Free Remembering You: Pushing the Boundaries, Prequel by Audra North Page A

Davis breathing. When he finished, he sat up and looked Ben in the eye. “I talked to my sister last night. She went to high school with Nina.” Davis shrugged. “At least until Nate was born.”
    Nate was Davis’s nephew, the one who had been born right after Davis finished high school. Ben raised an eyebrow. “And?”
    Davis shook his head. “Kelly got into a shouting match with Nina once because Nina was saying things about how policemen with wives and children were hypocrites, and Kelly took it really personally because of Dad. They were only in high school, though. Could have been nothing more than a teenage rant. But Kelly remembers it like it was yesterday.”
    Ben nodded, not wanting to tell Davis how deep her “teenage rant” seemed to go, even if she had a damned good reason for saying that kind of stuff about cops. He didn’t want any of the guys turning against Nina.
    So instead, he shrugged. “We’ll see. Not like it matters, anyway. Spot me this time, will ya?”
    Davis looked at him kind of funny, but took the hint and dropped further talk of Nina. “Show me what you got.”

Chapter Nine
    Nina tapped her pencil on her desk and tried to resist the urge to use the sharp point to gouge out her eyes. After a morning of making phone calls to connections in Paris and New York, conducting two interviews and researching the past ten years of fashion, she was reading a celebrity news site to find out if any of the stars pictured were wearing bright colors.
    She wanted to be done with this bullshit, already. But she was determined, not to merely take on this assignment, but to blow it out of the water.
    If Jerry wants me to do a story on fashion, he’d damned well better be ready for an actual fashion exposé.
    If only thoughts of last night with Ben didn’t keep intruding, she’d be much more focused. She’d fled his apartment almost blindly, jumping into her car as though he were chasing after her, and speeding home. When she’d arrived there, it had barely been eleven o’clock and Dad had been awake, sitting at the table next to the caretaker Nina had hired as they played a card game.
    Well, the woman played the game, anyway, while Dad sort of stared off into space.
    She had stayed up for another hour after the helper had left and talked to her father. The doctor said it might help, and she should touch him as often as possible—hold his hand, rub his shoulders. But it was hard to do. After a lifetime of hugging him only a few days every year, it felt so foreign to even think about him being in one place for longer than a week.
    By the time Dad had started drowsing in his chair, and Nina roused him enough to get him upstairs and tuck him into bed, it was past midnight and she was exhausted.
    It was as though the whole thing with Ben hadn’t happened.
    Except for the wild dreams she’d had of him after she’d finally fallen into her own bed. In those dreams, he’d had her again, in every position, in every mood. Ben, his mouth on hers. Ben, telling her she wasn’t alone.
    That one had been the best dream of all.
    And when she’d awoken this morning, she was sore between her legs and all she could think of was how much she wanted to see him again.
    She sighed and glanced at the clock on her computer. At least she could leave soon, go home to check on Dad and torture herself with thoughts of Ben in private.
    Footsteps approached her desk and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. What the fuck? Her head shot up as Rob walked up. But it wasn’t the older reporter who’d caused the tingle in her spine. Her eyes shifted to the person walking behind Rob.
    Ben. Walking toward her, his eyes intent on her face. Ben. In uniform. Ben in uniform. Ben in fucking uniform.
    She almost fainted from the swift, intense arousal flooding her body at the sight of him. Her breasts swelled, her nipples hardened and her knees felt wobbly.
    Fuck.
    But before she could even whimper, Rob stopped in front of