Free Safe in His Sight by Regan Black Page A

explanation of the incident, you won’t need a strong-arm firm like Marburg.”
    He chuckled. “Not even if I could afford it.”
    She shifted a few inches closer, her covered legs bumping his, and faced him. “So what’s bugging you about your situation?”
    “It leaves a mark, official or not.”
    “You’re worried about how others will look at you when you’re back on the job.”
    He’d assumed, tough as she was, that she wouldn’t understand. “It’s a small world, y’know?” He laced his fingers behind his head to keep his hands from reaching for her. They barely knew each other and she’d been clear she liked her personal space. “Eventually, I want to move up through the ranks, and this kind of thing is something they can point to as an excuse to turn me down for promotions.”
    “Even if you’re cleared?” She sat up a little straighter. “That’s not fair.”
    “That’s life.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Are you playing me?”
    He gave her a long look. “Hell, no.” The flood of honesty might be the dumbest thing he’d done since they’d met. “What good would that do?”
    “I don’t know, that’s the problem. Are you taking this ‘infiltrate my life’ thing too personally and trying to create a bond or something?”
    Would that be so bad? “I wasn’t. I was talking about me.” He stared out across the river. “It does bring up a valid question.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Why don’t you want to like me?” He’d noticed her utter lack of a social life and he thought it had more to do with her past than her present career. It wasn’t really his business and fewer people in her life meant fewer people who would ask about him hanging around.
    “Take me home,” she replied. “We’re not friends. We’re basically client and expert. Two people stuck in a new and apparently difficult situation.”
    Interesting. She resorted to the attorney lingo and unflappable courtroom voice when she got rattled. “We could be friends.” He heard the words and knew that’s what he wanted. To start with. He could list a dozen reasons why being friends was a good idea and probably a dozen more why distance was the wiser choice.
    She slid off the hood to her feet, keeping the blanket wrapped around her. “I don’t play well with others, Mitch. I’m a better person when I’m alone,” she said.
    The quiet words hung in the air, choking out what could have become a decent conversation. He wasn’t buying it, but he wouldn’t argue. Not yet. He’d been raised in a big noisy family that boasted the opposite philosophy. Mitch decided whatever the stalker’s motives were, he wanted to learn what the hell had turned her into such a loner.
    As they drove back to her place in silence, he told himself to let it go. Except she wasn’t half the hard-nosed terror she thought she was or pretended to be. Under that tough-attorney exterior was a woman he wanted to get to know better.
    A lot better.
     

Chapter 5
    I n the Marburg library, Julia rocked back in the task chair and stretched her arms over her head. She was exhausted. The words printed on the pages kept getting smaller and blurring into nonsense. A glance at the clock on the wall showed she’d been at it for over two hours since the last five-minute break she’d allowed herself. Two full days in the library and only the rest of my life to go , she thought bitterly. Precedents abounded for potential pretrial motions for the Falk case and her bosses expected her to present every possibility.
    Seeking a respite, her thoughts drifted to Mitch. The way he’d infiltrated every corner of her personal space, it was tough not to think about him. He’d been camped out on her floor since that first night. Over the past days, she’d learned he could be awake and on full alert at the merest provocation, that he preferred free weights to machines at the gym and that he was itching to get back to the firehouse.
    Mitch could cook, his coffee was better