Fatal Series 01 - Fatal Affair

pleasure. Don’t work too hard.”
    When she was alone, Sam had to resist the urge to call her sisters to share the huge scoop that had just fallen into her lap. “Not my news to tell,” she muttered, deciding that maturity wasn’t much fun at all.
    While Celia’s news had surprised her, Sam realized it shouldn’t have. With hindsight, she could see there was something special between her father and his devoted nurse. Their banter, the carefree caresses Celia showered him with even though he couldn’t feel them, the genuine affection.
    Comforted by Celia’s disclosures, Sam finished the pie and turned back to her report. She ran through it twice more before she sent it off to Freddie, who always checked them for her before she passed them up the food chain. If he wondered about the random mistakes, odd phrasings or twisted wording, he never said. Rather, he corrected the errors and returned the reports to her without comment.
    Might be time to bring him into the loop , she thought. Dyslexia had cast its long net over every corner of her life, and until its diagnosis in sixth grade, she had believed herself to be as stupid as she was made to feel by teachers who had no idea what to do with her and parents who had been frustrated by her less-than-stellar performance in school.
    Giving it a name had helped somewhat, but the daily struggles that went along with it were exhausting at times.
    With the report finished, she finally allowed her thoughts to drift to Nick. As if floodgates had opened, she was overwhelmed by emotions and yearnings she had managed to resist all day. She had a list of questions she wanted to run by him, so she had every reason to take out the card he had given her. The call was about the case, right? There was nothing wrong with reaching out to him in a strictly official capacity. If she was also dying to tell him about her promotion and her father’s pending marriage, what did that matter?
    She flipped the card back and forth between her fingers for several minutes until her stomach twisted with the start of the dreaded pain. Thinking of the case and only the case, she dialed his cell number.
    He sounded groggy when he answered.
    “Oh God, did I wake you?”
    “No, no.” A huge yawn made a liar out of him. “I was hoping you’d call.”
    Deciding to keep it strictly business, she said, “I have some questions. About the case.”
    “Oh.”
    She winced at the disappointment reverberating from that single syllable. “You sound…I don’t know…kind of lousy.”
    “It’s been a lousy day, except for the very beginning when I was with you.”
    Without saying much of anything he had managed to say it all. And she knew she couldn’t tell him what she needed to tell him over the phone. “You’re at home?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Do you mind if I come by? Just for a minute?”
    “Are you at home?”
    “At the moment.”
    “You’re just going to ‘drop by’ all the way over here in Arlington? And only for a minute?”
    “I need to talk to you, Nick. I need… Oh hell, I don’t even know what I need.”
    “Come. I’ll be waiting. And babe? You don’t ever, ever have to ask first. Got me?”
    She melted into a sloppy, messy puddle of need and want and desire. “Yeah,” she managed to say. “I’ll be there. Soon.” Her heart doing back flips, Sam reached for her weapon, badge and cuffs. She released her hair to brush out the kinks and primped for a few more minutes before she headed downstairs to tell her dad she was going into work for a while. Celia told her he was already asleep.
    “He was especially tired tonight.” She held Sam’s coat for her. “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
    “Always.” Impulsively, she turned to kiss Celia’s cheek on her way to the front door. “See you.”

    He’d turned on the outside light for her. A simple thing, but it evoked such a powerful sense of homecoming that Sam sat there for several minutes reminding herself of why she was there—and why she wasn’t. “It can’t be about you,” she whispered. “Not now. This is about finding justice for John O’Connor. Nothing more.”
    But when Nick came to the door looking so…well… lost was the best word she could think of, nothing else mattered but him.
    “Nick.” Closing the door behind her, she let her coat drop to the floor and reached for him.
    They stood there, arms wrapped around each other, comfort seeping through to warm the chill she had brought in with