A Girl's Best Friend (6 page)

Nodding, she snagged his keys out of his hand and crawled into the passenger seat of his SUV. If Tyrone’s parents knew, her parents would know, too. Thank God they were on a cruise, so she had a few weeks to prepare herself for her mom doing the
I want grandbabies
dance. Her parents loved Tyrone, so putting a stop to the steamroller that was her mother would be…traumatizing. She shuddered just thinking about it.

This madness had to stop. Right now.

She jolted when his door opened and he slid in beside her. “You need to go in?”

“Yeah.” He plucked the keys from her fingers, started the car, and pulled away quickly, taking the most direct route back to his house. “I don’t know how long this will take, but I hope I can make it back before midnight.”

“Okay.”

He slanted a sideways glance at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. His fingers tapped the steering wheel. “Stay the night. Be there when I get home.”

She shook her head. “I need to go home and change clothes. I think if I showed up to work twice in the same dress, even an airhead like Edith would suspect I didn’t make it home the night before. I’m not interested in doing the walk of shame at work. Because you
know
your mother already noticed.”

He chuckled. “I can’t say I wouldn’t like to wake you up in the morning by sliding inside that tight—”

They pulled up into his driveway and she hopped out before he could touch her, kiss her. Tempt her. “Go. And call me when you get home so I know you’re okay.”

“I will.” Confusion flashed in his eyes, but she shut the door in his face, turned and fled for her own vehicle. He may not know it yet, but she was walking away from more than just the evening. She winced as she climbed into her car, her backside still smarting from his spanking. Her pussy clenched at the power of the memory.

A tiny part of her heart bled knowing she’d never feel his hands on her skin again.

Chapter Three

It had been one hell of a night. His SWAT team had a man in intensive care. Someone had screwed up. Grit burned his eyes. Now that the adrenaline rush had passed, exhaustion slammed into him with the subtle force of a hurricane. He should be home in bed, but somehow he ended up knocking on Lorna’s door. It was midnight. Would she even be up?

Her door creaked open and his heart stopped at the look in her wide eyes. He stepped inside and wrapped his fingers around her upper arms. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She pulled away, twisting her pajama bottoms between her fingers and not meeting his gaze.

No, she wasn’t. Every protective instinct inside him went on high alert. His gaze swept the apartment, looking to see if something was out of place. Everything looked fine—until he glanced at what was on the television. It was the news coverage of the bank robbery gone wrong he’d just been at.
Sacramento SWAT officer in critical condition
trailed across the bottom of the screen. Now he understood the terrified look on Lorna’s face. Shit. “You shouldn’t be watching that. It’ll just make you crazy, baby.”

She sniffled and stepped further away from him. “I usually don’t, not when I know you’re on duty. But I needed some background noise tonight…and it was on every station.”

“Lorna—”

“Are you all right? I—it didn’t say who all was hurt, or if that one officer was the only casualty.”

He wanted to reach for her, but the way she stiffened held him back. “It was a guy on my team. The new rookie made a mistake and Brandon stepped in to save the kid’s ass and got shot. He should pull through.”

Her breath escaped on a ragged sigh. “His poor wife.”

His shoulders went rigid. Wariness flooded him. “He may never walk again, so I’m thinking his wife has fewer problems right now than he does.”

She waved her hand. “You think his wife isn’t freaking out right now? That his job doesn’t affect her as much as it does him? That’s the
dumbest
thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

Anger flashed somewhere deep inside him, like a dam had ruptured and the feeling rushed over him. This was his worst nightmare come to life again. Only it was with Lorna, the one woman he trusted with his life. His
best
friend. His fists balled at his sides and he spoke slowly, deliberately. “You’re sounding just like Sherona.”

“What the hell do you expect? You have a dangerous job where people die, and your loved ones have to pick up the pieces. And let’s not lie about this, either. You aren’t in SWAT just because you like to help folks, you’re also there because you’re an adrenaline junkie. You’re addicted to the thrill, and that means you don’t always think about how your job affects the people around you. Like me and your brothers and parents.” Squeezing her eyes closed for a moment, she didn’t manage to hide the sheen of tears there. It hit him hard, seeing her in pain. Her lips compressed into a flat line. A frisson of panic—of dread—wound through him when she spoke again. “It’s just a matter of time until something happens to you, too, isn’t it? You’re not invincible.
We
have to cope with that, not just you.” She shoved a hand through her hair. Hair he’d wound his fingers through just the night before. How had things gone from such a bright promise to
this
?

His breath hissed out as the painful truth rocketed through him. Something in him shriveled and died. His lips felt numb, like they didn’t want to form the words. “You can’t handle it. I thought since we’ve known each other so long, it would be different with you. But it’s not.”

“I was just worried, and you need to see that it’s okay for me to be worried about you.” She hugged her arms around herself. “Worrying doesn’t make me weak, Tyrone. It doesn’t have anything to do with handling or not handling your job, it means I
care
. But you don’t even see that, do you? You’re so wrapped up in all the shit Sherona put you through that you’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“But it’s just a matter of time until something happens to me, right? You don’t trust me to take care of myself, to carry out my duties safely. I’m not some Rambo jackass, Lorna. I’m a trained professional.” He rubbed the back of his neck, just wanting this over with. His mind still spun from the events of the day, his friend being shot, the floor of the bank splattered with Brandon’s blood. No one on SWAT liked to think about the dangers of the job. It made them sloppy. It made them scared. Fear could focus an officer, hone his senses to the sharpness of blades, but if he thought too long about how badly he could be injured and what getting hurt would do to his family…well, he was done. That was when burnout happened. When an officer was so torn up over the stress of his job and how that stress affected the people he loved, then it was time to retire and become a desk jockey. And Tyrone wasn’t ready for that. He was good at his work, he liked it.

Maybe it wasn’t meant to happen for him—finding someone. He’d made that decision when things had gone south with Sherona, but Lorna had given him hope. She’d known him before he was SWAT, had been his friend since then…he’d assumed she could deal with it, that she had been dealing with it for years. Now she wanted to get pissed about him being an adrenaline junkie? Now she wanted to call him insensitive? It was just like Sherona. Things went just fine and then suddenly his job made him an asshole. It was too much the same, he couldn’t even think beyond that. The same. And over way too soon. Lorna didn’t even see that, though. She wanted to claim he was overreacting. He didn’t think so. He snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. “And am I really
blowing this out of proportion
? Then why have you been running since this morning? Let’s be real, Lorna. You don’t want to be with me because I’m SWAT.”

Those tears welled in her eyes again, threatening to spill over. Frustration settled over her face like a mask. “It’s
nothing
like that, Tyrone. I’m not the girl for you. We’re just friends, and I’m—you know what I look like!”

He jerked his chin to the side. No way was he letting her get away with that. “Yeah, I do know. And you’re the only one who has a problem with it. You’re using that as a lame excuse. We both know what’s going on here.”

She shook her head so hard her hair flew around her in a burnished cloud. Her arms folded tighter around herself. “It’s easy to overlook stuff when the sex is good, but we both know you’ll end up with someone who looks like Sherona. Not one who
acts
like her, but one who
looks
that good.”

“You’re not even hearing what I’m saying.” His fingers reached out to close around her bicep.

She shook her head again. “You’re the one who’s not listening.”

“Why did you even agree to sleep with me in the first place? I didn’t force any of this on you.” The numbness was wearing off and the anger came roaring back, fueled by disappointment. In himself for hoping, in her for not fulfilling those hopes. “So what was I? Some fuckfest on the way to Mr. Right? Now you can settle down with some boring office type you think can deal with your weight, and I was just a bad decision you made along the way.”

Her eyes rounded. “Don’t say it like that. You’re making it sound ugly.”

“I call it like I see it, Lorna.” He gave a tight shrug. “You know that. And I’m not looking to be your mistake. Friends don’t do that to each other.”

Now rage sparkled in her gaze, and she poked a finger at his chest. “And who the hell are you to make me feel guilty, Mr. No Strings Attached? You expect me to believe this is so deep and permanent for you? You don’t do serious since Sherona. Everyone knows that.”

“Not serious, huh? How’s this for not serious?” He shoved his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out something small, and shoved it into her palm. It sparkled in the lamplight. He watched her breath catch when she recognized it. The diamond ring she’d loved so much at the photo shoot. Some piece of insanity had made him stop off at Carraway’s this afternoon and ask about it. They had one in her size. He hadn’t even known why he was buying it, when he would give it to her, but in a moment of sheer clarity he realized that she was the only woman for him. Whatever excuses he had burned away, and he knew he was so deeply in love with her that he’d never escape. And he didn’t want to.

He thought he could ease her into it, but now he wasn’t so sure. If she couldn’t live with him on SWAT, then she wasn’t the woman he thought she was. Bitter pain swamped him so fast it made his teeth lock. He couldn’t even think past the agony ripping through his chest.

“Tyrone, I—” Her breath escaped in a rush.

“Yeah. I was planning to sit down and tell you I want us to be together for the rest of our lives. I want us to be friends and lovers until we’re old and gray. Stupid of me, right?” Damn her for making him love her. And damn him for setting himself up for this.

Tears welled up in her eyes, a deep misery he didn’t understand stamped on her face. But he knew it was his fault. “I just…I never thought…”

“I just realized something though.” He shrugged and turned away, so she couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t see how badly this hurt him. “It’s always going to be something, isn’t it? We’re always going to let something get in the way. Your weight, our friendship, my job. I was ready to try, but you aren’t. This isn’t what you want, baby.
I’m
not who you want. I get it…I finally get it.”

And then he did the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life. He walked away from the only woman he could ever love. If he stayed, he’d only cause her pain like he had Sherona, but he didn’t think he’d ever recover if Lorna loved him and left him.

He had to save his best friend from himself.

* * *

Diamond’s bark sounded from the doorway of the warehouse. Lorna spun around, her heart pounding. Was he here? Had he come? She had no idea what she would say to him, but she wanted to see him so badly it pulled at her very soul. The way they’d left things last night had shredded her. She’d lain awake all night, torturing herself with the details of their fight. They’d argued before, but not like that. Not the kind of parting that felt like forever.

What would she do without him? He was her rock. How could she live with a part of her suddenly ripped away? And not by death, but by her own actions. She’d said he was going to be injured someday—as though it was inevitable that he end up the way his teammate had, broken and fighting to survive. She knew that wasn’t true, no matter how dangerous his job was. His father was proof of that. He’d been on SWAT for years before he’d been promoted out of the teams. She wanted to kick herself. God, she was so stupid. She’d been so freaked out about what had happened between them, she hadn’t even thought about how it might affect him that his friend had just been hospitalized. Not the best time for a relationship-defining argument. And she’d called
him
insensitive. She’d said
he
overreacted. Yeah, it was all him. She had no part in that totally screwed up mess.
You’re a hypocrite, Lorna
.

She wove through the people crowding the photo shoot to try to see him. He would be taller than almost everyone here. Please let him be here. She needed to talk to him so badly, needed to fix things between them. Diamond barked again and she stepped around a couple of models, hope making her heart hammer. If he was here everything would be all right. They would work this out, get back to where they’d been before all this started. Somehow.

She needed him so much. She would do anything to make it better. A day of recklessness shouldn’t kill over a decade of friendship. They just needed to pretend this was all one big nightmare. It would all be okay then. It had to be.

Her gaze landed on Marion Forrester standing with Tyrone’s Dalmatian on a leash. Disappointment flooded Lorna until she almost whimpered from the pain of it. Tears pressed at her lids as she approached Tyrone’s mother.

Marion dropped Diamond’s leash and held out her arms. Lorna hurried forward to bury her face in the older woman’s shoulder. Marion steered them outside and away from the crowd. Lorna tightened her grip, inhaling the familiar comfort of the other woman’s magnolia perfume. “He said I couldn’t take it. His job. I freaked out on him last night. He was so mad. We’ve never fought like that before. Never.”