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  The officer jerked his head toward the narrow hallway that led to the interview rooms. “Miz Harmon. She drove Richie Johnson’s grandmother in.”

  Chapter 7

  Clare. Matt’s gut roiled. Not twenty minutes ago, he’d been thanking the saints she wasn’t involved in this mess. So why couldn’t she keep her pretty little nose out of it? He’d warned her not to get mixed up with the Boothe kid.

  “Is she all right?”

  Stewart looked surprised. “Her? Oh, absolutely. She’s been real insistent that the rights of the juvenile offender be observed.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” In spite of Matt’s anger, he smiled some as he exchanged a long, silent look of masculine understanding with Stewart. Saint Joan was obviously back in the saddle and riding to the rescue. “You want me to talk to her?”

  “Thanks, Sarge. That’d be good.”

  Matt wasn’t so sure. His first sight of her, primly upright on a bench in the hall, filled him with a combustible mixture of relief and longing, irritation and respect. One wrong word from her, and he’d blow up like a homemade bomb.

  Her red-gold hair was bright against the dingy green walls and disheveled where she’d run her hands through it. He remembered the feel of it in his fingers, baby fine, baby soft. She didn’t belong here, he thought, propping up the grimy station house walls on behalf of some thankless punk.

  And yet by some combination of charm and determination, she’d finagled her way to the interview room. Department regulations had stumped her just outside the door. She hadn’t managed to wangle her way inside.

  Yet, Matt thought wryly, both exasperated and admiring.

  “Matt!” Her eyes lit when she saw him. “I’m so glad you’re here. They won’t let me in to see Richie.”

  Her total focus on the kid made a mockery of Matt’s unvoiced concern, his unacknowledged desire. The need to silence them both, to stifle the hot churning in his gut, made him snap.

  “Why should they? You’re not his mother.”

  He watched her draw back, her slim shoulders squaring. “Very astute, cowboy. Is that the kind of shrewd observation they’re teaching in police academy these days?”

  God, she was a pistol, Matt thought, torn between laughing and shaking her. Of course, he could do neither. No wonder Stewart had accepted backup.

  “Only in the detective division, sugar.”

  Her ready flush swept up. He wanted to brush the back of his fingers over her cheek, to feel the smoothness and test the warmth.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I talked to the arresting officer. Pending the investigation, they’ll release Richie into his grandmother’s custody. You’ll be able to go home real soon.”

  Instead of thanking him, she shook her head. “What about Tyler?”

  “Tyler’s none of your business. You shouldn’t waste your time on a kid like that.”

  She stood, crossing her arms under her small breasts. Damned if he knew another woman as attractive. Or as annoying.

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. He’s a child.”He was a threat to her. But Matt couldn’t make her see that. “He’s a punk.”

  “He’s my employee.”

  “So, fire him.”

  “I will not.”

  Matt made a grab for his patience. He could sympathize— just—with Clare’s concern for Richie. But the Boothe kid...a Viper...Eddie Boothe’s frickin’ cousin! He didn’t understand that at all.

  “You can’t want this kid around. We’re talking no respect for property rights here. He stole a car.”

  “That hasn’t been proven.”

  “There are witnesses, Clare. He’s a criminal.”

  Unexpectedly, her smile glimmered. “Not a very successful one, apparently. I think he’s going to need to find another line of work. And I can provide one.”

  Matt rubbed the back of his neck. He’d coped with well-intentioned interference from members of the public before. The important thing was not to lose his cool. But when he looked at Clare, reasoning and training flew out the window, and an irrational, unprofessional desire to grab her and stow her safely away seized his gut and squeezed his chest. He couldn’t explain the feeling. Didn’t want to examine it too closely. But there it was, and he was going to have to deal with it.

  And so, he thought grimly, was she.

  “You gave him his chance. He blew it.”

  “Then I’ll give him another one. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

  He let his glance linger pointedly on her mouth. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Her eyes widened at his sexual implication. Good, he thought. At least he had her attention now.

  But before she could respond—if she was going to respond—the door to the interview room opened and Richie and his grandmother came out.

  ***

  Clare took a step forward, her shoulder brushing Matt’s.

  Warmth jolted through her at the casual contact. She ignored it.

  He was no use to her at all, she thought indignantly. She pushed from memory the rush of relief she’d felt at that first sight of his tall, commanding figure, the bump of her heart when his gaze burned her mouth. Since his arrival, he’d proven himself totally unsympathetic, completely uncooperative, every inch the unbending officer of the law.

  Poor Richie.

  The boy slunk out of the interview room, chin to chest, eyeing Matt with the same hopeful, wary look she was sure she’d worn herself. Seeking comfort. Wanting rescue.

  Clare pressed her lips together. Well, they were going to have to manage on their own, because the big, bad detective wasn’t here to rescue anybody. He was here to kick some butt.

  But even as she thought that, even as she reached to tug on the brim of Richie’s cap and fuss with the shoulders of his jacket, Matt moved smoothly in front of her to take Letitia Johnson’s arm.

  “Ma’am? How are you doing?”

  Clare stopped at his warm, reassuring tone.

  Letitia’s tired face creased in a smile. “Sergeant Dunn. That other policeman, he told me you were here.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Did he also tell you that you can go home?”

  Her troubled gaze sought her grandson’s face. “For now, he said.”

  “Two to four weeks. Until the court date is set,” Matt said calmly.

  Clare admired his honesty as well as his support, but Letitia wasn’t satisfied.

  “And then what?” she demanded. “Sergeant Dunn, what’s going to happen to my boy? I told him to stay away from that Tyler. I told him to listen to Miss Clare. They tell me he’s got to stay with me and mind me, and I can’t get him to mind. He—”

  “You leave Richie to me,” Matt interrupted her. “Let’s just get the two of you home now.”

  Letitia nodded, resting her birdlike arm on his massive one.

  “I can take her,” Clare intervened.

  “Fine. Richie can ride with me.” Matt’s black eyes met hers in pure challenge. “It’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  She felt the heat in him. In spite of his controlled gentleness with Richie’s grandmother, she guessed Matt wouldn’t be kind. Beside her, Richie shrank deeper into his oversize jacket. Clare’s own stomach contracted in sympathy. No, she thought. Absolutely not. No way was she trusting Matt to deal with eleven-year-old Richie until he’d had the chance to cool down. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he was already addressing the boy, speaking over her head.

  “The dog was expecting you,” he said evenly. “At three.”

  Richie’s head dropped even further. “Oh, man,” he muttered.

  “You let him down.” Matt waited a beat. “You let both of us down.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” Richie burst out. “Tyler, he said the car belonged to his cousin. I didn’t know. We were just gonna sit in it, he said.”

  “Was that before or after he wired it?”

  Richie screwed his cap around in an agony of unexpressed remorse. “He said he cou
ldn’t find the keys. I thought it belonged to his cousin.”

  Clare’s compassionate heart twisted, remembering a time when she had been similarly deluded and similarly blind. She felt again the guilt that ate at her after Paul’s unexpected murder. You didn’t see what you didn’t want to know.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “Not to me,” Matt agreed readily. “Of course, Officer Stewart is going to want some answers. I’m sure the judge will be interested in your explanation when the time comes. And Trigger...how are you going to make it right with him, Richie? You can’t explain it to him. He’s just a dog.”

  “I’ll walk him when we get back,” Richie said eagerly. “Twice, if you want. I’ll walk him tonight.”

  “No.”

  Richie blinked at the soft, implacable reply. “It’s no trouble. I can do it. That policeman, he didn’t say I had curfew or anything. Grandma, tell him I can do it.”

  “No,” Matt repeated. “You can come visit the dog after school, same as before. But I’ll have to take over the walking chores for a while. I need to be able to rely on you, Richie. Until I can, you’ll see Trigger once a day, in the yard.”

  Even as sympathy for the boy stirred inside her, Clare recognized the justice of Matt’s decision. He made Richie’s punishment a direct consequence of his choice not to come home. Maybe it was the kind of call good cops made all the time, but still, Clare admired Matt’s judgment. A child learned to value fairness in an adult.

  She caught herself wondering if Matt had learned his tempered judgment from his own father and shook her head at her foolish abstraction. His parenting skills or lack of them were none of her business. All that mattered was that Richie live with the ban and learn from it.

  Even Trigger wouldn’t suffer from Matt’s ruling. The only one inconvenienced, she suspected, would be Matt himself. Could he even walk the dog with his wounded leg?

  “Is that a good idea?” she asked.

  He propped against the wall, lifting one eyebrow. “Are you telling me who can walk my dog now?’ ’

  “No. It’s just—”

  “Not volunteering to do it yourself?”

  “Hardly. But—”

  “Then you’ll have to leave this one to me and Richie.”

  “I just thought—”

  He leaned closer, speaking low. Her heart skipped to her throat as his broad shoulders swooped over her, shielding their conversation from Richie and his grandmother.

  “Maybe this time I don’t care what you think. He acted impulsively, you said last time. He’s sorry, you said. He won’t do it again.” She could feel his breath warm on her face, smell his soap and sweat and coffee. “Well, sugar, we all need to learn to control our impulses. Maybe you don’t think much of me or my way of doing things, but taking away something the kid values is the only way I know to help him do it.”

  Driven on the defensive by his unexpected criticism, Clare snapped, “Fine. Maybe the badass cop routine will work with Richie. I’ve got to tell you it doesn’t do a thing for me.”

  Too late, she realized she’d been overheard. Matt’s fellow officer—Stewart, was it?—stood just behind him. She bit her lip. Following the line of her gaze, Matt turned.

  The patrolman cleared his throat, stepping back. “When you’ve got a minute, Sergeant, Lieutenant would like to see you.”

  Matt nodded. He waited for the officer to leave before he said quietly to Clare, “If I were trying to impress you, sugar, I might be upset by that remark. But I’m just trying to do my job.”

  He pushed away from the wall, away from her. “Take the kid home, if you want. I’ve got things to do here.”

  ***

  Matt turned the corner at Magnolia and Vine.

  Right on time, Clare thought. In the three weeks since Richie’s arrest, she’d learned Matt’s schedule by heart.

  She straightened from the rows of new peas, one hand to her back, one shielding her eyes from the afternoon sun. Isaac, uncharacteristically, had failed to show for work that morning, and she was thinning the rows with a skeleton crew. She watched Matt come down the street, moving stiffly because it was the end of his walk and slowly because his dog stuck its nose in every drooping bush and discarded candy wrapper along the way. In black boots and jeans and a gray police department T-shirt, he looked like a gunslinger hired to tame the town. He was still too far away for her to read his face, but she could see the effort in his stride and the tension in his shoulders. Her heart tightened at the subtle signs of pain.

  A little girl with neat black braids skipped out from her beaten clay yard. At her approach, the dog wagged its tail, and Matt stopped and smiled. And his flashing grin shattered his big, bad image and made him infinitely more dangerous to her heart.

  Slowly, Clare lowered her arm, still squinting into the sun. She’d told him—she’d told herself—she wasn’t interested in a relationship. She wasn’t compromising her hard won independence with another take-charge law enforcement type. She was afraid to risk her heart on a man whose job put him in danger. She didn’t want to get hurt again.

  But she found now she was hurting anyway. It hurt to see Matt and never talk to him. It hurt to have him think badly of her.

  Movement behind her snapped her attention back to the lot. Isaac slunk along the chain-link fence on the far side, shoulders hunched and navy cap pulled low against the sun. He staggered in the soft, tilled soil, regaining his balance with difficulty.

  Drunk, Clare thought, her stomach sinking with a weight of sorrow and anger. If he were high, he’d lack the judgment to avoid her. She pressed her lips together. She liked Isaac— depended on him, really—but she was going to have to bust him. It was hard enough to get her crews to report to work sober and on time without the crew chief setting a bad example.

  She set her shoulders, wiped her palms on her jeans, and strode across the lot. “Isaac! I want to talk to you.”

  Work stopped on the lot. Isaac stiffened in the thin strip of shadow cast by the shed.

  Reaching his side, Clare dropped her voice, mindful of listening ears. “Do you want to tell me what the hell you think...Oh, dear Lord.”

  He’d been roughed up. Beaten. Beneath the rolled brim of his navy knit cap, a cut slashed his eyebrow. The eye itself was swollen almost shut. A gash at the corner of his mouth cracked and bled. He’d made some attempt to clean himself up, she could see that now. White wrapped his knuckles, and his face was clean. But nothing could disguise the rising bruises.She gripped his forearm. Which one of them she hoped to support with her gesture, she couldn’t have said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  He attempted a smile. Winced. “Don’t need one.”

  “What happened?” He didn’t answer. Frustrated, like a mother whose child has run into the street, she shook his arm. “Who did this to you?”

  He dropped his head. “Don’t know.”

  He was lying.

  “Isaac...” she appealed.

  He raised his eyes to return her gaze steadily. “Can’t say,” he corrected himself.

  Clare sighed in defeat. “Oh, Isaac.”

  She glanced up the street. Matt, having finished his dialogue with the little girl in purple barrettes, had resumed his slow, uneven progress along the sidewalk. She felt a peculiar pang when he crossed to the other side. To avoid her, she supposed. Since their encounter at the police station three weeks ago, they’d barely spoken.

  She didn’t want to gamble what was left of her life on a man like Matt. But having seen his expert handling of Richie and his grandmother, she was prepared to trust him now. Impulsively, she shouted across the street.

  “Matt! Got a minute?”

  ***

  Matt stiffened. He’d known all along she was there, watching him, weighing him with her clear brown eyes and finding him wanting. The hell with that. He’d known all along a woman like her had n
o place in her life for a man like him. He let Trigger get a good snoutful of whatever fascinated him under the bush before he turned, slowly.

  Mistake. She was too close, too fast. He had no time to prepare a defense against her. She came up smelling of dirt and tender growing things, and her freckles danced across her nose, and the sun on her hair dazzled him.

  “Clare,” he acknowledged cautiously.

  Trigger woofed an exuberant greeting, his thin tail whipping his haunches. Clare knelt, covering the awkward moment by fussing over the dog. When she looked up, her face was pink from pleasure or embarrassment.

  Or stooping, Matt reminded himself, trying to rein in his overactive imagination.

  “We’ve got a problem,” she said, in that blunt, warm way of hers that alternately tickled and irritated the hell out of him. “Can you come talk to Isaac?”

  She didn’t want the man. She needed the cop. It was a change from the usual reaction he got from women, Matt reflected. Before he could decide how he felt about it, his training took over.

  “Sure,” he said easily. “What’s up?”

  She pushed to her feet. “He won’t tell me.”

  “Okay. Let’s see if he’ll talk under the bright lights and rubber hoses.”

  She checked in the middle of the street.

  “Joke,” Matt explained.

  She tilted that little nose of hers in the air, making him grin. “I knew that.”

  But one look at Isaac’s face dispatched the smile. Damn. Someone had made one hell of a point with his fists.

  “Isaac.” The crew chief nodded warily. Matt tried the most nonthreatening approach he could think of. “You want a ride to the ER? I’ve got the hospital route memorized.”

  “Naw. Thanks. I’m okay.”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Matt said dryly. “But you might want to have a doctor take a look at that eye.”

  Isaac reached a cautious hand up to his oozing eyebrow. “And take pictures, right?”

  Police procedure called for two sets of color photographs after an assault, one taken right after the crime was reported, and one three days later, when the extent of the injuries could be clearly seen.