Which meant that, no, he definitely wasn’t obsessed with her.
“He’s not watching me,” she said now to Silas. “He just wants to make sure I’m—we—are doing our job.” She took another picture of the area around the dumpster, behind it, in front of it, then turned and shot the crowd.
It was her crowd shot last time that had helped Rembrandt catch the coffee shop bomber.
“If I’d been better at my job, maybe I would have discovered earlier the connection between Green Earth coffee growers and the social activist group intent on blowing up shops who used their coffee.”
Silas looked over at her. “Seriously? The fact that you figured that much out between bombings put you on Chief Booker’s radar. Sheesh, Eve, he thinks you’re a CSI protege.”
She didn’t want to tell Silas about the fact it was actually Rembrandt who helped her figure out that connection. Or that she’d talked her kid brother, Asher, into hacking into some database to find the coffee shops who sold the brand.
And while he was busy hacking…
For a delicious, brutal second she was back in the kitchen, her hands on Rembrandt’s chest, barely holding on as he kissed her, as she gulped in the taste of him.
She’d made the first move. But she’d been nearly positive, by his reaction, that he was all in. Sometimes she could still feel his hands in her hair, smell the summer air on his skin, the dark, mysterious taste of him and oh brother.
Enough. She had to expunge him from her brain because her father was right. He was trouble. Trouble and adventure and mystery, determination and justice and wow…yes, maybe her father should be worried.
“It was Rem who found the guy. He staked out a coffee shop, driven by one of his legendary hunches, and nearly got killed.”
No wonder he wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything.
“Rem?”
Eve glanced at Silas, her face growing hot. “Detective Stone.”
Silas’s mouth pinched. “I don’t like him. He’s reckless and doesn’t care about the rules—”
“He’s…driven.” And frankly, she knew why.
It’s what happened when you lost someone you love. She’d dug up the files on his brother’s disappearance. Rembrandt had been twelve, his little brother eight. Yeah, she understood driven. Obsessed.
Motivated. After all she had her own regrets to drive her.
Silas shot her a look. Thin, with hazel-green eyes, he was her best friend from college, the kind of guy who showed up with donuts and coffee to help her cram for her Forensic Toxicology final. Maybe he wanted more—she tried not to notice.
“I think our victim was running. Look here.” Silas crouched next to a footprint in the mud near the dumpster. “Look at how deep this print is.”
She took a couple shots and moved around for a better view.
“Running from whom?” Rembrandt had come over, and great, how much had he heard? She lowered her camera as he crouched next to the print.
He had nice hands. Solid. Strong.
C’mon, Eve! Focus!
He glanced out across the parking lot, where the police had blocked it off, as if seeing into the past and reconstructing the scene.
His gaze landed on her. “Why does a woman run?”
She didn’t want to look at him, but he had these blue eyes. And when he spoke, something terrible and tantalizing rumbled under her skin. “Fear? Hurt?” she managed.
“That’s what I was thinking.” He still had his gaze on her, looking at her the same way he did this morning.
She always had the sense, except for that moment in the hospital, that Rembrandt Stone could see right through her, into her soul.
Or maybe that’s what he did with every woman.