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he said.
    He said it as if knowing she came from money explained everything about who she was. Old insecurities rose up. “What picture is that?” Her being a brat? Spoiled? Out of touch with the world?
    “Your family has money and consequently you have nice things.”
    It didn’t sound like judgment. Just a statement. “Why does that matter?” she asked.
    “It doesn’t,” Cash said. “But based on how annoyed you’re getting with me about it, I’m guessing you’re accustomed to a certain reaction that I’m not giving you. What is my reaction supposed to be?”
    She didn’t know what it was supposed to be, only that she was surprised he seemed not to care. Lucia was careful not to overreact. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am with the Bureau. My father doesn’t have any influence on my job. My career is my own.”
    Cash regarded her with curiosity in his eyes. “That’s why you’re uptight at work.”
    Outrage struck her. “I am not uptight at work.”
    “You’ve taken on the paperwork for the team. You look for missed dots on i’s and crosses on t’s.”
    “That wasn’t my choice. I was assigned that responsibility,” Lucia said. It grated that he thought she enjoyed looking for mistakes on bureaucratic waste-of-time paperwork. Her “promotion” to white collar was hardly that.
    “You have a list of rules and you follow it. It’s black and white to you because shades of gray scare you.”
    She had professional standards. What successful person didn’t? His assessment that she was uptight stung. “I play by the rules.”
    “But the criminals you’re trying to take down don’t. That puts you at a disadvantage.”
    “But I have you. You’ll break the rules. That puts me back on an even playing field.” Too bad she hadn’t had Cash around when she worked in violent crime. She had been so careful not to make mistakes, but they’d kicked her out another way. Cash would have been slicker.
    Cash laughed. “I bend the rules. I don’t break them.”
    He lay next to her on the bed. It was a bold move, but she knew he hadn’t done it to take advantage of her. He was being a friend.
    “Let me sleep here with you,” Cash said.
    Not possible. How could he suggest it? “No. I have a rule about that.” She threw his words back at him. “You can crash on the couch tonight if you want.” She wouldn’t send him back to the crappy motel. She could call Benjamin and explain.
    “It means a lot to me that you’re letting me stay here, even temporarily. It’s much nicer than the Hideaway.”
    The frank admission struck her. Her bull-crap meter was well honed from years of listening to suspects and criminals lie. It wasn’t going off now. Cash was a really good liar. Was he telling her the truth now?
    Her stomach growled when she caught a whiff of the food Cash had brought. “How did you disable and re-enable the alarm?”
    “Don’t pick such an obvious access code,” he said.
    He’d guessed the number: the date she had been made an FBI agent. Was she that obvious? Cash must have done his homework on her. “Nice guess,” she said.
    He didn’t ask why she had picked that date. “Come on. Let’s eat while it’s hot.”
    “Is eating here okay?” she asked. Her leg hurt too much to move around.
    “Whatever you prefer,” Cash said. He left the room and returned with two bottles of water from the kitchen. He set them on her bedside table. He placed the brown paper bags of food on her bedspread. “I stopped by the security office. I pointed out a few security flaws in the building and he promised to address them. I’ll make sure that he follows through on it.”
    Lucia rearranged her pillows as an ache spread across her leg. She tried to find a more comfortable position to take the strain off it.
    Cash twisted the top off her water and handed it to her. “How can I make you more comfortable?”
    “I’m not sure. Everything hurts,” she said.
    “Do you need another pain pill?”