Free Fool Me Once (Codie Snow #1): A Romantic Suspense Series by Jade C. Jamison

except when he had to be a bad ass.  Just thinking about him made her warm—especially when she thought about last night.
    Yes, Matthew was right.  One-hundred percent on the money.
    “Nope.  Don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Codie picked up the paper cup and sucked more tea through the straw.  If she were a district judge, she would have banged a gavel, forcing Matthew to move on…because she had to, right this second.
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    CODIE PUTZED AROUND their apartment that afternoon.  It was a day off from work (a job she hated) and she should have been doing something…something meaningful, but she just couldn’t bring herself to concentrate long enough.  Her mind was obsessing over Pete.
    So, after spending an hour napping and then tidying up her room, she fired up her laptop computer.  She’d considered for just a second to see if any of the scenes she had witnessed with Pete had hit the news, but now she had another goal entirely.
    When her laptop was done booting up, Codie opened up the browser and went straight to Facebook.  She remembered that, at one time, Pete had had an account, but she wondered if becoming a cop had changed that.  She’d heard about different professions where the workers were encouraged to do away with their profiles or, short of that, go incognito.  When she typed Pete O in the search bar, though, his profile was suggested by the site.  She heard the words I’ll be damned in her head, but she only smiled and barely shook her head as she clicked and headed to his timeline.
    They were already friends on the site, but it looked like he wasn’t very active on it.  She imagined he could actually lurk and use his connections to see what some of the dumb criminals around town were up to, and that was probably easier if it looked like he was never on.  There were a few things about him she wanted to check, and she thought by snooping she could find several answers to her burning questions.  She knew a few years ago Pete and some girl named Clarissa were pretty serious.  Codie couldn’t remember for sure, but they might have even lived together.  Pete was currently “not in a relationship,” but she thought maybe she could peek through his photos just to be—
    She heard the front door open.  “Honey, I’m home!” Matthew yelled, one of his usual silly greetings.  She slammed the laptop lid down.  It wouldn’t do her any good to have Matthew doing his usual probing and prodding when she wasn’t sure how she felt about her and Pete yet.  Yeah, Matthew thought he knew, but how could he when she didn’t?  All she knew was she wasn’t willing to chalk it up to a one-night reminiscent thing.
    Not yet anyway.
    She stood, taking a deep breath, and walked out of her room.  Matthew pulled her into a hug.  “How’s my favorite roomie?”
    “Tired.”  He set her down on her feet.  “I just proved to myself once again that graveyard shifts aren’t for me.”  She’d tried it in her present job as a CNA and learned quickly that the higher overnight pay just wasn’t worth it—not for that damn job anyway.
    Matthew shrugged, removing his suit jacket.  “Somebody’s gotta do it.”
    He started walking toward their bedrooms and, even though it bordered on potential talk about things she wouldn’t care to hear, she chanced asking him anyway.  “How was work?”
    Matthew paused just inside his doorway and spun with a flair.  “This afternoon was exciting !  We were in court.”
    Codie had heard for years that good lawyers never saw the inside of a courtroom, but the people who said that shit had never seen Slade in action.  When she’d first started dating him, he’d invited Codie to sit in on a big lawsuit involving tenants versus slumlord (well, as slummy as Dalton got—there weren’t any actual tenements or ghettos, but there was a “bad side” of town).  She still hadn’t been convinced that Slade was worth