Northern Lights

coins as Meg swept them away. Then he lifted his chin, pushed back his chair as Nate stepped in from the lobby. "Chief ?"
    Meg jerked around. She'd sat facing the outside door, waiting to pounce the minute he opened it. Instead, she thought sourly, he'd snuck in behind her.
    "Could use some coffee, Charlene."
    "It's good and hot." She filled a large mug. "I can fix you a meal. That'd be good and hot, too."
    "No, thanks."
    "Where are my dogs?" Meg demanded.
    "In the lobby. Otto, I ran into Hopp and some others outside. Consensus is the river looks like it's going to hold, but we'll need to keep an eye on it. No more than a light snow coming down now. Forecasters say this system's going to head west, so we're probably in the clear."
    He drank down half the coffee, held the mug out to Charlene for a refill. "It's flooded over on Lake Shore. Peter and I put hazard markers up there and across from the east edge of Rancor Woods."
    "Those two spots are a problem if too many people piss on the side of the road," Otto told him. "The system goes west, we won't have a problem in town."
    "We'll keep an eye," Nate repeated and turned toward the stairs.
    "Just one damn minute. Chief. " Meg stood in the doorway, a dog on either side. "I've got some things to say to you."
    "I need a shower. You can say them while I'm cleaning up, or you can wait."
    Her lips peeled back into a snarl as he carried his coffee up the steps. "Wait, my ass."
    She stomped up behind him, the dogs in her wake.
    "Who do you think you are?"
    "I think I'm chief of police."
    "I don't care if you're chief of the known universe, you don't get off snapping at me, ordering me, threatening me."
    "I did get off. But I wouldn't have had to do any of those things if you'd just done what I told you."
    "What you told me?" She shoved into the room behind him. You don't tell me. You're not my boss or my father. Just because I've slept with you doesn't give you the right to tell me what to do."
    He yanked off his soaked jacket, then tapped the badge on his shirt. "No, but this does." He peeled off the shirt on the way to the bathroom.
    He was still someone else, she thought. The someone else who'd lived behind those sad eyes, just waiting to muscle his way out. That someone was hard and cold. Dangerous.
    She heard the shower start up. Both dogs continued to stand, their heads cocked at they looked up at her.
    "Lie down," she murmured.
    She marched into the bathroom. Nate was sitting on the toilet lid, fighting off wet boots.
    "You sic Otto on me like some sort of guard dog and leave me waiting damn near three hours. Three hours where I don't know what's going on."
    He looked at her, dead in the face, with eyes like flint. "I had work and more important things to do than keep you updated. You want the news?" He set the boots aside, rose to strip off his pants. "Turn on the radio."
    "Don't you talk to me like I'm some sort of whiny, irritating female."
    He stepped into the shower, ripped the curtain shut after him. "Then stop acting like one."
    God, he needed the heat. Nate pressed his hands to the tile, dipped his head and let the hot water pour over him. An hour or two of it, he estimated, it might just reach his tired, frozen bones. A bottle or two of aspirin, parts of him might stop aching. Three or four days of sleep might just counteract the fatigue that trudging through icy flood water, hauling barricades, watching a grown man and woman weep over their murdered dog had drenched him with.
    Part of him wanted the quiet, the quiet dark that he could sink into where none of it really mattered. And part of him was afraid he'd find his way back there, all too easily.
    When he heard the curtain draw back again, he stayed as he was, arms braced, head down, eyes shut. "You don't want to fight with me now, Meg. You'll lose."
    "I'll tell you something, Burke, I don't like being shuffled off like a petty annoyance. I don't like being ignored. Ordered around. I'm not sure I like the way you looked outside Town Hall tonight. So I couldn't see anything I recognized on your face, in your eyes. It pisses me off. And . . ."
    She slid her arms around him, pressed her naked body to his so that he jerked straight. "It stirs me up."
    "Don't." He clasped his hands over hers, prying hers apart before he turned to hold her at arm's length. "Just don't."
    Deliberately she looked down. Deliberately she smiled as she looked up again. "Seems to be a contradiction here."
    "I don't want to hurt you,