Free Unforgivable by Laura Griffin

put up. The house was old-fashioned, yes, but Mia wanted it to function like a modern home, complete with modern security features. Maybe she was paranoid, but she had seen far too much violence in her career to leave her safety to chance.
    What you need is a man, not a house. Her mother’s words elbowed their way into her head with their usual tact. What do you need with all that house when you’re not even married?
    Mia washed the soup bowls and arranged them on the drying rack. She needed the house for herself. That was enough. At the end of the summer—right after her thirty-second birthday, actually—she’d come to the realization that she was tired of living in beige apartments that smelled like other people’s pets. She was tired of storing her books in the milk crates she’d been dragging around since college. She was tired of driving to public parks so she could spread out a beach towel and enjoy the sun. She was ready to own something, paint something, plant something, and she didn’t need a man in her life to do any of those things, no matter what her mother thought.
    So she’d plopped down her savings on a two-bedroom bungalow that she could live in all by herself, and she was glad. Usually. On nights like tonight, though, nights when she was restless and anxious and unnerved, she would have welcomed a man in her home. Or better yet,her bed. She would have welcomed a strong arm draped over her waist to make her feel safe as she drifted off to sleep. It would have been nice to have the arm—just as long as it didn’t belong to Ric Santos.
    Mia put away the soup and washed the ladle. Thank God Sophie had come when she did. What if she hadn’t? Mia knew exactly what. She’d seen the predatory glint in Ric’s eyes the second before he kissed her—like a wolf sizing up his prey. It made her blood tingle. One little kiss, and her no-men-from-work rule had gone straight out the window.
    Mia felt a knot of frustration as she wiped down the counter. She should feel relieved, really. An emotional entanglement with a cop was a bad idea. An emotional entanglement with a cop who sent her his cases was beyond stupid. It could jeopardize her objectivity, the hard-earned trait that was the cornerstone of her reputation as a scientist. And in a field where juries could be swayed by a facial expression, a tone of voice, a fumbled answer under cross-examination, reputation was important. Mia’s colleagues trusted her. Juries trusted her. So did lawyers on both sides of the courtroom. They trusted her because she had a sterling reputation, one that thus far had been beyond reproach, and she intended to keep it that way.
    So police detectives were out. As were prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. What she needed was a nice doctor. Any kind would do. An orthopedist. A podiatrist. Even a dentist. People always told her she had a pretty smile.
    Mia gazed at her reflection in the window above the sink and lifted her handto her bruised cheek. What had Ric seen in her tonight that had prompted him to kiss her? His face flashed into her mind, the corner of his mouth lifting in that cocky half-smile she’d seen only a few times. And she knew that the nice doctor she needed would bore her to tears—because she really wanted a jaded homicide detective who was attracted to her for all the wrong reasons.

CHAPTER 6

    Ric capped off a shit week watching the Cowboys play a shit game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
    “Christ, I could have made that tackle,” Jonah said, staring at the TV mounted behind the bar. “Fucking cowgirls.”
    Jonah was in a black mood, like Ric. Maybe it was Frank’s upcoming funeral. Maybe it was the stalled investigation into who killed one of their own. Maybe it was the fact that they’d spent the better part of their Sunday trying unsuccessfully to figure out who had raped and murdered two women barely out of their teens. Ric wasn’t sure what it was, but he should have known that letting