‘Oh,’ her father said gruffly. ‘Well. I’ll thank him when I meet him, then. Your mother wants to see you, to prove to herself that you’re not dead.’
Scarlett shook her head. Her mother would never ask her brothers to do the same. ‘Tell her I’m not dead,’ she said, trying to keep the attitude from her tone. ‘I’ll drop by when I can, but it won’t be today.’
‘I should make you tell her yourself,’ he grumbled. ‘But I know you’re busy with this case.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘Stay safe, okay, baby?’
She forced her lips to curve. ‘Okay,’ she said with a pleasantness that was equally forced.
A slight hesitation. ‘Listen, about this publisher . . . Your lieutenant seems to think he’s more than a witness to you.’
Scarlett’s teeth clenched. Yet another question her parents wouldn’t dream of asking her brothers. ‘Is this an official question? Sir?’
A pause, longer than the hesitation. ‘And if it is?’ her father asked crisply.
‘Then I’ll tell you the same thing I just told Isenberg. No conflict of interest. Sir. I have things to do. I’ll call when I can.’ She hung up and drew a deep breath.
Her father always did this to her. Always treated her like she was five years old. She’d thought when she earned her badge that he’d change, but he hadn’t. She’d thought when she earned her detective shield that he’d change, but he hadn’t then either. He might never change. She’d learn to be okay with that. Someday. At least she knew it was because he cared, but that didn’t make it any easier to tolerate.
‘I’ve made things difficult for you, haven’t I?’ Marcus asked quietly from the sofa.
Yes, you have, but I’m okay with that too. ‘No, not really.’
‘You lied to your boss. And to your father. Who is also a cop, I take it?’
She frowned at him. ‘Yes, he is a cop. I come from a long line of cops. And no, I didn’t lie to either of them.’
‘You told both of them that you didn’t have a conflict.’
‘And I don’t. You’d be a conflict if you were a suspect.’ Or if I were to fall in love with you. ‘You are not a suspect.’
‘And if I were?’
‘If I had even an inkling that you were, your ass would be in lockup so fast your head would spin. But you’re not a suspect.’ She shrugged. ‘And sticking with me is the best way to keep it that way. If you’re with me, nobody can accuse you of anything.’
His lips curved, making her heart stutter in her chest. ‘Protecting me, Scarlett?’
‘Maybe. Maybe you need it.’ She went back to the table that held her first aid supplies. ‘Mr I’ve-got-concrete-in-my-head.’
‘Touché,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘You’re going to fix me up after all. I thought you’d be racing out of here to interview Annabelle Church.’
‘It’ll take Lynda a little while to coordinate a pickup with Children’s Services, and I’m only fifteen minutes from the precinct, so we’ve got a little time.’ She pulled a headlamp from the box, slipped it over her head and turned it on, then went back to the bathroom to wash her hands again. A minute later she was back, snapping on a new set of gloves. ‘Hold still,’ she said, sitting on the arm of the sofa again so that she could get close to the cut on his head. Holding a pair of tweezers in one hand, she pushed his hair from the wound with the other and wiped away the dried blood with some soft, dry gauze.
‘You look like a coalminer,’ he said gruffly.
She frowned again. ‘You do realize I’m holding a pair of very pointy tweezers mere millimeters from your head?’
‘You do realize you’ve got your breasts in my face? I have to distract myself somehow, and commenting on your coalminer-ness was the first thing that came to mind.’
She looked down and her cheeks instantly heated, because he was right. She had pressed her breasts almost in his face. She leaned back and dropped her hands, trying to figure out how she could accomplish her task without getting so close to him.
He scowled up at her. ‘I’ll be quiet. Just get the cut cleaned. I can control my baser instincts that long.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m used to patching up little people. The angle is different.’ She scooted closer on the arm of the chair so she didn’t have to lean over so far. ‘I would have had you sit on one of my bar stools,’ she said as she finished wiping the dried blood from his head, ‘but they’re all wobbly. I’ll fix one of them so you’ll have a stable place to sit while I do this the next time you almost get yourself killed.’
‘God, you’re snotty when you’re being Nurse Nancy.’
She started to laugh, but held it back to keep her hands steady. ‘Nurse Nancy?’
‘It’s a guy thing. Naughty nurse fantasy.’
A single glance at his lap told her he wasn’t bluffing. ‘Well thank you very much,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Now I’ve got that picture in my mind.’
‘Are you wearing the naughty nurse uniform in that mental picture?’ he asked slyly.
She huffed. ‘I am now. I thought you were going to be quiet. I have to make sure you don’t have any debris in here before I clean it.’ She stole another glance at the very impressive bulge in his lap and had to draw a steadying breath before leaning a little closer to examine the wound. ‘I don’t see any splinters of wood or shards of concrete.’ She reached for a bottle of wound cleaner. ‘This should help numb it while I’m cleaning it. Again, no allergies, right?’
‘None,’ he said, much quieter than he had been before.
She’d leaned in and was squirting cleaner into the wound when he spoke again, his tone very serious. ‘What did your neighbor mean about “that other one”? The one you gave walking papers to?’
Damn you, Mrs Pepper. The old woman had said that on purpose. ‘Bryan is an ex. Kind of, sort of.’
‘Kind of, sort of?’ he asked sharply. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, first, I did give him his walking papers, so he is no longer anything other than an old friend. We’ve been friends since college. Kind of, sort of means that he was off and on. Never anyone steady. We both knew that. He didn’t want to take the walking papers at first and kept ignoring them. So I put my foot down and Mrs Pepper heard us.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘She heard you? Was he fighting with you?’
‘No, not that time. We were standing in the driveway. I didn’t want to let him in the house.’
‘Not that time?’
‘Like I said, he didn’t want to take his walking papers the first several times I handed them to him.’
‘When was the first time?’
‘Eight months ago.’
His brows shot up. ‘Eight?’
She knew what he was asking. ‘Like I said, we were off and on, mostly off. “On” was usually at his instigation. He was in a relationship until eight months ago, so that was the first time it came up.’
‘And if he’d instigated something nine and a half months ago?’
Right before she’d first met Marcus. She focused on swabbing the cut on his head to keep her hands steady. ‘We’d have probably been on. Bryan has always been a friend, Marcus. We always knew that one of us would end this off-and-on thing eventually.’
‘Will he remain your friend?’
She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, packing the cut with treated gauze. ‘This stuff has antiseptic in it, so you don’t need to add anything else. You should probably have a doctor look at the cut. I didn’t see any splinters, but sometimes they hide.’ She turned back to her kit to trade the wound cleaner for a roll of tape. ‘I’m not sure this will keep the gauze in the wound with your hair in the way.’
‘Then shave it,’ he said curtly. ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital or see a doctor.’
Scarlett winced, both at the hurt in his tone and at the thought of shaving off any of his beautiful dark hair. She changed the blade on her razor and cleared away just enough hair so that the tape would stick. ‘Bryan and I go back a long way, Marcus.’