Stripped, page 7
Brooke nudged him as they wove their way toward the table at the back, where Amelia was already waiting for them. “Waitress was checking you out.”
“That’s Celia. We’re, uh, acquainted.”
“Meaning she’s seen more than just the inside of your Ferrari.”
Jack winked at her, and she had to admit that after navigating around Sawyer’s surliness all day, Jack’s easygoing charm was a welcome change. “You catch on quick.”
She tapped her temple. “All part of the job.”
As they neared their table, she couldn’t help but notice that the sadness she’d seen on Amelia’s face earlier was back. She sat staring out the window, toying with her necklace, her eyes soft and melancholy. It was yet another observation about her new team that Brooke tucked away as she tried to get to know them and figure out her place.
“Sawyer say what he needed to talk to Cap about?” Amelia asked by way of greeting as Jack and Brooke sat down on either side of her. They both shook their heads.
They’d just ordered a pitcher of beer and a plate of nachos when Brooke spotted Sawyer’s broad shoulders in the doorway. It was amazing the way he made the bar suddenly feel a little bit smaller. As though he somehow shifted the gravity in the room and became the center around which Brooke’s attention revolved. He was wearing the same gray Henley and beat-up jeans that he’d had on earlier, and as he approached the table, she noticed that his hair stuck up at a funny angle on one side of his head, as though he’d been running a hand through it. He nodded at everyone, taking the empty seat next to her.
She had the urge to scoot her chair closer, but fought against it. She could feel the warmth of his body next to her, only a few inches away. But those inches might as well have been miles, because he wasn’t into her, resented her presence, and even if those first two items weren’t true, the fact that he was her assigned partner made him completely off-limits anyway.
God. She really needed to figure out a way to recalibrate her dude radar, because hers was forever pointing her in the wrong direction. Not only that, but she was wasting brain cells on her attraction to him when she needed to be focused on figuring out a way to make this partnership work.
“What were you talking to the captain about?” asked Amelia.
Sawyer poured himself a pint from the pitcher the waitress had just set down. “Nothing important. You order food?”
“Yeah, fish tacos,” she said, still toying with her necklace.
Sawyer made a face like he’d just smelled something rotten. “Fuck you guys.” He turned in his seat, ready to call Celia over.
“They ordered nachos,” said Brooke, not quite following whatever the joke was.
Sawyer pointed at Jack. “I hope they’re covered in black olives.”
Amelia threw her head back and laughed and Brooke took a sip of her beer, feeling completely lost. This was one of the biggest challenges that came with joining a new team. She didn’t speak their language yet. Didn’t know any of their inside jokes, or hot spots, or little codes. And based on the way her three colleagues were laughing about fish tacos and black olives, she had a feeling that her learning curve was pretty freaking steep.
The waitress brought their nachos, setting the platter down on the table. Sawyer reached for his glass, and she couldn’t help but watch, almost transfixed, as his muscles moved beneath his skin. The way his big hand wrapped round his glass and raised it to his mouth, his throat working as he swallowed. Heat churned in her stomach as she remembered the feeling of that mouth on her, those fingers inside her.
“Right, Brooke?” Jack’s voice cut through her lust-induced haze, and she forced her attention back to the conversation happening around her.
“Sorry, I zoned out there. Long day. ‘Right Brooke’ what?”
“Feels good to get an arrest on your first day.”
She nodded, picking up her beer and relaxing back into her chair, trying to ignore the mental tug of Sawyer sitting right beside her. “Yeah, although you guys did all the work to make it happen. That was your warrant, based on your surveillance.” She nudged Sawyer, smiling at him. “Wasn’t just my arrest.”
He didn’t react.
Jack shook his head. “And that’s why I don’t miss patrol at all. Patrol’s reactive. But a lot of what we do is proactive. Preventing crimes instead of dealing with the fallout.”
“How long have you been on?” she asked. Sawyer shifted in his seat beside her, reaching for a nacho. His arm grazed hers, and a warm tingle worked its way across her skin. She focused on Jack, keeping her expression casually neutral.
“Got hired as a beat cop over ten years ago. I did a stint in major crimes when I first made detective, then joined HEAT three years ago.”
“And what about you?” she asked, nodding at Amelia.
“Started on patrol when I was twenty, spent a few years in Vice. Came to HEAT two years ago.” She nodded at Brooke. “How long you been on?”
“Seven, almost eight years.”
“You think you’re gonna miss patrol?” asked Jack, picking the black olives off his nacho.
Brooke shook her head, glancing over at Sawyer, who didn’t seem interested in participating in the conversation. “I like what you said about patrol being reactive. It’s treating the symptoms instead of the cause, you know? Plus the whole dynamic of patrol gets old. The hours of boredom followed by several seconds of terror.”
Sawyer leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. She traced the rippling lines in his forearms with her gaze. “Several seconds of terror, like when your partner goes all Karate Kid on a fucking biker with a gun?”
Her head whipped around so fast that her ponytail slapped against her cheek. His blue eyes bored into hers, his face a stony mask of hidden emotion. Holy shit, was he pissed at her? She’d thought everything was fine—not that he’d said anything to her either way. Talking and Sawyer didn’t really mix, apparently. That, and she’d spent her afternoon buried in paperwork while Sawyer and Jack had questioned Bowman.
A silence had fallen over the table, so she forced herself to laugh. “Aw, were you worried about me?”
An intensity flashed in his eyes. His jaw clenched, and he looked so raw, so masculine, so grumpy, that she wanted to climb into his lap and do fun, dirty, forbidden things with him. “Things could’ve gone sideways real fast.”
Jack sighed, pushing a hand through his thick blond hair. “Jesus Christ, lighten the fuck up. Brooke knows what she’s doing.”
Sawyer squinted at Jack, not looking convinced.
“Listen,” she said, touching Sawyer’s arm. His head swiveled in her direction. “This was day one. I’m sorry if . . . I didn’t mean to scare you or make you think that I didn’t have things under control. We’ll figure out a way to work together. We’ll find our rhythm.” His eyes met hers, a dark heat flashing in his gaze, and she knew he was remembering just how well they’d found a rhythm together. Then he glanced down, and she realized her hand was still on his arm. He pulled his arm back, shifting away from her touch.
It stung, but she couldn’t stop replaying their night together. Couldn’t stop her stomach from dipping and swirling when she looked at him. Couldn’t stop the buzzy rush of attraction that flooded her system like adrenaline when she was around him. But they couldn’t be anything other than colleagues, and she had a new job to focus on.
“Hey.” Amelia’s voice was sharp as she kicked Sawyer under the table. “I hate that Ryan’s not here even more than you do. But what happened with Ryan isn’t Brooke’s fault. You’re being an asshole, even for you.”
Another silence fell over the table, the tension palpable. Sawyer shrugged and took a sip of his beer, seemingly unconcerned with being an asshole. Fine. She couldn’t control how Sawyer reacted to her presence on the team, and she had the feeling that trying to control anything Sawyer did was probably a losing battle. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her from doing her job, or hoping that maybe things could shift between them—even if they couldn’t shift in the direction her body kept remembering.
“You get anything good out of Bowman?” asked Amelia, steering them back on track.
Some of the rigidness went out of Sawyer’s shoulders and he leaned back in his chair. “Not a lot, but it’s more to go on than what we had before.” He crossed his arms over his chest, which made him look even bigger. God, she wanted to sink her teeth into those biceps. Dammit. “Bowman runs security for the cartel, but said he had nothing to do with the drugs or the weapons we found. He was guarding the storage locker, probably against getting hit by another gang.”
“So he’s basically a security guard,” said Brooke.
Sawyer nodded. “So he says. He gave us a few other names, bikers doing shit for the cartel. We’ll follow up with those and see if anything shakes out.”
“What about the pills? He say what they were?” Amelia’s eyebrows rose as she lifted her beer to her lips.
Sawyer shook his head. “Said he didn’t know what they were, or what MBR means.”
“We should get Vice in on this,” said Jack, adding to his growing pile of discarded black olives. “See if they’ve seen the pills before, or know what MBR is.”
“Yeah, I agree.” Sawyer nodded. “Bowman didn’t have much to say, but if we can trace those pills, we might actually have a solid lead on the cartel. Especially if they’re exclusive to Baracoa.”
Jack popped a nacho into his mouth. “Here’s hoping.” Then he turned his attention to Brooke. “Okay, Simmons, let’s have it. Craziest on-the-job story. Everyone’s got one. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” He wiggled his eyebrows, and she laughed.
She tapped her fingers against her lips, keenly aware of Sawyer’s eyes on her. “Craziest? I think that’d have to be Leotard Chester.”
Amelia leaned forward, a rare smile on her face. “Oh, I’m liking this already. Leotard Chester? Here for it.”
Brooke leaned forward too, her arms braced on the table, the feel of Sawyer’s gaze on her warming her skin. “This happened last year. I’m on night shift, it’s maybe one in the morning. Radio’s pretty quiet, and I’m driving down Decatur. All of a sudden, I see this guy walking down the street in a supertight leopard-print leotard and ripped fishnet stockings, carrying a pillowcase stuffed with clothes. So I roll up on him to see if he’s okay. As soon as I get out of my cruiser, I see him toss a baggie of drugs into the bushes and then he takes off. So I chase him, catch him, bring him down, and his leotard, I guess it, uh, shifted while he was running, so now his balls are, like, hanging out.”
The table let out a collective groan.
“Right? I cuff him, and I’m trying to get him to relax, to tell me why he ran. He doesn’t have ID on him, and he’ll only tell me that his name is Chester. And then things got real weird. I go and pick up his pillowcase, and it’s filled with women’s underwear, all of it different sizes, and . . . none of it clean.”
Another groan from the table.
“So I’m trying to talk to him, but I can’t because he’s now singing at the top of his lungs about how much he loves panties. He even had, like, a little jingle.”
Jack waved his hand in front of him. “And how did it go?”
“I’m not gonna sing it, but the words were something like,
‘They call me Leotard Chester
I walk around in scanties
Not because I’m a jester
But because I love panties!’”
The table burst out laughing—even Sawyer. She gave them a second to get it together before continuing her story. “I’m trying so hard not to laugh, and also trying to figure out what the hell to do with this guy. Turned out he’d stolen the items from a nearby laundromat.”
“Speaking of balls,” Jack said, but Sawyer cut him off before he could continue.
“I’ll take Things You Wish You Had for $500, Alex.”
Jack flipped him off and continued talking. “When I was still in patrol, I arrested the same guy over twenty times for riding his bike naked in public. I always knew it was him thanks to the helpful sign mounted on the back of his bike.”
“What’d it say?” asked Brooke.
“‘Stay back, oversize equipment.’”
They all laughed even harder. “If I had a dime for every naked dude I’ve had to deal with, I’d be living on a tropical island by now,” said Amelia, shaking her head and then taking a sip of her beer.
“Why are the naked people never the ones you’d want to see?” asked Sawyer, and they all laughed in agreement. For a brief second, their eyes met, and she knew he was thinking about her naked. Or maybe lust swirled through her was because she was remembering the muscled perfection hiding under his clothes.
“What’s your crazy cop story?” Brooke asked Amelia. The table went quiet, and she shook her head, once again fingering the necklace around her throat, which Brooke could now see had a simple diamond ring threaded onto it. Sensing that she’d inadvertently stepped into murky waters, Brooke redirected her question, smiling at Sawyer. “What’s yours?” she asked, wondering if he’d get all grumpy and quiet again.
He smiled at her and something inside her lit up. “Oh, man, it’s gotta be the snake. My first year on, we get this call—the Atlanta Zoo can’t seem to find their python. It’s missing. I tuck that away, go about my day, and I’m searching this house—we’d arrested the guy for assault and violating his probation, and then I hear it. This soft, low hissing noise. I turn, and the biggest fucking snake I’ve ever seen in my life is coiled in the corner, its head moving back and forth. Staring at me. Like I’m lunch.” He shuddered. “I hate snakes. I fucking hate them. And this thing is huge.”
“So what did you do?” she asked.
“Radioed for help, grabbed a broom that was in the corner and when it darted at me, I used the broom to pin it against the wall. Someone else came in and between the two of us, we managed to get it outside. The zoo people had shown up with a snake bag by then, so we dumped it in there.” He shuddered again. “Snakes.”
“So if I’m the Karate Kid, I guess that makes you Indiana Jones, huh?” she said, sending him a teasing smile.
He chuckled down into his beer. “Guess so.”
It was such a small thing, but it still felt like a win.
Jack’s phone rang and he excused himself to take the call. Amelia rose and headed for the bathroom, leaving Sawyer and Brooke alone at the table. A slightly awkward silence hung in the air, and Brooke traced her finger through the condensation from her beer glass on the table.
“So, uh . . .” started Brooke, trying to figure out what to say to him. It felt strange that even though they’d had crazy, out-of-this-world sex, she didn’t really know anything about him. “Too bad about the Braves, huh?” They’d failed to make the playoffs—again—disappointing everyone but surprising no one.
He took a sip of his beer and nodded. “Yeah.”
She chewed her lip and decided to go for straight-up honesty instead of fishing for topics he might be interested in. “I don’t know what to say to you.”
He shrugged. “You don’t need to say anything.”
“Listen, we’re working together and what happened is in the past. I want to make this work. This job’s really important to me.”
An expression she couldn’t quite name flickered across his face just before he popped another nacho in his mouth.
“It’s important to me too. I mean, every job’s important, but this one . . .” He let out a long sigh.
“I get it. This one’s everything.”
He looked over at her, his head tilted. “You do get it, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Amelia returned to the table and he shook his head. Okay, so it hadn’t been the world’s most scintillating conversation, but it was something.
Sawyer leaned forward, pretending he cared about scooping up the last nacho. But he didn’t. Sure, nachos were great, but really he just wanted an excuse to lean in close to Brooke and take a deep breath. Like a diver pulling as much air into his lungs as he could before submerging himself in the cold, dark waters, he wanted to pull a small piece of her deep inside himself. To let that be enough to sustain him because he couldn’t have more.
Amelia stretched and then retrieved her helmet from under the table. “All right kids, I’m off. See you in the morning, bitchachos.” As she left, Sawyer wondered how she was sleeping these days. Nightmares? Tossing and turning restlessly, unable to shut off the images flashing through her mind? Or in a deep, prescription-drug-induced sleep? Because on any given night, he could check one or all three of those boxes.
Brooke nodded goodbye and then reached for her purse, the tip of her tongue playing against the corner of her mouth in an unconscious gesture as she counted out enough cash to cover their tab. Why did every tiny thing she did make him feel like he was about to jump out of his skin? It was unsettling. Unnerving. There was no fucking way he could work like this.
And that was exactly why he’d gone to the captain and respectfully asked that Brooke be transferred off the team, which probably made him an asshole. Maybe he’d even hinted that Brooke wasn’t ready for HEAT, that she was too green to be an asset right now.
That last bit most definitely made him an asshole; no “probably” about it.
Brooke glanced over her shoulder to where Jack stood, leaning against the bar and flirting with the waitress. She laughed and ran a hand up Jack’s arm, who then settled himself on one of the barstools, his attention fixed on her.
Brooke sighed. “Looks like I’ve lost my ride.” Shaking her head, she pulled her phone out of her purse. “Guess I’ll call an Uber.”
Maybe it was because he felt guilty for what he’d done in the captain’s office, but he couldn’t stop himself from opening his mouth. “Don’t. I’ll give you a ride back to the station.”
