Serving Side by Side (Rocky Royal Romance Book 3) by Fiona West

Author:Fiona West [West, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Tempest and Kite Publishing
Published: 2021-02-23T00:00:00+00:00

WHEN SAM STEPPED OUTSIDE to start his shift, he groaned. Saint was standing there, arms folded across his wide chest, wearing a Cheshire grin.

“Hello, ladies’ man,” he said in his deepest register. “How was your day?”

“Get out of here. I’m working.”

“Me too. I’m filling in for Macias,” he said, “so we’ve got plenty of time to talk.”

“Macias and I don’t talk when we work.”

“No, there’s better ways to pass the time, apparently . . .”

“Hey!” Sam felt his face flush. “We weren’t working, we were at her house! We would never do that on duty; she’s a total professional. She’s on bereavement leave because she just found out her husband is dead, remember?”

“Wait a minute. She finds out her husband is dead, and the first thing she does is kiss you?”

Sam said nothing. This whole situation was getting out of hand.

“Dang, Sammy. You better jump on that.”

Sam shook his head. Now that he’d eaten something, he’d cleared his head, gained some perspective. “She was just grateful. That’s all.” He lowered his voice. “Why would she want to be with me? I’m a hot mess when it comes to women.”

“Which is why you should jump on it if a woman’s into your brand of mess.”

“Conversation over.”

“Sam, come on. I just meant—”

“Conversation over.”

“I know it’s delicate, working together, but you could easily—”

“Conversation over.”

“You’ve got twelve hours to pick my brain, which is chock full of information about women, and you just want to stand here in silence?”

“That’s correct.”

“Fine.” That’s what they did . . . for a while.

Around 2300 hours, when Edward and Abbie had gone to bed, apparently without breaking any more lamps, Sam cleared his throat.

“My life is carefully ordered.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. In ways not even you guys know about. I don’t know if there’s room for a woman in my life. I can’t imagine what woman would want that, want me.”

“Give me an example.”

“I can’t sleep without a heavy blanket on me.”

He heard Saint’s clothes shift as he shrugged. “A lot of people like the covers on them . . .”

“Mine weighs twenty pounds.”

“Huh.”

“When I’m at home, I wear my clothes inside out so the seams don’t drive me crazy.”

Saint was silent for a moment. “Does that mean that your clothes bother you when you’re out?”

“You’re missing the point. The point is I’m not normal.”

“What’s normal? My parents are Imaharan, and they adopted a white kid. That’s not normal.”

“But your parents are great.”

“Of course they are. But the point is that everyone’s weird somehow. What’s really weird are the people who think they’re is normal.” He paused. “Does she know?”

“She knows some of it.”

“And?”

“And she doesn’t seem to care.”

“You don’t have to marry her next week, Sam. Try the relationship on for size, see how she fits. It’s called dating.”

“Yes, and like carbon dating, it has a rate of decay. When it doesn’t work out, and we have to stand here in silence every night for twelve hours, that’s gonna be terrible.”

“I thought you were doing that master’s certificate, the risk

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