Chapter

Nate found he didn’t do that very easily. Service passed in a blur, and he focused on Dove after the service. As soon as the final song finished, he strode towards her, barely taking the time to set his guitar on the stand. “Hey, Dove,” he said.

“Hey, Nate,” she said with a grin.

“I had an idea for your case. I was thinking maybe I could go to your house, turn on some lights, and bang around until he thinks you’re home. Then some officers in civilian clothes across the street will get him. Sound good?”

“Nate, you’re a genius.” She threw her arms around his neck, and he couldn’t help but grin.

“Lots of people are around, Dove,” he whispered, lips brushing her ear. She pushed back with a laugh.

“I can’t hug someone saving my life?”

“I’d hardly say I’m saving your life,” he said, with a happy blush.

“I would,” she said, stroking his arm. “When are you going to come get the car?”

“Well, I don’t work till tomorrow. Maybe bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“I won’t see you till tomorrow?” she asked.

“I mean, if you showed up at the diner at six, there might be someone you know there at the bar that you just happen to sit next to,” he said.

“Hmm, we’ll see what I do tonight,” she said, grinning. She turned and walked away.

He grabbed her arm before she could get too far, and whispered in her ear once more. “Maybe keep the dress on?” he said. She patted his hand, then removed it from her arm before walking away.

He watched her walk. She was beautiful from every angle. He wanted to follow after her, to take her in her arms and kiss her. He saw her stop at Pastor Felix for a moment, then walk out the door. He wondered what they had talked about. What she was thinking. What made her flirt so openly. He realized, after a moment, that he had one access to point to Dove’s brain. “Ms. Orolv,” he said, looking at the woman. “Do you think we can talk for a moment?”

“Of course,” she answered.

“Uhm.” He looked around. There were people everywhere.

“I think I have something I need a police officer to look at in my car,” she said, then turned and walked away. Nate felt like this all was so unceasingly obvious to everyone else, but he didn’t know a way out of that. He wanted to get to know Dove, and this seemed like the best way to do it. He watched Teressa jump in a car, then walked up slowly and knocked on the passenger side door. She reached over and threw open the door. He climbed in.

“What do you want to know about Dove?” she asked as he was closing the door.

“Just … Is it working? Is she interested?”

“Is she interested?” Teressa laughed. “I haven’t seen her go after anyone this hard since Harold. Certainly you’ve noticed she’s been flirting.”

“I wasn’t sure if that was just her.”

“Dove doesn’t go after people unless she’s sure, but then she goes after people hard. That’s just the way she is. It’s true of friendships too. She sat at my lunch table every day until I decided I might as well give in and talk to her.”

“What can I do to keep her interested?”

“Exactly what you’ve been doing. She is interested, Nate. Don’t overthink this. You’re doing just fine. Just hurry up and solve the case. You can’t expect her to wait forever.”

“I really am doing my best,” Nate said. “Didn’t you hear about my plan for tomorrow?”

“I think it’s something worth trying. Whatever makes her safer.”

“I should go. I need to get ready for tonight.” He grinned. “I’ll take good care of your friend, don’t worry.”

“If you don’t, you’ll have me to reckon with,” she answered. Nate left the car.

* * *

As Nate was preparing for dinner that night, he got a call. A call he had spent nights waiting for months before, but who he had hardly even thought of in the last few days. The name Sarah lit up on his screen, and his heart skipped a beat.

“Hello?” he said, holding the phone to his ear.

“Nate,” she said, “it’s Sarah.” As if somehow he didn’t know.

“Hi, Sarah.”

“I saw on the news that you were involved in an accident. I’ve been meaning to call for a while, but I never really got around to it. I wanted to call and make sure you were okay.”

“Well, they said on the news it was just whiplash, I’m sure.” He couldn’t figure out why she had chosen now to call. He had expected their first phone call to be this glorious event that changed everything, but in reality it was just a phone call, awkward and grainy and filled with pauses.

“Right, but, you know. You can never trust the news. It made more sense to check up on you.”

“Well, it was just whiplash. Is that the only reason why you called?” He realized he was being short with her, but he didn’t know how to stop. He just wished it was someone else’s voice on the line.

“I wanted to apologize for not calling sooner. And I wanted to ask you out for dinner.”

Nate gave a longer pause at this one. He wanted to say yes. He had been looking forward to this moment for months. He had literally dreamed about it. But he couldn’t get his mind off Dove. “I think I’m going to have to pass,” he said. “Not because you’re not great, or I didn’t really want this at some point, but because—well, because there’s sort of someone else now.”

“I understand,” she said, but he could hear the break in her voice, and he knew she didn’t. As if she got to be the one upset after not contacting him for months at a time. He wanted to call her selfish for expecting him to wait, but he remembered how the word had hurt Dove.

“Well, thanks for the call, Sarah. Talk to you later,” he said, and hung up.

Dove knew he must already like her look since he had complimented her dress and her hair recently, but that didn’t stop her from trying to clean up her look a bit, make sure her makeup was perfect and her curls looked full. She hadn’t been on a date since Harold. She was practically giddy. A nice man—a cop, no less—wanted to take her on a date. True, it wasn’t officially a date, but they had made plans to eat dinner together, at a restaurant and everything.

She wanted to get there early so that she could spend some time with Teressa, making sure she felt ready, but as she brushed her teeth again and again, wishing she had bought whitening strips, she ran out of time to see Teressa. She jumped in her car with fifteen minutes to make it to the diner. A couple extra minutes, but not enough to have any deep conversation with Teressa.

When she walked in, she was surprised to find him already there, nursing a cup of coffee. She sat next to him, and waved over Teressa. “Can I have coffee, and extra cream and sugar?”

“I know how you take your coffee,” Teressa said with a grin. She looked from one to the other, and Dove half-expected girlish giggles.

Dove turned and acted as if she saw him for the first time. “Oh, Nate, what are you doing here?”

“Eating dinner. Isn’t that what everyone is doing here?”

“Well, isn’t someone smart?” she said.

Teressa came back with Dove’s coffee and set it in front of her. “Well, guys, I’m going to go in the back now, but if you need anything, just holler. Danielle can take care of you.”

“I won’t need anything,” Dove said. She knew the report was mostly for her emotional state, since Danielle would take their orders and such. In fact, a moment later she was doing just that.

“Scrambled eggs, bacon, and ketchup please,” Nate said.

“No,” Dove said. “No, tell me you’re not one of those people who put ketchup in their eggs.”

“Born and bred,” he answered.

Dove covered her eyes. “Uncultured swine.”

“And you, ma’am?” Danielle asked.

“Fried eggs, turkey sausage, and no ketchup. I would prefer it’s not even on the counter near me, but I suppose that’s unavoidable now.”

“When I was little I used to dip my watermelon in ketchup,” Nate said, and Dove thought he even had some pride behind the statement.

“If it were up to me right now, I would say you need to leave the restaurant. Maybe I’ll call Teressa over here to tell you that.”

“And she’ll tell you plenty of people put ketchup in their eggs.” As they continued to tease each other their food came out. Nate grabbed the ketchup bottle and squirted in a sizable amount of ketchup. Dove watched him mix it all up with his fork, making a face. Then he took a big forkful, and pushed it towards her.

“What? No! What are you doing?”

“Come on. Open up, Dovey,” he said, then began making airplane noises, circling her head.

“No, stop—” she began, and as she was speaking he shoved the fork into her mouth. She coughed, spraying bits of ketchup egg everywhere. He laughed and grabbed a stack on napkins, beginning to clean up.

She grabbed napkins of her own and spit the eggs into them. “Gross,” she said. “Completely gross.”

He took the fork back and took a big bite of his eggs. “Tastes good to me,” he responded.

“You know,” she said, “sharing a fork is sort of like kissing.”

“Is it?” he asked.

“Yes. Our mouths both touched the same thing.”

“Yeah, but I kissed you. You didn’t kiss me back,” he pointed out with an exaggerated lip jutted out.

She grabbed his fork and cut a corner off her egg with it. Then she took a big bite.

“I can’t wait till this case is over,” he said.

She placed a hand on his leg, then handed the fork back to him. “It will be before you know it,” she said. “As long as you stay on the job.”

“Believe me, I am seeing this job to the very end,” he answered. “Oh, so I have something to tell you.”

“Yeah?” Dove took another big bite of food, surprised at how comfortable she was eating in front of him, despite how she normally felt on dates.

“Sarah called me,” he said nonchalantly.

Dove stopped eating in the middle of her bite and spoke the next word with her mouth full. “What?”

“Yeah, she just wanted to make sure I was safe, because she saw the crash on the news, and she asked me to dinner.”

Dove quickly chewed her food and swallowed. “What did you say?”

Teressa chose that moment to come out of the kitchen and walk over to them.

“How’s it going? Food good?” Teressa asked.

“Teressa, I don’t need you to check up on me,” Dove said, a bit shortly.

“The food is as good as ever,” Nate said, shooting Teressa a smile.

“See how polite he is?” Teressa said, looking at Dove. “Maybe you could learn from him.”

“Oh, I want to learn whatever he has to teach me,” Dove answered hollowly. As she was talking, she felt Nate move over quickly, and her hand fell to the side. She looked at him. “What?” she asked.

“Hey, Lieutenant Monroe,” he said, and Dove understood. This was too public. Everywhere was too public. They weren’t safe together until the case was over. Dove ate quickly and left Nate and Leslie talking. She knew what was going on now anyway. It didn’t seem worth spending any more time with him.

* * *

“I thought I told you you can’t do that,” Leslie said to Nate, arms crossed.

“Do what?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“Flirt with Dove. Don’t think I didn’t see you over here, talking and laughing, with her hand on your leg. This is an open case, Nate.”

“We were just eating together. We happened to both be here and thought it didn’t make sense for us to eat alone.” Nate knew he was caught. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do. He hated lying, but he thought he might like Dove more than he hated lying. “It’s not like I paid for her dinner or anything.”

“Just know I’m watching you,” she said.

Nate nodded, paid, and left. He couldn’t believe he had just left Dove without giving her the news that he had told Sarah no. He realized too that, on top of everything else, he didn’t have her number. He had no way of contacting her and telling her the truth. And driving to visit her seemed a bit too intimate. Besides, there was no way he could do it after Leslie’s warning.

He drove home and flipped on the television. He wondered if Dove was watching the same at the motel. If her motel even got cable. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get his mind off Dove. He needed to tell her that she was the one he chose. That through it all, even when Sarah was an option, he chose her. But he supposed it would have to wait till tomorrow.