Free Hot Blooded by Jessica Lake Page B

extremely uncharacteristic and burst into tears while waiting at a red light. It came out of nowhere, I couldn't even remember what I'd been thinking about. One minute I was driving, the next minute I was weeping. I never cry. That isn't true. I never cry in front of other people but even alone, it's rare. After I got over the shock of the fact that I'd just started bawling over seemingly nothing, I pulled a wad of kleenex out of the glove compartment and swiped underneath my eyes, hiccupping and sniveling like a little kid. When the light turned green and I got beeped by the person behind me, I barely restrained myself from flipping them off.
    I'd calmed down by the time I got back to my flat, but I was still deeply worried about where such an outburst had come from. There was a half bottle of cheap Tesco wine in the fridge so I poured myself a glass and sat down at my kitchen table, taking an unladylike first gulp and willing the alcohol to chill me the fuck out a little. It took a good half hour of sipping the too-sweet wine and telling myself it was nothing to start to get an inkling of what it actually was.
    It was guilt. Shame. I recognized it well. It was the way I used to feel when my parents were disappointed in me, which was most of the time. Now I was feeling it because, in spite of his reassurances, some part of me couldn't accept that I hadn't just been given some form of a dressing-down from Akin.
    I told myself it was silly. It was. He was right that counseling was par for the course of undercover work. I'd known a number of other Met officers who had done it as part of their own assignments. It wasn't even the counseling. It was the question about my feelings for Callum. Goddamnit. Akin could see right through me. He was probably the only person I'd ever met who could. It was what made him promote me through the ranks so quickly. It was also what had made him ask the question in the first place. Because he could see it even better than I could. I did have feelings for Callum Cross.
    I tried to argue with myself. It wasn't 'feelings,' it was lust, it was the excitement of being undercover for the first time, etc. etc. I was lusting over Callum, that was true and undeniable. Every time I thought of him I got a hot little tightening sensation in my belly. Lower, actually. Surely it was a stupid crush. Like in high school when a certain boy looks really, really good in his t-shirt and you project all kinds of other qualities onto him, qualities you have no way of knowing he actually possesses. And Callum did look good. He looked so damn good it made me want to punch a wall. But he was also funny and cocky and smart in a way I'd never encountered before - not the educated kind of smart, the inbuilt kind of smart. And I was desperate to please him, to impress him.
    "Jesus, get a grip." I muttered to myself, shaking my head and refilling my wine glass.

Chapter 9: Callum
     
    I texted Lily from the deck of the ferry as it sailed out of Dover.
    "On the ferry. The frogs better hide their croissants. x"
    I don't know why I texted her. We'd already agreed to meet when I got back. I was nervous. Not anything I couldn't handle but a feeling that was becoming alarmingly more frequent, at least since I'd spotted Lily that night in the Streatham Club. There was something else, though. A strange kind of unease, and so mixed up with the anticipation of the job I couldn't quite manage to identify its root cause, let alone explain it to myself.
    I told myself it was the ferry. I could have taken the Chunnel - the rest of them did - but something about being underground like that, as well as being under the ocean, just made me want to stay somewhere I could see the sky. I stood on the back deck and watched the White Cliffs receding into the haze as the ship rolled in the choppy water. Lily didn't respond to my text. What was she doing? Working? Sitting in an expensively furnished office somewhere, pretending she was interested in