“Hey, Kowalski,” Morgan said, not looking in her direction. “What does this look like to you?”
When she made no response, Morgan raised his voice and asked her the same question again. Still not receiving an answer, he looked over toward her. Apparently, she had fallen asleep and continued to remain that way rather than jolting awake.
“How about that?” he murmured under his breath in surprise. “I guess you really were tired this time.”
Krys had folded her arms in front of her to lay down her head just for a moment and had, apparently, instantly fallen asleep.
Morgan rose to his feet and crossed over to her desk to check her out before he made the logical assumption.
Circling her from both sides to make sure he wasn’t making a mistake, he grinned to himself. She continued sleeping.
He debated between waking her up so she could finally go to bed and just leaving her where she was. But from where he stood, neither solution was acceptable. If he did wake her up, since she was so incredibly stubborn, for all he knew she just might deliberately force herself to remain awake. And if he left her where she was, sleeping with her head on the desk, she could very well wind up having one hell of a crick in her neck when she woke up in the morning.
There was a third alternative.
“Looks like I’m going to have to put you to bed whether you like it or not,” he told her softly. He sighed, shaking his head. “You know, Kowalski, this would be a whole lot easier if you weren’t so damn stubborn.”
Moving very carefully so he wouldn’t wake her, Morgan bent down and slipped one arm just beneath her legs, another around her shoulders. And then, very slowly, he picked her up.
“C’mon, Sleeping Beauty,” he quietly whispered. “Your bedchamber awaits.”
With that, moving at an extremely slow pace so as not to wake her up, Morgan carried Krys to her bedroom. Halfway there, he froze as she murmured something under her breath and then curled up against his chest.
He had just started walking again when she tucked her arm around his neck and sighed.
Morgan couldn’t help reacting to the feel of her body up against his, to the scent of her hair as it seemed to curl its way through his senses. Most of all, he had a hard time resisting the very strong pull of desire that insisted on telegraphing itself throughout his entire body.
“You do know how to make this hard on a guy, Kowalski,” he whispered softly to the woman he was holding in his arms.
Making certain not to jostle her as he walked, Morgan very carefully made his way into her bedroom and then, bending over in a painfully slow manner, he laid Krys down on her bed.
Once he had her on her bed, Morgan didn’t even attempt to take off her shoes, much less any other article of clothing. He just spread a blanket over her because the nights were still getting chilly this time of year and he didn’t want Krys getting cold.
Morgan withdrew from the room very quietly, eased the door and then managed to tiptoe away.
He returned to the sofa in the living room where he had been keeping vigil at night.
Time to get back to his post.
But first, before he made himself comfortable for the night, Morgan had one more thing that he wanted to take care of. Taking out his cell phone, he pressed buttons on the keypad that he was so familiar with he could do it in his sleep. Having completed the sequence, he waited while the phone rang on the other end.
When it finally did, he heard it quickly being answered.
“Morgan,” the deep, resonant voice on the other end of the phone said. “Is anything wrong? You don’t usually call at this time of night. Or, for that matter, you don’t really call at all,” Andrew noted. “What can I do for you?”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Morgan quickly told the former chief of police. He paused, looking for the right words. All of this had seemed so much clearer in his head, but now that he had the man on the phone, he found himself slightly at a loss for words. He decided the best course of action was to dive right in. “Um, I don’t know how much you’ve heard through our family grapevine, but it turns out that Finn’s new wife, Nikki, has a twin sister.”
He heard Andrew’s deep laugh resonate against his ear. “Yes, I’ve heard,” Andrew replied. “I’m retired from the police force, Morgan. I’m not dead. I doubt if there’s anything you can tell me about this young woman that I don’t already know. I have my sources.”
The thing of it was, Morgan thought, his uncle was probably right. The man did have his finger on the pulse of events concerning things that had to do with the police department and all the people connected to it, especially his family.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you,” Morgan apologized. “The truth of it is, I didn’t want to take anything for granted.”
Andrew chuckled again. “No need to apologize, Morgan. You were just being thorough. That’s what makes you a good cop. Now, is that the main reason you called, to let me know about Krys, or is there something else?”
“There’s something else,” Morgan admitted.
“Ah. Well, let’s have it. The night’s not getting any younger,” he prompted, “and neither am I.”
“How would you like to have an excuse to throw one of those famous family get-togethers of yours?” Morgan asked, then quickly began to explain, “I don’t usually like to impose like this, but—”
“Morgan?” Andrew said, raising his voice and cutting through his nephew’s rhetoric before he could get carried away.
Morgan abruptly stopped. “Yes, sir?”
“How hard have your superiors been working you lately?” Andrew asked.
The question caught
