Page 37 of After The Storm
Roman’s gaze slid down from her face to where she held the towel closed in front of her. “I never said I didn’t. But now we need to figure out what this case is about and what top your boss was talking about.”
“The head of the police department,” Kate declared, sure that she was right this time.
After thinking about her idea for a long moment, he looked up at her and let his gaze settle on her face. “Then why title one of the files Hawaii Five-O? That says state police to me.”
“Same difference. Cops.”
He shook his head. “No, although I did look up the word flic. It’s French for policeman. If all of this is related to Hawaii Five-O, the top is the governor.”
His statement made her breath catch in her chest. What would Governor Williams have to do with Samuel Darnell, a carpenter from Lafayette?
“Well, I’m going to get dressed again and get back into Jonas’s laptop, so I’ll be right back.”
As she hurried back into the bathroom to put her clothes on, Roman yelled, “No bath, then?”
Kate closed the door behind her and began to dress quickly. She wanted to read every last word her boss had written and left on that computer to find out what the hell had happened to end up with him and Samuel murdered.
There was no time for a bath now.
Chapter Twelve
Roman awoke earlyand instantly felt the effects on his back from sleeping in the chair the whole night. Tilting his head left and right, he cracked his neck and felt relief begin to trail down his spine. His side still ached, but he’d have to ignore that.
His eyes focused and he saw Kate on the bed still asleep, the laptop right next to her. She’d spent hours scouring her boss’s files and had drifted off in the middle of reading.
Much of what she found he still needed to figure out, but that would have to wait until after he had some breakfast. Standing, Roman stretched his body and headed to the bathroom to make himself at least presentable to go downstairs to the restaurant.
Five minutes later, he stood in front of the mirror scrubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his face and staring at the man he saw before him. Three days ago, he knew what his life needed. At least he thought he knew. Now, everything seemed different.
Changed all around because of her.
Roman shook his head, still not believing what his head and heart kept telling him. He’d never believed in love at first sight. Who thought that shit really happened in real life? That was the nonsense of romance movies men had to watch to make their girlfriends or wives happy. It didn’t happen anywhere but in the movies.
And yet, there he stood not twenty feet away from a woman who’d somehow, with her insistence on arguing everything and impetuous need to prove she didn’t need his help, made him want her more than he’d wanted anyone in his entire life. It made no sense, but there it was.
He didn’t exactly know what to do about it either. Not since Emily died had he even spent more than a night with a woman before leaving forever. He’d learned the painful lesson of his life with her.
Who he was and what he did had always been too perilous for him to let love in. He had a duty, first as a soldier and now as a member of Project Artemis, and that responsibility put him in harm’s way too much to commit to anyone or anything else but the mission. He’d accepted that truth and lived by it.
Until Kate.
Now everything in his being seemed to have abandoned that central idea of his life for the possibility of what he might have with her. But he knew better. Nothing had changed from the time he lost Emily until now. He couldn’t promise a woman anything, no matter how much he wanted to.
That’s why he’d stayed away from relationships all this time. And he’d been successful at arranging his world to accommodate the reality that he couldn’t commit to a woman and the job at the same time.
It had to be one or the other, and for so long, he met no one who made him want to even entertain the thought of not being the person he’d been all these years.
Not until Kate.
Roman narrowed his eyes in anger at his reflection. “You know what happens when guys like us lose our focus. You know people get hurt. And still you stand here thinking about her like it can ever be anything more than what you’ve always had with women.”
Splashing water on his face, he silently chastised himself for being foolish, disgusted with this newfound pie-in-the-sky attitude he had adopted in the past few days. This job was no different than any other, and if he didn’t keep his focus, Kate or he would get hurt.
Or worse, both of them.
And not in some boo-hoo my heart is broken way either.
He now knew what the cops would want Kate for, and knowing how the police worked, if they got their hands on her, she had no chance. He still didn’t believe they were guilty like she did, but once she became part of the case, she’d be caught up in the legal system and there’d be nothing he could do.