She pulled to a stop at the red light in front of them before lifting one hand from the wheel in a wordless translation of mea culpa. “I was a bit…brash. But it’s not as if I don’t know the process for giving a statement, and that it needs to be thorough. You were just doing your job, and I was”—she trailed off for a beat, then one more before turning to look at him through the shadowy interior of the car—“Well, I should’ve reacted differently.”
A burst of desire moved through Xander, swift and enticingly hot, and Christ, was he nuts? This woman drove a BM-fucking-W and was a smart, successful attorney in the DA’s office. She wasn’t for him. Not fleetingly. Not just in his head.
Not ever.
Xander smoothed his expression and tugged together all the no-big-deal he could muster. Once he delivered Tara to the hospital and relayed her statement and an update to the Intelligence Unit detectives who would surely meet them there, the chances were high he wouldn’t even see her again. All he had to do was make it through the next hour or so. Then he could go back to keeping his head down and his ass in his own lane.
“What do you say we just call it even?” he asked, extending his hand over the center console.
Tara looked at him, her copper-colored eyes as wide as pennies but her grasp firm as she wrapped her fingers around his and shook.
“I’d say you’ve got yourself a clean slate.”
Oh, if only. Nothing about him was ever going to be clean.
Especially with a woman like Tara Kingston.
The rest of the ride passed in comfortable silence, with Xander trying to get the image of her sexy, sassy mouth out of his head and Tara blissfully unaware of his wicked (and wickedly inappropriate) thoughts. Remington Memorial’s Emergency Department was relatively quiet, with only a handful of people spread out across the waiting room, and Tara didn’t waste any time heading for the intake desk.
“I’m Tara Kingston, with the DA’s office. I’m here for a patient who was brought in via ambulance. Amour Pollard. Aimee,” she added, and the scrubs-clad man behind the desk nodded.
“The paramedics said to expect you. Dr. Riley is with the patient right now. You’ll have to wait out here.” He darted an apologetic glance at the waiting room. “But I’ll let her know you’re here. She’ll come find you as soon as she can.”
Tara tensed beside him in a way that said she was primed to argue, and Xander edged his way into her line of vision before he could stop himself. “Tara, she’s in the best hands. You don’t want to mess with that,” he said quietly. “Plus, we have to wait for someone from Intelligence to get here to work this case before we can do anything, anyway. It’s SOP, and we have to do this by the book.”
To his total surprise, she eked out a small, slow nod. Thanking the intake nurse, she stepped back with a frown. “I know you’re right. But…”
“The waiting sucks. I know.” Xander slapped back the memory of exactly how well-acquainted he was with that particular terror and gestured toward the chairs. “Do you want to sit down? It might be a while.”
“Not really, no.”
“Okay.” Xander tried Door Number Two. “Maybe we should find a vending machine. Are you hungry?”
Tara shook her head, knocking a strand of hair loose from the already tousled twist pinned just behind her ear. “No, thank you. I just want to wait right here for Dr. Riley.”
She locked her fingers together and started to pace. Her shoes—a pair of classy black heels with slim straps around her ankles that did absolutely zip for Xander’s composure—clipped a steady rhythm over the linoleum, and after the third circuit of pacing/hand wringing, he realized he was going to have to stage an intervention, otherwise she was going to fry her own circuitry before Dr. Riley could get even close to an update.
He fell into step alongside her. “Interesting story. Like, thirty years ago, there was this cargo ship on its way from Hong Kong to the United States.”
“What?” Tara stopped short to stare at him, but Xander didn’t let go of his steady-as-she-goes expression.
“Cargo ship. Hong Kong to the U.S.,” he repeated. When she was too shocked to verbalize the WTF that was scribbled all over her pretty face, he continued. “On the route, the ship accidentally lost a shipping crate, like, smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I bet you can’t guess what was in it.”
She blinked. “Electronics?”
“Good guess, but no.”
“Car parts.” A competitive spark lit her eyes, making her even prettier than usual.
Xander forced his shoulders into a haphazard shrug and his dick to stand down. “Nope.”
“Clothing?”
“Not even close.”
“Xander.” His name was all warning as it crossed Tara’s lips, and he had to cave.
“Twenty-eight thousand rubber ducks.”
The look on her face was priceless. “I’m sorry. Did you say—”
“Yup. Ducks. So, the shipping company figures they’re lost, right? I mean, the crate fell into the ocean.” He pantomimed a big splash with his hands. “But then these rubber ducks started popping up in all sorts of places.”
“Are you serious?” Tara asked, fully hooked on the story if her expression was anything to go by.
Annnd gotcha. “Scout’s honor,” he said, even though he was as far from a Boy Scout as a man could get. “Australia. Alaska. The shores of the Atlantic. They’ve even found a couple frozen in Arctic ice.”
“No way.” She huffed out a laugh. “That’s thousands of miles.”
“I know, right? But that’s the coolest part. Those accidental ducks ended up teaching marine researchers a ton about ocean currents. A few still pop up here and there to this day.”
“Oh, my God, that’s so cool,” Tara murmured. The ease on her face lasted for a beat, then one more before her chin whipped up, and ah, busted. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Xander slid on his poker face like it was his Sunday best. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You used that story to distract me so I’d relax.”
Her hands found the generous curve of her hips, and Xander wondered if the move was pure reflex. Focus. And not on grabbing her hips while fucking her senseless. “Uh,” Xander grunted, and what the hell was wrong with him? “Yeah, maybe. But you weren’t going to last five minutes pacing the floor like that, and I know you want to save your energy for Amour.”
Tara took a step toward him, her arms softening at her sides. “You’re a really nice guy, you know that?”
The urge to correct her was strong, but Xander bit it in half and said, “Just doing my job.”
“The standard answer when someone says ‘you’re a nice guy’ is usually ‘thank you’.”
The words carried none of her usual heat, filled instead with curiosity, and hell, Xander would take her ire a million times over the beautiful, wide-open look on her face right now. “Thank you.”
Another step, and now Tara was right in front of him, close enough to touch. “How come you don’t like being called a nice guy?”