The Do-Over (The Rooftop Crew #5) - Piper Rayne Page 0,40

option? I must’ve ordered wrong for my date.”

The man looks at me and takes my plate away. “I’ll be right back.”

Knox sits there while everyone else eats.

“Eat,” I whisper to him.

“No, I’ll wait.”

“Yours will get cold.”

“It’s fine. It won’t take much time to eat it.” He sips his beer.

Patrice talks about how her husband would’ve prepared such a better meal. Five minutes later, the two men across the table are already done.

I pinch Knox’s thigh. “Eat.”

“No.” He exaggerates the no.

Just when I’m about to pick up his fork and cut his meat for him like a child, the server returns with a plate pretty much full of vegetables, but I’ll take it.

“We’ll stop somewhere on the way home,” Knox whispers in my ear. I appreciate his offer, but his breath in my eardrum is increasing my libido.

I use my fork and knife to cut up my green beans as though they’re a steak. I’m used to not being catered to at a big event like this, and I’m happy to eat whatever they offer. The group at our table talks about the detective retiring, and the guy across the table who thinks I look like Leilani tells Knox that he’s up against some tough competition for the detective’s position.

“He’s got it,” Patrice says. “No better cop out there than Whelan.” She winks at her partner.

Knox reaches behind me to fist-bump her.

“No other applicant with an ex-girlfriend they just had to arrest.” Both guys laugh.

Knox stiffens but surprisingly says nothing. Maybe I’m typecasting, but Knox is so big and muscular that I expected he’d slide out his chair and ask the guy to go outside. But he cuts his steak and remains silent.

“She got arrested for protecting animal rights,” I say.

“Don’t entertain them,” Knox whispers to me.

“Shooting a man in the nuts isn’t protecting animal rights,” the guy with the receding hairline says.

I shrug. “So she has bad aim.”

“Good catch, Whelan. Sounds like this one will be in the cell right next to the first one.”

“Go to hell,” Knox says.

“First of all.” I place my silverware down. “I’m not suggesting what she did was smart. It was reckless, but passionate all the same. But whether it was right or wrong, it says nothing about Knox. He wasn’t with her. Surely if you divorced your wife and she got mad at the traffic mom one school morning and punched her in the face, that wouldn’t be a reflection on you. Would it?”

“Sweetie, I’d never do that,” the one wife says.

“I’d run the bitch over,” the other wife says and sips from her wine glass.

The men only look amused, not understanding my point. Maybe Knox was right and I’m just wasting my breath, but I refuse to sit here and blame Knox when none of it was under his control.

“Here comes the person you really have to convince anyway.” The man smiles at someone behind us. “Cap.”

A large hand falls on Knox’s shoulders. “Whelan, you want to introduce me to your date?”

Knox wipes his mouth and sets his napkin on the table, sliding out his chair. “Captain, this is Kamea. Kamea, this is Captain Donnelly.”

Now the real work begins.

Chapter Eighteen

Knox

Captain Donnelly laughs at Kamea’s joke about being a vegetarian and living with Jax and me.

“My third ex was a vegetarian and I will say I did enjoy this fried tofu thing she’d make.”

I pass drinks to Cap and Kamea from the bar.

“When I first started eating tofu, I didn’t know there are so many different consistencies and one time I wanted to pan fry the soft kind and well, the fire alarm for the entire building ended up going off.” He chuckles again. “My second wife was the worst cook. I finally took out the batteries from the fire alarms because they’d go off when she was making a pizza.” He leans in close to Kamea. “Don’t tell that to the fire department though.”

Kamea zips her lips and pretends she’s throwing the key away.

This entire time, I thought she was shy. That I’d bring her here tonight and she’d barely talk to a soul. But she was ready to go rounds with Milliken and now she’s winning over Cap.

How can anyone resist her?

She’s drop-dead gorgeous tonight. She is every day, but I almost couldn’t talk when I walked into Rian’s earlier. I had to remind myself that she isn’t mine, that this is all pretend.

Then again, after the rooftop talk, I can’t help but think about what would happen if we crossed that