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pew at church on Sunday mornings.”
    “You’ve got a problem with church now?”
    “I don’t have a problem with anything. Other than you being a big phony. Mean as a snake, my ass,” he said with a grin. “You’ve made a home here. Become part of the community. They don’t see you as an outsider. You’re one of them. And one of the older ladies said she was thinking about getting some tattoos like yours and some colored streaks in her hair. She said you looked hot and she could use a little hot in her life.”
    Mia snorted out a laugh. The timer dinged on the oven and she pulled out Mrs. Baker’s pizza. It smelled so good she had the fleeting thought that it might be best to eat it all herself.
    “It’ll go straight to your hips,” Zeke said.
    “Stay out of my head.”
    “Didn’t have to go in there for that one. I could read the intent on your face.”
    He got plates and found the pizza cutter in the drawer next to the stove. She narrowed her eyes and wondered if he’d come in and looked around while she’d been hiding at work, or if her patterns of where she kept things were so regimented that he knew right where to look.
    They sat at the little bar in the kitchen and ate pizza and drank beer, and Mia decided to wait him out. Zeke had never liked silence between them. He’d start talking eventually.
    “I know what you’re doing,” he said.
    She stared at him blankly and took another bite of pizza.
    He finally sighed and said, “I’m retiring from undercover work.”
    None of the scenarios Mia had played through her mind had been that one, and she choked on her beer. She pounded at her chest and coughed a couple of times and then stared at him in complete and utter shock.
    “Your mouth is hanging open,” he said.
    “I think I passed out for a second. I’m sorry, what did you say?”
    “I should’ve done it years ago,” he said and shrugged, ignoring her question. “I’m forty years old and it’s a younger man’s game. But I think sometimes it just takes men longer to realize when they’ve hit their limits. Our egos are fragile, I’m told.”
    “Are you sick or something?” she asked, only half joking. She got up and went to grab another beer. The news was a shock. And she was surprised by the violent rearing of her temper. She wanted to throw something. To ask what was so important now that he was able to put the work behind him. But she didn’t. She took a long sip of beer and waited him out. 
    “I’m not sick. It’s just time. I was offered the chief’s job over in Carson. Normal hours and weekends off sounds better and better the older I get. It’d be nice to see what it’s like to have a normal life.”
    “Wow—Carson.” She still couldn’t wrap her brain around it. It was like he was speaking another language and she wasn’t able to process any of his words. It was a good job. Carson was the closest large city and he’d be running a full department of hundreds, not a twenty- or thirty-man task force.
    “You’re angry,” he said, surprised.
    “Nope,” she denied. “Just trying to process.”
    “I thought you’d be happy. I thought it’s what you wanted.”
    She debated on whether or not to throw the bottle at his head, but decided it’d be a perfectly good waste of beer. “It’s what I wanted. Past tense. You are un-fucking-believable. What kind of ego does a man have to have to think that a woman would be waiting on him for seven years while he sowed his oats and finished up his career? And then what, Zeke? Did you think I’d run into your arms and everything would be okay?”
    His cheeks flushed as his own temper rose and satisfaction crept comfortably through her.
    “What makes you think that I’m not completely happy in my life as it is right now?” she asked. “Or that you’d assume I’m not involved with someone who does know the meaning of the word compromise.”
    “That’s fucking bullshit, Mia,” he said, scraping back his chair as he