“Did she just let you?” she asked. “End it, I mean.”

“No, not really,” Rosie said quietly. “We’re not a couple, not by a long shot, but she pesters me to go on dates with her and makes sure I’m assigned to her cases, and every so often she’ll get me drunk enough that I’ll sleep with her.” She withdrew her hand from Jem’s and tucked it between her thighs, her embarrassment evident in every stilted movement.

“Hey,” Jem said. She waited until Rosie looked at her. “I can fabricate feline shenanigans just as well as you can, so phone me if you ever need me, okay?”

“Steph knows I don’t have a cat,” Rosie said. Her face was pale, but she was starting to smile.

Jem shook her spoon at Rosie, splashing ice cream down the side of the car. “I’ll use my imagination. I’m very creative when I set my mind to it. Do we have a deal?”

“Okay, yes, we have a deal.” When they shook on it, Rosie kept a tight hold of Jem’s hand. “On a scale of one to ten, how pathetic do you think I am?”

“Zero. Minus one. Don’t be bloody stupid,” Jem said. “Nobody’s perfect. We all fuck up, get stuff wrong, and do things we’d want to change if we had the chance.” She held Rosie’s gaze, making sure she’d got her point across, and then jumped as the RRV’s data terminal began to bleep and her radio blared in synch with it. She scrolled down to the job information and sighed. “I rest my case,” she said, turning the monitor so Rosie could read it. Male, nineteen. Head stuck in a gate.

“For fuck’s sake.” Rosie could barely swear for laughing. “That scale I just mentioned? He’s getting an eleven.”

Chapter Twelve

Jem straightened Ferg’s bowtie and steered him in front of her bedroom mirror. “They’re not going to know what’s hit them,” she said, brushing a crumb from his kilt. “Damn, Ferg, you have better legs than me.”

“Hairier legs,” he corrected her. “And ginger hair at that.”

“Shush, it’s all part of your charm. You’ll have them queuing out of the marquee again.”

They walked downstairs together. She was ready for work and scheduled to drop him at the train station half an hour before the start of her shift.

“How ever are you going to manage without me?” he asked. He’d always been as much a big brother as a best friend, and there was genuine concern in his expression, despite his lightness of tone.