attention. I need to change clothes so we can leave for our honeymoon.”
“You never said where you’re going,” Toni said.
“To Barcelona. We catch a cruise ship from there to the Canary Islands.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“I’m excited. When do you head back to Miami?” Toni was a police detective with the Miami Beach Police Department.
“My flight leaves at eight in the morning.”
“Have a safe flight back home, Toni. And give this thing with Drew some time. You’ll figure it out. But trust me, talking might help. Now give me a hug. I promise I’ll call when I get back. We can come up with a strategy for you after I get settled.”
The two hugged, and when Joy hurried off to her husband, Toni sighed. Maybe Joy was right. There was no reason she and Andrew couldn’t at least say hello. Neither of them had a reason to be angry about their breakup. It was what they’d both agreed to, after all.
She turned and glanced around the room, looking for him. But her heart dropped when she saw him leaving with a beautiful woman.
Timing had never been one of their strengths.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
- Benjamin Disraeli
Eight months later
DETECTIVE ANDREW LOGAN TOOK another sip of his coffee as he glanced around the chief of police’s office. Unless there was a departmental meeting, he rarely had a reason to come in here, so he couldn’t help wondering why he’d been summoned now.
He’d been a detective for eight years and loved what he did for a living—literally bringing in criminals. It wasn’t all that difficult, considering at one point in his life, he’d been one of them. He was not proud of his juvenile-delinquent past, especially since it had made it easy for the police to pin a conviction of armed robbery on him when he’d been seventeen and still in high school. He’d been innocent, but that hadn’t mattered.
Taking the advice of another innocent man in prison, Sheppard Granger, who had become a father figure to him and to many other young men, he had decided to make something positive out of his life.
And Andrew had.
He had gotten his GED and completed two years of college while confined. Now he had a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice and worked for the Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department. Considering his past, he was the last person anyone would expect to uphold the law. But he was, and it was a job he was proud of doing.
He took another sip of his coffee as his gaze returned to the man sitting behind the desk in front of him, Police Chief Wilmot LaNeer. He liked LaNeer. He was the kind of police chief who left you alone if you did your job, and got all over your ass if you didn’t. Andrew knew he did his job very well...which made him wonder again why the chief wanted to see him. He took another sip of his coffee and figured he would find out soon enough, once the chief finished reviewing whatever file he was currently reading.
In the meantime, Andrew allowed his thoughts to shift to the woman he’d met two nights ago. She had definitely been a looker in her skintight jeans and midriff top. He’d met her at the gun range, of all places. During their too-brief conversation, she’d told him she was living alone since her roommate had moved out, and she had decided to get a gun to protect herself.
He’d been tempted to tell her that she had just given too much information to a man she had just met, but he didn’t want to scare her. So he’d gone along with the conversation, writing down her name, address and phone number on a piece of paper which he had tucked in his wallet. He would give her a call this weekend and hoped she would be as eager to jump into his bed as she’d been in divulging information about herself. After several rounds of hot, satisfying sex, he would explain to her that she was way too friendly for her own good. There were too many crazies out there.
“Thanks for your patience, Detective Logan.”
He glanced at his superior. “No problem, Chief.” He wished he could say that he had all the time in the world, but he didn’t. Not as long as there were plenty of cases still to solve. For the last couple of weeks, he’d been rotating partners. His partner of eight years, Norman