If I want that, I’ll reply to the guy on Tinder who just asked me if I rose from Hell because I’m “looking hella horny” right now.
If I want that, I’ll let Drake take me with those darn handcuffs he’s so fond of.
But I don’t. Not for a second.
I don’t do my job to fall in love. I don’t do it to be second to a man—or, indeed, first to one. I do my job because there isn’t a thing I’d rather do than this.
And if that means stepping on Detective Drake Nash’s toes, then so be it.
I grab my phone and dial Ryan Perkins’s number. He doesn’t pick up, so I dial again. And again. And again. Finally, the answer machine makes way for his voice, and before he can speak, I say, “I think we need to talk.”
He’s drawn. He looks like a man who’s had his heart broken then tugged through the wringer a million times over.
I don’t anticipate my estimation to be that far off reality.
“Ryan,” I say softly yet firmly. “I need to know everything. You know that. I can’t help you unless you help me.”
“Four months ago.” He looks out the window, the bags beneath his eyes more pronounced than they were when he saw me a week ago. “That was the first time. It was at a party. I don’t remember where. Lena was tired and wanted to leave, but she told me I could stay, so I saw her into a cab safely and stayed.”
“And?”
“Penny was there. She…tempted me. I gave in. We went to the room I’d booked for me and Lena and spent the night together. I regretted it instantly, Noelle.” He meets my eyes. “I fucking loved Lena. I still do. But she got busy with the store, and Penny told me she was pregnant, and I didn’t know what to do. So I had two relationships. I told my wife I loved her with the same mouth I kissed her best friend with.”
“And?”
“And then I lost the person I love most.”
I take a deep, slow breath. My eyes flit over every inch of his face, examining his expression from the downturn of his lips to the creases by his eyes. There’s no twitch. He doesn’t look away for a second despite my intense scrutiny. His lips don’t move even a millimeter.
“Talk to me about Daniel Westwood.” I lean back in my seat. “What was Lena’s relationship with him?”
Ryan’s nostrils flare, but the sadness remains in his eyes. “They grew up together. Separated for college. He came back to town and they reconnected,” he explains, a robotic, dull tone to his voice. “They were best friends, but they took it to the extreme. If she had a bad day, she’d call him instead of me. She’d have nights out with him and not me.”
“So you found solace in Penny,” I summarize. “You assumed your wife was finding comfort elsewhere, so you did.”
“No—”
“Yes,” I interrupt, leaning forward. “Your mistake, Ryan, was not trusting Lena. It was putting her into the bracket you put yourself. Maybe it was easier to speak to someone other than you. Maybe she didn’t want to worry you with her issues. Maybe Lena was so much herself that pushing her burdens onto you was too much for her to bear. Maybe, just maybe, she wanted you to ask her.”
“Stop.”
“What if Lena needed her best friend? Women don’t all have female best friends. Brody is my brother and my best friend. I go to him before Bekah sometimes. What if Lena was too afraid to trust you? What if she feared what you know to be true? What if she was so afraid of you being unfaithful that knowing she had problems with her business tipped her over the edge?” My gaze hits him with the force of a ten-ton truck. “What if, Ryan, her telling you about her being in debt tipped you over the edge and you left her?”
“Never!” He shouts it. No, he roars it, his chair clattering to the floor as he stands. “I’d never fucking leave her.”
“But you’d fuck her best friend.”
“I loved Lena!”
My door bangs open, and Mike and Dean fill the space where it just was. “Miss Noelle?” Dean asks, his muscles taut.
I hold my hand up. “So, why’d you cheat on her?”
He steps toward me, and in the same moment, Dean and Mike jolt forward and I slam my hands on my desk.
“I have three guns I could grab in a second. You wanna step forward again?”” I lift my brows, and Ryan freezes. “You know you’re the prime suspect, don’t you?” I continue, my hand on the weapon concealed at my hip. “For both me and the police. You have every motive under the sun, Ryan.”
“So arrest me!” he shouts, tears filling his eyes.
“No.” I smile sadly. “I don’t think you did it. I don’t believe you killed her, so I won’t tell them to or let them arrest you. You don’t look like a murderer to me, doll. You look like a man who fucked up and now has to bury the love of his life.”
Everyone in the room freezes. Mike and Dean are still holding fort at the door, their arms tensed and ready for a fight.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” I push Ryan. “I can’t help you if you don’t help me, honey. You want me to find Lena’s killer, you’ll sit down and tell me everything you hid before.”
Ryan looks at my impromptu bodyguards, his own body tight and ready to fight his way out of here.
“Y’all can fight it out, but all it’s gonna do is call the cops here and make you look even guiltier.” I slowly sit back down, my eyes still connected with Ryan’s. “This conversation is on camera. You really wanna help me, help the PD, help Lena…you’re gonna talk, Ryan. You’re gonna sit your ass down and talk right now or I’m telling my team to get Detective Nash, Detective Bond, and their boys in this office to lock you up. Now, sweetie, what’s it gonna be?”
With three pairs of eyes and a camera focused solely on him, Ryan Perkins sets his chair right and sits down.
“He threatened you?”
I roll my eyes. “God, Devin, no. He just tried to intimidate me.”
“I hear-a you taking the Lord’s-a name in-a vain-a!”
“Has no one procured legal tranquilizers yet?” I look at all three of my brothers and Alison. “Why is she still making my life hell? Doesn’t she know Brody is single?”
“Ahh, but I’m a year younger than you,” he sniggers. “Besides, you’re a woman, Noelle. You should be married by now.”
“Go on,” I threaten. “Keep it up. You know I can shoot better than all y’all put together and I won’t hesitate to do it.”
“One day, you won’t threaten such stupid things.”
“Cazzo no.” I stare at the large, Drake Nash shaped figure in the doorway. “What are you doin’ here?”
“Noella!” Nonna strolls into the front room with pasta sauce at the side of her mouth.
“I cursed in Italian!”
“Noella,” she repeats, this time with anger lacing the extra syllable she insists on adding to my name.
I push myself up with a fake cough. “I think I’m sick.”
“Sit the cazzo down!” Devin and Brody shout synonymously, each one of them snatching an arm and yanking me back onto the sofa.
“Y’all are only speakin’ Italian to please the pazzo vicchia senora!”
“Your switch from Texan to Italian is somethin’,” Drake says, grinning as he takes a seat.
I fix my gaze on him. “Io castrare te, stronzo,” I snap, to the amusement of both Nonna and Mom, who steps up behind her.
“Noelle.” Mom looks at me with that shut-the-hell-up look only moms can give. You know, the one that makes you wanna hide behind the sofa despite being a grown woman.
I tighten my jaw shut as Drake’s grin widens even further. Crap, I’m twenty-eight and being totally embarrassed by my mother. Didn’t she lose the right to do that when I turned twenty-one?
“I see-a why you have-a no husband,” Nonna pipes up. “You have-a no idea how to speak-a to a man.”
“I wouldn’t call Drake Nash a man,” I grind out.
His grin falls, his eyes chilling until their blueness reaches glacier quality. “Don’t you have a cheating spouse to be following?”
“Don’t you have a murderer to be finding?”