Angels Fall

wisdom of telling him the truth. And the truth, she decided, would sound, at the moment, like nonsense. "It was nothing. It doesn't matter. Do you interrogate everyone who has words with the hotel's desk clerk, or is it just me?" His face hardened. "I've got a job to do, Reece. You don't have to like how I do it. Now I've got to sort through this mess. I may need to talk to you again tomorrow."
    "Then I'm free to go?"
    "You are. You want Doc to look at that cheek?"
    "No." She got to her feet. "I didn't start what happened tonight, and I didn't finish it. I just got caught in it." She turned for the door.
    "You've got a habit of getting caught in things. And, Reece, if you jump and swing every tune you see orange, we're going to have a problem."
    She just kept going. She wanted to go home where she could burn off her anger and humiliation in private.
    But first, she noted, she'd have to get through Brody.
    Since he was sitting in one of the visitors' chairs in the outer office, legs stretched out, eyes half closed, she tried to simply go around him.
    "Hold on there, Slim." He got lazily to his feet. "Let's have a look at that face."'
    "Nothing to see."
    He got to the door first, closed his hand around the handle, then just leaned on it. "You smell like the barroom floor."
    "I spent some time on it tonight. Will you excuse me?"
    He opened the door, then curled his fingers around her arm the minute they were outside. "Let's not go through the ridiculous routine about you walking home alone. It's late, I'm driving." Since most of her body ached, including the knee she must have fallen on during the scuttle, she didn't bother to argue. "Fine. What are you doing here?"
    "Linda-gail called me in case you needed somebody to post bail." He pulled open the passenger-side door. "You sure keep life interesting."
    "I didn't  do  anything."

    "You stick with that."
    She stewed until he'd skirted the hood and climbed behind the wheel. "You think this is funny?"
    "It has several of the classic elements necessary for farce. Yeah, I think it's funny. The only other woman I've ever had to spring from the cops was a stripper I knew back in Chicago who beaned a guy with a beer bottle when he got a little overenthusiastic during a lap dance at a bachelor's party. She was a lot more grateful than you."
    "Linda-gail's the one who called you, not me." Reece folded her arms, and wished desperately for ice and aspirin. "And it's her fault anyway. None of this would've happened if she hadn't gotten a wild hair to make Lo jealous."
    "Why'd she do that?"
    "Because she's in love with him."
    "She's in love with Lo, so she incited a bar fight. Makes perfect sense." In the bizarro World women lived in. "Okay, Slim, your place or mine?"
    "Mine. You can drop me off and consider your Good Samaritan duties at an end." He started to drive, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. "Do you want to know why I got out of bed and came to get you when Linda-gail called?"
    Reece closed her eyes. "Because you have a need to play savior for strippers and lunatics."
    "Maybe. Maybe I care about you."
    "Maybe you do. Let me know when you decide."
    "Damn it, you know I care about you. Why else would I have been lying awake in bed cursing you when your partner in crime called?"
    "I couldn't say."
    "I think about you. It gets in my way." Resentment rippled in his voice. "You get in my way."
    "As this is the second time you've popped up in front of me tonight. I'd say you're getting in my way." She stirred enough to shift in her seat when he pulled up behind her car. "You wanted me out of your house. I left. You wanted me to back up. back off, I did. Your whim changes, Brody, that's not my problem."
    "Hard-ass," he retaliated. "I felt squeezed this morning. You start off with Italian wedding soup, for God's sake."
    "What's wrong with Italian wedding soup? It was one of my specialties when… Oh, you idiot. Wedding? You shudder in fear of the word?"
    He very nearly squirmed. "Nobody's shuddering."

    "I'm going to make soup and you get it into your pinhead that I'm picking out the china? Jerk." She started to yank the door handle, but he leaned over her, clamped his hand on hers. He preferred being pissed off to squirming. "Making the bed, offering to do my laundry. What do I want for breakfast." She put her tree hand on his chest, shoved. "I slept in the bed, so I made it. You let me stay at your place when I needed a sanctuary, and I was doing laundry anyway. I