“Go to work and stop supervising mine,” I tell her.
“I just wanted to see you testify on a case.” She glances back over her shoulder, making her lashes kiss her cheeks, while the warm sunlight bathes her skin. “I wanted to watch.”
“It’s okay to admit you’re obsessed with me.” I take a step back when my phone trills in my pocket. “I’m obsessed with you, too.”
“I’m not obsessed.” She allows her gaze to drop to my hand when I fish the phone from my pocket. “I just… hadn’t seen you all day.”
“My point exactly. Oh, and Minka,” I add when she takes another step toward her building. “I love you.”
“Shit, Archer…” Her chest visibly deflates.
Minka Mayet has no fucking clue how to say those words. Or at least, how to say them without folding in on herself and cringing away her vulnerability.
“Why’d you have to do that in the street?” she scowls.
“Because I love you!” I raise my arms, like a god addressing the skies, and chuckle when the woman across from me shrinks just that little bit more. “I love you, Minka Mayet. Marry me, and I’ll stop being all weird about it.”
“Shut up.” She rushes back in my direction and slaps a hand across my mouth to muffle my words. “This is my workplace, Archer! Shut it.”
I lick her palm and snigger when she whips it from my face. “So marry me, and all this embarrassing shit goes away.”
“Or maybe I’ll talk to my mafia contacts and have you removed.”
“Joke’s on you.” I hook a finger in the V of her top and peek inside at her lacy black bra, and her toned stomach marked with subtle ridges of muscle. “Tim promised to give me a heads-up next time you attempt to order a hit.”
“Ugh.” She turns away and clutches her sexy new briefcase. “Malone brothers are snitches. It’s gross.”
“Minnnka.” I say her name like I’m coming on every letter. “Babe?”
She turns back and glowers. “What?”
“I said I love you.”
Frustration makes her shake, and mortification makes her squirm as the crowd buzzing around us stares. But she doesn’t let me down. She never does. “Fine. I love you too. Now go the hell away.”
“Deal.”
My phone rang out and the caller gave up for a moment, but in my hand, the device trills again, so I bring it up and read Fletch’s name flashing on the screen.
“Catch you later, Mayet.” Then answering my call, I bring the phone to my ear. “Fletch?”
“Whatcha doing, Casanova?”
“Watching my girl walk. I’m done at the courthouse. What are you doing?”
“I’m five minutes from putting my most recent nanny applicant in an interview room and seeing if she’s a good fit for our family.”
“Oh! I wanna help.” The moment Minka is inside her building and the doors spin to close her in, I turn on my heels and start the trek back to my precinct. “Name?”
“Gloria Delgado.” He says her name like she’s a perp we’re looking to shake a confession from, when in reality, Fletch has a three-year-old daughter in desperate need of a daytime nanny, now that he’s trying this parenting gig solo.
If Fletch had left things alone and let his ex-wife continue on the path she was on, chances were he’d have found the woman dead, and the girl… who knows. Injured? Missing? Worse?
“She’s forty-nine,” he continues. “Career nanny. She’s been with four families in her thirty-year career. Good recommendations from all four families.”
“Any mysterious deaths in those thirty years?” I skip up the steps of the police precinct with the phone pressed to my ear, and stepping onto the escalator, I head on up. “Anything suspicious at all?”
“Nothing on first glance. But you and I both know that shit gets buried beneath the surface. How far out are you?”