The first thing Lucas noticed was the mess.

Pushing the door open to his office, he did a double take. If anything, his office looked worse than when he’d left it.

His gaze moved to the woman sitting in the middle of the room, the chair she was on like a boat floating amidst a sea of papers. She was pale, her face drawn, her blue eyes filled with tears.

Lucas strode toward her, his snow-crusted boots leaving wet footprints on the papers underfoot.

Alaina blinked as she registered that Lucas was there. Her gaze drifted to the floor and she quickly looked back to him, her eyes rounding with concern.

“The files,” she said, getting to her feet. “Your boots. They’re wet. You’re ruining the files.”

He stopped within a foot of her. “I don’t care about the files,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

She took a deep, steadying breath and he watched as she carefully arranged her features, almost as if she were donning a mask.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Except for the fact that you’re in danger of ruining dozens of files.”

He stared at her. Her expression was now one of mild annoyance, and all traces of whatever had been bothering her were gone. Sitting there in a blue sweater and thick black leggings, her feet snug in her Ugg boots, her long hair brushed out and looking like a silky waterfall, she looked like a college co-ed who was slightly miffed at being given an extra assignment.

He wondered how old she was…and why he couldn’t stop staring at her.

He forced himself to turn away, trying to pick a path toward his desk. “You looked upset.”

“I am upset,” she told him. “Your office is a pigsty.”

“Is that it?”

“No,” Alaina said. “I’m also thinking I got the short end of the stick here. You should be paying me.”

Lucas shoved his keys in his pocket and shrugged out of his jacket, draping it across the back of his chair. “How do you figure?”

She threw up her hands, and he marveled at her complete one-eighty. He’d walked in on a woman who looked fragile. Vulnerable, even. His instinct had been to go to her, to help. But just like that, she’d morphed. Gone were the tears, the anguished expression, and in their place was this spitfire standing in the middle of his office, her blue eyes narrowed, her expression haughty. She was like a chameleon.

“Do you have any idea how big of a mess this is? How long it’s going to take to get this stuff organized?”

Lucas had a pretty good idea. It was why he’d kept putting it off. Well, that and the fact that he despised paperwork. He was a detective. He figured things out…but that didn’t include where to put case files once he was done with them.

He grinned. “Seems to me I got the short end of the stick here.”

She planted her hands on her hips. Her eyebrows arched high. “Oh? How is that?”

Lucas shrugged before sitting down. “You’ve done the impossible. You’ve actually made the mess worse.”

She shook her head. “Don’t you know that you sometimes have to make a bigger mess in order to clean things up?”

Considering cleaning had never been high on his list of priorities, he didn’t actually know. “Is that so?”

“And this is going to take days.” She sighed as her eyes swept the room. “Maybe even weeks.”

Lucas felt a pang of guilt. He knew he’d let things spiral out of control, but was it really that bad? He wasn’t one to shy away from deals, to take things offered to him, especially if he benefitted, but he also wasn’t one to take advantage. And he was sort of thinking that was what he might be doing.

“Look, you don’t have to do this,” he began. “I mean, you probably have a job that you need to get back to. I don’t want you spending too much time on this.”

She snorted. “Define too much time.”

“Too much time means too much time,” Lucas said simply. “If it’s gonna get in the way of other commitments, then I don’t want you doing it.”

Something flickered in her expression, and it was almost as if the mask she’d carefully crafted was cracking. But just as soon as it came, it disappeared.

“I’m keeping my promises,” she said, with such force and intensity that it took Lucas aback.

“What about your job?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she clipped.

“I’m not worried. I’m asking.” He cocked his head. “What exactly do you do? For a living, I mean.”

She stooped to pick up a stack of files from the floor. “I’m in real estate.”

“Real estate?”

She nodded and straightened. The files were still in her hands and she transferred them to her side, using her elbow to hold them against her so she could brush a few loose strands of hair away from her face.

“What did you find out today?” she asked, making it clear she wanted to change the subject. “You went to the school, right?”

Lucas nodded.

“And?”

He thought about his brief conversation with Connor. He hadn’t gotten squat. And Carmen Garcia was nowhere to be found.

But he wasn’t going to tell Alaina that. He could tell she wanted results.

Immediate results.

She was the kind of person who dove in headfirst, who demanded action and progress.

Lucas was that way, too. But years on the police force had taught him that investigations took time. People hid things for a reason, and finding clues was like looking for buried treasure.

It took time.

Patience.

He glanced at Alaina.

He was pretty sure patience wasn’t a trait of hers.

“Did you hear me?” she demanded. “I asked what you found out today.”

Lucas smiled. “I heard you.”

“And?”

“And I’m making progress.”

Alaina frowned. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

Lucas’s smile widened. “That’s all you need to know.”