She shrugged when he didn’t complete his sentence.
He nodded, as though her lack of a definitive “no” was interesting.
She smiled.
He nodded again.
And dinner was served.
* * *
What in the hell was he doing?
Walking the dark streets of Santa Raquel sometime after midnight, hunched in his department-issued coat with the collar turned up, Tad warded off the thirtysomething-degree chill of California ocean air. He’d intended to head over two blocks to the beach, but had only gone one and then turned, choosing sidewalk instead of sand.
If it hadn’t been for dinner arriving, he was pretty sure he would’ve asked out his client’s daughter. The subject of his current job.
If he ever hoped to work in law enforcement in North Carolina again, he couldn’t be pissing off the state’s chief fire marshal—a man with more connections, both law enforcement and political, than Tad could ever hope to have.
Did he hope to go back to some form of law enforcement work?
He’d quit his job.
The department had refused to accept his resignation, so officially, he was on administrative leave for the year they’d agreed upon.
Time for the department to fully investigate, review and further discuss his last case or, more accurately, the one really bad decision he’d made in a career of relatively great ones. His solved-cases record was better than that of anyone in the department.
They wanted to keep him on.
They also wanted him to take some time to get his head on straight. To show them that he’d be able to regain any trust he’d lost with his peers.
But...did he hope to go back?
Noting that he’d crossed the fourth block with at least two largely cracked cement pieces, he thought about Santa Raquel’s finances. Figured fixing cracks in the sidewalk of a seasonal tourist town should be on the radar. Someone could trip. Fall. Sue the municipal government.
The town, which was more resort-like than not, didn’t seem to be hurting for money. Based on the number of large, well-maintained homes in the area, he supposed the town was doing just fine. Sidewalks didn’t last forever. They cracked.
And a detective was bound to make one bad decision in his lifetime.
But what if he made two?
What if he asked out the daughter of his client? A woman he’d been hired to find? And keep watch over?
In his line of work, there’d been more than one occasion when the means justified the end.
Would that be the case here? Could he convince the chief that dating his daughter, casually, of course, was the best way to stick close to her? To spend time with her son?
And what about Miranda? What right did he have to mess with her life? As if she hadn’t already been through enough?
She knew he was only in town for a matter of months. Their conversation that evening had gone in an unexpected—and much more personal—direction. Thanks to Ethan, who’d put the simmering tension between him and Miranda right out there.
So...if she was potentially interested in spending more time with him, say, one-on-one, knowing that it couldn’t last long, would he be wrong to give it to her?
The thin line he walked was going to trip him up. He knew it.
Just as he’d known, when he made the choice to barge into that back office without waiting for SWAT and the hostage negotiators to arrive, assess the situation and do their jobs, that he was crossing a line.
He’d practically gotten himself killed. Had put every other officer on the scene at risk.