Suzanne Brockmann - Night Watch

And now, while Wes didn’t quite want to call what he was feeling jealousy, everything had changed. Bobby now spent every minute he wasn’t on duty with Colleen instead of hanging out with Wes watching old, badly dubbed Jackie Chan movies.

Bobby and Wes had definitely turned into Bobby and Colleen—with Wes trailing pathetically along, a third wheel.

“Yeah,” he said to Brittany. “It’s a little weird.”

From out in the living room, Andy’s voice got loud enough for them to hear. “You can’t be serious!”

The kid didn’t sound happy, and Wes took a quick glance in his direction.

Andy was standing at the open door. His girlfriend hadn’t even made it into the living room. She was a pretty girl, with short dark hair, but right now her face was pinched and pale, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes.

“Will you please come in so we can talk about this?” Andy asked, but she shook her head. Her reply was spoken too softly for Wes to hear.

“What, so you’re just leaving?” Andy, on the other hand, was getting louder.

Wes stepped farther into the kitchen, attempting to give them privacy. Clearly this was not a happy conversation. It sounded, from his experience, as if Andy was getting the old dumparooney.

He looked at Britt who winced when Andy said, loudly enough for them to hear, “You’re just going home to San Diego—you’re not even going to finish up the term!?”

Again, the girl’s reply was too soft for Wes to hear.

“The biggest problem with having a small apartment,” Brittany said, as she poured hot water over the tea bag in her mug, “is that there’s no such thing as a private conversation.

“We could go for a walk,” Wes suggested. “You up for a walk?”

She put the kettle back on the stove, giving him another of those killer smiles, this one loaded with appreciation. “Absolutely. What I really wanted was iced tea, anyway. Let me get a warmer jacket.”

But as she went down the hall to her bedroom, the conversation from the living room got even louder.

“Why are you doing this?” Andy asked. He was really upset. “What happened? What’d I do? Dani, you’ve got to talk to me, because, God, I don’t want you to leave! I love you!”

Dani burst into noisy tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, finally loud enough for them all to hear. “I don’t love you!”

The door slammed behind her.

Oh, cripes, that had to have hurt. Wes met Britt’s worried eyes as she came back out into the kitchen. She’d obviously heard that news bulletin, too.

Andy was silent in the living room. He’d have to come past them to get to the sanctuary and privacy of his room.

And even if they were going to go for a walk, they’d have to go out right past him. If Wes were in Andy’s shoes, having to face his mother and her friend was the last thing he’d want after getting an I don’t love you response to his declaration of love.

“How about a tour of your bedroom instead?” Wes asked Brittany. If they went into her room and shut the door, that would give Andy an escape route.

“Yes,” she said. “Come on.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall.

Her room was as brightly colored and cheerful as the rest of the place, with a big mirror over an antique dresser and a bed that actually had a canopy. As she closed the door behind them, Wes had to smile.

“Gee, I wish it was always this easy to gain entry to a beautiful woman’s bedroom,” he said.

“How could she break up with him like that?” Brittany asked. “No explanation, just I don’t love you! What a horrible girl! I never really liked her.”

They heard a click as Andy quietly went into his room and locked the door. The kid turned music on, no doubt to hide the noise he was going to make when he started to cry.

Brittany looked as if she was going to cry, too.

“Maybe I should go,” Wes said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She opened her door and marched back into the kitchen and out into the living room where she started putting the sheets on the couch.

“I can do that,” Wes said.

She sat down on the sofa, clearly upset. “From now on, I’m going to screen his girlfriends.”

Wes sat down next to her. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

Brittany laughed, but it was rueful and sad. “He was so damaged when I first met him, when he was twelve. He’d been so badly hurt, so many times—shuffled from one foster family to the next. No one wanted him. And now this…Rejection really sucks, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I do. I mean, not on the scale that Andy’s faced it, but…So now you want to protect him from everything—including girls who might break his heart.” He shook his head. “You can’t do it, Britt. Life doesn’t work that way.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“He’s a terrific kid. For all the bad crap that happened to him in his life, he’s got his relationship with you to balance it all out. He’s going to deal with this. It’s going to hurt for a while, but eventually he’s going to be okay. He’s not going to come unglued.”

She sighed. “I know that, too. I just…I can’t help but want everything to be perfect for him.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” Wes said.

Except there was. Brittany’s eyes were a perfect shade of blue. Her smile was pretty damn perfect, too.

If she were any other woman on the planet, he would have given her a friendly, comforting hug. But he didn’t trust himself to get that close.

She exhaled loudly—a supersigh. “Well. I have to get up early in the morning.”

“I do, too,” he told her. “Amber Tierney awaits.”

Her smile was more genuine now. “Poor baby.” She stood up. “Towels are in the closet in the bathroom. Help yourself. I’ll get you that pillow.”

“Thanks again for letting me crash here,” he told her.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Wes’s car was in the driveway in the late afternoon, when Brittany got home from her last class.

When she’d gotten up in the very early morning to go in to the hospital, she’d left a key on the kitchen table, along with a note telling Wes to help himself to breakfast and to feel free to come back when his meeting with Amber was over.

As she juggled her keys with the grocery bags she was carrying in from her car, he opened the door and took one of the bags from her.

He had his cell phone tucked under his chin, but he greeted her with a smile and a twinkle of his eyes as he carried the bag into the kitchen.

“Is there more?” he mouthed. He was wearing jeans, and he had a barbed wire tattoo encircling his left biceps, peeking out from the sleeve of his snugly-fitting T-shirt.

Dressed up in a sports jacket and nice pants, he looked like an average guy—with a thick head of pretty-colored hair and those dancing blue eyes working to cancel out his lack of height. But with some of his natural scruffiness showing, in jeans that hugged a world-class set of glutes and a T-shirt that clung to his shoulders and pecs, with his hair not so carefully combed, and that tattoo…He was eye-catching, to say the least.

“I can get it,” she said, but he shook his head and went out the door and down the wooden steps to the driveway. Wasn’t that nice?

She started unloading the groceries, and he returned with the last two bags.

He was still on the phone. “I know,” he said to whomever he was talking to. “I understand.” He paused. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy, although, you’re the shrink—you should know.” Another pause. “Look, I’m on the case. I’m going out to her place tonight—there’s some kind of party and…”