Page 4 of By His Side
The minutes ticked by, my thigh jigging up and down of its own accord. To relax, I concentrated on my surroundings. The Scrubs smelled like it always did, that distinctive mixture of stale air, body odor, laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, and food. On a good day, you got a higher percentage of laundry detergent and cleaning supplies. Today wasn’t a good day, curry from last night’s meal the prevalent scent.
A jangle of keys heralded the prison officer’s return. He unlocked the gate and then jerked his head down the corridor. “This way, Quinn.”
I obediently climbed to my feet and joined him, waiting patiently as he went through the rigmarole of locking the gate once more. I wondered if their dreams were a constant cycle of locking and unlocking gates. Probably not. They no doubt had enough of it during the day. That didn’t stop me from writing pre-sentence reports in my dreams or running over pleas to parole boards, though, so perhaps it was the same.
He led me to a door, making no move to open it for me. When I dropped my usual gung-ho approach in favor of hesitation, he gave me a strange look. “Just wondering if anyone’s informed himabout the change in PO?” That hadn’t been what I’d been thinking. From experience, I could predict the answer to that question being a resounding no, that the news would come from me, but it was the best excuse I could come up with. I certainly wasn’t about to admit to suffering an attack of nerves.
When the prison officer shrugged, I gave in to the inevitable and pushed the door open. The words “I’ll be outside,” floated through the ever decreasing gap as the door closed in my wake. And then it was just me and Felix Church in a room together—the man who’d supposedly been so devoted to his older and more experienced lover he’d helped him cover up the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl who’d had her whole life ahead of her.
I pasted a smile on my face as I turned to face him. My first thought was that I should have done an internet search to find some pictures of him, or studied the file more closely. If I had, perhaps his good looks wouldn’t have packed such a punch. He had short, dark blond hair. Really short. On another man, the cut would have been too severe, but he had the bone structure to carry it off. Strong jaw covered in stubble. Regular well-shaped nose, neither too big nor too small. And a pair of stormy gray eyes currently narrowed on me.
There was no smile to be had in return for mine, but that was nothing new. I’d had plenty of clients where extracting a smile from them was akin to digging for treasure. One of them would be my brother-in-law. Levi smiled a lot these days. Usually every time he saw my brother, Hayden only needing to look at him in a certain way for Levi’s stony exterior to crack.
“Who the fuck are you?”
The delivery might have been a bit on the harsh side, but it was a fair question. I took a seat at the opposite side of the table, Felix choosing not to sit beneath it, but to sit at an angle, his long legs stretchedout in front of him. He wore the usual prison uniform of pale gray sweatpants and sweatshirt, with the sleeves of the latter pushed up to reveal muscular forearms. On Felix Church, the prison uniform looked good, a feat I couldn’t remember any other man or woman pulling off. The phrase he’d look good in a bin bag came to mind, because I suspected Felix would.
Don’t fall for him.
Yeah, the warning from Katherine was making sense. Because physically, Felix Church was smoking hot. Tall, muscular, unmistakably masculine, and with beautiful gray eyes. I cleared my throat, disguising—hopefully—the way his physical presence had thrown me by opening my briefcase and pulling out the folder with his name across the front. Only then did I trust myself to speak. “Unfortunately, Katherine’s had to step down as your probation officer. I’ll be taking over.” I held out my hand. “Darien Quinn.”
He eyed it for a few seconds. Just as relief was setting in that I wouldn’t have to touch him, he took my hand, his skin warm and slightly callused as it enfolded mine in a handshake that left quite the impression. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why has Katherine had to step down?”
I bit down on the urge to tell him it was none of his business. There was no reason not to be honest, especially when I’d be demanding honesty from him. A good relationship between a PO and their client depended on it. “Katherine and her husband have been on the adoption list for some time. They’ve just been given a baby. Short notice is very common. I know she would have liked to tell you herself if it was possible, but obviously the baby comes first.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“Does he have a name?”
I reached for the folder. “Perhaps we should get on with discussing the matter at hand. I don’t want to take up more of your time than I have to.”
Felix swiveled round to face me, tucking those long limbs of his under the table. I immediately retracted my feet, worried we might touch. “Oh, yeah,” he said with derision dripping from his voice. “Because my time is so precious.” He leaned forward over the table, bringing his face far too close for my liking. “What do you think I’ve got on my schedule today, Darien?”
He said my name like a challenge, making me uncomfortably aware that although there was an officer just outside the door, there were plenty of things you could do to a person in the time it would take for him to reach me. “I don’t know. I apologize if I’ve offended you. I didn’t mean to.”
“It was a simple enough question,” Felix pointed out. “I like Katherine. I was showing interest in her baby. I was being polite. Would you rather I wasn’t polite?”
Sweat prickled under my armpits. Difficult, was the word Katherine had used to describe him, and I was getting a firsthand example. I chose my words carefully. “I appreciate you being polite. More than I can say.”
“’More than I can say,’” Felix parroted, his tone giving me a glimpse of what him not being polite might look like. I definitely preferred the former.
“Oliver,” I said, to broker peace and get us back on an even keel. “The baby’s name is Oliver.”
Felix sat back with his arms crossed over his chest, forearms bulging in a way that I couldn’t help but notice. “See! That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He regarded me silently for a few moments. I managed not totwitch beneath his scrutiny, but it was a hard-fought battle. “How old are you?”
“I’m fully qualified if that’s what you're—”
“I didn’t ask about your qualifications. I asked how old you were? Is it a secret?”
“No, it’s not a secret.” I had a routine when meeting clients. I was friendly and chatty. I disarmed them by being nice, by treating them like human beings no matter what they’d done, by believing in them and telling them that with my help, they could turn their lives around. That patter had all deserted me today, leaving me feeling like a butterfly pinned to a board. Felix Church had hold of the pins, and was currently deciding whether he’d remove the ones that were already in, or add more. It was a strange analogy, but it fitted. “Thirty,” I answered.
Felix nodded. “And how long have you been a PO?”
