Gretchen, with an enterprising spirit Theo admired, had decided to stick it out with the cookies and was holding one half-submerged in a cup of coffee.  She dropped it and reached for her sidearm the second he came in with blood on his shirt.

“What happened?  Are you all right?”

“Broken window,” Theo said.  “A person with a brick, strong feelings, and a good arm.  I’m fine.  Jillian’s getting the first aid kit for me.  Where’s Tiffani?”

“Master bedroom upstairs.  I did a quick inventory of it and then let her go in to take a nap.  She’s wrung out.”

“Good, thank you.”

He unbuttoned his shirt and laid it down on the granite-topped island, unbloodied side down.  The cuts he’d sustained were light and already closing.  If Jillian didn’t come back quickly, he would have some improvising to do to explain why he’d healed so quickly.  Unless he could tell her now.

No, not like this.  She had no reason to trust him to not be either delusional or playing some kind of cruel practical joke.  That was right, wasn’t it?

He started to ask Gretchen—her constant diplomacy between humans and shifters must mean that she had explained the existence of one to the other before—but Jillian walked in before he could.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “Everything in this house is always three bathrooms over from where you’d think it would be.”  She snapped the case open and took out an alcohol-soaked wipe.  “Let me just clean the blood off so I can see how bad it is.”  Her brow furrowed in cutely, which distracted him from the icy chemical burn of the alcohol against his torn skin.  “These are shallower than I would have guessed.”

“There are a lot of blood vessels right at the surface,” Gretchen said quickly.

Jillian’s skepticism showed in her raised eyebrows—of course, Theo thought, if you worked with energetic children and teenagers all day, you probably saw your share of minor injuries—but when she spoke, she sounded playful: “Dammit, Jim, I’m a youth coordinator, not a doctor.”  She peeled the adhesive off a gauze patch and applied it to Theo’s arm.

“There.  Done.”

“Doctor or not, I’ve never had better care,” Theo said.

Gretchen coughed.  “Well, I’m going to go radio in about the brick just to get it on the record.  You two kids have fun.”

Theo had rarely seen anyone move that fast.

Jillian said, “You told her about our date, didn’t you?”

“Approximately.”  He could no longer stand being so close to her without touching her, so he put his arms around her waist and drew her near him.  Her full bosom was against his chest, her plaid button-up against his ribbed undershirt.  He thought about their clothes because to think about what was underneath them would drive him mad.

Jillian made a long mm sound of satisfaction and leaned into him, her head burrowing into the indentation below his shoulder.  “I have a confession to make.”

“Me too,” he said without thinking.  Dammit.  “You should go first, though.”

She turned a little so that her lips were against him.  He could feel her words as well as hear them.  “I paid someone to throw the brick.  I thought, hey, how could I get Deputy Marshal Theo to take his shirt off?”

“You work quickly.”

“Thank you.  I value efficiency.”

“But believe me, you would never have to contrive a situation to get us here.”  He raised her chin with his hand and kissed her, lingering on her lips.  She did taste like cinnamon: like cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla.  Spice and grounding sweetness.  He could fall towards her.  She was the new center of his gravity.

But he couldn’t afford to get distracted.  If he hadn’t been so overwhelmed by her back in the office, he might have seen whatever car had slowed down outside, or whatever person had run by.  The brick could have hit her because he couldn’t control himself enough to keep her safe.

He pulled back from the kiss with the greatest reluctance.

He said, “I thought you were hurt.”

“I thought you were hurt.  And you were.  Sort of.  I kind of feel like a hypochondriac-by-proxy now, though.”

Now he was making her doubt her own judgment.  This was all going so well.

Believe me, if you’d heard the cursing I did inside my head when the pain sank in, you’d know you couldn’t have overreacted to it as much as I did.

“That’s not your fault,” Theo said.  He had to admit that sounded strange—It’s not your fault that I wasn’t more seriously hurt!—but he continued anyway.  “Sh—St. Vincents have always been hard to knock down for the count.  I tend to heal a little faster than most people.”

“A very gallant try, but I’m pretty sure there’s no constitution good enough to do that.  Unless you’re one of the X-Men.”

He frowned.

“Wolverine?  Storm?  Cyclops?  Rogue?”

Wait.

“Are you asking if I can turn into a wolverine?” he said hopefully.

This went in circles for a few increasingly confusing minutes until Theo established that (1) the X-Men were fictional superheroes, not real life shifters and (2) Wolverine could not turn into a wolverine.  He stressed again that he was from a very small town.

“This makes me want to show you so many movies,” Jillian said.  “You’re my perfect blank slate.  Do you even know the twist ending of The Sixth Sense?  Do you know who killed Dumbledore?”

Theo brightened.  “I know who killed Dumbledore.”

He had always loved to read.  As sparsely as his apartment was furnished—dragons tended to be very picky where they made their dens, and the glossy townhouse still didn’t feel like home to him—its wall-to-wall bookshelves were full.  It was the one tie he still felt to his parents, who had loved books themselves.  Not just their prized first editions or their ancient volumes printed on vellum but their vintage science fiction paperbacks and their complete sets of Miss Marple mysteries.  They were the part of his inheritance he most valued.

Then the conversation turned to the two of them recommending books to each other.  Unsurprisingly, given her profession, Jillian read many children’s and young adult novels, and her enthusiasm for them was contagious.  She started writing titles down for him on a cocktail napkin and he did the same for her, remembering old fantasy novels like Lud-in-the-Mist and boisterous, clever mysteries like The Moving Toyshop.

“Wait,” Jillian said, capping her pen.  “I forgot.  What did you want to confess to?”

He had only a second to decide if now was his chance or not, and then the second passed.  “I wanted to say again that I’m worried.  I don’t think you and Tiffani should spend another night here.”

“She was planning on leaving tomorrow morning.  I’m just staying in town to help her get settled into her new place.”

“And she has that lined up already?”

“Yeah, but she’s allowed access to the house until the sale goes through, right?”

He nodded.  “Some of the furniture and other valuables will go before then, but she doesn’t have to go with it.  I just think she should.”

And so should you.

“I just don’t want her life to keep getting jerked around by other people making decisions for her.”

He admired her loyalty all the more because she gave it by her own choice.  That streak of principle, hard as steel, was a draconian quality: I will not spend myself on what I do not value.  But Jillian, unlike anyone he had grown up with, went further.  On what, and whom, she valued, she would give and pay and give and pay.  That was human.  When he looked at her, he saw the two halves of himself made into a whole more seamless than he ever felt.

Reluctantly, he said, “Then neither one of us will decide for her.  It’s her call whether or not to leave tonight, but, Jillian, I want to tell her that I think she should.”

“That’s fair.”

“If she wants to stay, you’re staying too?”

She gave a firm, decisive nod that made her hair bounce around adorably.

“Then I would like to stay here to look after the both of you, if you’ll have me.”

He didn’t know what he would do if she said no.  He wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing that she was safe.

A distracting fantasy suggested that perhaps he wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, not without her by his side, in his bed.  He could just see her long auburn hair spread out against the pillow, making her look like she was floating.  He could almost feel the smooth, creamy skin of her inner thighs.  If the taste of her mouth was beyond compare, what would she taste like between her legs?

Jillian said, “Of course I’ll have you,” and then darkened to a red that almost matched her hair.  “Who wouldn’t?  Are there people who detest having hot bodyguards around?”

“Maybe.  But I’ll do my best to stifle my natural attractiveness.”

“See that you do.”

Despite his best intentions to remain clearheadedly chaste, the better to protect her, he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to do the same.