the final plans. We’ve been through several drafts trying to incorporate everything he wants.”

“We could have canceled tonight.”

“I’m okay. I squeezed in a nap while I waited for your shift to end.” As soon as she’d gotten home that evening, she’d jumped into the shower, dancing beneath an icy spray that brought up goose bumps. Then, since Kendall and Evelyn didn’t get off work until eleven, she lay down, intending to close her eyes for only a minute, and awoke an hour later.

“Do you ever wish you could turn down the pain-in-the-ass clients?”

“Any work is good work these days.” Her landscaping company had a loyal customer base, but she hadn’t totally escaped the effects of a bad economy. She had four crews that handled the regular maintenance that her current customers required. But the requests for elaborate new designs had fallen off enough that she and her guys could personally handle each one.

Tomorrow she would start installing a custom design at a home still under construction. The owner, a prominent local physician, wanted the grounds to appear finished and well-manicured before he moved in. Between trying to accommodate his design ideas and keep the feel of her own concept, she had also been coordinating with the building contractor in order to properly time the start of her work. She enjoyed beginning a new project and found satisfaction in seeing a raw piece of land and imagining how she would transform the space.

The waitress returned and Evelyn ordered another drink for each of them.

“Are you sure you should be drinking?” she asked after the waitress left.

“Why not?”

“Could you have a concussion?”

“Mel, it’s a black eye—not even the first one I’ve had. I don’t have a concussion.” Evelyn punctuated her words by lifting her bottle and draining it.

“Okay.” She raised her hands in surrender but let her irritation show in her voice. “I worry about you and Kendall. And I won’t stop just because you both want me to.”

“I don’t expect you to change. And I appreciate your concern, but I can take care of myself. Believe me, this guy wasn’t that tough. And I had plenty of backup.” She smiled. “Then, when I put him in the cell at booking, I apologized for hitting him back, so all the guys in there with him now know that he got
his
shiner from a woman.”

Melanie’s nervousness over the injury eased as they laughed together. Evelyn’s black eye
was
minor, and fussing over her wouldn’t make her take it any more seriously.

Kendall had been on the force for three years already when they’d met. Kendall had expected her to understand what dating a cop would entail, but she’d been unprepared for the seed of fear every time Kendall came home a little late. Early in their relationship, she’d freaked out the day a client had casually mentioned that she’d just seen breaking news of a bank robbery where an officer had been hurt, even though the targeted bank was nowhere near Kendall’s sector.

Over the years, she’d learned to cope, or at least not to get her feelings hurt when Kendall dismissed her concern. Kendall’s commitment to her job helped make her the woman Melanie had fallen in love with. And she tried to remember that every time the fist of worry gripped her heart.

But she had also decided not to harden herself too much. If Kendall and Evelyn wanted to stay in such a dangerous profession, they would just have to put up with her occasional overbearing concern. Usually, her attention was wasted because they always sided with each other against her. Though they thought they were skilled at deceiving her, she often knew when they’d had a tough call. Kendall came home ready to fight after a bad shift. Evelyn hid her damage much more adeptly. Sometimes, she saw the stress of the job in the stiffness of Evelyn’s shoulders or the tight line of her mouth.

Tonight, Evelyn had let her long, dark hair fall in loose waves around her face, probably in an effort to conceal her bruise. And she had no doubt that Evelyn had rifled through her locker at the precinct searching for makeup that would cover the evidence. If she’d thought she could get away with it, she probably would have worn sunglasses into the bar as well.

Melanie had resigned herself to being on the outside of that part of their relationship. But she could admit to being jealous of the bond they shared. Sometimes she resented the fact that Kendall would always keep a part of herself from her—a part she shared only with Evelyn and her fellow officers.

*

“Football still on for Sunday?” Evelyn asked as she paused next to her sleek black coupe.

“Absolutely.” Kendall punched Evelyn’s upper arm. “See if you can cover up that bruise. Richard’s bringing his cousin and I hear she’s cute. We don’t want her to think you’re some kind of barbarian.”

“Yeah, okay.” Evelyn lowered herself into the car. “See you guys later.” She closed the door and started the car. The dark window tint hid her from view as she zipped toward the parking-lot exit.

Melanie pulled her keys from her pocket and disengaged the locks on her truck.

“Want me to drive?” Kendall asked.

“I’ve got it.” She climbed into the big Dodge. Her pickup didn’t represent her in quite the way Evelyn’s sport car fit her. She viewed her vehicle as a necessary convenience, given her frequent need to haul supplies. On occasion, she drooled over a hot little convertible, but she couldn’t justify the payment on an extra car that neither of them would drive very often.

“You know Evelyn hates when you try to fix her up,” she said as Kendall settled into the passenger seat. She turned out of the parking lot and headed toward their house.

“Did she say that?”

“Not specifically. But I get the impression—”

“Whatever. If I see a hot chick, why shouldn’t I try to get them together? She’ll thank me someday when I introduce her to her soul mate. Hell, a few have been so hot, she should have thanked me even though they didn’t work out.”

“Yeah. Are you living vicariously through her?”

“Now why would I need to do that, when I’ve got my soul mate right here?” Kendall laid her hand on Melanie’s thigh.

She glanced down, then over at Kendall. The words were perfect, but sometimes Kendall seemed to say what she thought Melanie expected to hear. Though she couldn’t put her finger on why, they hadn’t been connecting for over a year now. They’d talked about what might be the problem and vowed to try harder, each saying she would put work aside and make time just for the two of them. But before long they fell back into the same pattern.

Soul mate. She remembered a time when she wouldn’t have questioned using such a phrase to describe her relationship with Kendall. When they’d first started dating they planned for a future, growing old and retiring together. Now, when their schedules were so misaligned that they hardly spent any time together, she had trouble bringing that long-term vision into focus.

“Melanie? Where did you go?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted today.”

“Not just today.” Petulance colored Kendall’s tone.

She scrubbed a hand over her face and concentrated on the road in front of her. Arguing wouldn’t get them anywhere, so she ignored Kendall’s comment. She couldn’t handle another conversation that led them in circles. Hopefully they were just going through a normal cycle that long-term partners experienced and would figure out how to pull themselves out of it.

Chapter Two

“Hello, anyone home?” Evelyn called as she opened the front door to Melanie and Kendall’s ground floor apartment and went inside. The living room was empty but had obviously been arranged for the party. An assortment of folding chairs clustered among the couch and loveseat, each one angled toward the television over the fireplace.

“I’m in the kitchen.”

She followed Melanie’s voice and found her peering inside the oven. The countertop was already littered with “football food”: a tray of veggies and dip, two bowls of chips, and cocktail wieners in a spicy sauce.

“Early as usual.” Melanie glanced up and smiled.

“Hey, I don’t want to miss anything,” she said as she eased past Melanie on her way to the fridge. She slid a six-pack of beer into an empty space on the top shelf. “That smells awesome. What is it?”

“Buffalo-chicken dip.” Melanie pulled a casserole dish from the oven and set it on top of the stove. “Kendall is on the patio checking on the grill.”

“I’ll say hi in a minute. First, can I help you with anything in here?”

“Will you grab the fruit out of the fridge?”

Evelyn pulled out three plastic containers full of cut fruit.

Melanie slid a divided serving tray across the counter. “You can set it out on there.”

They worked quietly side by side; she arranged the fruit and Melanie prepared a cheese-and-cracker plate.

“How’s the eye? You’ve got some nice shades of purple and yellow going on there.” Melanie’s casual tone sounded forced.

She paused and raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you don’t want to inspect it.”

“I do. But I’m not going to.”

“Good.” The entire side of her face had throbbed that first morning. Then the pain subsided, but a sickly rainbow had spread across her cheek and around her eye. Melanie’s lips were pressed together, but she didn’t speak. “It’s fine, Mel. It’s a two-day-old bruise. It looks a lot worse than it feels.”

Melanie nodded.

She sighed and touched Melanie’s shoulder. “But thank you for being concerned.”

“Okay. I’ll let it go.”

“I’ve heard that before.” She meant her comment in a teasing way, but Melanie froze and her demeanor changed right away. Her back stiffened, and the tiny muscles around her eyes and mouth tightened. “Hey, it’s okay. I know it’s hard to see anything marring this gorgeous face,” she said, hoping to reverse whatever had just changed the mood in the kitchen.

Melanie met her eyes and she was surprised to find the remnant of hurt, before the tension in her expression eased. She smiled, albeit slightly awkwardly, then bumped her shoulder against Evelyn’s and resumed work on the snack trays. Evelyn watched her for a moment longer. Though she nodded along when Kendall complained about Melanie’s motherly concern, she kind of liked knowing that Melanie cared. Melanie had always been touchy about what she called their “tough-guy acts,” but had she been more edgy lately?

While she was still debating whether to ask her what was wrong or just drop it, Kendall came through the back door.