Chapter 9

Blowing out a breath, Sinead tapped the folded paper against her thumb as she sat in her car looking up at the apartment building.

“What the fuck am I doing?” she asked herself.

Going to get the test had been agonisingly embarrassing. Not that there was anything wrong with getting an STD test, it was the reason that she was getting it that made her stomach knot up.

Am I really doing this? She thought to herself.

She was stuck between a rock and a hard place on the case. Or it felt that way, at least. Maybe it was that Irish blood that her father had always said she’d inherited even though her family hadn’t set foot on Irish soil for a good century. She could just walk away. Someone else would find something else about Le Français at some point. No criminal network could last forever.

But the trail was going cold, and God she wanted to grab this tiger by the tail and try to wrestle it.

This, though...

Marc was an attractive man. She’d recognized it when she’d first seen him. Sinead couldn’t deny that she might have been willing to hook up with him under different circumstances. And this was only one time, for one specific goal. It wasn’t wrong, it was ... expedient.

“God, fuck,” she grunted and got out of her car before she could circle back on herself. She was cutting it close to being late and Marc wasn’t the kind of guy who was wishy-washy on timing.

The fact that she recognized that and felt herself care about it, even a little, made her stomach knot a little bit again.

She went up to the floor where his loft was and rang the doorbell, and he answered dressed in one of those suits that were cut so well on his frame. They were probably ridiculously expensive, but they looked good. His black hair was perfectly quaffed just like every time she’d seen him, and it looked like he might have freshly shaved the stubble on his cheeks.

“Detective,” he said. “Come in, please.”

She stepped in and felt like one weight had lifted from her shoulders but another had settled in her chest. The decision was made. She was here. She was doing this.

Sinead followed Marc to his kitchen, where he reached for an envelope on that expansive kitchen island he had and he handed it to her. “As promised, so you know we can have some good, clean fun.”

“Same,” Sinead said, handing him her folded test results and then opening the envelope. She scanned down the printout quickly. He didn’t have anything.

“Lovely,” Marc said, smiling softly as he checked her paper and then re-folded it and set it down. “I find, when engaging with a new partner even for a short time, it’s best to put things out in the open for everyone’s comfort. No judgement intended, of course. I don’t know what sort of sexual history you have.”

“I’m divorced,” Sinead said and wasn’t sure why she blurted it out. “I mean, I’m not seeing anyone regularly. There’s been a couple of casual hookups since then, but nothing major.”

“I wasn’t asking, Sinead,” Marc said with that fucking smile of his. “Though I appreciate the honesty.”

“So what now?” Sinead asked, leaning back into her frustration at him, and at herself, to try and ground her. “We head up to your bed and get busy?”