"I'd prefer you weren't here at all." The robe whips against my legs in the wind and I pull it tighter, which does nothing. I'm shivering from cold or nerves or both. "I'd prefer to be inside my chambers finishing motions instead of standing in a parking lot in my work clothes because someone—"
"The call came in as suspicious package. Foil wrapping near the judges' chambers." He's still watching the parking lot. "No secondary call. Single package, single location."
I stare at him. "And that's supposed to reassure me?"
"Bomb squad confirms or rules out. I read the situation." His gaze sweeps the lot in that constant motion I've learned to recognize. "Two different things in my line of work."
"In my line of work, reading the situation based on available evidence is called a reasonable inference." My teeth are chattering now and I hate that he can probably hear it. "And I'm freezing to death while we wait for your two different things to become one thing."
He holds out his jacket without saying anything, just extends his arm with the jacket hanging from two fingers while his eyes stay on the street. Not offering exactly, more like presenting options.
I take it because my teeth are chattering. That's the only reason.
It smells like him, saffron and cedar and something warm underneath that I can't name but my body recognizes anyway. Twelve years, and my mind still remembers what he smells like. I pull it closed across my chest and hate how much better I feel, not warmer but safer, which is ridiculous because a jacket isn't armor and Cole Tanaka isn't—
Isn't what? Isn't the man who left you? Isn't the man who's been watching you for seven years? Isn't the man whose scent is currently wrapped around you like a claim?
Nonna Rosa would laugh at me. "Tesoro, when a man gives you his coat, it means something."
It means I was cold. That's all.
"If I die of hypothermia in this parking lot," I say, "I want the record to reflect I was wearing your jacket under protest."
"Noted."
The all-clear comes forty minutes later. A retirement gift for Judge Morrison. A bottle of wine in a box wrapped in decorative foil, left outside his chambers by a clerk who forgot to include a card. No name, no note, no one claiming it when securitystarted asking questions. Standard protocol says unattended packages near judicial offices get treated as threats until proven otherwise.
An hour of bomb squad work for a bottle of cabernet.
I wait for relief. It doesn't come fully, because the spike was real even if the threat wasn't. My hands are still shaking inside the sleeves of his jacket.
Cole exhales through his nose. Once. Not a laugh, not commentary. Just an exhale I catch because I've been tracking every breath he takes for an hour whether I want to or not.
"Cabernet," I say flatly. "An hour in the cold fora bottle of wine."
"Could have been worse."
"How, exactly?"
"Could have been a boxed wine."
I almost laugh. Catch it behind my teeth and turn it into a sharp exhale that isn't fooling anyone.
Don't you dare find him funny. Don't you dare.
He waits for me to push off the barrier I've been leaning against first, then falls into step beside me. He's close enough to touch, not touching. I walk back into the courthouse wearing his jacket, catch myself halfway through the lobby, and keep walking anyway.
It's because we're almost at chambers. Not because it's warm. Not because it smells like anything in particular.
I wear it all the way to my office door before I make myself take it off.
Xander looks like he's been through a small war.
He's sitting at the kitchen table with Chesca, surrounded by newspaper, a jar of flour paste, and something that looks like itstarted as a papier-mâché cone and evolved into an asymmetric disaster leaning thirty degrees to the left. Flour dusts the front of his shirt, and Chesca has a streak of brown paint across her forehead and the expression of a field commander who is not satisfied with her troops' performance.
"Xander says I have to let the layers dry," Chesca says, as though this is a personal affront. "But it's dueThursday."
"It's Tuesday," Xander says with the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen too much.