Page 118 of The Billion Heirs Boxed Set

But I’m a rookie, and I have to work with someone. It may as well be a seasoned detective like Peterson. He does know his stuff…when he keeps to the book.

“What’s your beef with the Bridgers, anyway?” I ask once we’re back in the station.

“Who says I have any beef with them?” He glances at his phone.

I give him a perturbed look he doesn’t pick up on. “You couldn’t have made your feelings clearer. I mean, you went out there twice just to mess with them. We haven’t even heard back from the coroner yet. Those three—at least the two newcomers, for sure—obviously had nothing to do with that dead body. And I’ve known Chance Bridger since I moved here over a year ago. He’s a decent man.”

Mark gives me a patronizing look as he grabs his dirty coffee mug off his desk. “Listen, Hopkins. You’re a good cop, but you’ve got a lot to learn. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn to trust your instinct. And my instinct is telling me those boys know more than they’re letting on.”

Boys? Chance Bridger has to be around thirty, and I’d bet his brothers are older.

“Stick with me,” Peterson continues. “I’ll teach you how to ferret out evidence in the most unlikely places.”

I grit my teeth to keep from telling him the unlikely place where I want him to stick something.

“You know I appreciate your guidance,” I say. “But my instinct is telling me the Bridger brothers are innocent.”

“Your instinct is non-existent,” Peterson says. “No rookie a year out of the academy knows anything.”

I hold back a scoff. “I guess I knew enough to get hired as a detective after only a year in uniform.”

He doesn’t reply because his phone buzzes. He puts it to his ear. “Peterson.”

I walk to my desk when the receptionist calls to me from her spot by the door. “Sadie, you’ve got a call on line one.”

I frown and stare down at the phone on my desk. “I do?”

“You sure do,” she calls.

Strange. No one calls me on the landline. We all use our cells. I pick up the receiver. “This is Hopkins.”

“Hey, Hopkins. This is Bridger.”

My heart nearly flips out of my chest.

Sure, he told me who he was, but I’d know that deep, rich voice anywhere. It belongs to the man whose finger made me insane last night.

The man my partner seems determined to put behind bars.

“What do you want?” I ask, a little more harshly than I mean to.

“Easy.” He laughs. “I don’t know your cell number, but all it took was a quick search to find the number for the local sheriff’s office. How’d you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

My flesh prickles and my pussy clenches as I recall how skillfully he touched me in a room full of people.

I glance to Peterson, who’s not looking in my direction. God, yes, I’d like to have dinner with Miles. Better yet, I’d like to skip dinner and get under him because if he’s as talented as he was with just his fingers, I know it’ll be amazing when he gives me his all. Meaning his dick and mouth too.

But it can’t happen. Not while I’m investigating a dead body found on his land. Last night was a mistake. Innocent, yes, and I could explain it away as an epic coincidence. But a second time?

“You know I can’t,” I say finally.

“What? You can ride my fingers in the middle of a bar but you can’t have dinner with me?”

God, my cheeks are on fire. That gruff voice does things to me. Damn it.

“Besides,” he continues, “don’t you want those pretty lace panties back?”

“I thought you said I wasn’t going to get them back.”