Then he said, “Babe, like I told you, you gotta live more.”

“I tried that,” I reminded him quietly. “It didn’t work very well for me.”

His eyes grew dark and intense in an instant and it was fascinating as well as a bit scary.

“Don’t do that, Toots,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Twist yesterday to bad in your head. Don’t do it.”

“He knew I spent the night with you,” I explained. “He heard about it. It made him angry. He said it was disrespect. He said…”

I stopped because the memories were coming back in a flood. Esposito’s rage. His bad guy holding me while Esposito took that rage out on me physically.

And all this was a lot, so I couldn’t go on speaking.

“You laughed last night,” Buck broke into my thoughts. “You smiled. You opened up. You told me straight out you hadn’t laughed in a long time, darlin’. What we had was good. What he did with it is whacked. That’s on him. Don’t let him twist that. You do that, he beats you a different way.”

He was right.

He was right and I liked it that he thought what we had was good.

I liked that a lot.

So I turned to my sandwich and took a bite. It hurt to open my mouth that wide, but it couldn’t be denied it tasted great.

As I was chewing, I looked back at Buck to see he was grinning down at the counter before he took his own bite.

He looked handsome grinning. He also looked handsome eating.

God, I was such a dork!

Time to put my mind to other things.

“Did you see my purse at my apartment?” I asked and his attention returned to me.

“Wasn’t lookin’ for your purse, babe, was lookin’ for you.”

“So you didn’t see it?”

“No, why?”

“Because Mrs. Jimenez gave me her nest egg so Tia and I could go on the lam. I need to give it back to her.”

He took a slug of beer and set it on the counter. “When the boys go get your shit tomorrow, I’ll tell them to look for it.”

After he said that, he took another huge bite of his sandwich.

But I was blinking at him.

And this blinking was repeated and rapid.

“When the boys go to get my shit?”

He swallowed and said, “Yeah,” then took another big bite.

“Why are they getting my shit?”

He replied through a full mouth, “Bringin’ it up here, Toots.”

What? My brain screamed.

“What?” I whispered, but I’d lost his attention.

He’d turned his head and was scowling out of the plethora of windows that, by day, showed a magnificent landscape, and by night, showed moonlight-shrouded pine trees which was no less magnificent.

They also showed the headlights of a car coming up the lane.

“Fuck, what now?” he muttered, putting his sandwich on the counter and grabbing his beer. “Stay there,” he ordered as he walked away while taking a pull on his beer.

I didn’t have any choice but to stay there.

Sitting on the counter didn’t feel great on my hip but nothing felt great on my hip.

The rest of me felt okay, muted pain in my ribs and face, but this was because I wasn’t moving much.

I didn’t want to face the consequences if I tried to jump down.

Buck exited the front door and closed it behind him.

I sat on the counter, ate my sandwich, sipped at my Coke and resisted the urge to get a plate to put his sandwich on.

I needed to live more and not worry about stupid stuff like sandwiches on counters. My life was such that I knew, in enumerable ways (of which that day I was reminded of a few), that a plate for a sandwich was not the least bit important.

I told myself this, but I still found it hard not to find a plate.

I was finished with my sandwich by the time Buck returned and I felt my belly get tight when I saw the man who walked in with him.

Detective Rayne Scott.

Darn.

What was he doing here?

I didn’t really want to know.

I just wished he wasn’t here.

I’d never forget him. Tall, dark-haired, interesting light-brown eyes, athletic build and incredibly good-looking.

He was also the detective who’d worked with the FBI locally in investigating and eventually arresting my ex-husband.

And me (without the arresting part).

I gazed at him remembering that I never wanted to see him again.

Never.

He wasn’t mean to me.

He was professional, all business, but not mean. Even the three times he was in the room with the men who interrogated me.

That said, although he was only doing what he was paid to do, he’d rocked my world so immensely, it came crumbling out from under my feet.

He had a job to do, I understood this logically, and I was just caught in the fallout.

It was Rogan who did the deed. I understood this logically too.

But that didn’t change the fact that Detective Rayne Scott was a major player in the events that ruined my life and led me to the dire predicament I currently found myself in.

Now he was there, looking no less handsome, wearing a chambray shirt and jeans, and I was sitting on a counter in a faded black T-shirt with a busted lip, a swollen face, and I didn’t even want to think of what my hair looked like.

Hells bells.

I continued to gaze at him, immobile.

He returned my look, something working behind those interesting brown eyes, something deep and meaningful and maybe even painful, before he clipped, “Jesus.”

“You’ll give us a minute,” Buck stated.

This wasn’t a request, it was statement, and it was clear he was displeased.

Rayne Scott didn’t take his eyes off me as he nodded.

Buck came at me, put the beer bottle down by my hip then lifted me carefully off the counter to set me equally carefully on my feet. He took my hand and guided me out of the kitchen, up to the landing and into the bedroom. He flipped on the overhead light and closed the door.

Then he turned to me and dropped my hand but only so his hands could come to rest on my waist.

“That man is a cop,” he told me.

“I know, he was one of the team that arrested Rogan,” I told him.

This news did not make Buck happy. I knew this because his eyes flashed, and his mouth got tight as he studied me.

Then he went on, “No fuckin’ clue how, but he heard about what Esposito did to you.”

Fabulous.

I looked away.

“Toots, eyes to me,” Buck ordered gently.

I looked back at him.

“He wants Esposito. He knows Esposito caught you in his net and he’s here to convince you to press charges about what happened today. What he’s not sayin’ is he’s also here to convince you to inform on Esposito and his crew.”

Oh no.

I couldn’t do this.

With all that had happened, neither Tia nor I had ever considered going to the police. We’d lived the kind of lives that you knew you never, but never, snitched.

Never.

“I’ll never snitch,” I whispered and saw Buck’s eyes flash again, this time not with irritation but something else, something that looked an awful lot like approval.

“Then don’t.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “You don’t think I should talk to the police?”