Yes, you have, but I’m okay with that too. ‘No, not really.’

‘You lied to your boss. And to your father. Who is also a cop, I take it?’

She frowned at him. ‘Yes, he is a cop. I come from a long line of cops. And no, I didn’t lie to either of them.’

‘You told both of them that you didn’t have a conflict.’

‘And I don’t. You’d be a conflict if you were a suspect.’ Or if I were to fall in love with you. ‘You are not a suspect.’

‘And if I were?’

‘If I had even an inkling that you were, your ass would be in lockup so fast your head would spin. But you’re not a suspect.’ She shrugged. ‘And sticking with me is the best way to keep it that way. If you’re with me, nobody can accuse you of anything.’

His lips curved, making her heart stutter in her chest. ‘Protecting me, Scarlett?’

‘Maybe. Maybe you need it.’ She went back to the table that held her first aid supplies. ‘Mr I’ve-got-concrete-in-my-head.’

‘Touché,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘You’re going to fix me up after all. I thought you’d be racing out of here to interview Annabelle Church.’

‘It’ll take Lynda a little while to coordinate a pickup with Children’s Services, and I’m only fifteen minutes from the precinct, so we’ve got a little time.’ She pulled a headlamp from the box, slipped it over her head and turned it on, then went back to the bathroom to wash her hands again. A minute later she was back, snapping on a new set of gloves. ‘Hold still,’ she said, sitting on the arm of the sofa again so that she could get close to the cut on his head. Holding a pair of tweezers in one hand, she pushed his hair from the wound with the other and wiped away the dried blood with some soft, dry gauze.

‘You look like a coalminer,’ he said gruffly.

She frowned again. ‘You do realize I’m holding a pair of very pointy tweezers mere millimeters from your head?’

‘You do realize you’ve got your breasts in my face? I have to distract myself somehow, and commenting on your coalminer-ness was the first thing that came to mind.’

She looked down and her cheeks instantly heated, because he was right. She had pressed her breasts almost in his face. She leaned back and dropped her hands, trying to figure out how she could accomplish her task without getting so close to him.

He scowled up at her. ‘I’ll be quiet. Just get the cut cleaned. I can control my baser instincts that long.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m used to patching up little people. The angle is different.’ She scooted closer on the arm of the chair so she didn’t have to lean over so far. ‘I would have had you sit on one of my bar stools,’ she said as she finished wiping the dried blood from his head, ‘but they’re all wobbly. I’ll fix one of them so you’ll have a stable place to sit while I do this the next time you almost get yourself killed.’

‘God, you’re snotty when you’re being Nurse Nancy.’

She started to laugh, but held it back to keep her hands steady. ‘Nurse Nancy?’

‘It’s a guy thing. Naughty nurse fantasy.’

A single glance at his lap told her he wasn’t bluffing. ‘Well thank you very much,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Now I’ve got that picture in my mind.’

‘Are you wearing the naughty nurse uniform in that mental picture?’ he asked slyly.

She huffed. ‘I am now. I thought you were going to be quiet. I have to make sure you don’t have any debris in here before I clean it.’ She stole another glance at the very impressive bulge in his lap and had to draw a steadying breath before leaning a little closer to examine the wound. ‘I don’t see any splinters of wood or shards of concrete.’ She reached for a bottle of wound cleaner. ‘This should help numb it while I’m cleaning it. Again, no allergies, right?’

‘None,’ he said, much quieter than he had been before.

She’d leaned in and was squirting cleaner into the wound when he spoke again, his tone very serious. ‘What did your neighbor mean about “that other one”? The one you gave walking papers to?’

Damn you, Mrs Pepper. The old woman had said that on purpose. ‘Bryan is an ex. Kind of, sort of.’

‘Kind of, sort of?’ he asked sharply. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, first, I did give him his walking papers, so he is no longer anything other than an old friend. We’ve been friends since college. Kind of, sort of means that he was off and on. Never anyone steady. We both knew that. He didn’t want to take the walking papers at first and kept ignoring them. So I put my foot down and Mrs Pepper heard us.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘She heard you? Was he fighting with you?’

‘No, not that time. We were standing in the driveway. I didn’t want to let him in the house.’

‘Not that time?’

‘Like I said, he didn’t want to take his walking papers the first several times I handed them to him.’

‘When was the first time?’

‘Eight months ago.’

His brows shot up. ‘Eight?’

She knew what he was asking. ‘Like I said, we were off and on, mostly off. “On” was usually at his instigation. He was in a relationship until eight months ago, so that was the first time it came up.’

‘And if he’d instigated something nine and a half months ago?’

Right before she’d first met Marcus. She focused on swabbing the cut on his head to keep her hands steady. ‘We’d have probably been on. Bryan has always been a friend, Marcus. We always knew that one of us would end this off-and-on thing eventually.’

‘Will he remain your friend?’

She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, packing the cut with treated gauze. ‘This stuff has antiseptic in it, so you don’t need to add anything else. You should probably have a doctor look at the cut. I didn’t see any splinters, but sometimes they hide.’ She turned back to her kit to trade the wound cleaner for a roll of tape. ‘I’m not sure this will keep the gauze in the wound with your hair in the way.’

‘Then shave it,’ he said curtly. ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital or see a doctor.’

Scarlett winced, both at the hurt in his tone and at the thought of shaving off any of his beautiful dark hair. She changed the blade on her razor and cleared away just enough hair so that the tape would stick. ‘Bryan and I go back a long way, Marcus.’

‘Back to your college days. I heard you.’

And it had hurt him. That much was clear. ‘He’s more like a . . . war buddy than anything else. We went through a rough time together and for a long time only had each other.’ She hesitated again, then sighed. ‘I don’t love him, okay? I never did. Not like that, anyway.’

A moment of silence. ‘What did you go through?’ he asked carefully.

Her hands stilled as she pressed the tape to his scalp. ‘You remember me saying that I’d lost a friend back in college?’

‘Of course. Michelle.’

He’d remembered Michelle’s name. Scarlett braced herself, willing the words to come. ‘I found her body. Thrown behind a dumpster, like she was trash. And there was so much blood.’ She gritted her teeth, forcing the images to the side of her mind. ‘Bryan was with me. We found her together. It’s not something either of us has managed to completely leave behind.’

His sigh was heavy. ‘I’m so sorry, Scarlett.’

‘It’s all right. But there will always be that link between us. I can’t make it go away. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’m sorry.’ She’d finished her task, but didn’t move away from him. And then a second later she didn’t want to move anywhere. He’d leaned into her, closing the distance between them, resting his head against her.

The kiss they’d shared earlier had been intimate. This was much more so.

She peeled off the gloves so that she could stroke his hair. ‘I told him that it was over. Today, in fact. When I came home from the alley, he was waiting for me. I’d been avoiding him for the last few weeks because he wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

He shuddered in pleasure when she raked her fingers through the hair at the back of his head, so she did it again. ‘Do I need to go beat him up for you?’ he asked lazily.