Paper Bullets (25 page)
In the end, everyone had compromised.
Kyle had agreed we should cut our trip short, spending only one night in San Francisco. We’d dropped Samantha at Jonathan’s house early this morning, and we’d be heading back to Napa to pick her up after tomorrow’s Giants’ game.
Samantha had wanted a longer visit, but considering she would be spending the better part of two days with Jonathan, she eventually realized she had a good thing going and didn’t argue the point. Too much.
Besides, Jonathan’s mother had told me he was saving up to buy a car. I had a feeling we’d be seeing a lot more of him as soon as he could drive himself to Sparks.
Of course, the inner voice of my mother was about as happy with the whole thing as Samantha was with the locked-down campus at her high school.
Whenever I doubted a parenting decision, that doubt took on my mother’s critical voice. I didn’t hear that inner voice as often as I used to—right after Ryan and I had separated my mother’s voice had gone into hyperdrive—but apparently my first real bout of separation anxiety and empty nest syndrome was kicking in hard.
“Do you think she’s having a good time?” I asked Kyle. “Samantha?”
He rested his chin in my shoulder. “She’s spending two days with her boyfriend. Since you’re spending two days with yours and you’re still asking that question, should I be worried?”
I grinned and nudged his head with my own. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
I waited, but when he didn’t say anything else, a niggling little worm of self-doubt started to burrow its way into my brain.
Kyle had left his own daughter behind. Lauren was spending the weekend with her mother. The two of them had shared custody of Lauren, which meant that Kyle spent a lot more time with his daughter than Ryan spent with Samantha. Maybe he was dealing with his own second thoughts about spending the weekend so far away from her.
“How about you?” I asked. “Should I be worried whether you’re having a good time?”
He hugged me closer. “I am endeavoring to enjoy the moment,” he said.
Endeavoring?
I pulled away a little so I could turn my head and look in his eyes.
Kyle had the most gorgeous eyes of any man I’d ever met, including Ryan. I’d seen him shut down emotionally when he was in cop mode, his eyes as flat and blank as his expression, and I’d been lucky enough to have him look at me with the kind of soul-baring gaze that took my breath away. Now his eyes looked troubled.
“What’s up?” I asked. If it was something bad, I didn’t really want to know, but I didn’t want to put it off either.
He hesitated for a moment, and I felt my heart grow as cold as the wind off the bay.
Kyle was the first person I’d dated since my divorce. While I had no reason to think that it would turn into anything special or long-lasting, I didn’t want our relationship to crash and burn either.
“I never really understood how Ruth felt,” he said slowly. “Every time I’d go out on a call.”
Ruth was his ex-wife. He’d still been a patrol officer when they’d divorced.
“She worried about you,” I said.
“Drove her nuts. I was pretty cavalier about it, I guess. Hot shot young cop. Didn’t really think about what it must have been like for her.”
He’d told me before that his ex couldn’t handle the stress of being a cop’s wife, and it had driven them apart. From what I’d seen so far, they seemed to have an amicable enough divorce as divorces go.
Kyle glanced at the bay, like he didn’t want to look at me. “Got a taste of my own medicine, as my dad would have said.”
He’d asked me to back off my investigation and I hadn’t. I couldn’t have backed off, not if I wanted to live with myself. I hoped now that my decision hadn’t driven a wedge between us.
This was the same kind of conversation I’d had with Jonathan’s mother. I just never expected to have it with Kyle.
He put his life on the line all the time. Maybe not as much as patrol officers who never knew what kind of trouble they were walking into whenever they got a call about a domestic disturbance or a man with a gun. But Reno had its own share of random violence these days. Cops and private investigators weren’t the only ones who risked their lives every time they stepped outside.
“You can’t keep me safe,” I said. “Nobody can. I could get hit by a drunk driver tomorrow, or go to the bank on the wrong day and get killed during a robbery. Even if all I do for the rest of my life is chase after guys who file phony insurance claims, there’s no guarantee I won’t rub a con man the wrong way someday and make him think he can take his frustrations out on me.”
He gave me a smile that was more than a little on the rueful side. “Seems I’ve heard something along those lines.”
I didn’t doubt it. I grinned back. “Oh you have, have you?”
“Yes.” He kissed me on the lips, a light, tender kiss. “So, I am endeavoring to enjoy this moment with you, and the next, and the one after that, and forget that you have a job that can be as dangerous as mine.”
So far I hadn’t found myself worrying about the dangerous aspects of his job. Was it different because we weren’t living together? Hadn’t really committed to each other as a couple? Would that change when we did?
I stopped myself. Wasn’t I just thinking not five minutes ago that I didn’t have any reason to think that our relationship would last? Now here I’d gone and thought
when
, not
if
.
I had to admit it was a pretty darn pleasant thought.
“What?” he asked.
I made an inquisitive sound.
“The look on your face,” he said. “Made me wonder what you were thinking about.”
I might have been a newbie at this dating thing, but I knew enough not to mention I was contemplating couplehood. At least, not yet.
“I was thinking about those moments,” I said. “Especially the ones we’re going to have tonight.”
It was only a small fib, and besides, I had been thinking about the moments we’d have tonight ever since we’d decided to take this trip. Tonight’s moments, and tomorrow morning’s moments when we’d be waking up together for the first time.
“Oh,” he said, his grin melting into something more intimate. “Nice way to change the subject.”
He kissed me again, a little more seriously this time. A preview of those moments to come? I sure hoped so.
When we stopped, he glanced down at the oversized lollipop I was holding. “So, I plied you with candy, I’ve promised to buy you genuine San Francisco sourdough and a shrimp cocktail, and we can even ride the cable car back to the hotel if you want.”
He had done all those things. I arched an eyebrow, wondering where this was going.
“Think you might reconsider wearing a Giants’ hat tomorrow?” he asked.
He looked so hopeful, I had to chuckle. Yes, I looked horrible in a baseball hat, but for him? Relationships were all about compromise, and as compromises went, this was a little one.
“If you take my picture,” I said, “you might have to arrest me for assaulting an officer.”
“Was that a yes?”
I held up the lollipop. “This had better be one fantastic lollipop.”
“I have it on the highest authority that it’s the best lollipop in San Francisco,” he said.
“The highest authority?”
He shrugged. “The girl behind the counter.”
“An unimpeachable source.”
“Of course.”
He was grinning down at me, and I saw it again—that open, honest expression in his eyes that made my heart do strange things.
Maybe it was the city, or the fact that we could just be two people here, not the detective and the private investigator we had to be back home, or that I’d come so close to losing my life, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alive. Alive and happy and cared for.
When my mother’s voice tried to pop up in my head and ruin the moment, I squelched that bit of negativity and worry.
This might be only the start of a deeper, long-lasting relationship with Kyle, or it might be the best day I’d have with him. Either way, for right now, life was good.
And you know what?
I intended to enjoy the heck out of it for however long it lasted.
About the Author
Multi-genre award-winning author ANNIE REED’s first Abby Maxon novel
Pretty Little Horses
was a finalist in the Best First Private Eye Novel contest sponsored by the Private Eye Writers of America. Her versatility in not only the crime and mystery fields but also in science fiction and fantasy led to her short fiction appearing in five of the first seven volumes of the inaugural year of
Fiction River
, and her short crime fiction has appeared in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
. She has won a literary award for her speculative fiction and was recognized in the romance field as a Brava novella finalist. A Nevada native, much of her fiction is based in her home state, including her mystery novel
A Death in Cumberland
featuring tough rural sheriff Jill Jordan.
Annie still lives in Nevada with her husband and daughter. Visit her online at
www.annie-reed.com
.
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