Page 5 of In Too Deep

Then the front door below opened.

Voices drifted up, muffled at first beneath the scrape of his tools and the breeze moving over the roof, then clearer as whoever it was stepped outside. Jake straightened and moved carefully towards the edge, boots finding their grip on the pitch before he glanced down.

Shit.

Harrison.

Not DI Black in one of those immaculate suits, though. No crisp white collar buttoned around his throat. No tie. No polished shoes or professional armour making him look as if touching required prior authorisation.

No.

This was Harrison in jeans.

Those jeans. The ones Jake already knew fitted far too fucking well. A loose T-shirt ruffled in the breeze around a body that was leaner than Jake’s but still taut in all the places Jake had become painfully familiar with wanting to get his hands on. His usually immaculate blond-grey hair was mussed, as if he’d shoved a hand through it after getting out of bed and decided that was good enough. And on his feet were those Adidas Gazelles Jake had only seen a handful of times. The ones that somehow made a forty-three-year-old detective inspector look less like the man who could have him arrested and more like the man Jake desperately wanted to drag back inside.

His chest gave a stupid little flutter.

Until he realised Harrison wasn’t alone.

A woman stepped out beside him, and that stupid little flip dropped somewhere considerably lower. She looked around Harrison’s age. Forties, maybe. Pretty. Dark hair, make-up, denim jacket thrown over a floaty dress. Comfortable beside him, too. Familiar enough that neither needed the careful politeness of people who didn’t know each other well.

Jake gripped his hammer in a balled fist.

Because apparently weeks of voluntarily not fucking anyone else had somehow made him forget Harrison had an entire life Jake knew fuck all about. And he watched them walk together to the end of the drive until the woman’s phone rang and she slowed to answer it. Harrison took another couple of steps before his attention snagged on Jake’s van.

He stopped.

Looked back at the cottage.

Then up.

Their gazes met.

And there it was again. That immediate, ridiculous surge low in Jake’s gut that didn’t give a shit who the woman was, where Harrison had been all weekend or how spectacularly stupid Jake might be for caring about either.

“Hey,” Harrison called up.

Jake dragged a hand back through his hair, buying himself a second. “I, uh… thought you’d be at work.”

“Took some time off in lieu.” Harrison gestured to the woman talking on her phone. “Nell’s heading back to London.”

“Right.” Jake nodded. “Had nowt else on today, so thought I’d carry on with this. Would’ve knocked, but…” He pointed his hammer vaguely around the street. “No car.”

Harrison winced, rubbing his forehead. “We went out last night for dinner and had one too many. Left it in town.”

“Right.”

The woman finished her call and slipped the phone into her bag, her gaze wandering upwards until it landed on Jake. She smiled.

Knowingly.

And Jake felt that smile right down to his fucking toes.

Harrison had mentioned someone coming up, hadn’t he? A friend staying for the weekend. That was why this weekend hadn’t worked for them. Not that either of them had actually put it like that. They didn’t say things like I wish I could see you or when are you free? They just traded messages, floated possibilities and pretended it didn’t matter when none of them quite came off.

Because whatever this was, it wasn’t that. Wasn’t something defined enough to bring other people into. Fuck, half the time it barely felt as though it included the two of them.

Harrison pulled the woman into a hug. Easy. Familiar. Close enough to make something unpleasant tighten beneath Jake’s ribs, even though he knew how fucking ridiculous that was. Then a taxi rolled to a stop at the end of the lane, and they exchanged a few words Jake couldn’t hear. She pulled back, said something that made Harrison laugh, then glanced up at the roof one last time.