Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(63)
“You’re watching that thing again?” Her new partner’s hazel eyes went wide. Gemma White was a tall woman with icy blond hair and a ready smile who could kick more ass than Holland had ever dreamed of. Gemma was the real shit—a former Naval officer who had spent a little time with the FBI before coming home. “You come off like a total bitch, you know.”
She was also opinionated and so honest it hurt sometimes.
Holland felt that way when she saw the video. “Thanks for pointing that out.”
Gemma shrugged. “I do what I can.” She leaned over and pressed the button that started the whole thing over again. “This is my favorite part. Look at that. Everyone looks all shiny and happy. Oh, there. He brought his grandma out of the nursing home for the occasion.”
Holland felt her whole body flush. “Yes. And then she had to go to the ER because she complained of heart palpitations.”
Holland wasn’t entirely sure the woman hadn’t done it so she could sue.
“I have a screenshot of that moment when you say no.” Gemma’s lips curved up as the camera centered on Chad’s handsome face and a light seemed to die in his eyes. “Yeah, right there. I made it my screen saver.”
Mortification rolled over her. “You have to take that down.”
“No can do, partner. I want it to serve as a sign for you. I was right. He’s a dick. Yo, Johnson. What did you think of Kirk’s old boyfriend?”
A younger agent popped up, a smile on his face. He was dressed casually, having just come from a nasty crime scene. “He was amazing. He was only around for a few weeks, but he’s a damn legend around here. He sent us all barbecue one day. I guess that’s why they call him Captain Awesome.”
Gemma shook her head. “No. The more recent old one.”
Johnson’s face fell and the kid practically snarled. “He’s a total dick. You were right to dump his ass. Me and some of the guys have a drinking game based on that video. We take a shot every time the douche bag checks himself in a mirror. I got trashed on Tuesday. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done that right before I had to process a multiple homicide.” He shrugged. “Live and learn.”
All around her she could hear her colleagues agreeing that Chad Michaels was an asswipe of the highest order.
“There was a reason he didn’t invite any of us to his little proposal, and it wasn’t all because Jim can’t dance to save his life,” Gemma explained.
“Hey,” Jim yelled over his cubicle wall. “I’m a fine dancer. Ask anyone who saw me last Christmas.” He stood up and got serious. “And you were right to turn that kid down. I’m not as fond of Captain Awesome as nitwit Johnson, but that man was madly in love with you. Officer Michaels is looking to move up and thought you would be the perfect wife.”
She frowned. She’d never once felt as if Chad was using her. Quite the opposite, in fact. And Holland had always felt guilty. “Chad was fun to date. And might I point out that Captain Spencer couldn’t have been too madly in love since he got married the day after he dumped me.”
“He dumped you? That’s not how I heard it, Kirk. The story circulating was that you’d devastated the man and the idiot got shitfaced, then found himself in a bad situation,” Jim shot back. “Since I’ve been married four times, I sympathize with the guy. Never got the one woman I loved so I kept trying to make it work with someone else. Like I said, you were right to turn down Detective Michaels, for more than one reason.”
“Are we having some kind of therapy session here?” Her boss, Bill Edmonds, was a fit man, having spent over twenty years in the Army. Now, at sixty, he headed her unit. “Because if we are, I’m running the other way.”
“We’re discussing Kirk’s love life,” Jim pointed out to his former partner.
Bill nodded. “Yeah, that’s been a fucked-up mess since she dumped Captain Awesome. You don’t come back from that, Kirk. Give it up. Be a nun. Or find a boy toy like White here and pump out a couple of babies.”
Gemma shot their boss the finger. It was that kind of workplace. “My Frasier is a beautiful man and he gave me three gorgeous babies. Kirk would be so lucky.”
Frasier White was a skinny little academic teaching comparative literature at Tulane. He weighed at least twenty pounds less than his wife and had about a quarter of her muscle tone, but she lit up every time she saw him.
Yeah, she could be so lucky. Only one man had ever made her light up, and he was lost to her forever.
“I need reports in thirty minutes on all open cases, people. Sort out your love life later, Kirk.” Bill stopped at her desk. “Though if you give a damn about my opinion, you did the right thing. Michaels wasn’t good enough for you.”
Bill nodded and moved on.
Holland flipped her laptop closed, unable to look at the screen a second more. “Well, at least we have a consensus.”
Gemma leaned on the desk. “You have to let him go.”
Holland gestured to her laptop. “Oh, I think I did that already.”
“Nope. I wasn’t talking about the replacement. I was talking about the real thing. Spencer. You know, when I transferred here two years ago and got assigned to you, Jim and Bill told me that you’d gotten involved in a little side research that meant something to someone you loved and it went bad. They said you’d never gotten over it. You still haven’t, honey. It’s time.”