The Rookie: A Romantic Suspense Standalone (The Intelligence Unit Book 1) Read online

  He was inches away from ruthlessly fucking her on the secondhand couch he’d inherited from his brother-in-law when instead, she should be treated like a queen.

  “Tara.” He pulled back, despite the righteously indignant WTF, man! coming from his dick. She blinked up at him, her expression catching in worry that made Xander want to kick himself. Hard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Christ, nothing.” Unable to help himself, he brushed a kiss over her mouth. “You’re perfect. It’s just…” Tension crowded his muscles, and damn it, had he been insane, losing his composure like that? Tara wasn’t the kind of woman he could just screw on impulse, especially after everything she’d just trusted him with. She deserved better than that. “I want to do this right.”

  A wry smile tilted her lips upward, shocking him clean through. “Trust me, Xander. You are totally doing it right.”

  Her tart comeback pushed a laugh right out of him, scattering his tension like smoke in a spring breeze. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  “Okay,” Tara said, using the space he’d given her to right her skirt and push herself up to seated beside him. “Talk to me.”

  Her tone was so devoid of drama or irritation or, hell, anything other than wide open honesty, that his feelings just slid on out.

  “How many people have you told about Lucas?”

  Tara’s brows traveled up in obvious surprise, but Xander didn’t backpedal. “Just go with me, here. How many?”

  She stayed quiet for a minute, then another, before saying, “Well, my boss knows—it’s in my personnel file because of the trial, and my job isn’t exactly low-stress. He likes to make sure all of his ADAs are in a good headspace, so we talked about it briefly when I came on board.”

  “Right, but that was a disclosure thing for work,” Xander said, although he was glad her boss seemed like a decent guy.

  Tara tilted her head in a non-verbal fair enough. “Everyone in college knew about it, but I was too raw to actually talk about it with anyone other than my therapist. I never got too close to any of my friends in law school.” Here, her shoulder lifted against the back of the couch in the tiniest shrug. “It’s not easy to form deep friendships when you’ve lost the one that meant the most to you, you know? I told a few of them anyway—by then, I was okay talking about it in a general sense. But it’s obviously pretty emotional for me, so…oh.” Understanding stole across her face, her eyes sweeping wide. “Is that why you stopped? Because I confided in you?”

  “Tara, I want to make one thing really clear. I meant what I said. I want nothing more than to take you to my bedroom, strip off all your clothes, and make you lose your mind a hundred different ways. But between everything that’s happened with Amour and what you just laid out, it’s been a long week. If we do this”—Xander caught her stare and held—“I don’t want it to be some impulsive thing.”

  “Impulse isn’t so bad,” she pointed out, but still, he stayed firm.

  “It is when it leads to regret.”

  Tara’s brows lifted slightly, the flash in her eyes telling him in no uncertain terms that she was about to argue. “I think I made it pretty clear that I want this.”

  “You did,” Xander said. Sweet Jesus in the manger, she really had. “And I want it, too. But I also want to do it right.”

  Tara looked at him for a heartbeat, then two, then ten. Then, her lips quirked in the makings of a smile. “Can we please give up the notion that you’re not a nice guy?”

  Xander laughed softly. “You’re not going to let that one go, are you?”

  “Not even for a second. But it just so happens that I argue with people for a living, so I’m all too happy to prove it to you if that’s what it takes. Now, do you want to grab some dinner? Woman cannot live on ice cream alone.”

  Xander looked up at the building in front of him and immediately started to sweat. Apart from an elementary school field trip to the Remington Fine Arts Museum, he’d never seen this much marble in one place. A dark red awning led to a set of brass-lined double doors, complete with a uniformed doorman on the other side, ready and waiting with a smile or an umbrella or whatever else the residents might need.

  “Good evening, sir,” the man said as he ushered Xander all the way into the lobby, and Xander had to fight the urge to turn around to see who the guy was really talking to. “How may I help you this evening?”

  Surreptitiously brushing off the rain that had dampened his jacket on the two-block hustle from his car to the building, Xander said, “Oh. I’m, uh, here to see Tara Kingston.”

  Holy shit, the lobby had a chandelier. No, wait—two of them. And here he was, in his favorite worn-in canvas jacket and equally banged-up boots, carrying a big bag of takeout food from The Crooked Angel like a goddamn delivery service.

  This was a fucking mistake.

  “Ms. Kingston, of course.” The doorman smiled, and okay, he didn’t seem ready to toss Xander on his ass or anything. “Mr. Matthews, then?”

  Xander’s brows lifted. “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s expecting you.” At what had to be the totally bewildered look on Xander’s face, he added, “She called down to say you’d be arriving shortly. The elevator to the East Tower is through the lobby and to the right. Have a nice night.”

  “Great. Thanks.” Having memorized the apartment number Tara had texted him this morning when she’d invited him over for dinner, Xander made his way to the elevator. The elegantly mirrored car gave him a chance to smooth a hand over his jeans and make sure his T-shirt was still as clean as when he’d shouldered into it in the locker room at the Thirty-Third. The elevator chimed its arrival on the eleventh floor, the doors gliding open to reveal a hallway that was just as upscale as the rest of the building, and he followed it to the door marked 1104 in oiled bronze numbers.

  Tara answered his knock after only a few seconds, erasing all of Xander’s unease with one smile. “Hey! You made it.”

  He crossed the threshold and nodded. “I did. This place is”—he took in the hand-scraped hardwood floors, the light, open living space that was the size of a gymnasium, yet somehow still managed to be cozy, and the stacked stone fireplace taking over the far wall—“wow.”

  “You like it?” Tara asked brightly. “After we eat, I’ll give you the full tour. But first…” She pressed up to the balls of her bare feet, her mouth warm and sweet as she placed a quick peck on his jaw. “Thank you for bringing dinner.”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said, wondering how the fuck he’d managed to grit his way through his Physical Ability Tests at the police academy just fine, yet he was pretty sure he’d just been felled by a two-second kiss from a five foot five redhead.

  Tara tipped back her head and laughed, not making Xander’s situation any easier. “I beg to differ. According to Amour, these onion rings are going to make me see God. That is a very big deal.” She took the bag from his hand, gesturing toward an L-shaped sectional sofa with a nod before leading the way. “And anyway, bringing dinner was a really nice thing to do. Do you want to do the honors while I grab us something to drink? I’ve got water, soda, beer, wine…”

  “Beer works. Thank you,” he said. He had a rare day off tomorrow, although he’d likely spend a lot of it reviewing the case. If he stuck to one and then watered up afterward, he’d be fine to drive.

  “You got it.”

  She returned just as Xander had finished unloading everything, a beer in each hand, and his chin lifted in surprise.

  “What?” Tara asked, passing one of the beers over as she took a sip from the other.

  He might not have known her for that long in the grander scheme of the universe, but he knew better than to go the nothing route with her. “I just didn’t take you for a beer drinker. Or a jeans and sweatshirt wearer, to be honest,” he said, although, damn, the way her soft pink top slid just far enough off her shoulder to give him All The Bad Ideas was more than a little hot.

  “What, you think I ha
ng out at home in my suit and heels, drinking Cristal and eating caviar?” Her laughter softened any heat the words might’ve otherwise carried, making it all too easy for Xander to laugh, too.

  “Maybe not that extreme. But we’ve spent every evening this week together, and you’ve never not been in a suit,” he pointed out.

  “Every evening this week I came to your building directly from work. I’m not all business.”

  “You’re mostly business,” Xander said, partly because it was true and partly because the fire that sparked in her eyes whenever he messed with her was too hot to pass up.

  Tara didn’t disappoint. “Yet here I am, enjoying a beer in my favorite pair of jeans—which have a hole in them and everything”—she paused to point dramatically to her knee, coppery brows lifted as if to say Exhibit A, Your Honor—“so maybe I’m just a regular girl after all.”

  It took all Xander had not to laugh his head clean off at that. “Well, I hope you’re a hungry regular girl.”

  “Starving,” she admitted, settling cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table. “Okay. What’ve we got?”

  “Well, you said to bring you the best thing on the menu, so in order to give you the full Crooked Angel experience, I kind of had to get creative.” Starting to open up the cartons, he said, “For appetizers, we’ve got Tex-Mex eggrolls, calamari with cilantro aioli, and homemade Pierogis. For the main course, I’d be doing you wrong if I didn’t bring a Cuban—they’re the restaurant’s signature sandwich—but the shrimp tacos are ridiculous, too, and this pesto chicken sandwich is new, so I thought we’d give it a go. Oh, and obviously”—Xander popped the lid on the last container, his mouth going all Pavlov—“plenty of onion rings.”

  Tara scanned the coffee table, taking it all in. “I have a feeling I’m going to wish I’d worn my favorite leggings instead of my favorite jeans, but okay. Let’s do this.”

  After a half dozen pieces of calamari and two bites of an eggroll, Xander realized he was going to have a kickstand in his jeans for the duration of the evening. “Oh, my God,” Tara moaned blissfully, popping the last of her eggroll past her sweet, sinful lips. “I want to eat these every day. So…good.”

  Xander swooped up a Pierogi with his plastic fork and smiled. “Kennedy would be happy to hear you say that. Although, I don’t know, maybe now you’d make her cry.”

  “Yikes. That sounds extreme,” Tara said at the same time Xander realized his mis-step.

  But there was no going back now, so he said, “Yeah. She just found out she’s having a baby, so I guess the crying is a thing. But I’m not supposed to tell anyone the happy news yet, so…”

  She mimed zipping her lips and tossing away the key. “I’m a vault. Still, that’s pretty exciting, right?”

  “Yeah,” Xander said, taking a few more bites before adding, “She pretty much raised me, so we’re closer than most siblings. She’s worked really hard.” It was the world’s most colossal understatement for what Kennedy had done, all she’d sacrificed, much of it for him. But the curiosity in Tara’s eyes might as well be burning a hole in him right now, so he pulled on the cover of a shrug. “She and Gamble are happy. They’re going to be kickass parents, and I get to be the fun uncle who buys the drum set. It’s all good.”

  “I don’t really know a lot of people who have gotten to the point in their lives where they decide whether or not they want to have kids,” Tara said thoughtfully, and here, Xander could relate. “Then again, I don’t really have many close friends, and even though I’m pretty tight with my parents, our family is basically just the three of us.”

  Now Xander’s curiosity sparked. “What about work? You’re not close with anyone there?”

  Tara shook her head. “Nah. The other A.D.A.s are all pretty much workaholics, like me. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing when you love your job, but it doesn’t exactly lead to a chummy environment.”

  “It could, though,” Xander speculated. “I mean, I kind of fell into this great, big extended family when my sister married Gamble. Those firefighters work their asses off. The cops at the Thirty-Third, too. But they’re also unbelievably tight. Aside from me and Kennedy, they’re the only family Gamble even has.”

  “Really?” Tara’s fork stopped mid-air, her brown eyes wide. “There have to be, what, ten first responders at Station Seventeen? Twelve? And you’re close with all of them?”

  Xander had no shortage of fondness for everyone in the group, despite his rocky introduction to all of them, including his brother-in-law. “Oh, yeah. The docs at Remington Mem, too. We all hang out a couple times a week, mostly at The Crooked Angel, but some of us do other stuff. Gamble and I play basketball once a week with Isabella’s husband, Kellan, and his buddy, Devon. We all kind of group together for barbecues in the summer and most holidays. Oh, and we always hang out for hockey playoffs,” he added. “Kennedy’s best friend, January? She’s married to Finn Donnelly, so it’s pretty much law that we all watch the games together to cheer him on.”

  “You know Finn Donnelly,” Tara said slowly. “The star forward for the Charlotte Rogues.”

  “Yep. Cool guy. He hosts a killer fundraiser at The Crooked Angel every year.”

  “Wow.” Tara took a long sip from her beer bottle, the look on her face wistful enough to make his heart take a stutter-step in Xander’s chest. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be part of such a big group of people who are all so close. To be honest, the thought of it is a little scary to me.”

  “Scary how?” Xander asked.

  “It’s an awful lot of people to let in. I guess I’m just kind of guarded because of my past.”

  Hell if he didn’t know all the words to that song. Not that he could tell her that. Christ, if she knew even half of what he’d done in his past, she’d probably regret trusting him with her dinner preferences, let alone some of the most emotional parts of her personal history.

  And still, that didn’t stop him from wanting her to, because that was the sort of bastard he was. “You could try starting with just one person,” he said. “Maybe then it wouldn’t be so scary.”

  Tara’s smile made his chest squeeze. “I think I’d actually really like that.”

  And as they spent the next three hours talking and laughing and losing track of every single thing around them that wasn’t each other, Xander realized he didn’t just want Tara to trust him.

  He wanted to trust her, too.

  8

  Tara pulled into a parking spot a block from the Thirty-Third Precinct and grinned at her good luck. Okay, so it was a bazillion degrees out, and yeah, she’d have to walk that block pretty quickly—in three-inch heels, no less—if she was going to make her meeting with Isabella and the Intelligence Unit. But despite working some breakneck hours to manage both her normal caseload and the trial prep for the Sansone case, she’d been able to spend the last four evenings in a row with Xander, hence her inclination to smile both randomly and often.

  He’d surprised her by having a sense of humor nearly as dry as her own, along with a love for Renaissance history and the ability to make a killer dirty martini. He hadn’t surprised her by being smart or pretty quiet about super personal stuff unless nudged, but Tara wasn’t exactly a stranger to guiding conversations. While Xander had remained pretty tight-lipped about some of his past, he’d also told her no less than four dozen stories about his sister, Kennedy, her husband, Gamble, and the rest of the firefighters from Station Seventeen that served as his found family. Although she’d loved listening to Xander go on about his sister and all of their close friends, Tara couldn’t deny the odd ache she’d felt in her chest as she’d listened to him talk.

  What would it be like to be close with people like that? To trust that they’d always be there for her? That they’d never leave?

  The way she was starting to trust Xander, and God, she didn’t hate it.

  “Oh, stop,” Tara chided herself, replacing the smile that had faded from her lips with a newe
r, if less comfortable, version. Yes, she was enjoying the time she and Xander spent together, and oh yes, she’d definitely enjoyed the steamy goodnight kisses they’d traded over the past week and a half, ever since that first one at his place the night he’d brought Amour dinner. But the thought of belonging with anyone like that? Of being cared for at that level? That deeply?

  She might as well be wishing for rainbows and unicorns, with quadruple orgasms on top.

  Straightening her shoulders beneath her suit jacket, she scooped up her purse and got out of her car. The walk was as short and hell-hot as expected, and by the time she’d made her way through the lobby, then the metal detectors and security check-in that allowed access to the Intelligence Unit’s offices, Tara was fully focused on the case at hand.

  “Hey! If it isn’t my favorite A.D.A.,” came Isabella’s welcoming voice from the midway point in the large, open-concept main office space. Tara had always marveled at how the Intelligence Unit worked as a true team—no cubicles for this crew. The only private rooms were Sergeant Sinclair’s office and the interrogation rooms along the back hallway of the space.

  “I bet you say that to all the A.D.A.s,” Tara said, her smile hanging in her voice.

  Capelli looked up from the bank of monitors spanning half of the far wall of the office, pushing his black-framed glasses up over his nose. “Actually, she doesn’t. Most of us really do like you best.”

  Tara had to laugh at how forthright the guy always was. “Most of you?”

  “Well, Garza doesn’t seem to have a preference,” Capelli mused. “But I wouldn’t take that personally. His gruff demeanor dictates that he doesn’t really have a preference for anyone.”

  Isabella’s partner, Liam Hollister, let out a thinly disguised laugh-cough from his spot at the desk across from her, as Garza—who was sitting well within earshot of the entire conversation—sent a hard look at Capelli.