A Capital Mistake Read online

  “Huh. I’m surprised he’s not your type.”

  “Right. Yeah, I’m all about the Schwarzenegger looking guys.”

  “I don’t know.” He pretends to consider it. “I could see it.”

  Before I can catch myself, I toss a joking punch into his arm. But the way he laughs makes me swell with delight.

  And God, it’s sexy.

  Everything thing about him is sexy. Several times already I’ve noticed the hard lines of his chest under his shirt. He’s not threatening the freakish size of Mr. Schwarzenegger, but he’s certainly not weak.

  And his eyes. His skin is so smooth and soft that combined with his dark ruffled hair, his green eyes practically glow. They’re the most striking eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “Oh, here we go.” Noah points in the crowd. “That looks more like your type.”

  I follow his finger toward a tall guy conversing with a blonde woman who’s also notably tall—at least five inches taller than me. She nearly reaches his shoulders.

  “Yeah, no thank you,” I say. “I think I’d come up to his waist.”

  “I thought women liked a man with a few inches on him?”

  “Maybe…” I punctuate my smirk with a laugh. “But I don’t really have a type to begin with.”

  “Oh—bullshit,” he says. “Everyone’s got a type.”

  “Is that a fact? What type am I, then?”

  He swigs from his margarita while his eyes peruse over me, up and down. And out of nowhere, almost as if toying with me, I get a whiff of his cologne.

  Crisp, masculine, and utterly irresistible. Good God.

  “Let’s see,” he begins. “Type A for sure, but in a way that’s too attractive to be overbearing. Smart. Knows exactly what she’s doing 99 percent of the time. Knows what she wants. Ambitious. The kind of woman that’s gorgeous, but doesn’t ever let it get to her head.”

  At first I don’t have enough breath to reply.

  “Am I right?” he asks after a beat, but I still don’t know what to say. My only hope is that my blush isn’t as visibly embarrassing as it feels. “Or here—tell me this,” he continues, sensing my hesitation. “What type am I, Sophia?” He emphasizes each syllable in my name.

  “Let’s see,” I mimic, even mocking the way he sipped his drink while studying me. But inside my mind’s reeling. No matter what people say, profiling everyone walking down the street is not in a detective’s job description. However, I am trained in profiling a person of interest.

  And lightly speaking, Noah is definitely a person of interest.

  “Alpha male personality,” I finally say. “For sure. Successful. Knows what he’s doing seventy-five percent of the time, but likes to gamble with the other twenty-five. The kind of guy who knows he’s attractive and absolutely lets it get to his head.”

  Noah breaks out in laughter that’s music to my ears.

  “You don’t have to tell me, I know I’m right,” I say.

  “Then I guess the only question is whether our types are compatible.” He adds a smirk that sends electricity up my spine.

  I’m ready with a response—a response that has my heart beating fast, when a body collapses into my lap. My instinctual reflexes surge before I realize who it is.

  “Ahhhh,” Nora drones. She rolls over and falls to the ground.

  “Jesus!” I kneel down in a feeble attempt to catch her head before it hits the floor. She rolls over again, her head in my hands and a sloppy smile plastered across her face.

  Great.

  “What happened?” I ask, though I’m not sure why I even bother. She only mumbles in response. “Come on, get up.” I pull her arm until she’s sitting up. There’s a chance Schwarzenegger-James slipped something in her drink, but I can’t find him and there’s a crowd of spectators already starting to gather.

  Nora slurs together a few syllables of nonsense.

  “Let’s go, get up!” My tone is somewhere between a cop and a sympathetic friend. I tug on her arm again and Nora stumbles to her feet.

  My eyes catch Noah and his expression deflates me.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouth to him, but even that feels useless. But as much as I hate it, I have a bigger priority right now.

  I guide Nora as she takes a wobbly step. Then another.

  The hand of what I assume is a bouncer catches my shoulder, but Noah’s at my side when I turn.

  “Are you really leaving right now?”

  “I have to.”

  His face deflates me all over again.

  I try my best to pull myself away but his arm snags my shoulder again. “Sophia, wait—I need to see you again.”

  With Nora hanging deliriously off my arm, there aren’t a lot of things that could make my heart flutter. But that does.

  “I’ll give you my number,” I tell him. I rattle it off as he follows across the club, helping to clear a path to the exit.

  I turn around and steal a final look at his face before forcing Nora out the doors. The night air feels unusually crisp as we emerge. I pull Nora towards a bench around the side of the building.

  “Sit here. I’m going to call a cab.”

  “I’m fine.” She yanks her arm out of my grasp.

  “Sit do—”

  “I said I’m fine,” Nora barks. And she’s right. It’s like the night air miraculously depleted her system of toxins.

  For a second I can only stare in disbelief. “What the hell was—”

  “I’m fine, Sophia. Really.” Her voice is so composed that it baffles me. “Sorry I had to do that.”

  “That was an act? Are you kidding me?”

  She grins and I have to hold back from slapping her across the face. “How did I do?”

  I’m at a complete loss for words. When I finally overcome the urge to slap her, I turn toward the entrance and tell her that I’m going back inside.

  “No.” Nora reaches for my arm. “They won’t let you reenter.”

  “Then call your friend Anthony. I’m going back in.”

  “Sophia, stop.” She tugs on my arm and I spin around to face her. “Look at the line, it’s not worth it.”

  I don’t even bother to look. “So you dragged me out here just to make a scene and drag me back out? What is your—”

  “I’m sorry,” she pleads. “I didn’t know what else to do, that guy was a creep.”

  “Really? You couldn’t come up with any other option?” I glare at her for a moment, then return to dialing a cab when something knocks me forward.

  “There you are,” slurs a deep and sloppy voice. James’s hand finds my shoulder in an attempt to keep his balance.

  Nora springs to her feet. I shrug out of his grasp and he flops onto the bench.

  “Come here.” I take Nora’s arm and pull her around the corner toward the entrance. “Call the cab—” I hand her my phone. “—I’m going to signal a bouncer.”

  “No, it’s fine.” She takes my phone but grabs ahold of my hand with it. “We’re fine, cab will be here in a sec anyway.” She puts the phone to her ear.

  I don’t know why I’m letting Nora decide anything right now, but at this point I’m too annoyed to argue.

  This is what I get for giving in to her girl’s night out.

  Nora ends the call and reaches to hand my phone back, but it drops when someone clenches her shoulder from behind. “Found you,” James blurts.

  “Get off,” Nora yells.

  “Sir, you need to get the hell away from her,” I shout, pulling his hands off her shoulder. He hurls a stiff backhand to the side of my face. My cheek instantly throbs in a pulsing sting.

  I reach for my tranquilizer right as the realization sets in.

  I don’t have any of my gear.

  The man pushes Nora to the side and takes a wobbly step toward me. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he mumbles. His breath reeks of liquor.

  A hand clasps tight on my hip, but before I can throw my elbow back in defense Noah is in front of me.

  He coc
ks his fist back and swings.

  The man stumbles backward. His eyes are dazed but he took it well. He staggers to the side and tries to square his body, but Noah takes another step forward and swings again.

  This time the man drops.

  Chapter Six

  Noah

  My bed is depressingly empty when I wake up. The sunlight blankets my room in an intrusive reminder that I forgot to shut the blinds last night. The only thing that stops me from falling back asleep is the display on my phone when I turn it over.

  11:15.

  Shit—I hope Owen made it into the gallery today.

  I have the store’s number half-dialed before remembering that we scheduled our new guy this morning. Ben.

  The kid couldn’t take an artistic photo if someone worked the settings, set the shutter speed, handed him a camera and pointed. But occasions like this are exactly what he’s for. Occasions when I would rather watch blades of grass grow than stand behind the desk in our gallery.

  Photography’s always been my biggest passion, but Owen and I operate the gallery as a front. It absorbs all the money from our heists, funnels it through accounts, pays taxes, and returns it clean and ready to use. If Ben worked for any other reason than to buy cigarettes and booze, he might have the curiosity to question a few details here and there. Like how we can sell one photo a week and still afford to pay fifteen dollars an hour.

  But Ben’s an idiot.

  And I need coffee.

  I lumber down the stairs, meander into the kitchen, and curse with the entire force of my being when I open the cupboard.

  Of course it’s empty. How could I forget.

  Owen and I used the rest of the coffee during the planning for last week’s job. There’s a shopping list taped to the fridge as proof, with coffee circled at the top. I’ve put off that damn errand for the last two days now. This is karma.

  I trudge out the door and across the yard. Times like this are exactly why I live away from visible neighbors. I’m grumpy, un-showered, and dressed in a tee shirt and pajama pants. It’s an especially nice day, but that doesn’t stop me from angrily twisting the keys in the ignition.

  There’s a grocery store in the shopping center about five miles away. But there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts three minutes from my house, so the rest of the list is going to have to wait.

  Parked in the drive-thru, I pull out my phone and skim my contacts until I’m hovering over her name. Sophia. And right away I see her face again. Her bright blue eyes.

  I don’t even know if this is the right number. It was such a commotion dragging her friend out that I could barely hear. Especially the last four numbers, which were either 3991 or 3999. I went with the latter.

  But I’m not going to call her. In fact, I should delete it right now.

  I have a personal rule against repeats. Once is fine, it’s fun, but that’s the end of it. Calling, planning, weekend brunches—they’re not allowed. For better or worse, it’s the choice I’ve had to make.

  I’ve downed a quarter of my 24oz coffee by the time I pull back into the driveway. Though I’m still in a trudging-kind of mood when I fling open my door, so I stomp my way through the yard and back into the house.

  I take my coffee into the kitchen to sit and look over the gallery’s financial ledgers. I wish I actually had some work to do. Owen and I have already spent around thirty hours dispersing the heist money into false sales and accounts receivable. Hence, the lack of coffee.

  The ledgers are an unsuccessful distraction. I take a long swig of coffee and immediately return to the fog in my head.

  It’s been fourteen years since my parents died. Fourteen years that I’ve carried a dark weight in my chest.

  I was only eighteen. Eighteen and blindly naïve to how unforgiving the world can be. But that naivety did nothing to cushion me from the harsh reality that became my life. My brother is the sole reason I didn’t cave into that weight. Kris was there when I had no one else. But here I am, older now than he ever was.

  It’s his loss that’s left the true weight in my chest.

  But while talking to Sophia, just for a moment, that weight had disintegrated. For the first time it subsided, and just for a moment, I was whole again. She entered the emptiness in a way that I didn’t know was possible. Like she belonged there.

  Like she touched a void I could never reach.

  But… despite the emptiness, my mess of a life doesn’t have room for anyone else.

  I’m thirty-two now. Kris died at thirty-one. And when his fiancé had their baby boy a few months later, Grayson was born with a congenital heart defect and no father.

  My parent’s spent their lives working nine-to-five, mind-numbing, dead-end jobs. There was simply no money to leave behind. They didn’t buy life insurance. No pensions, no savings accounts.

  My brother met someone that got him involved in robbing banks. He tried his damnedest to make something out of the cards we were dealt, but he never saw his son’s infant body struggling to stay alive. Which is why I stepped in.

  Grayson’s first procedure, the surgery, all the medications—they aren’t cheap. But I’ve made it my life to secure whatever treatment he needs. That little boy is the only reason I do what I do. And I’m the only reason he’s still alive.

  Anything else is a distraction I can’t afford, and a strict rule is the best way to prevent that.

  No. Repeats. Ever.

  Although… Sophia’s not even a repeat. I could call her without violating my rule. Hell, I could do more than call her.

  I pull up her contact. And this time I press call.

  The phone chimes a good six or seven times before a scratchy elderly voice finally picks up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?” I echo. God, does she live with her mother? I almost hang up, but I’m already this far. “I’m looking for Sophia.”

  “This is Judy,” the voice exclaims. It sounds overjoyed and about forty years too old.

  “Yes, I’m looking for Sophia. Is she there?” There’s a long pause.

  “Hello?” the voice asks again.

  God dammit.

  I punch off. And then I remember.

  I click on edit and change the last digit from a 1 to a 9. Then dial again.

  This time it only rings twice.

  “Hello, this is Sophia.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sophia

  It’s already noon by the time I drag myself out of bed. Not that I have anything better to do.

  I woke up at 5:30 with the scene from outside the club playing over in my head. I almost made some coffee, but decided it would eliminate the only thing I have planned today, which is sleeping.

  But I can’t push that scuffle out of my mind.

  It’s not like it was my first physical encounter. Far from it.

  I knew when I joined the force that I’d be putting myself in harms way. Willingly. I’m lucky to have never been shot, but I’ve taken more than a few knocks. I can handle some physicality.

  What infuriates me is my own defensive reaction. Or lack thereof.

  Granted, I wasn’t entirely sober. Not an excuse, but certainly a factor. I don’t care about his size, on the job I would’ve taken that asshole down immediately. On the job, I would’ve had my gear. Things wouldn’t have escalated the way they did if I had my badge.

  And now that I think about it, that’s not what’s bothering me at all. It’s Noah.

  If Nora hadn’t decided to play actress, Noah and I would’ve never been interrupted and we would’ve never gone to wait outside in the first place.

  I trusted her when she said I needed a night out. And I probably did. But this is Nora’s fault. I would’ve been plenty happy to stay home and watch Law and Order all night. Now I’m hung up on him.

  His sarcasm.

  His laugh.

  His smile.

  His eyes.

  I feel like I was denied a chance at something special. He was special. Unlike any
one I’ve been with before. But here I am, the morning after nothing, romanticizing the idea of someone I met randomly in a club. Maybe this is exactly why I’m twenty-nine and single as can be.

  Though I can’t pretend this happens often. He deserves to be romanticized.

  But when I open my phone, my balloon of anticipation pops at the empty screen. Nothing. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, but after all that commotion I was expecting a quick text at the very least.

  Sherlock traces my steps down the stairs. We’re both irritated. His breakfast is nearing 6 hours late. The spoiled brat is used to getting his wet food right when I wake up for work, but that’s not our routine anymore.

  “Better start getting used to the suspended-life,” I tell him, reaching for a can of Fancy Feast from the pantry. Sherlock jumps onto the kitchen counter as I scoop his food.

  “Hey, get down,” I scold, scooting him until he jumps back off. “You know better.”

  I watch as he devours the entire can in under a minute.

  “You’re getting kind of chubby in your old age, you know that?”

  His eyes follow me expectantly after I pick up his plate. “Nope, no more. All gone. In fact, maybe we should get you on a diet.” He’s still weaving between my feet so I pick him up. “What do you think about that, huh? You’d hate me.”

  I settle him in my arms and comb through his fur. It’s twelve seventeen. I’ve been up for seventeen minutes and already feel like going back to sleep.

  This suspension is going to be the death of me.

  “Hey, you wanna go back to bed?” I let him down from my arms and whistle as I head for the stairs. His little footfalls follow all the way into my room.

  Before collapsing into bed, I set my phone and coffee on the bedside table. I’ve barely touched it. Sherlock waits a moment, then leaps up beside my feet.

  Maybe I’ll read while I try to finish that coffee and wake myself up a little bit.

  I bring Sherlock to my chest as I roll onto my side. He curls right under my chin. His purr is like a soothingly soft motor and I fall back asleep before even attempting to find a book.