there a panic attack issue you need to tell me about?” Although he frowned, and didn’t take his eyes off the road, there was amusement in his voice. “I don’t have to worry about you grabbing the wheel or anything, do I?”
“I don’t think I’m that far gone. Unless we skid.” Please don’t skid. Please don’t skid. But he was handling the machine beautifully, so far successfully avoiding every patch of ice.
“Why don’t you tell me about that birthmark?”
“That what?” Belatedly, Eve remembered her earlier remark when he’d first entered the kitchen. “Oh! That was just … comedic relief.”
“I’m crushed.”
Eve wished she had the courage to turn forward again, but was afraid that if she did, she would lose what little she’d eaten this evening. She chose her second-best option—to duck deeper into her jacket like a shy turtle. “I’m not really the flirt you’re taking me for.” Of all the people she’d had to make a fool of herself in front of, why did it have to be him?
“Doubly crushed.”
“Seriously. I’m the dumped wife, remember? Sex appeal in the negatives.”
“Right. Which is why, in hindsight, I found myself wishing Rae had taken a wrong turn instead of locating us as quickly as she did.” Shifting slightly in his seat, he abruptly added, “This might sound like bitterness, since I’m the rejected party, as well, but I don’t owe Sam squat, let alone allegiance, and hadn’t for some time. So let me just say this for what it’s worth. Wes is a fool … and that’s on top of being the four-letter equivalent of excrement.”
Eve waited for more, but Derek, erudite man that he was, said nothing else. “Feel better now?” she ventured to ask.
“I do, actually.” After a few moments, he added, “I wish you did.”
“I’m getting better.” At his brief, disbelieving look, she added, “It’s not like I’m hoping he’ll waken one morning to the revelation that he made a mistake.”
“I should bleeping hope not.”
It was sweet of him to be so sensitive to her battered ego. But despite his comment about loyalty undeserving, she couldn’t completely shake the nagging concern that all this attention to her was because he harbored a little fantasy about exacting a bit of revenge against one or both of their former mates. Eve inwardly shook her head at how she had become her worst enemy.
In took less than twenty minutes until the worst of their descent was over. In that time, Eve carefully kept questions away from personal matters. She asked if he supervised a large group of people, and he told her that including clerical staff, they had just under two hundred agents.
“There’s roughly the same number of specialists, analysts and pro staff. Then there’s the different task forces.”
“Good grief, you’re a king with your own kingdom,” she said, intimidated all over again.
When they could see the highway that would take them back to the city, she looked for signs of smoke, or—worse yet—flames, indicating D.A. Maines’s situation had grown dire. “I’m sorry I didn’t voice more concern over the D.A. Will you be able to call him and see how things are over there?”
“Yeah, I’ll check as soon as I get home.” Derek turned onto the interstate. The lights from Denver’s skyline painted a glittery landscape and stark contrast to the wooded foothills. “If anyone is going to get a fast response from the fire department, it’s his neighborhood, but I don’t blame him for hurrying off. I would have done the same thing.”
“I’ve met him only a few times, but he seems quite the family man.”
“That’s the impression I got.”
As they passed a series of restaurants, she almost pointed one out to mention that it was particularly good if he liked Thai cuisine. Then she decided against that. He’d been living here almost as long as she had and probably knew about it. And the last thing she wanted was for him to be thinking that she was hinting at an invitation.
He did get her attention when he turned onto a road that she would have taken to get home. When he took the next left, she looked at him with disbelief. But it was when he turned into her apartment complex that she tensed with unease.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Pulling into a parking spot in front of the first building, he gave her a wary look. “Are you okay?”
No, she wasn’t okay. He was freaking her out. “This is a joke, right?”
Derek pointed to the corner apartment of the building directly in front of them. “‘E.T. go home,’” he recited, using a forlorn voice.
No. “You’re serious? You live there—since—?”
“Since I arrived in Colorado. It’ll be a year in March.” He pointed to the black SUV parked in the spot next to him. “That’s mine. Why?”
Her heart sinking, Eve reached over to shut off the ignition and pulled out her keys. She used them to point to the building diagonally across from his, specifically the bottom corner apartment. “That’s me,” she said.
Derek glanced from her to the point of her direction and back again. Then his chest started to shake on a soft laugh. “Well. Hello, neighbor … again.”
Derek meant to bring a little levity into the moment, considering that this was playing out to be a classic case of fate having the last laugh. But one look at Eve Easton’s adorable, but horrified face, and his smile waned. Damn, but the cutie was hard on his ego. The situation wasn’t as awful as all that … was it?
“Okay,” he began slowly, “you don’t think this is even the slightest bit amusing?”
“More like a bad dream.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Eve had the grace to wince. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean—”
“That you were appalled at the idea of living next door to me? And here I thought that lovely little interlude we shared in the sunroom would be—”
“This would be a good time to start forgetting that.”
“Why on earth would I want to? Tonight was the best time I’ve had since moving here. Come to think of it, it’s the best New Year’s Eve I’ve had in … long enough,” he said, realizing he was already giving away too much. She’d already managed to deflate him; there was no point in proving that not only did his love life suck, his determination to make high marks with his superiors had turned him into a workaholic. “The point is I’d hoped we’d gotten past that your-ex-dumped-you-for-my-ex hurdle.”
“I did, too … back when I assured myself that it wasn’t as if I would be seeing you every day.”
“I don’t remember the word blunt being used in reference to you.”
“I’m not being insensitive, I’m being real-time
