Page 80 of The Wild Card

“Damn, this is good.” I close my eyes, savoring. “Why don’t we do this more often?”

When I open them, Crew is watching me. There’s something in his expression—something heated and quickly shuttered—that makes my breath catch.

“Because someone—” Sadie points her fork at me, oblivious to the moment I just had— “is always working on her cookbook and never wants to leave the apartment.”

“I leave the apartment.”

“For groceries. That doesn’t count.”

“Speaking of the cookbook,” Foster says, reaching for more chips, “how’s it going? You’re writing about cooking for people you love, right?”

I feel Crew stiffen slightly beside me.

“It’s, um, going well.” I take a sip of my margarita. “Finally found my angle.”

“What’s the angle?”

Cooking for a grumpy man who pretends he doesn’t like good food. Learning someone’s tastes. Paying attention to what they need before they know they need it.

“Just… making it more personal,” I say. “Writing from experience.”

Sadie catches my eye. She knows. She’s the only one who knows I’ve basically been writing about Crew for the past two weeks, that my editor finally stopped sending concerned emails, that the pages are flowing in a way they haven’t since I started.

“Well, Crew’s definitely eating better since you moved in,” Foster offers. “I’ve never seen the man voluntarily consume a vegetable before. Now he’s talking about roasted brussels sprouts like they’re a revelation.”

“They are a revelation,” Crew mutters. “When they’re cooked right.”

“See?” Foster toasts me with his ridiculous drink. “You’ve changed him, Marshall. It’s beautiful.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just smile and shove more enchilada in my mouth.

But under the table, Crew’s hand finds my knee. It just rests there, warm and steady.

I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it.

Dinner stretches into two hours. More drinks. More food. Stories I’ve never heard about Crew’s early days at the Bureau—how he accidentally tackled a senior agent during a training exercise, how he once chased a suspect into a quinceañera and had to apologize to an entire extended family.

“He was very polite about it,” Foster says. “Said ‘excuse me, ma’am’ to the grandmother while he was cuffing the guy.”

“She gave me cake,” Crew adds. “Afterwards. Said I had good manners.”

I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts. This is a side of him I’ve only seen in glimpses—dry humor, quiet warmth, the ability to laugh at himself. He’s different with his friends. Looser. More human.

And God, he’s beautiful when he laughs.

It transforms his whole face—softens those sharp edges, crinkles the corners of his steel-gray eyes, makes him look like someone who hasn’t spent years building walls around himself. I want to make him laugh like this every day. I want to be the reason for it.

Dangerous thoughts, Emmie. Very dangerous thoughts.

But I can’t stop having them. Can’t stop noticing the way his shirt stretches across his shoulders when he reaches for his drink. The way his forearm flexes when he gestures. The scar through his eyebrow that he never talks about, that I desperately want to trace with my fingertip.

He catches me staring and raises an eyebrow.

I look away quickly, face hot, and pretend to be very interested in the last of my enchiladas.

“Okay, I need air.” I slide out of the booth, still catching my breath from the last story. “It’s too hot in here.”

“I’ll come with you,” Crew says, already standing.