Guilty Pleasure (Protect and Serve Book 3) Read online

  Again, hell if I knew. I hadn’t planned for last night to happen, but that didn’t have to mean that it was a mistake. It didn’t have to be some deep dark secret that we didn’t talk about, that we ignored every time we were alone together. I didn’t think Veronica would have the strength to pretend like that… and I sure didn’t, either. I would never again look at her without remembering the way her skin had felt underneath my hand, the way her mouth—and every other part of her—had tasted when I devoured her.

  “I don’t know,” I finally confessed, “but more than just ‘thanks for the good time.’”

  Veronica opened her mouth to say something but stopped, a sudden look of fear on her face. I turned to look behind her and froze, staring straight into her dad’s confused face.

  Chapter Three

  Veronica

  Oh shit. My dad was standing in the lobby of the hotel, his arms crossed in front of him like he was trying to look tough. He looked between Finn and me for a few moments, then gave me a once-over look, clearly aware that I was still wearing the same fancy dress I’d worn to the ceremony last night. For his part, Finn was all dressed up too, of course, though his tie hung down around his neck and the top buttons of his dress shirt were undone.

  “Hey guys, what’s up?” my dad asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Dad, hey. What are you doing here?” I asked, stalling for time while I thought of any possible explanation.

  “I had to bring a new check down here today, the one the precinct had used to pay for the ballroom had a mistake on it,” he answered slowly. “But how come you guys are here… on a Saturday morning? And dressed like that?”

  “Oh, you remember my friend Beth who came with me last night?” I said, a slightly believable story coming to mind. “Well, she… had a little too much to drink last night. It got pretty bad there for a minute, and Finn helped me get her home. We ended up pulling babysitting duty all night, it was actually kinda sad.”

  My dad looked at me and nodded slowly, then looked at Finn as though waiting for his version of events.

  “Yeah, so after she woke up this morning and we got some food and ibuprofen in her, I drove Veronica back here to get her car,” Finn added offhandedly.

  “Yeah. See?” I said, holding up my car keys. “We were just leaving. You should have called me and told me you had to come down here, I’d have been glad to come get that check and bring it on my way.”

  My dad looked at both of us for a few seconds longer, just long enough that I started to worry he wasn’t buying it, but then he smiled. “Well, Beth has always had a bit of a wild streak. I’m sad to hear she hasn’t outgrown it at her age. Anyway, you did good looking out for her, not letting her drive home and that kind of thing. Go home and get some rest, and for pete’s sake, take a shower and change your clothes!”

  My dad laughed and wandered off in search of the hotel manager, leaving me to finally let go of the breath I’d been holding. Finn raked a hand through his hair, exhaling loudly.

  “That wasn’t good,” he finally said.

  “Yeah, and it’s just a taste of things to come if we were to try to keep this going,” I said, agreeing with him but answering a little more sharply than I’d meant to. I softened my tone and said, “That was just lying to my dad, something I’ve done a few more times than I’m proud to admit.”

  “No, Veronica, that was also lying to your Captain,” Finn reminded me with a raised eyebrow.

  “That’s true. But to be fair, my Captain doesn’t get to ask me how I spent my Friday night if it doesn’t involve being on duty,” I replied. “Just one of the perks of being a police officer under my dad’s command.”

  “Yeah, but try being a police officer under your best friend’s command… and then sleeping with that best friend’s daughter.” Finn shot me a look before scanning the crowd to make sure my dad wasn’t coming back this way. “That’s why this can’t happen again.”

  “Try being sixteen years old and having not only your dad but his best friend and your older brother the cop monitoring your every move,” I snapped. “I couldn’t get a date all through high school thanks to the three of you. And now apparently, I can’t even date you.”

  Finn looked at me sympathetically for a moment, and there was a second there where I thought he might apologize. Instead, he shrugged.

  “We were just protecting someone very special to us. And no, we can’t date. We could never explain it in a million years,” he said in a low voice. “Come on, let’s go ‘get your car’ or whatever you told Henry.”

  We made it out to the parking lot and Finn walked me to my car, even though I told him he didn’t have to do that. I guess it was the closest thing he could get to being chivalrous and walking me out since this wasn’t our homes. Luckily, my dad emerged from the hotel not long after and came towards us, sparing Finn and me any awkward “do we kiss or shake hands or are we just not gonna do that” goodbyes.

  “See you Monday,” Finn said as I unlocked my car.

  “Yeah, see you.” I nodded, already giving my dad a little half wave.

  Finn didn’t walk away for a moment, and I wondered if he was just being gentlemanly and waiting until I was in my car. I climbed in and shut the door then turned on the car, and he was still standing there expectantly.

  “Watch your feet there, I have to back out of the spot now,” I said, rolling my window down a little bit and meaning for him to step back.

  Instead of moving away, Finn leaned down until he could look me in the eye, bracing his hands on my car door. “I’m sorry, Veronica, really. But this has to stop here.”

  ***

  Finn

  By Monday morning, I was ready to climb the walls in frustration. I’d done nothing but think about Veronica all weekend, alternating between replaying our unbelievable one night together in my mind and worrying about how this was going to affect us at work.

  I was right to be worried.

  Monday was weird, but fine. Veronica showed up before me and was already at a desk filling out some paperwork when I arrived. She smiled, but not too much, and greeted me like she always does. It was… eerie. How could she be so calm about this, like nothing had happened?

  The rest of the week was murder. Riding out on patrol with her sitting in the seat beside me, knowing what a glorious physique was hidden beneath layers of standard-issue uniforms and Kevlar, was driving me wild. Through it all, Veronica didn’t mention our weekend together but she also didn’t avoid talking to me. She made small talk, told a few stories about her family, that kind of thing.

  There was nothing to make anyone think she had anything on her mind, least of all me. Officers came and went past her desk and she talked and smiled with them like everything was fine.

  But it wasn’t fine, at least not for me.

  By Friday, it was driving me mad how unaffected she seemed to be. I ached to hold her in my arms, my fingers burning with the need to touch her skin or a tendril of her hair again.

  “Hey Ronnie,” another officer called out as he sauntered into the bullpen where a bunch of us sat around finishing our weekly reports, and for a moment I was confused. Who was Ronnie?

  Then it hit me. Officer Lopez beelined for the desk where Veronica was working, sitting casually on the edge of it and smiling down at her.

  Ronnie. Veronica. That punk had given her a nickname. Or had she always answered to Ronnie, but only humored me when I called her “V” all this time?

  I narrowed my eyes as I watched them talking and joking, Veronica’s laugh drifting over the whole scene. The pen I held in my fist complained as I squeezed the cheap plastic to keep from shouting at him to get away from her, to leave her alone.

  As they talked, Veronica happened to glance in my direction by mistake. She did a double-take, returning her gaze to the look of pure rage I must have been wearing. It seemed to surprise her, maybe even frighten her a little. Once she’d recovered, though, a new, unmistakable emotion took hold of her:
fury.

  Veronica returned my glare for a split second then turned her attention back to Lopez. She leaned her elbow on her desk and put her chin in her hand, listening to him tell some very animated story.

  I’d had enough. I slammed my folder shut and pushed back from my desk before storming out of the room. Down the hall, I managed to make it to the break room and grab a bottle of water before I could make an idiot of myself. I paced the room angrily while I downed the cold water, hoping it would jolt me out of this rage before I could do something stupid.

  The door behind me opened and I slowed down my walk, trying to appear laid back. Just a man having a drink of water, nothing to see here.

  “What was that about?” Veronica asked behind me, causing me to jump a little. A bit of water sloshed on the front of my shirt, sending an icy stream down my chest.

  “What was what?” I asked, turning around to face her and leaning against the counter top behind me. Without moving, I poured the last drops of water in the sink and dropped the bottle in the recycling bin at the end of the counter.

  “The nasty look? The staring? What is that?” she asked.

  I could hear the hurt in her voice and I felt like the worst kind of jerk. But that didn’t erase the image of Officer Lopez with his leg thrown over the edge of V’s desk, talking and laughing with her.

  “So you and Lopez?” I demanded.

  Veronica only shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Great. Tell me, you planning to fuck your way through the entire precinct?”

  She didn’t even wince. “Only the guys. I’m not into women.”

  I stared at her hard, knowing that her snappy reply was just a comeback to my highly insulting and inappropriate question. I took a deep breath and held it, not trusting myself to say anything else.

  “Are we done, or would you like to know any other personal business? Maybe what brand of tampons I buy or how often I shave my legs?” Veronica asked, her voice taking on an accusing tone.

  “Yeah, just one more question. What happened? Everything was so right between us only a week ago, and now we can barely speak to each other, let alone work together,” I said, grasping for some kind of understanding.

  “That was your doing, Finn,” Veronica reminded me, but her words weren’t hateful now. “Whether you meant it or not, you broke my heart.”

  “How? You agreed with me, this could never work,” I answered, trying to understand.

  “No, I never agreed. I simply didn’t argue. I may not have that much experience with men, but I do know that you can’t force a man to keep what he doesn’t want.”

  “You think… you actually believe I don’t want you?” I said, lowering my voice and taking a step closer to her.

  Veronica had to look up to meet my eye. At any moment, the door could have opened and we would have been completely busted. There wouldn’t be any way to explain that it wasn’t how it looked, me looming over Veronica with a starved look in my eye, her looking up at me only inches away, searching for answers.

  “What do you want, Finn?” she whispered, blinking once.

  “I want you, Veronica. I want you to be mine completely, to belong to me, for me to be the only man you want to talk to or laugh with or who makes you bite your lip nervously when you look him in the eye,” I said, my gaze falling to her mouth.

  Veronica’s eyes went wide and she swallowed nervously. I could hear her breath coming faster, but she didn’t answer.

  “Why? Is that what you wanted to hear?” I asked, toying with her.

  She shook her head, her eyes taking on that angry spark once again. “So this is some kind of joke to you? Messing with my emotions but getting angry when I try to put you out of my mind?”

  “I wasn’t finished,” I said, standing even closer, close enough that our bodies nearly met. “I was going to say, all of those things aren’t even a fraction of what I feel for you. They don’t come close to describing how much I want you.”

  “In your bed, you mean,” she clarified, raising an eyebrow suspiciously.

  “No. In my life,” I said evenly, meeting her gaze without looking away. “For the rest of my life.”

  Chapter Four

  Veronica

  I was about to come unglued. Finn’s eyes bored into mine with an intensity that I couldn’t look away from. He was close enough for me to reach out and grab, and it took all my willpower to keep my hands balled into fists at my side rather than grab him by the front of his uniform and pull him to me.

  Before I could reply—and thankfully, before I could do something super physical and really foolish—his phone buzzed at his hip. He seemed disgruntled about looking down at it right now, then swore under his breath. Answering the call, I distinctly heard him say, “Hey Captain, what’s up?” before walking out of the break room.

  I immediately collapsed into a chair at one of the tables and tried to steady my breathing. What had he just said? For the rest of his life? That didn’t sound like a spontaneous Friday night in a luxury hotel room. That sounded a whole lot more permanent.

  How would that even work?

  The bigger question was did I even want that, to which I could only scream, “YES!” My longtime crush on Finn wasn’t only physical. That may have been what first piqued my sixteen-year-old curiosity, but all this time, I’d gotten to know Finn in a way that most women don’t get to know a man they’re in love with. I’d gotten to see him at his best and his worst, thanks to his closeness to my family. I’d seen him getting promotions and saving lives, I’d seen him recovering from the death of his last partner. I hadn’t really known him that well when my mother died such a long time ago, but I’d certainly clung to him like a lifeline thrown to a drowning person when my brother was killed and my dad shut down in his grief.

  Losing Jacob was the hardest thing I’d ever experienced, even harder than losing my mom in some ways. Her death to cancer was slow and not unexpected, and I’d been just a kid. It was awful, of course… but different.

  But Jacob… maybe because I’d needed him so much more than most people need their siblings, his death had destroyed me for a while. With Mom gone and Dad working such long hours, he and I had been closer than most siblings. Even worse, losing him to a violent criminal while serving his community had set a fire inside me that drove me to become a police officer.

  And I wasn’t going to throw away my hard work and my brother’s memory over a relationship that could never go anywhere.

  “Hey kiddo,” my dad called out, opening the door to the breakroom. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, a sheepish grin on his face. “Sorry, old habit. I mean, Officer Miller. Are you packed yet?”

  “Packed?” I asked, turning to look at him and trying not to let him see my muddled emotions.

  “For the cabin?” he said, raising an eyebrow at my confusion.

  “Oh crap. I forgot all about it,” I confessed. How could I have been sitting here thinking about Jacob not two minutes ago, then forget that we always go to our family’s cabin on his birthday! “I guess with the new job I didn’t think I’d have any time off.”

  “Yeah, but I checked with your boss and he said he knew this was a scheduled trip before you took the job,” Dad said, winking at me. “Besides, you’ll only really miss one day. It’s a three-day weekend, and you’ll be back on the job Wednesday.”

  “Right. Okay, well, I’ll go straight home from work and pack my things,” I said, standing up and straightening my uniform.

  “Sounds good. I’ll swing by and pick you up around 6:00.” Dad smiled and left the room, and I felt like a total jerk for forgetting. Everything had been so crazy lately—from the new job to getting shot to meeting Brant and then whatever that was with Finn—that it had slipped my mind completely.

  Secretly, our annual trip was just a way of making sure that neither of us had to be alone on Jacob’s birthday, to pretend that it was about going to his favorite place. Instead, it was really about helpi
ng us both make it through that day with our sanity and sobriety mostly intact.

  I owed it to my dad to just be with him this weekend, to spend a few days remembering the good times. It was the least I could do for the only family I had left.

  As promised, Dad picked me up and we headed north out of the city. The cabin was a little over an hour away, so we pulled through for some fast food and ate on the road. By the time we got there, we were both able to shed some of the stress of the work week—my stress undoubtedly very different from my dad’s—and relax, looking forward to a week of quiet ahead of us.

  Inside the old cabin, my dad lit an oil lamp and got a fire going in the fireplace while I brought our stuff in from the car. The property had been in my dad’s family for six generations, and only the barest of essential upgrades had been put in over the years. There was a real toilet and corner shower in the bathroom, and a small but functioning stove and oven in the kitchen alongside an old refrigerator, the kind with the metal handle that wasn’t safe for kids to be around because they could get locked inside.

  Other than that, the place was mostly unchanged. There were six bedrooms, including the enormous loft that overlooked the main living area down below. Some relative had built it for the family to actually live in, then over the years, it had turned into the perfect family getaway. It was rich with history, but only the kind that my relatives would care about.

  And Finn, apparently.

  Just as Dad and I were finally settling back in front of the fire with our shoes off and our beers open, the glow of a set of headlights slid across the ceiling overhead. I looked at Dad expectantly, but he just stood up and went to the door. He opened it and called out to someone: “Glad you finally made it!”

  Somehow, I knew who it was without even waiting to see his face. Only minutes later, Finn walked in. I would have been angry that this was some kind of setup, but I got the impression he didn’t know I would be here either.

  “Hey Henry,” Finn said before nodding at me. “Veronica.”