“Don’t say cute. Don’t even think about it.”

“I wouldn’t dare. I know better by now.” He caressed her face and disposed of her tears with a minimum of fuss. “I want to watch your belly get all big and round. I want to be there when you bring this little person into the world. I want to sleep with you every night and laugh with you and put up with you imitating my accent—badly, I might add.”

“I do a great Avery Hill.”

“Keep telling yourself that, darlin’. I want you to remember something else too.”

“What’s that?”

“I changed my opinion of the color pink for you.”

Shelby didn’t want to laugh, but a gurgle escaped nonetheless. He had, in fact, come around on the pink issue.

With a finger to her chin, he compelled her to meet the sexy golden gaze that had made her want to drool from the first time she ever laid eyes on him. “You forgive me?”

“I want to, and I hate myself for that.”

“Why do you hate yourself?”

“Because. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had, and I don’t want it to end. But I also want to be able to respect myself. You kept something big from me—something I had a right to know. That doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t.”

“This isn’t the FBI, Avery. If you want me, really want me, I won’t put up with secrets and intrigue. That’s not what I want. I’d rather be alone than be with someone I can’t trust. I deserve better, and not just from you but from two people I consider my friends as well as my employers.”

“You’re right, I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry you were hurt because of me. Your knees and your heart.”

“It’s very evolved of you to actually use the word ‘sorry’. That right there makes this different from any relationship I’ve ever been in.”

“I promise I’m not just telling you what you want to hear, Shelby.” He leaned in slowly, his eyes open and fixed on her, and kissed her. “Kiss me back.”

“I’m not ready to.”

“When will you be ready?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Oh, that smile did crazy things to his sexy face. She was powerless against that smile.

He kept kissing her, subtle brushes of his lips over hers, teasing her with far less than he was capable of. “How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“How do the knees feel?”

“Not so good.”

He took hold of her hands, which were also bruised and scraped. Then he pressed gentle kisses to each palm. “I called in to work. I’m staying home tomorrow to take care of you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It is to me.”

“I have to work tomorrow.”

“You’re going to call them and tell them you got hurt and that you need to take a sick day. And then you’re going to stay here with me, snuggled under this blanket my sister got me for Christmas. Then you’re going to let me make it up to you by torturing me with a full day of your favorite chick flicks.”

“You have no idea what you’re in for. Do the words Legally Blonde mean anything at all to you?”

“Not yet, but after tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be fully indoctrinated.”

He put his arms around her and Shelby leaned her head against his chest. After all these years of navigating the dating game, you’d think she’d have a better handle on whether or not she should give him another chance. That he’d sincerely apologized and assured her that whatever he’d felt for Sam was in the past now went a long way toward soothing the ache inside her.

But she’d have to talk to Sam and Nick about this situation at some point, and the thought of that made her feel sick. She loved them both. That they could’ve kept something like this from her surprised and hurt her.

“Let’s go to bed, darlin’,” Avery said.

When he slid his arms under her, intending to carry her upstairs to his bedroom, Shelby looped hers around his neck. She’d deal with her employers tomorrow.

* * *

Because the punch had broken bones in her face and around her eye, doctors decided to keep Elin in the hospital overnight. They gave her something to help her sleep and after she was settled in a room upstairs, she conked out. Freddie sat by her bedside, staring at her bruised and swollen face, seething over how it had come to be that way.

That she had kept something so important from him for a month made him crazy. A guy had been hassling her, and she didn’t think he needed to know? Just when he thought he had this relationship thing figured out, something happened to remind him he was in way over his head with her and had been from the beginning.

He could still remember the first time he’d laid eyes on her during the O’Connor investigation when he’d had to listen to her describe the kind of wild sex she’d had with the dead senator. He’d wanted her madly then and nothing had changed in the year since.

It was exactly a year today since he went to find her at the gym, thinking of New Year’s resolutions that had nothing to do with working out and everything to do with getting the incredibly sexy Elin Svendsen into his life and his bed. No one had been more surprised than he was that she was equally attracted to him. This woman who could have anyone actually wanted him.

A lifetime of abstinence had melted away in one life-changing night with her. He’d put everything on the line for her—his faith, his close relationship with the single mother who’d raised him and most important, his heart. It had been totally and absolutely worth it. Now they lived in an apartment they’d chosen together.

Freddie loved coming home to her every night. He loved sleeping with her and weekends with her and making love with her. So it killed him to know she’d been troubled and bothered by someone and hadn’t told her boyfriend the cop. What did it mean for them that she could’ve kept something like that from him for so long?

While she’d been getting a CT scan earlier, he’d called HQ to find out the status of the man who’d hit her. He was in the cooler awaiting arraignment in the morning. Freddie kept telling himself his place was at the hospital with her and that he shouldn’t leave her for any reason.

But as her face continued to swell and the bruises turned a dark, vicious purple that matched the rage that had been festering inside him all night, he knew he couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing. Bending over the bed, he kissed her lips and waited to see if she would wake up. She never stirred.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered as he kissed her again. “I love you.” After leaving her room, he stopped at the nurses’ station, where he recognized several of the women who’d cared for Sam after a car accident last winter. “I have to step out for a short time. If my girlfriend, Elin Svendsen, wakes up, can you please tell her I’ll be right back?”

“She shouldn’t wake up for a while,” one of them said. “We’ll keep an eye on her. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks a lot. I’ll be right back.”

“We’ll be here.”

“Thanks.” He headed for the elevators and cut through the emergency department to get to his car. The temperature had dropped significantly during the hours he had spent inside, so he zipped his sweatshirt and ran for his car, anxious to take care of what needed taking care of and to return to Elin. He ought to call Sam, but she’d talk him out of what he was about to do. He couldn’t let that happen, he decided as he reached his car.

The old Mustang fought back, and for a second he didn’t think it would start. But then it roared to life, backfiring as he punched the accelerator. A few minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot at HQ, parked in one of the spots reserved for visitors outside the main door and jogged inside. He nodded to the sergeant working the main desk and headed for the detectives’ pit, which was deserted.

Since officers never took weapons into the cell block out of fear of being overpowered, Freddie locked his gun into his desk drawer and then took the stairs down two floors to the cells where people were held while awaiting arraignment.