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Strong hands closed around her shoulders.“Sweetheart, are you going to introduce me?”
Shock rolled through her.Had Eb just called hersweetheart?She’d thought she heard him call herbabyearlier, but that had been in the heat of the moment.A possible auditory hallucination given the fire around her and the stress but this time…
He did it.He called me sweetheart.
He pulled her back against him.Back against his warm, strong, bare chest.And one arm moved down so that his forearm slid over her chest while his fingers brushed lightly over her shoulder.His breath blew over her skin.“Play along,”he whispered.Or, she thought he whispered the command.The order was so incredibly soft.A bare breath of sound against the shell of her ear.
“This is…” Naomi cleared her throat.“Detective Clark Anderson.And Officers Kennedy Willow and Aziah Burch.”Yep, she remembered them all.Hard to forget because Kennedy and Aziah had cuffed her at this same location.Ah, memories.They’d cuffed her even as she’d loudly protested her innocence.
“Who the hell are you?”Clark demanded as he glared at Eb.The officers remained silent.Watchful.
“Eb Jones.”He kept her pinned against his body.Kept right on holding her, too.
“Eb Jones?”Clark took a step closer.“As in, Hudson’s former partner?”
“Guilty as charged,” Eb said.
She flinched.Dammit, he did not need to go around saying stuff like that.If she didn’t get to use dark humor, then neither did he.
Clark closed in even more.“You’re the partner…and you’re here?”His gaze dropped to the arm that Eb still had curled around Naomi.“With her?”
“Looks that way,” Eb responded.“You are observant.”
“Where is your shirt?”Clark wanted to know.His tone had flattened.
“Sir.”Kennedy stepped forward.Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, even in the middle of the night.“It appears she is wearing the shirt, sir.”
Oh for goodness… “Yes, I’m wearing it.Excellent deduction.”Naomi lifted her hands and curled them around Eb’s forearm.She tugged.Casually.
At first, he hesitated, then he let her go.
“I’m the victim.”She stepped to the side and waved back toward her house.The still smoking house.The smoke could easily be scented on the wind.So could the coming storm.“My house caught on fire tonight, but I’m good.No need for the cops to get involved, I am?—”
“There’s a need,” Eb cut in to say.“It’s a good thing they are out here.”
Wait, itwas?
“This is my new friend, Jeffrey Lee.”
A young firefighter stepped forward.One that, in the swirl of lights, she could see sported a very large mustache.
“Jeffrey did a bit of checking inside the structure for me,” Eb continued.“Jeffrey, will you tell the cops what you found?”
Jeffrey bobbed his head.He clutched a helmet in the crook of his arm.“The smoke detectors didn’t have batteries.”
Naomi sucked in a sharp breath.
But Clark just shook his head.“You took out your own batteries, huh, Naomi?Trying to get an insurance claim, were you?Did you think that if you?—”
“She was asleep, dumbass,” Eb snapped.
Clark stiffened.“What did you just call me?”
“I had to wake her up.Carry her down the stairs.Then she insisted on fighting the blaze with fire extinguishers that she had in her closet.A woman who sets her house on fire doesn’t stop to try and put out the flames.A woman who survived a fire as a child doesn’t set herself up again to face that same hell.”Rage vibrated in Eb’s words.A carefully controlled rage.
That was the thing about Eb.He knew how to control his emotions.She struggled in that regard.In that very moment, it felt as if her emotions were close to ripping her apart.It took all of her energy to hold herself together.
“You’re saying someone else set the fire?”Clark rocked onto the balls of his feet.