Page 20 of Day of the Storm
Shelby and their friend Zoey—and Darrell, Daryn’s older brother—had been all the family Daryn had had from the time she and Shelby were twenty and Daryn’s mother had died in a house fire in her hometown of Stephenville.
The years since that day had been fraught with studying doubly hard so she could graduate medical school early and go straight into her internship/residency in pathology. Daryn was doing what she wanted now, on the career path she’d chosen for herself all those years ago. She helped stopped the bad guys, there was no better rush than that.
“I’m getting the feeling you don’t want me in here today. Any particular reason?” Evers grabbed for the files on her desk. They weren’t his files. She barely resisted smacking his hand. That was just the reaction he was looking for. The man loved to torment her. Just her.
Every single time their paths crossed.
She didn’t have an actual office—that was reserved for her boss—but her cubicle was her space. Period.
She didn’t want him in her space. That shouldn’t have been too hard for him to understand.Mike enjoyed giving her fits. She almost thought he sought her out to do just that.
Most likely because she’d told him once that she thought he was a real asshole.
He hadn’t enjoyed that, especially since his buddies from Major Crimes had been present at the time.
She’d spent all afternoon that day with Shelby at a youth center helping teenagers develop job skills. Shelby—the kindest woman Daryn had ever known.
She’d seen the good Shelby did, and it had just angered her that men like Mike Evers, Sean Callum, Daniel McKellen and Jake MacNamara—all bigshots at the TSP post—had thought nothing of savaging Shelby in order to get information out of her about Shelby’s brother’s best friend.A man Shelby had cared about a great deal, who had died tragically.
Shelby had had nothing to do with the things that man had been involved in.
Evers and his posse hadn’t cared.Zoey, the sheriff of Garrity now, had broken up their final interrogation of Shelby all those months ago and made threats of her own, while Daryn helped comfort Shelby.
She and Mike had had their battles ever since.
He was still staring at her. Waiting.
Daryn wanted to slug him.
He, more than any of the other jerks who’d targeted Shelby back then, got under her skin and infuriated her the most.
He did not know the damage he had done to her best friend that day.
None at all.
2
Daryn Mabry wasthe sexiest medical examiner Mike had ever seen.
And Mike had had plenty of fantasies of her wearing nothing more than a stethoscope and a lab coat. Tiny at five-foot-nothing, with big brown eyes that routinely looked at him like he was a slug and dimples that flashed every time she spoke, she looked like a pixie. All he had to do was glue on some iridescent wings and the look would be all set.He didn’t get it. He had never gone for the wholesome little sister, girl-next-door type before.
But no woman had ever made him hotter than this one.
He suspected she was aware of it—and it was another thing that just pissed her off at him.She was always cranky when he was near. He had yet to figure out why. But he was an investigator—he had a few possibilities.
He’d heard through the grapevine—mainly his sister, who she was close friends with—that during a recent investigation, he and his partner Callum had interrogated the doc’s closest friend.
A little too harshly.Enough to make that friendcry.
That friend was supposedly innocent, of course. Like theyallwere. Mike was a bit on the cynical side, too.
Mike had a problem caring about that.So what if he’d ruffled some feathers of some woman he didn’t even remember?He’d been trying to save lives, after all.
It was kind of what he did.
Daryn would get over it, eventually.
He just wished she’d like him a little better after.