But Menes had assured Jackson that like a hydra, the Templars would grow a new head quickly. This came as no great surprise to him. Knowing what a never-ending battle that was, he did not envy Menes his position.

Their position.

You will have to quit soon, Menes said with little gentility. Surely you realize that? The Politic awaits our leadership in New Mexico. Even your sister has left to go there with Ram as he holds the government center for me during our Blending. What is the purpose of training this animal when you know you must leave him? Menes reached out with Jackson’s hand and rubbed at the dog’s ears. He is a fine beast, and you are making it difficult for him to do his job well if you don’t transition him to a new owner as soon as possible.

Jackson didn’t respond. He knew he was in some sort of denial, and he knew every word was the truth. That didn’t make it any easier. To leave everything he knew? To leave a lifetime’s work behind and force new, unappreciable goals onto himself? He resisted the thought of it with every fiber of his being. He loved being a cop. The law is what he excelled at. What he thrived for. And the k-9 unit … he would have been content to stay in the unit until he retired.

But he’d made a deal with Menes, and now he must honor that. Menes had held up his end. He had brought him back to life. Now …

He knelt down beside Sargent, tousling him roughly, patting his dense, muscular body until the dog was grunting with pleasure. It was then that he realized just how attached the dog had become in spite of Jackson’s months of recalcitrance. Jackson wouldn’t be the only one affected when he was compelled to quit, leaving the dog behind to connect to a new handler. Perhaps he was being selfish, training Sargent now and allowing him to imprint on him as a companion, as if they truly were going to become a warrior team when he knew there was no enduring future for them whatsoever. The understanding made him frown as he stood up, his heart feeling a bit heavier as he entered the building, Sargent trotting perfectly at his side.

Sargent’s training was showing impressively as the dog resisted all the smells of the food the dinner shift was partaking of. Jackson’s dog was especially fond of hotdogs, and Detective Wells had two sitting in a takeout box on his desk. But Sargent simply walked by, only his nose flaring in recognition of the coveted scent.

Then, unexpectedly, Jackson was pulled back by Sargent’s leash. The dog sat dead still, his butt hitting the floor and his heavy body becoming suddenly unmovable. “Come on boy,” he instructed, his hand signal to retrieve the dog automatic as he made the command.

Sargent stayed.

The door he was near opened, and out stepped Marissa Anderson. She came up short at the sight of the dog, rocking back a little on her fiercely high heels. Honestly? As tall as she was, why the heck did she have to wear those killer heels? Other than to accentuate her long, gorgeous legs and the way her snug skirt loved up against her delectable backside, that is.

He saw her hands lift up in withdrawal, as if she were afraid Sargent would bite her.

“He won’t hurt you,” he felt compelled to say, even though she should’ve already known that given all the time she spent among cops and, most especially, her time talking to him about Chico’s death.

“I know. I’m sure he’s a very nice dog,” she said, a tremulous tone underlying the stern bravado she was mustering up. Still, she couldn’t hide the stressed tension in her body as she leaned away from the dog.

“Are you afraid of dogs?” he queried her directly, studying her face carefully for tells. The desperation in her eyes on his told him that he was right.

“Not at all,” she lied. “Could you please move him out of my way? I do have things to do.”

Damn. Damn damn damn. Why was it the more tightly wound and aloof she acted the more he wanted to rip it all down, leaving her vulnerable to him and opening her up to the idea that a grunt cop had a hell of a lot of physical therapy to offer the highly educated, perfectly poised and consummately professional doctor.

“Chico, come.” Jackson commanded his dog.

The entire corridor seemed to go still. Marissa. Jackson. The two cops that had been chatting it up a few feet away. Jackson felt a chill walk up his spine and a sickly rush of regret and pain swam in his gut. It was a command he had given over and over again for years. It was still second nature.

And, God love him, Sargent stood up and came immediately to heel, clearly knowing what Jackson had meant to say and making no notice of the slip. He took no offense. It only solidified Jackson’s admiration and connection toward the canine cop.

But the humans around them were another story. They were suddenly watching him with an almost eager sort of wariness, as if they were staring at the high adrenaline danger of a ticking bomb.

“It’s only natural to become victim to long-time habits,” Marissa said softly, soothingly, as she put a gentle hand atop his biceps, her fingers warm through the fabric of his uniform shirt. He could smell her now and almost instantly the calamitous emotions caused by his faux pas were forgotten and other sensations rushed up to replace them. She smelled of sweetness, like fresh-baked cookies made with warm, gooey chocolate. It make him want to nibble and lick and …

He jerked his thoughts away when he felt himself getting hard. He drew away from her, turning his back to her, shutting down her empathy and ignoring her nearness the best he could.

“It happens,” he said with a shrug. He paused to give a hard look to the other two cops in the hall who immediately moved along and resumed their conversation.

“Do you want to …?” Marissa began predictably.

“Jesus, doc,” he snapped shortly, “Why does every little thing need to be talked about? That’s a hell of a world you live in. If I took time to kick around every stray feeling or negative thought I had I’d never get anything done.”

She bristled, as she almost always invariably did when he dismissed the effectiveness of her work.

“I was just—”

“Well don’t,” he bit out, cutting her off. “I don’t need your mothering and fussing.” Then, without understanding why he did it, he turned back to her and stepped into her personal space. She immediately took a step back, but the wall was directly behind her now and she found herself pressed back into the painted cinderblocks. Oh, he knew it was playing with fire, bordering on insubordination and about to cross into sexual harassment, but he also couldn’t seem to make himself care enough to back off. “Unless you have other ways you’d like to fuss over me,” he said, his voice dropping so only she could hear him, and so there was no mistaking the intent of the remark.

She drew in a small, startled breath, holding it as she stared up at him and searched for a response that wouldn’t immediately come. As he looked down into her eyes he confessed to himself that he’d always found the blue-green color of them to be compelling and beautiful.

Pupils dilated. Pulse beating rapidly at the base of her long, beautiful neck, he heard ghosting through his thoughts. Whatever she says, she is aroused by our suggestion.

Our.

The pronoun in his mind caused him to falter and he stepped back awkwardly. Our. He was no longer a “me” or an “I.” He was a “we” and an “us.” He no longer spoke for only himself, and he no longer had his own mind and solely his own impulses to control.

He was searching for a graceful exit out of a situation of his own making when someone came running up to him, out of breath and clearly overexerted. Then again, Tim McMullen was always out of breath and overexerted. He’d put on quite a bit of weight over the years and probably hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since academy training.

“Jacks! Jacks, there’s a kid missing. Riley’s on vacation in Albany with his family,” he puffed, even though Jackson already knew the other k-9 officer was away. “The captain wants to know if you think Sargent is ready to help us out.”

“Whether he is or isn’t,” Jackson said, “it’s better than nothing.”

“I’ll come too,” Marissa said. “The family is going to need someone.”

“Took my next words out of my mouth, doc,” Tim said with a toothy grin.

Marissa hadn’t realized that going to the scene of the missing child meant she would be forced to ride shotgun with the very officer she’d been trying to avoid for weeks. She supposed she could have taken her own car, but then he would have known just how much he was getting to her and she refused to give him the satisfaction. Let him stew and wonder, the little bastard. She was tired of this whole situation. Tired of having her sleep ruined every single night because he had wormed his way into her subconscious. And because of that disturbed sleep, she was just plain tired.

In the backseat Sargent was pacing back and forth, getting on her nerves with his whining. Jackson must have noticed her tension because he said, “He knows something is up.”

“I imagine the siren is a dead giveaway,” she said dryly.

“It is, actually, even though he hasn’t got too much experience with it. We’ve exposed him to it several times already to get him used to the sound, and he associates it with training, which is exciting and rewarding as far as he’s concerned.”

Marissa stole a glance at him. Although he was trying to adopt a laissez-faire attitude, he had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. She wished she could read his mind and figure out why. Was it anxiety about working in the field for the first time with a new dog since Chico’s death? Was it tension from the interrupted moment of sensuality between them that still had her heart beating wildly?

She should have been offended. She should have slapped his face off in a single blow. But she hadn’t. She had been paralyzed as his heated suggestion caused her to get weak and wet in all of a heartbeat. And she had been terrified that he would know it. He seemed to perceive a lot of things lately. Ever since …

She shook herself mentally and then forced herself to converse with him, trying to prove to herself that he didn’t rattle her in the least.

“I heard your sister is getting married,” she blurted out—an obvious stumble for conversation.

He smiled with one side of his mouth, his entire face changing from a guarded expression to one so warm that it peeled years away from him.

“Yes. To Vincent Marzak.”

The man who had “kidnapped” his sister three weeks ago. Only it had turned out to be just a very big misunderstanding. She didn’t know all the details … she just remembered Jackson apologizing to everyone for his behavior and then eating a lot of crow and taking a lot of shit from the brotherhood of the SPD. There was very little room for error in an environment like the one they worked in. If you made mistakes you paid for it. But Jackson had withstood the weeks of ribbing and practical jokes far better than she would have expected from him, considering the short fuse he’d been displaying at the time of the incident.

But it was like … it was as if she were dealing with an entirely different man. As though the incident with his sister had flipped some kind of switch inside of him that made him recognize where he had been coming up short … or perhaps it finally forced him to reconcile with the recent loss he’d suffered.

Or so she had thought. But that move a few minutes ago of trying to throw her off balance and disturb her line of concern when he had called Sargent by Chico’s name, that was a classic avoidance maneuver. He was throwing up a smoke screen of sex and inappropriateness to obscure her focus on the one thing he didn’t want to address.

Ahhh … so that was it, she thought. The ultimatum he’d given her had been his way of trying to cut off her access into his mind and emotions! Why hadn’t she seen it before?

Because a little part of you wanted it to be genuine …

Marissa ignored that nagging little whisper in her subconscious. She couldn’t afford to indulge it. And honestly, Jackson couldn’t afford it either. He needed her to be far better at this game than he was. He didn’t know it … but he needed it.

“It must be a very big change in your relationship with her,” she observed.

“Not really.” He shrugged. “Vincent treats her like a queen.” For some reason she got the feeling she was missing an inside joke when he smiled rather mischievously. “Ram would rather take a bullet than let any harm come to her. She’s in very good hands.”

“Ram?” she queried.

He blinked, a small line of tension tautening up the length of his arms and his grip on the steering wheel.

“Nickname. I think it was football related or something.”

Okay now that was weird. Why did it feel like he was lying to her? If so, it was a really silly thing to lie about. What the hell did she care where the name came from? He could have said it was his alter ego’s name for all she cared. She’d heard stranger and weirder things in her career.