Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 50

“Go away, people!” Cate and Nesbitt slammed the front door against the noisy media mobbing her driveway and sidewalk. It was after midnight by the time she got home, but the TV klieg lights flooded her street with a noontime brightness and illuminated the drawn curtains in her darkened living room. Cate shivered against the residual chill and switched on the brass candlestick lamp on the hall table as Nesbitt turned the dead bolt and looked at her with concern.

“How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine,” Cate answered, though she could feel an ache under the bandage they’d put on at the hospital. The bullet had only grazed her arm, but her jacket was DOA.

“Let me help you take that coat off.”

“Thanks.” Cate turned and let him lift the long topcoat from her shoulders. It was his, because hers was still in chambers. Her car was at the courthouse, too, and Nesbitt had driven her home. Unfortunately, her garage door opener was still in her car, so they’d had to park in the driveway and run the gauntlet of reporters. She could still hear them outside. “You know what bugs me about them?”

“What?” Nesbitt asked, folding the coat and setting it on the back of a chair.

“That they’ll camp out there forever and do almost as much harm as that dumb TV show.”

“But of course, it would make a better story if you had guessed the real bad guy.” Nesbitt smiled, his blue eyes bright and his crow’s-feet creased with warmth. His longish hair fell sideways, dark silver in unexpected patches, like weathered cedar shakes on a shed. “Imagine how much fun I had-me, a law enforcement professional-accusing a completely innocent young girl of a double homicide.”

Cate cringed. “Be fair. How could I know that Micah would be at her therapist’s that night? I said I was sorry.”

“I’ll never live it down. Roots called my cell twice when you were in with the doc. Even my useless nephew is lording it over me. He’s like, ‘Love is blind.’”

Love? Cate caught her breath, and Nesbitt’s eyes flared a little when he realized he’d let the L-word slip.

“Uh. Well, anyway.”

“Whatever,” Cate said, and they laughed uncomfortably, which stopped the moment Nesbitt leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She closed her eyes, enjoying the cold brush of his mustache. When he pulled away, his eyes looked fairly soft for a detective, set in his wonderfully lived-in face.

“I should go.”

“I agree,” Cate said with a smile. They understood what they meant, and neither needed to spell it out. Because she sensed, in her heart, that Nesbitt was going to be the last man she took to bed.

In her life.