Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,40
something about the sheriff’s office conducting an investigation.”
Nick waved his hand in a careless gesture. “That’s normal in this kind of situation. St. Augustine P.D. doesn’t have their own IA unit. Internal Affairs,” he clarified, after apparently seeing the confusion on her face. “They have to bring in someone from the outside to conduct the investigation. From what I heard on the way here, Jake will be exonerated. That’s not why Buresh is yelling.”
“It’s not?”
“Nope. He’s trying to patch things up between Rafe and Jake. They used to be really close, which made them his best investigative team. He’s wasting his breath. You can’t be friends with a guy you blame for your sister’s death.”
“Why does Jake blame him?”
He slid her a sideways glance, and Darby had the impression he was deciding what to tell her. And whether to tell her the truth.
He looked back at Buresh’s office. “Shelby and Jake were adopted. Their adoptive parents died in a car crash right after high school. They didn’t have any other family.”
“I take it they were close?”
“Very.”
“They never found Shelby’s killer?”
“Right.”
Darby nodded, believing she understood Jake’s anger. “Without the killer to blame, Jake is focusing his frustrations on the one who survived. He’s rearranged the facts in his head to give himself an excuse for how he feels. He’s probably genuinely convinced Rafe did something, or didn’t do something, that caused his sister to die.”
“You think so?” Nick slid her that sideways glance again.
“It’s the best hypothesis I can come up with. I don’t suppose you could tell me more about what happened? All I know is that someone broke into Rafe’s house, apparently a botched robbery, and shot Rafe and his wife.”
“I guess since Bobby Ellington splashed it all over the newspapers for weeks, it’s really not a secret.”
“Is that why Rafe doesn’t like Ellington?”
Nick laughed. “Baby, it’s not that Rafe doesn’t like Ellington. He despises the man.” His smile faded. “With good reason.”
“Let me guess. You’re not going to tell me the reason.”
“Nope.”
She sighed and tapped her nails on the desk again. “What about the shooting? You said you could tell me about that.”
“You’re a curious little thing, aren’t you?” he teased.
“Comes with the job.”
He raised a brow in question.
“I’m a therapist, a psychologist.”
Nick burst into laughter.
Darby tried not to be offended. “I wasn’t making a joke.”
He grabbed her hand and pressed a kiss against her fingers before letting go. “My apologies, darlin’. You being a therapist just struck me funny.”
Darby had the impression he was remembering an inside joke, but she had no clue what it could be.
He leaned farther back in his chair, and propped his feet—which Darby just realized were encased in a pair of cowboy boots—on the desk.
“What you said is pretty much what happened,” he continued. “Rafe got shot in the chest. Cracked a rib, lost a lot of blood, but the bullet passed through without hitting any vital organs. Shelby got hit in the jugular. She couldn’t have been saved even if she’d been shot in a hospital. It was a tragedy, all the way around. And I don’t care what kind of self-delusion Jake is under. He has no right blaming my brother and making Rafe feel any worse than he already does. Jake is a moron.”
Darby blinked in surprise at the anger and conviction in Nick’s voice. She wouldn’t have expected the half-naked, outrageous flirt she’d met earlier to have such a serious side.
Just as quickly as he’d turned serious, his expression cleared and his mouth curved into that cocky half grin of his. “How about I take you to dinner? Now that all this is over and you don’t have to suffer with my far-too-serious brother anymore. You like seafood? We can go to Harry’s, get a seat by the window, eat lobster while we watch the boats sail by Castillo de San Marcos. Or we could go to The Columbia off St. George Street. Their roast pork à la Cubana is out-of-this-world good. You like Spanish food?”
A gorgeous man—gorgeous with a capital G—had just asked her out.
And Darby wasn’t even tempted.
She should have been all fluttery inside and excited. Instead, she was more interested in what was going on in Buresh’s office. Rafe was sitting in a chair now, looking down at the floor. Jake’s eyes were closed and he looked as though he’d fallen asleep against the wall. Buresh was sitting behind his desk, shaking his head.
“Looks like I’m too late. You’re already taken.”
She blinked, trying to remember