“Status quo?” Lifting her hands, she gave him her best “Duh!” look, but he just shook his head.
“That’s a phrase, not a word, and ‘quo’ on its own doesn’t count unless you’re playing in Latin.”
“Which, technically, is part of the core English language, so it counts.”
Very slowly, he tipped his head toward the wall and pretended to bang it a couple of times. “Next time we play with a dictionary. Or better yet, I’ll bring over Risk.”
“Great—world domination’s right up my alley. Bring it on.”
A moment hung between them, a moment that pulled things together yet still separated the real from the imaginary.
“Okay, then. Lock the door behind me and I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
“I can…” He was already gone, leaving her standing there in the middle of the living room, one second frowning at the closed door and the next smiling like a complete and utter idiot. “…walk.”
Oh boy. He wasn’t even down the block yet and she was overthinking everything again. She’d learned to deal with a certain type of cop. But this guy, hell, he was almost worse. He actually seemed to care about his cases, without being motivated by the prospect of moving up the ladder.
Not only that—he was also incredibly easy on the eyes and had managed to scramble all of her good sense with a single kiss.
Stop it! It wasn’t a kiss, it was an incident. A sham.
Ellie had met Sergeant Schilling a couple of times, and he hadn’t struck her as someone who’d be willing to go too far outside the rule book, no matter what the circumstances.
She needed to remember that this was all part of a job. Period. And her role was to somehow convince her best friends and her family that she was in it deep with Poncherello—the one person she’d spent the last four years avoiding. No problem, except for the fact that lies beget more lies, and it was already hard enough to separate what was real from what wasn’t.
Keeping her friends safe was very real; the incident last night…phew…incredible and muscle melting, but not real. It couldn’t be. If it were, it would make sense, and not a single thing about it made sense. Not the way his skin warmed under her touch, not the way she felt safe and protected when his arms moved around her like that, not the way his mouth—wow, that mouth—made her want to keep kissing him. And it sure as hell didn’t make a lick of sense that the second her lips touched his, nothing else existed, not even Kurt, and he was the reason everything had happened in the first place!
She needed to keep a clear head, and the best way to do that was to stop staring at the door and get moving. First things first: there was bedding that needed to be washed. Mind over matter, right? If she made it look like he hadn’t been there, she could pretend it had never happened.
Wrong. When she pulled the sheets off the bed Brett had slept in, a new scent caught her by surprise.
Ivory soap. The most simple, unassuming scent out there, and yet it was all Brett.
Until that moment she hadn’t paid much mind to it, but thinking back, she couldn’t remember him ever smelling of aftershave or cologne, not even when they all got together for a special occasion like Christmas or Jayne and Nick’s wedding. That wasn’t his way.
No, he was the one who showed up on time, never making a big entrance, never making himself the center of attention, and usually chose to hang back and observe.
Stop it, Ellie. Stop thinking about him, stop thinking about kissing him again, and for the love of God, stop imagining him in this bed last night.
By the time she’d cleaned up, made sure Angie was okay down at the store, moved the now April-fresh sheets into the dryer, and had run the vacuum, she had herself sorted out and was back on an even keel again. Maybe Ponch had been right: if she didn’t overthink things, she’d be fine.
Uh-huh. That would be a hell of a lot easier to do if she didn’t have to spend all day with him again in that stuffy classroom.
She tried to focus on the work, but it wasn’t easy. After what Brett had said, how could she be sure Kurt wouldn’t hurt anyone? He could be anywhere right now—he could be sitting outside waiting for her, or