on me. Fucking Morrison.”
Who I sort of slept with a few times.
“Anyway, the charges against Mark were dropped after Detective Morrison beat the snot out of him during their interview, and a very nice judge said if I went to defensive driving class, he’d wipe the ticket off my record.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just pay it?” he suggested.
“And have a mark on my record? Are you mad?”
Now I was treated to the full wattage of his pearly whites. “You are your grandmother’s granddaughter.”
“Sounds like we both have important business to attend to then.” He leaned forward and took my hand in his, bending down to brush a brief kiss across my knuckles. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?” A draft from the gallery’s windows caressed my blood-warmed cheeks.
“Mercy,” he answered. “First and foremost. And for being so kind to me. Undeserving as I am.”
“We’ve all made choices we regret,” I said. Like my ex-husband, for example. And that Quarter Pounder with Cheese I ate at midnight. “I’m not here to judge.”
“What a rare woman you are,” he observed. “Rare, and beautiful.”
He gave me his second bow of the day, and left the gallery to dispose of the dismembered undead.
Chapter 5
I have this theory.
It goes like this: the universe hates me.
Arriving at my defensive driving class my standard ten minutes early, I sat myself in the shameless nerd-approved front row table and I took the time to arrange my effects: cell phone, two pens, notepad, iPad, and a bag of cheese crackers.
If I was going to spend the next four hours with my ass in a plastic chair, cheese needed to be in the equation somewhere.
My fellow students shuffled in over the course of twenty minutes, a buzz of discontent building when the instructor hadn’t shown at ten minutes past the appointed start time.
A full twenty-eight minutes late, he shuffled through the door. I knew his smoky, scotchy smell as well as I knew his hard hewn but handsome face.
Morrison, my clever-tongued and dexterous detective.
So, this is what they did with cops on suspension.
His brown sugar fudge colored hair hadn’t been washed this morning, the granite cliff of his jaw was begging for a shave. The lids over his hazel eyes seemed heavier than I remembered, wanting sleep, and more. The white button-up shirt stretched over his chest looked like it might have been resurrected from the bottom of a laundry basket. Ditto, the pants, which radiated resurrected from the floor energy. The body beneath the fabric appeared softer than the whole and vibrant image in my mind’s eye. Dulled by time or beer.
He saw me at once.
I felt the small pop of recognition, but not the usual spark of hunger that generally attended it. His eyes darted not to my face, or my breasts as was their custom, but to my wrists and neck.
Checking for bruises, no doubt.
When I had deplaned after my meeting with Oscar Wilde in London, I’d had plenty. Only Morrison had assumed Mark had put them there. I’d argued as much as I was able without revealing that whole werewolves and vampires are real thing, but it hadn’t been enough. Detective James Morrison had exacted justice by way of a fist, leaving due process to see to his suspension. I hadn’t seen him since that night.
Satisfied that I’d sustained no further injury, Morrison refused to look at me for the rest of the class—even when mine was the only hand raised to answer the questions he posed.
Which was often.
I sat through all four hours, ignored and ignoring, resenting everything and everyone, and generally just wanting to throat punch someone.
Morrison’s voice still resonated with the unrelenting edge that had ripped confessions from murderers and rapists alike and closed a record number of cold cases within the Georgetown Police Department. He was wasted on this class, and its bored, blinking occupants.
Well, most of its occupants.
I caught hungry gazes from my fellow female classmates lasering at Morrison’s ass when he turned his back to the class to scrawl on the whiteboard.
And, damn him, he’d turned and smiled at them. Every single one of them.
Except for me.
You think he’s flirting with you? I wanted to shout. Well I’ve ridden that man like a mechanical bull on nickel beer night, you smug eye-humper. Put that in your Juicy Couture sweatpants and smoke it.
After class, Morrison snapped his battered briefcase closed and was out of the room quicker than a greased pig. I packed up my notes and wandered out to the