[When SEALs Come Home 04] - Heated Read Online Free PDF Page B

every bit as hard and muscled as her view had promised. Wow. She needed to arrest him more often. No. Scratch that. She needed to stay professional. A sexual harassment complaint wasn’t one of her goals for the week.
    “Any weapons I need to know about?”
    “I have a switchblade in my right boot,” he said after a long beat. She sensed he’d almost said something flirtatious instead, but had refrained. Apparently, he really didn’t have a death wish.
    She reached down to explore the top of his boot, and the position put her face inches from his crotch. She hastily plucked the blade out and opened it up.
    “I have a small blade,” he said woefully.
    “And you can count your lucky stars that you do.” Anything over two inches and he’d have been looking at another misdemeanor charge.
    He didn’t seem upset as she read him his rights and cuffed his hands. Nope. He grinned at her the whole time, like this was one big joke. She had no idea what it would take to put a serious look on his face. Nuclear explosion? Zombie apocalypse? Trying to understand Joey made her head hurt.
    When she went to put him into the backseat of her car, however, he twisted his head to look at her. “You can thank me later.”
    “For?” She put a hand on his head to keep him from hitting the roof and guided him down onto the seat. He had absolutely no idea what he did to her, and it was tempting to shove him into that seat. And then possibly forget that he was there for an hour or six. She could go find a Starbucks with a drive-through, take the scenic route back to Strong. Being professional sucked sometimes.
    “Giving you an excuse to go fast.”
    “You need to slow down and do something more productive with your grief. See a counselor. Read a self-help book. Binge eat.”
    He grinned at her, a slow, sleepy grin that made her think about bedroom things. “I think you like me. That means I get to keep you.”
    Slamming the door was marginally satisfying. Of course she liked him. She didn’t drive around the county hating people. She just didn’t like like him. Which made her sound like a twelve-year-old girl, darn it.
    She slid into the driver’s seat. The only thing going on here was that she didn’t like watching him—literally—drive himself into an early grave. He was trying to outrun his demons, and she could have told him that never worked. Demons had always chased her faster than she could run.
    ***
    J oey stared at the back of Mercedes’ head through the bulletproof glass separating the criminally inclined from the morally upright. It was no surprise which side he was on. She’d twisted her dark hair up in some kind of complicated braid, leaving her neck exposed. He had no idea how she got the thing to stay put since he couldn’t see any visible signs of support. Small tendrils of hair had escaped, however, and he itched to play with those curls.
    Parking his butt in the backseat of the patrol car with his hands cuffed behind his back should have been awkward as hell. He’d certainly earned it—he’d been pushing his luck burning up the highway for weeks now—but he’d always figured that the point of punishment was that it sucked.
    And yet the only part of today’s scenario that bothered him was that Mercy had held him while he fell apart over burying Will. Two weeks—or a fucking millennium—wasn’t enough time to get over his embarrassment. His man card needed revoking, because he didn’t break down. Ever. He was a soldier. A SEAL.
    And... he knew how to pick his battles. When to retreat. When to forge ahead. There was no fighting his attraction to the woman in the front seat.
    He studied the back of her head as she put the car into drive and headed toward Strong. She didn’t look particularly happy with him right now, which made sense. He’d forced her to chase him down the highway at unsafe speeds, and he sensed that his companion was all about playing it safe. She liked rules, and she definitely knew