Concealed Hearts (Hometown Jasper #4) - Nicky James

Chapter One

Windsor

It had taken me over twenty minutes to navigate the University of British Columbia’s website and find the list of faculty. Twenty minutes! Technology was getting away from me. I’d thought myself adept when it came to maneuvering email accounts and filtering through the department’s social media pages, but now that I was pushing forty-six, everything felt ten times more complicated.

Watching the new kid up front update our pages and post emergency bulletins or notable information on our website was mind-boggling. His fingers flew over the keyboard with ease. He didn’t have to pause once to learn where they moved this feature or that feature.

It was fast becoming a language I didn’t speak. I was happy enough with my out-of-date cell phone and base model electronics. All these newer gadgets annoyed me.

That and complicated university websites.

Victory for me was locating the physics department’s list of professors after scrolling through over a hundred or more different programs the U of BC offered. Finally, there he was. Dr. Tomi Lee.

I checked the door to my office, ensuring I was alone before clicking his name. My computer screen wasn’t visible from the doorway, but the tickle of apprehension that had arisen with this task made me extra cautious. I was a quick-thinker, most of the time. It came with the job as Jasper’s Chief of Police, but digging into something like this unearthed a disquiet I hadn’t felt in decades. With the excessive tension and anxiety came fear and paranoia. The ever-present If I think it, they will know, lurked around the inside of my mind like an ominous presence, warning me all the time I was being reckless.

But I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. I had to do something.

The screen changed, and a small picture appeared in the upper left-hand corner, Tomi wearing a white button-up under an argyle vest. His smile showed white teeth. His skin was warm, light-brown and flawless. His black hair was cut short and spiked, the same way it had been when I’d seen him not that long ago. Dark and mysterious eyes looked out from my screen, and I rubbed away the rising goose bumps under my shirt sleeves.

Tomi Lee.

He awoke something that had been dormant for many, many years.

For once, I could look at him without the pressing worry of being seen or caught.

On the right-hand side of the screen was Tomi’s biography and a long list of credentials. The man was brilliant—smarter than I could ever hope to be. There were notable awards he’d won, a list of magazines where his articles were published, and an extensive and elaborate description of the research he was currently involved in. I wished it made sense, but my understanding of physics and whatever else he studied didn’t exist. Half the words were foreign and unpronounceable.

I found what I was looking for at the bottom of the page.

An email address.

My determination had taken me this far, but finding a Post-it note and scribbling down the information was a whole other level of bravery I wasn’t sure I possessed. Writing it down implied I was ready to act. Was I?

Drumming my fingers on the desk, I pondered all the pros and cons of my decision. I could make an email look innocent. Unsuspecting. There were any number of excuses I could attribute to why I might need to contact him. Just checking up on you. You’re a Jasper resident, after all, was the top of my list and the one I’d planned to open with. Where I went from there, I had no idea. I could use the communication as a simple follow-up to the case we’d closed a few weeks ago surrounding Tomi’s brother, but that seemed less believable.

If I was a bolder, braver man, I’d have risked it all and laid it out for him. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m attracted to you. I’m gay.

But I wasn’t that man. Despite my uniform, despite my position and years of service as a police officer, there were some areas of my life where I was a coward.

“Chief?”

I startled and punched the off button on the computer terminal with such force, the tower rocked once, tipping so far over I thought it was going to fall before settling on its legs again.

Matthew Knightly, our brand new office administrator, cringed as he watched the ten-year-old computer threaten to collapse.

“Um… It’s actually not good for your computer to turn it off like that, sir. You should shut