Nicole Helm - Falling for the New Guy

She pulled her patrol car up to the apartment complex and Marc still didn’t know what to say. What he was supposed to do.

Maybe nothing. If he’d been the one in her place he’d want nothing except for her to pretend it had never happened. She hadn’t said anything since aside from the basics that had to be said to get their job done for the day.

She stepped out of the car and he followed suit, stomach tightening uncomfortably in the face of a situation he had no idea what to do with. He tried to avoid that feeling at all costs. It had been such a damn constant growing up, he’d found all the ways to distance it from himself.

But none of his self-preservation instincts kicked in. He felt drawn to the feeling inside, into figuring out some way...some way to help.

This is not the kind of thing you fix.

He knew way too much about those things.

They reached the top of the stairs and Tess slowed her pace as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. “Well, it was an interesting day.” She didn’t meet his gaze, which was unusual for her. This closed-off, shifty way of standing, looking. Discomfort.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice coming out oddly hoarse as he stood by his door.

“Thanks.” She finally met his gaze and the way she oozed embarrassment and pain had him stepping toward her. For what? He had no idea.

“Anyway, good night.” She gave a little nod, looking at the floor, but the slumped posture and the defeat in her spine made him act against every sensible thought in his head.

“Tess.” He didn’t reach out to her, but that’s what he wanted to do. Why the hell did he want to do that?

“The fact of the matter is I’m going to have a good cry, and if you don’t want me to do that all over your shoulder, you better get in your apartment ASAP.” She tried to smile, but it wobbled and the tears were already shimmering in her eyes.

Yes, he should get inside the safety of his apartment. He wanted nothing to do with a crying woman who was his coworker and kind of flinging her life all over his. Her this-precinct-is-a-family edicts and this stuff with her father and making him talk when he normally wouldn’t and...everything.

But he didn’t move to his door. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder, because there was only so much visceral pain he could see in someone else without trying to help.

Not at all smoothly, he pulled her into a hug. He figured it’d be awkward. In the grand scheme of things, he’d never found hugging people anything but awkward.

But she leaned into his shoulder, resting her head there, her fists trapped between his chest and her collarbone. Her breath hitching occasionally.

He wasn’t sure anyone had ever cried on his shoulder before. In particularly tragic situations he dealt with at work, he’d occasionally offer a hand, a shoulder pat, something solid to hold them up.

But never like this.

“A pity hug from you. I am pathetic.” But she didn’t pull away—she sniffled into his shoulder, and it was such a strange sensation. Holding and comforting someone he barely knew. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this for someone he did know.

“How long has he been like that?”

She stiffened. A question she didn’t want to answer, and inevitably the question that got her to pull herself together and step away.

Because the impulse to touch her face, wipe away the tears there, was shockingly strong, he shoved his hands into his pockets. There was something all wrong about this whole exchange, and it wasn’t her crying or pulling away. It was him. His reaction to it. The wanting to understand and fix wasn’t unique; he felt that a lot.

But he never felt compelled to act. Never acted against the voice in his head telling him to put up a barrier or step away. He had learned his lesson from childhood, damn it.

“Look, um, thanks. Really.” She wiped her face with her palms, let out a shaky breath as she looked around. “Can’t say I’ve ever broken down in a hallway before.”

“Where do you usually do your breaking down?”

“Alone.”

Christ.

“But those big broad football shoulders are good for crying on.” She ran her fingertips down his chest, and this was a completely inappropriate time to think of anything sexual, but he could not force himself to be appropriate.

She pulled her hand away and the way she looked at him, he had to wonder if she felt it, too. The little zing of heat and inappropriate attraction.

She took a full step back, eyebrows drawing together. “Anyway. Hopefully you won’t be put in that position again. It isn’t...normal.”

“It isn’t?”

The vulnerable bafflement on her face immediately changed, blanked. “Enjoy your day off tomorrow, Marc. You earned it.”

“I only did my job.”

She cocked her head. “You did a little more than that, Captain Quiet.”

Before he could argue with the obnoxious moniker again, she stepped inside her apartment and shut the door.

He found himself here far too often, wanting to understand more, with a door shut in his face. When he should feel nothing but relief, he felt the exact opposite.

CHAPTER FIVE

TESS SCOOTED FARTHER down into the cooling bathwater. It was her day off and she didn’t want to face it. So much so, she’d taken a bath, something she almost never did. Infrequently enough she didn’t even have bubbles. She’d squirted some shower gel in there and now she was lounging in tepid, bubbleless water.

It seemed terribly appropriate.

At least she didn’t have to face Marc. Small mercies. Her embarrassment wasn’t likely to fade anytime soon, but maybe she could get a better handle on it with a day in between sitting in a car with him for eight hours.

Eight long hours knowing he’d seen through her so easily. All the bravado, all the work she’d done to create this persona, and it’d only taken her father threatening someone with a butter knife and her asking Marc to keep people from pressing charges.

Marc saw her for what she was. A scared little girl with daddy issues so wide no submarine could cross.

She thought about the way she’d cried all over his shoulder then commented on the broadness of said shoulders. It was so out of character. At the very least when she flirted with a guy she didn’t do it in the middle of a good cry.

And she did not flirt with cops. Attraction didn’t matter. She’d seen enough to know if she got together with one cop, all the hard work she’d put into building her reputation would be for nothing. It was rare these days someone rolled their eyes at her simply for her gender.

She wasn’t undoing all that work for an impressive chest. Except she’d already done it with tears and Dad.

It was an impressive chest. What was the harm in a little fantasy when he wasn’t here, and she was in the bath, and—

Nope. Whole lotta harm. Because she had to share a damn patrol car with the guy for weeks upon unending weeks, and she did not need actual fantasies in her head.

Which was enough impetus to get her out of the bathtub. The only problem was—now what? She should go see Dad, check his place for signs of drugs, figure out what was going on.

She should. She should. What else might he do if she didn’t?

I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care.

She was over the crying and the hurting. So she’d do the only thing that ever helped that—run her ass off.

She pulled on her running gear and slipped her apartment key in her shoe. She purposefully left her phone on the kitchen counter, strapped her MP3 player to her arm and stepped into the hallway.

There was Marc.

Well, hell.

She mustered her best I-did-not-wipe-snot-on-your-shirt-last-night smile.