Gretchen had a few days off from the club, so she went back to her life and her job. She knew she needed the time away from Finn. She was falling in love with him—not that she hadn’t been mostly in love with him her entire life—but she knew now she was losing her heart to him, and it wasn’t something she could afford to do. She had never expected him to love her, but there were times when they were together when she thought maybe he could. Then reality would set in, and she would remember that while he was enjoying her body, the rest was simply another elaborate con for a man whose life was just more of the same.
She sat at the metal desk in the cubicle they had assigned her on the third floor of the precinct and leaned back, resting her heels on top.
“Have you looked over the information I sent you?” Neil came into the cubicle like a tornado, all energy and noise.
“Yeah,” Gretchen shrugged with a yawn, “but there wasn’t anything very useful.”
“I know, I know.” He waved her off, coming to stand in front of her and leaning a hip on her desk.
“Most of the people on your list are pretty low key. A couple of petty crimes, drugs, theft, assault, battery.”
“That’s what you came in to reiterate with such energy?” She yawned again, not missing the slight glare in Neil’s gaze.
“Ronnie Sinclair,” he stated. “She’s the worst. She’s thinking of setting up shop here, from what I can gather, she’ll be coming in the next few weeks.”
“What if she comes when I’m off?” she asked. “Should I—”
“No,” he told her. “She usually stays around for a while. She’s involved with one of the guys on the list, Jay Finley. I think that’s why she’s looking to move here full time.”
He wiggled his eyebrows, but she didn’t laugh like she knew he wanted her to. Instead she focused on not letting him see how the thought of Finn with another woman made her stomach turn.
“Anyway,” he started when she didn’t respond to the news. “Carpenter’s getting a real hard-on for Sinclair. If you could get her and Carlisle, you would have your pick of assignments from now on, Gretchen.”
“What if I can only get one?” she asked, turning over in her head how to best work the new situation.
“Sinclair might be better.” Neil shrugged. “I mean, Carlisle does more business around here, and his drugs are running rampant, but people choose to buy the drugs, you know. The girls that Sinclair has working for her, they don’t always get that choice.”
Gretchen watched Neil as he shook his head in disgust.
“You know that girl who went missing last year from her class trip in Florida?”
Gretchen nodded, remembering the media attention and the widespread search for the young brunette with the cobalt eyes.
“They think Ronnie got her, not sure if she still has her, but there are rumors that she was seen with some of Ronnie’s girls in Miami.” He shrugged and shook his head.
Gretchen could see the helplessness take over for a moment as he was reminded that sometimes no matter what they did, the bad guys won the battle.
“If she’s such a badass, why is she hanging out with this group?” Gretchen asked. Carlisle ran drugs and pussy, but in the grand scheme of things, Gretchen knew he could be much worse. Case in point, he could be abducting young co-eds and forcing them into prostitution instead of providing of-age hookers to of-age men.
“She started out as one of Carlisle’s girls,” Neil informed her.
“So how does the student become the master?”
Neil grinned.
“Oh grasshopper.” He laughed. “She had a john go a little crazy on her, she was laid up for a while, surgery, rehab, the whole nine. Carlisle helped start her own business as a kind of ‘I’m sorry’.”
“What happened to the john?” Gretchen ventured, though she was sure she already knew the answer. Neil’s cool smile confirmed her suspicion.
“No one’s seen him since.”
Gretchen sat for a moment, her fingers steepled under her chin in a gesture anyone who knew her well would know not to interrupt. She couldn’t understand why a woman who had been hurt would then choose to subject other women to the same pain, and she couldn’t understand why Finn would choose to be with someone who could do that to others, especially after the way he had blamed Raymond Carlisle for his own mother’s death. As she thought about it, she realized she didn’t really know what Finn was capable of either. He was the one person she’d never tried to figure out too closely, letting it slide when Neil failed to gather anything on him. She wanted Ronnie Sinclair, and she was becoming quite determined to bring her in and make her pay. Gretchen just wasn’t entirely sure whether it was because she was a criminal or Finn’s lover.
* * * * *
Finn watched Gretchen out of the corner of his eye as he pulled waffles from the iron and put them on a plate. She had spent the last four nights with him and he had noticed her becoming increasingly more withdrawn as the days passed. She sat at the bar in a kitchen he rarely used and spun a glass in her hands.
“You’re thinking too hard,” he told her as he ducked into the refrigerator and came out with a carton of orange juice.
“Is there such a thing?” Her lips attempted a smile but failed.
“What’s going on?”
He placed the plate of eggs and waffles in front of her before coming around the counter and taking the seat next to her.
“I was just thinking,” she started. “You and me, what we do, it’s not so different.”
“If you don’t count the fact that you enforce the laws I sometimes break, I guess you have a point.” He grinned mockingly.
Gretchen shrugged and picked at her eggs.
“I’m sure we both do things that we don’t always think are right. We both certainly lie to the people around us.”
She didn’t look at him as she spoke. His gray eyes narrowed, taking her in.
“I wonder sometimes who I really am,” she confided. “I mean I know where I come from and who I’m supposed to be, but then I go in as someone new, and—”
“And you feel more comfortable in your skin,” he finished for her.
Gretchen looked up then and met his eyes.
“Exactly,” she whispered, pursing her lips. “You feel that way too?”
Finn watched her for a moment, searching her eyes for something that told him she was trying to con him, but there was only the deep green, and he had a sudden memory of watching Gretchen as she ran across the lush lawn of her parents’ house toward him. He had been thirteen, and she had been seven. He had been avoiding Brock’s family for weeks while his bruised ribs healed after another battle with his stepfather. Gretchen had spotted him across the lawn and immediately made her way to him, yelling his name with her arms outstretched. He had lifted her, despite the pain, and she had wrapped her tiny arms around him and squeezed his neck.
“I missed you,” she had told him. He had told her that he missed her too and promised not to disappear for so long again. As he placed her back on the ground, she had kissed his cheek loudly.
“I love you,” she had told him.
And he had responded, “Me too.”
He wondered now what he would say if she uttered those three words to him again. He wondered if now that he loved her so differently, he would be able to admit it.
“You’re a good person,” he told her. “You try to help people, and you lie because it helps you do that.”
He saw her eyes darken fractionally.
“Is that why you do it?” she asked him.
“What’s with the heart-to-heart?” He tried to avoid her digging. “You trying to get inside my head and get close?”
She flinched involuntarily before visibly shaking off his words.
“Of course not.” She picked up the plate she had barely touched and made her way to the sink.
“I would never think to do anything as stupid as that.” She looked back over her shoulder with a fake smile, but Finn could see the tears that filled her eyes.
She scraped her plate and began rinsing. She stopped when he put his hands on her shoulders, running down her bare skin to her biceps, and rested his forehead against the back of her head. He wondered if she knew he was equally confused, not just about himself, but about the two of them together and his growing feelings for her
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.
Gretchen shook her head and put down the plate, bracing her hands on the sink.
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she lied.
“You know me better than anyone, Gretchen. You’re the only one in this whole world who knows both sides of me. You’re certainly the only one who could still…” He stopped himself, afraid that he was making presumptions about her feelings. “Like me, knowing all that you do.”
She shook her head sadly.
“You do like me, don’t you?” He kissed her neck, and slid his arms around her waist.
“I’ve always liked you.”
“Even when you said you hated me?” He thought of the night he had first brought her home, surprised to realize it had just been a little over a week ago. How the hell had he fallen so in love with her in such a short time? His only explanation was that he had loved her in one form or another her entire life.
“Maybe even especially,” she confessed.
He wanted to tell her then that he loved her, but instead he kissed her neck again before moving down to her shoulder.
“Why don’t you bring some of your things with you the next time you’re here?” he offered. “You could, uh, leave them, and then you wouldn’t have to lug that huge bag back and forth.”
Gretchen turned in his arms and eyed him suspiciously. “That’s a bit of a commitment, isn’t it?” She had her eyebrow cocked, and he laughed, unsure of how she could be so damn cute and sexy at the same time.
“It is,” he conceded, “but if we want to be convincing for the sake of your investigation.” Why he didn’t just tell her he wanted her there with him, he didn’t know.
“Of course.” She nodded curtly, and the cold tone of her voice had him doubting that she would be bringing anything with her. She smiled almost sadly and moved out of his arms.
“Gretchen, what is it? Please.” He sighed in exasperation and ran a hand through his unruly hair.
“How will Ronnie feel about my things being here?” She turned to him and he knew she was looking for his reaction.
Now he understood what had been bothering her all weekend. “I couldn’t tell you,” he lied. He knew Ronnie would hit the fucking roof when she heard about them, which was part of the reason he wanted Gretchen in his apartment where he could keep an eye on her. She nodded, but he knew she didn’t believe him.
“They say the two of you are pretty close.” She shrugged. “I just thought—”
“We’re not together,” he told her. “We’ve never been together together.”
“You mean you’ve never been exclusively a couple,” Gretchen corrected, “because I’m fairly certain you have been seen together together.”
Gretchen tried not to think of the things Neil had told her other agents had reported witnessing.
“You’re right.” He shrugged. “Is that a problem? I assumed you knew I wasn’t exactly a virgin when we started sleeping together.”
Her eyes snapped to his then and she smirked. “I’m well aware of how you feel about virginity.” She turned away and made her way to his bedroom to gather her things so she could head back to her real life for the next few days.
“Gretchen.” He went after her, following her into the bedroom. He stopped when he saw her packing. “What are you doing?”
“Getting my things together,” she called as she went into the bathroom.
“I stand behind what I did ten years ago.” He leaned against the bathroom door, blocking her exit with his arms crossed casually across his bare chest. “I was not the man you wanted to be with the first time.”
“You’re the only man I’ve ever wanted to be with,” she let slip as she turned to him. They stood staring at each other until Gretchen thought she would choke on the things that neither of them were saying.
Finn opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head and pushed past him.
“Please don’t say anything,” she told him. “Really it’ll probably only get worse.”
“There’s no reason for you to be jealous of her.”
“What did I say about not saying anything? I am not jealous of her. I just don’t understand how you could be with someone like her after your mother—”
“Why? Because my mom was a whore and so was Ronnie?” His temper flared to life, but Gretchen didn’t flinch.
“No,” she told him slowly, “because you were ready to kill Raymond Carlisle when you thought that he was the reason your mom had been killed. You thought that he had forced your mother to do what she did, and you hated him—”
“I didn’t hate him,” he interrupted.
“Don’t.” Gretchen pushed a finger into his chest. “I was there, Finn. I saw you; I saw the look in your eyes.” A look that had haunted her for the past ten years as it reminded her of the broken boy he had once been.
“It wasn’t Raymond’s fault,” he spoke through clenched teeth. “She chose—”
“I know.” Gretchen sighed. “But Ronnie’s girls don’t always get that luxury, do they?” He met her eyes then, but he didn’t answer. They had made a deal, here in this bedroom, that she wouldn’t ask him for information, and though it hadn’t been her intention, she saw that she had just come too close to the truth.
She nodded slowly before turning back to her bag and zipping it. Despite the things he had said, she was beginning to think that Ronnie got more of the real Finn. She tried not to be hurt by that realization or the knowledge that when it came down to it, Finn would choose this life over her every time.
“Where are you going?” he asked when she picked up her bag and began making her way to the door of his bedroom.
“I have to get back to my real life for a bit. When I spend too much time playing here I start forgetting that this isn’t real.” She didn’t turn toward him, she knew the sight of him would break her already shaky resolve. She made her way out of his bedroom and through the kitchen to the door.
“Gretchen,” he called as he came after her.
She stopped with her hand on the knob, but once again she didn’t look at him. He took her by the shoulder and turned her. His hand slid from her shoulder to her neck, his fingers reaching out to tangle in her curly hair. He brought her mouth to his and kissed her firmly, before easing back and letting his tongue wrestle lazily with hers. She surrendered because she had already learned that there was no fighting her feelings for him. When he touched her like this she could almost believe he loved her. She dropped her bag to the floor and her arms wound around his waist.
She pulled away, her lips obviously reluctant to let go of him.
“I have to go. That’s one way we’re different, huh? I have to float back and forth, and you get to hide out here forever.”
“I’m not hiding,” he whispered, his mouth still close to hers. “This is me, Gretchen.”
“A part of you,” she acknowledged, “but it’s not all of you, Finn. You’re a good man, I’ve always known that. One day maybe I’ll understand you.”
She lifted on her toes and kissed him gently before she disappeared through his door.