“Richard. Me too.”
“Adam’s a great friend.”
She smiled at Josh. And Josh was a great friend to him for trying to help her see that Adam was interested in her. She already knew that from the way Adam smiled and kidded with her. She didn’t need Josh telling her that. She loved teasing the guys. Josh was like her brother and she adored him for it.
“You’re going boating with us on Sunday, right? My parents always had a boat when I was growing up, but I haven’t been on one in eons,” Sierra said.
“I’ll have to check with Brooke and make sure she doesn’t have other plans. Her shop is closed on Sundays, and she likes to catch up on work at the store.”
“Okay.” She hoped Josh and Brooke hadn’t already told Adam they were going but were now thinking of backing out because they wanted to allow her and Adam time to get to know each other.
Josh pulled into the parking lot at the bureau.
She got out of Josh’s vintage Ferrari, a gift from Brooke’s inheritance. All the police officers and detectives at the bureau who were either coming or going had to make a detour and check out the car.
“Thanks for the ride, Josh.”
“Did you need a ride home tonight?”
“No, thanks. My car should be released to me soon.” She saw it in the parking lot. “Oh, there it is. Thanks again for breakfast too.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And don’t you say anything to Adam about him having to keep his boat if he doesn’t feel he’s getting enough use out of it.”
Josh smiled and then one of the officers shook his hand. “Good to see you here, showing off your Ferrari again.”
Josh laughed and Sierra smiled, then headed for the building just as Adam and Tori were exiting it.
“Come on, Sierra. We’ve got a job for you,” Adam said.
“Dead or alive?”
Tori laughed. Adam sighed.
“Dead. Gotcha,” Sierra said. This was going to be a long day.
Chapter 16
That night, Adam took Sierra out for a steak dinner, since she’d had her heart set on good red meat—totally a wolf thing—and then to a movie. He wanted to really show her he could take off work and they’d have a great time. He’d even dressed up a bit, no suit since he had to wear one at work, but no jeans on his date. And Sierra was wearing a sundress and looked as pretty as could be.
He had no intention of talking about anything work-related either.
“This is really nice,” she said, glancing at the overhead crystal lights bouncing off the rack of wineglasses separating their booth from part of the serving area.
“Yeah, it has the best steaks and great atmosphere, right here in Portland. I thought tomorrow night, if you’d like, we could go to that”—he leaned over and said for her hearing only—“wolf-run restaurant that has live music and dancing.”
“Oh, absolutely. You know, I love just doing things with you at your place or mine too. We don’t always have to go out, but this is so nice.”
“I feel the same way. I love doing either.” Adam liked doing both. Despite their busy workdays, he found going out just as relaxing with her as sitting at home and grilling dinner on the grill or ordering pizza delivery.
He wondered if her ex-boyfriend had preferred sitting at home and just chilling with her. There was no way he was bringing up the ex though.
Once their steaks arrived—she got the petite filet mignon, and he went for the T-bone—with glasses of red wine, they settled back and ate their meals, neither of them talking about the cases they were working on. And he was glad about that.
“I have to tell you I’m so glad I came here to live and to join your pack, all at Brad’s insistence. He knew I would love it here. And he knew I needed to give my ex-boyfriend up to find someone else.”
“I wanted that to happen too. Brad was always showing the guys your picture, whether you were playing with him in the surf on Galveston Island or wearing your uniform and meeting up with him when he came to visit you while he was still in the military. He had all of us interested in you way before you ever arrived here. Then here you are, but you’re still dating an out-of-state guy.”
“Yeah, I was just having a hard time letting go and getting on with my life. I knew I needed to. And I think the fact that he would never come here to see me should have clued me in that it wasn’t going to work out between us. That I wasn’t his priority, but I was supposed to continue to see him like he was all that mattered to me.” She smiled and took a sip of her wine.
“If you don’t mind me saying so, he was a fool to let you go.”
“No, I don’t mind you saying so at all. Brad, and even my parents, had often said I should have ended things with him before I even left Texas. I guess I just had to finally come to terms with it and let go.”
“Well, I’m glad for us that you did.”
* * *
After they finished dinner, Sierra asked, “So what did you want to see tonight at the movies?” She would have been just as happy to go home and watch something on TV, but she hadn’t been to a movie theater on a date in eons.
“Thriller? Mystery? Horror? Animated feature? That’s all they have,” Adam said, looking up the movies. He showed them to her, and she picked the thriller.
“It seems it goes with our line of work.”
He smiled. “You’d think you’d want to watch something else then.”
“Nah, maybe we can get a clue, something we’ve missed, by watching how the other detectives solve their crimes.”
“You know, I would have been a skeptic about that theory until it worked for me one time. A man had taken a woman hostage on an airplane so that he could get her bank president dad to open a safety deposit box the kidnapper wanted to get into. After I watched the old movie, I realized the case I’d been working on was eerily similar. So you just never know,” Adam said.
“See there? I knew it.”
At the theater, they had buttered popcorn and bottles of water and snuggled together. This was sure nice, and unless he objected to her being in bed with him tonight, Sierra was joining him there. The movie was great, an edge-of-the-seat thriller, and she realized he was just as tense as she was through some of the wilder scenes. And the ending was a happily-ever-after, making it the perfect movie for her.
“That’s what I like to see. Bad guys lose, good guys win! And the hero got the heroine in the end.”
“Yeah, now that’s the part I have to really learn how to do.”