Beneath the Badge (First Responders) Read Online Free PDF

thanking him for his help was a very convenient excuse for showing up.
    “That smells good,” he said, emerging from the bathroom.
    He’d changed into jeans and a plain white T-shirt, leaving his feet bare. His hair was so short that it needed nothing more than running his hand through it. She made herself reach in the bag for a second item just to avoid staring. “You hungry yet?”
    “I could eat,” he responded, pulling up a bar stool. “There’s beer in the fridge if you want one. Otherwise…water. I haven’t grocery shopped in a while.”
    “Water’s fine for me.”
    “Me too.”
    She filled two glasses and then peeled the lids away from the food. “Noodles, vegetables, some fried tofu for me and I got you an order of cashew chicken.”
    “There’s enough food here for an army,” he said, but she noticed it didn’t stop him from grabbing a set of chopsticks and adding items to his plate.
    She filled her own plate and came around the counter to sit on the stool next to him. “This place is huge. And I noticed you don’t have a TV. I figured a guy like you…you’d have one of those big screen deals.”
    “I travel light,” he commented, wrapping noodles around his chopsticks. “I don’t watch a lot of TV, and if I want to catch a game or something I can always head to the pub.”
    “Don’t your dates mind?”
    He looked sideways at her and his lips tipped up at the corner. “Not so much. And it’s not like I have a million of them.”
    She snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.” She speared a hunk of tofu with her chopstick.
    “Jealous?”
    This was what she’d missed, she realized. The rich insinuation in his voice that meant he was flirting. She’d enjoyed that the other night—well, in retrospect, anyway. She gave another snort. “Me? Jealous? Not likely.”
    His knee touched hers. “You sure?”
    Tingles ran up her leg at the subtle contact. “I’m sure,” she answered, but her vocal chords felt tight. Like the rest of her. She knew Matt Parker spelled trouble, so why was she here? To scratch an itch?
    “Then why are you here?” he asked, echoing her thoughts. “Because you could have just called and said thanks for the help.”
    “You did say the next time I owed you dinner. I always pay my debts.” She snagged a piece of broccoli and popped it into her mouth.
    “Hmm. I thought it might be something else. That you wanted to pick up where we left off.”
    “You seemed to have a pretty good love affair going with your heavy bag. What’s up with that?”
    The cloud descended over his face again for a moment until he wiped it clean away, making her wonder if she’d actually seen it at all.
    “Just working out some frustrations.” His left hand strayed over to her knee, suggesting what those frustrations might have been.
    “What sorts of frustrations?”
    He considered her question for a moment, removed his hand from her thigh. “I’m not a particularly nice guy, Lindsay. I’ve seen and done a lot of things. Because of it, sometimes simple things have a weird context for me, that’s all.”
    “Are you depressed, Matt?” She put down her chopsticks as she asked the question, suddenly no longer hungry. Matt appeared fun and that fun side seemed to be what appealed to her most. But she knew too well that it could be a cover. A bright face to the world and a troubled mind beneath.
    She’d only been eight years old when a troubled mind had won the battle with her mother. That had just been the beginning. There’d been over a decade more of living in a single-parent home where she’d spent too much energy trying to make things good and right. She’d finally made her stand with veterinary medicine rather than medical school. She’d done what she wanted rather than what was expected to make people happy.
    “Depressed? I don’t think so.” He frowned into his noodles. “Affected by what I’ve seen? Definitely. These are good noodles.”
    Changing the subject. She was