Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (15 page)

He turned back to the windshield, but his eyes were distant. “And when I went in the house later, you know what I saw? The key for the back door, hanging on a hook right by it.” His voice was close to breaking. “The guy must have looked right at it like ten times and not seen it because he was panicking. Isn’t that funny?”

I could feel big, hot tears threatening to spill. “
Jesus.
”

Ryan took a deep breath. “So. That’s what happened.”

I thought back to the screen test.
How’s Hux?
I’d asked merrily. I closed my eyes. “I’m such a bitch,” I whispered. “Ryan, I am so, so sorry.”

“You couldn’t have known,” he told me. But that didn’t make it any better.

***

He started driving again a few minutes later and I just sat there and watched him, letting the tears dry on my cheeks. I’d thought there’d been something different about him when I saw him at the screen test and now it made sense. God, he’d worked with Hux for years—hours and hours, every day, just the two of them in the car together. It must have been like losing a brother, or a father. He looked haunted...a little like Darrell had looked sometimes, when I’d first met him. Darrell had needed Nat to bring him out of himself, to start the healing process. Who did Ryan have? No one.

…

No. Don’t even start down that path. Jesus, as if I could help him anyway!
I knew now what caused that deep, dark anger that lurked inside him, the anger I’d glimpsed at the screen test.

I studied him as he drove. It’s not often you get to look at someone—really
look
at them—because they always sense you looking and turn around and meet your eyes. But Ryan was staring determinedly at the road—waiting, I suspected, until he trusted himself enough to speak again. Dark brows and dark lashes, accentuating those deep blue eyes. He’d let his hair grow a little longer, that clean-cut look now a little looser, a little more tousled, and the summer sun had lightened his hair to a dark brown. I wanted to run my fingers through it, staring into his eyes as I leaned in to—

I caught myself.
Get a grip!
I still had to deal with this whole situation before it got any more out of control. Ryan was in pain and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him more...but the quicker and cleaner I could shut this thing down, the less painful it would be. I needed to be Jasmine more than I ever had.
What would Jasmine do?

She’d play dumb. She’d pretend she thought he was acting in the screen test.

I was about ninety percent certain that he hadn’t been, but if I played dumb it allowed him a way out. He could take it all back and claim he’d been acting...or he could say he hadn’t been, and then I’d have to be shocked and maybe a little embarrassed and tell him how I didn’t feel that way about him. It would kill him, but it was the only way. I really hoped it didn’t come to that.

“That was pretty amazing, in the screen test,” I said.

I saw his hands clench on the steering wheel. He must have known it was coming, but maybe he’d been putting it off as long as possible. “Yeah,” he said. Then, “Thanks.”

He was being just as guarded as I was. Feeling me out just as I was feeling him out. Well, alright then.

“I didn’t know you could act like that,” I said.

He looked across at me for a second. “I can’t.” His eyes were burning in their intensity.

Shit!

But then I saw the battle in his eyes, and he wavered. “I mean: I can’t normally. But with you...I had a good partner.”

I nodded. Okay.
Whew.
So I’d been right: it
had
been for real. But he’d realized it was a mistake and was backing off from it.
Thank God.
Now we could go forward, and everything would be fine.

Except...there was a part of me that wasn’t happy with that. A part that had been sent reeling when he first said
I can’t.
It had felt like my heart had grown lighter, somehow, like it had lifted, and it was a long, long time since I’d felt something like that. I wanted to feel it again.

And suddenly words were coming out of my mouth and I wasn’t speaking them. Emma was. She said, “You weren’t acting, were you?”

What? WHAT?! What did I just say? Shit, shit, shit!

Ryan looked at me. My mouth was hanging open as I sat there in total disbelief at what I’d just said. He started to slow down and pull over to the side of the road and I knew, I
knew,
that the second the wheels brushed the curb, he’d kiss me.

He had to glance, just once, in the mirror, and that broke the spell. I felt my mouth twist into a grin. “I’m kidding!” I said, and laughed long and hard, throwing back my head. “Oh, man. Your
face!
I know you were acting, you idiot!
”

I’m good at laughing. I can do it even when I’m in tears on the inside.

I watched him swallow. I watched the anger and pain play across his face and I’ve never felt like such a bitch. But out of the corner of my eye I could see the shotgun, and I remembered what would happen if Ryan discovered the real me. Better this than that. Better to hurt him a little now than to rip him apart later.

He nodded to himself, as if what I’d said made up his mind about something. And then he flipped a switch and the radio crackled into life. “Let’s see if we can find some action,” he said. The radio started blurting out staccato orders.

I nodded enthusiastically and smiled as if I was oblivious to what he was going through. But I could see it in the way he set his shoulders, in the tension in his face.
He likes me. He likes me a lot. But it couldn’t be more than that...could it? Oh God, please don’t say he’s really fallen for me. Not Ryan. Please don’t say I’ve broken his heart.

But as I looked at him, I knew it was true. This guy—this
good
guy, who’d never done anything to hurt anyone, had bought the illusion I’d been selling. He’d swallowed Jasmine hook, line and sinker and he’d fallen for her...he’d fallen for a woman who didn’t exist. And now she—I—was callously pushing him away.

The radio said something that was completely indecipherable to me, but Ryan hit a button and snapped out a response. “That’s only a few streets away,” he told me, his voice tight. He hit the gas and the car surged forward.

“What is it?” The acceleration was pressing me back in my seat.

“Bag snatcher. Someone on foot patrol saw it happen. Got a description. We’ll see if we can pick him up.”

He’d got all that from the few seconds of garbled radio chatter? I stared at him and tried to figure out what was going on in his head. Was he just pretending to concentrate on the crime, and he was still thinking about what had just happened between us? Or had he really just snapped into cop mode, everything else forgotten in an instant?

We turned into another street, then another. Ryan slowed the car and we cruised almost silently beside the crowds of shoppers. Then: “There.” He pointed. “See him? Red hooded top, black jeans, paper bag from a store? He’s got the handbag inside it.”

I looked and spotted the guy. “How do you know it’s him? There must be hundreds of people in red tops.”

“Instinct.” He stopped the car right behind the man. “Also, we do this and see if he bolts.” And he blipped the siren, just a single strangled wail.

The man bolted. Ryan already had his door half open and was off after him, plunging into the crowd.

I sat there stunned for a few seconds. What the hell was I meant to do now? Run after him? Stay there? Was I meant to watch the car?

I jumped out and sprinted down the street, searching for them. Fortunately, Ryan’s size made him easy to spot and the path he carved through the crowd made it easy to follow.

Clarissa had been trying to convince me to come jogging with her. I suddenly regretted every time I’d given her a lame excuse. By the time I’d gone half a block my lungs were burning, but Ryan was still pounding along ahead of me. He could really
move,
despite his height and bulk, and I wondered if he’d played sports in high school. He’d nearly caught the thief, one hand extended to grab his shoulder, and it didn’t look as if he was even running flat out.

I pushed myself harder, panting, thanking God I’d at least worn sneakers and not heels. I saw Ryan bring the guy down, spinning him around and pinning him all in one move. When I got there, he was already slapping the cuffs on him and reading him his rights. He looked up at me as I staggered to a halt. “You okay?”

I bent over, my hands on my knees, heaving in air. I gave him a thumbs-up.

“Who’s she?” asked the thief. “Your girlfriend?”

Ryan ignored him and heaved him up to his feet, then pushed him along in front of us.

“Is it...always...like this?” I panted, falling in alongside him.

Ryan thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah. Quiet, and then crazy.”

I watched him all the way back to the car. Even now that he’d caught the guy, he was still checking the crowd and glancing at passing cars. Alert. On patrol. I realized I’d got it wrong, before, when I wondered if he’d really gone into “cop mode” or was just faking it. He was
always
in cop mode. He’d just been dialing it down when he was with me. I tried to imagine what that would be like: to always be on the job, in a way, even when you’re out in a bar with your friends, or out on a date.

Maybe it wasn’t so different to constantly playing a role.

Chapter 17

Ryan

“Watch your head,” I told the guy as I bundled him into the back seat. Then I got into the front beside Jasmine. “We’ll have to take him downtown to book him,” I told her, keeping my voice neutral. “That okay?”

“Sure,” she said, smiling. “Hey, I need to see that stuff too, right?”

I pulled out into traffic, trying to draw calm from the familiar: the feel of the wheel under my fingers, the chatter of the radio—half-heard, but always there in your consciousness. Civilians think it must get irritating, but it doesn’t. When the radio’s on, you’re connected. You’re a part of something, and someone always has your back.

I glanced across at her. God, she’d turned up in the sexiest outfit imaginable. A Fenbrook sweatshirt whose soft black fabric formed a ski slope over her perfect breasts and jeans that hugged every inch of her glorious curves.

So she thought I’d been acting in the screen test. And she’d been acting, too.

I cursed my own stupidity. Of
course
she’d just been acting. Of
course
she didn’t feel anything for me. Get real! Those few times I thought I’d glimpsed something must have been wishful thinking.

One thing didn’t make sense. If she’d thought all along that I was just acting, why had she run off to the corridor? Why had she been banging her head against the soda machine?

I reddened.
Shit.
Because thanks to me, she had to perform with an idiot. Maybe one she didn’t even like. And when she discovered that I couldn’t act, it would be even worse. She would have been starring with a professional, talented actor, even if he was a sleaze. I’d messed up everything for her!

“So,” said the bag snatcher. “
Is
she your girlfriend?”

“Shut up,” I said without turning around.

***

At the station, I left Jasmine sitting in a corner where she could watch the chaos without being completely consumed by it. The room was packed with uniforms: hauling perps around, filling out paperwork, tapping away at computers...she was probably in the safest room in the entire city, but she looked terrified. I figured it was being so close to actual, real-life criminals—with her privileged background, it was probably the first time she’d seen one up close.

I filled out the booking form for the bag snatcher. Charlie C came over to grab it off me so he could process the guy. “Please tell me,” he said, “that she’s in the TV show.”

I followed his gaze to Jasmine. Cops usually use surnames, but we have three Charlies in our precinct with surnames starting with A, B and C and, once people started using it, the names stuck. Charlie C’s the little one, scarcely taller than Jasmine herself.

“Yep,” I said.

“Oh, man. So you have to, like, teach her how to be a cop?”

“Yep.”

Charlie shook his head. “You lucky SOB. Does she take it off, in the show?”

I turned to him. “What?!”

He blinked and stepped back. “What? I was just askin’.” He looked at Jasmine again. “Man, she’s hot. Look at those—”

I slapped the booking form to his chest. “Done,” I told him, and stalked off, anger flaring inside me. What had I expected? I’d overheard plenty of conversations about hot actresses on TV. Hell, I’d probably contributed to a few of them. So why did it bother me so much with Jasmine?

You know why,
said Hux.

But she wasn’t with me. Wasn’t ever going to be with me—she’d made that pretty clear. But that didn’t seem to matter—I still had this urge to protect her, to shield her from all the bad shit in the world. Every time I looked at her, I just wanted to scoop her up in my arms and carry her off somewhere where no one could ever talk about her that way. She deserved better than that. She was a goddamn princess.