B007S2Z1KC EBOK Page 2

  “No.” His smile blazed briefly. “No, thanks.”

  Frowning, she watched him walk to the back of the truck and across the narrow road. What she’d taken as a swagger was actually a limp. He stopped by the open window of the news van, exchanging a few words with the driver. She saw his teeth flash in a grin and the van roll forward. The blond correspondent detained him for a few minutes and then patted his arm, wrapping up for the camera.

  He hadn’t needed her intervention, Clare thought, faintly chagrinned. He didn’t need her help. That was fine with her. She’d redefined herself as a woman with a mission. She didn’t have time to waste on a macho man with an attitude problem. She had strawberry plants to unload.

  “Isaac! You want to stack these against the wall? Benny, bring the hose around.”

  She pulled herself up by the rope swagged across the back and scrambled into the truck. Turning with her hands full of young plants, she glimpsed Matt’s dark head and broad shoulders surrounded by camera and sound men. He seemed confident, patient and polite, with no sign of the frustration she’d thought she’d sensed in him before.

  But he was definitely limping.

  She thrust the molded plastic tray at Isaac. “Water these down,” she instructed. “Let’s get them in the shade and then see if we can give our new neighbor a hand.”

  Isaac’s eyebrows disappeared beneath the brim of his navy knit cap. “You gonna help the cop move in?”

  She understood his reservations, even if she didn’t share them. She had a lot of respect for policemen. Not, Clare told herself, that she’d ever get involved with one. The police were more at risk than any other profession. More than race car drivers. More than fire fighters. Certainly more than assistant district attorneys, like her late husband Paul.

  Paul had always laughed at Clare’s fears for his safety. Drug dealers went after the witnesses in a trial, he’d assured her, not the prosecuting attorneys. But his promises hadn’t prevented him from pursuing a lead into this troubled neighborhood one night, or blocked the gang member’s bullet that blew apart their tidy life. Clare knew the cost of loving now. She wouldn’t wager her happiness again.

  But Detective Sergeant Matt Dunn was no threat to her carefully achieved peace of mind. He was just a neighbor who needed help. And Clare was a sucker for people in need.

  “You’re going to help the cop move in,” she corrected. “Better than digging trenches, right? I’m going to dust the cabbages.”

  Isaac shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  She positioned herself at the foot of the driveway to intercept Sergeant Dunn when he came back for his truck. She couldn’t help noticing he slowed when he saw her, and the killer smile that had scrambled her receptors had flattened to a professional courtesy.

  Her own smile dimmed. “My crew can give you a hand moving in,” she said abruptly.

  His thumb scraped his jaw as he evaluated her offer, looking over her head at Isaac lifting strawberries off the truck, at the men still digging the trenches. No bandannas, she’d warned them. No gang colors. But Isaac’s pea jacket had been rescued from the Dumpster, and Benny’s shirt had the sleeves ripped out. Most of them were clean—drug free—but there were layers of dirt on their clothes and skin that hadn’t come from the garden.

  “Not necessary,” he said finally. “But thanks.”

  She wasn’t used to being turned down. “What do you mean, ‘not necessary’?”

  “I don’t have a lot. I’m only going to be here for a couple of months.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “You still have furniture, though, right? Boxes?”

  “Not a lot of furniture. Personal stuff, mostly. Television, stereo, stuff like that.”

  Stuff that could be ripped off, he meant. She bridled at the implication that he didn’t want Garden Project workers in contact with his personal possessions. It was a prejudice she com- batted all the time.

  “You can trust my crew.”

  “Yeah, they look real trustworthy,” he said dryly. “Where’d you hire them? City lockup?”

  “Some of them,” she admitted, smiling as he scowled. “Listen, you want to be accepted in this neighborhood, you’re going to have to be a little more accepting. Take the help.”

  He hesitated, his cop’s training obviously waning with his need. With unexpected grace, he gave in.

  “Fine,” he said. “Thanks. The guys from the station aren’t due for another hour. Besides, the chief wouldn’t like it if I antagonized all my nearest neighbors the minute I moved in.”

  When he smiled, Clare noted, his dark, rather somber face transformed. He didn’t look any less dangerous, but it was the kind of danger foolish women courted. She wiped sweaty palms on the seat of her jeans.

  “Great,” she said briskly. “I’ll tell Isaac.”

  As she wheeled and went up the walk, she forced her mind to concentrate on her work schedule and not on the man she left behind. But she felt his thoughtful gaze like a touch between her shoulder blades.

  She didn’t look back.

  “Okay, Isaac. Take the team on over.”

  Collecting her gear, she set to work. She was spraying cabbages, her hands on the pump and her duck shoes an inch deep in mud, when she saw Richie Johnson at the end of her row.

  Her husband’s legal crusade against drugs had failed kids like Richie, a handsome eleven-year-old with bark-brown skin and eyes soft and dark as peat. Beneath the macho cool of early adolescence lurked a sweet kid with a child’s need for attention. Clare would dig trenches with a teaspoon before she failed him, too.

  “Hey, Richie,” she greeted him. “No school today?”

  He twisted around his Atlanta Braves cap, measuring her from under the brim. “Early dismissal,” he told her.

  Could be. His grandmother Letitia complained that sometimes the middle school let its students out early. Clare would mention it to her later.

  “Well, go on in the kitchen. Apples are in the bin and chips are on top of the fridge.” Knowing any public display of affection would embarrass him, she contented herself with a tug on his cap. He jerked it off, shoving it in his back pocket, and they smiled at one another.

  “Got any homework?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then after your snack go ask Isaac what you can do to help our new neighbor move in, okay?”

  “Right.” He thumped up the porch steps.

  Smiling, Clare moved along the rows, making sure she treated the undersides of leaves and the surrounding soil. The pale March sun warmed the air and heated the red clay under her feet, releasing the scent of the new growing season. Breathing in, she felt its promise rush in her lungs and bubble along her veins like melted snow. For three long years grief had lain like a frost over her heart. But now something uncurled within her, uncertain and tender as the new cabbage leaves pushing through the freshly-tilled ground.

  The screen door banged. Richie raised an apple in salute before loping across the crumbling asphalt to report in to Isaac. She waved back and hefted the sprayer again.

  From the porch across the street, a radio wailed. Honky tonk country, as out of place in this urban neighborhood as the classical music she played for her plants. She heard jeers from her crew, and the cop’s laughing, indistinct reply. Her gaze wandered, searching for his black-clad figure. Clare jerked her attention back to her garden. She had no interest in a man who got shot at for a living. She had no interest in men, period.

  Other helpers arrived across the street, out of uniform but identifiably cops by their regulation haircuts and neatly trimmed mustaches, by the way they sized the situation up and pitched in without waiting to be told what to do. Stopping by the courthouse to pick up Paul after work, she used to see them, or men like them, waiting in the hallways to testify. Secretly, she’d always been a little intimidated by the type.

  Clare inspected the young plants wilting in the scant shade of the shed, debating whether to call her team back or pull out the hose.
But then Matt came out of the house with a cooler full of beer, and the two groups, cops and crew, conerged on the spotty lawn. She hesitated. It wasn’t a bad idea, having her project workers socialize with Supercop’s friends. Isaac, she saw, looked relaxed and easy for a man who’d only known trouble with the law. Maybe she should leave them alone.

  But then eleven-year-old Richie slipped through the knot around the cooler and reached for a can. It had to be a beer. Dumping the sprayer, she started across the street.

  Matt Dunn turned at her approach, a wet can in his hand and that smile glimmering on his face. It went down in her stomach like sloe gin on a warm day. She felt it rise to her brain and shook her head to clear her thinking. She was not a drinking woman.

  “Have a beer,” he offered.

  Her reply was sharper than she intended, cool and almost priggish. “Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Sergeant?”

  The smile vanished. His dark eyes traveled with almost insulting thoroughness over her slim torso. “You don’t look under twenty-one.”

  Quick heat stung her cheeks. “Good guess. I’m not.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  “Richie Johnson.”

  “Richie?”

  “Johnson.”

  He twisted awkwardly on his stiff leg to follow her pointed stare. Before she could speak, before she could react, he set his own drink down on the opened cooler lid and stalked up to the boy.

  “Hand it over,” he growled.

  Richie started guiltily. “What?”

  He extended a large palm. “Soft drinks are in the fridge, kid. Go get one.”

  The boy hunched his shoulders up to his reddened ears. “Right,” he mumbled, turning away.

  “I’ll take this,” Matt announced, and plucked the beer can out of the boy’s slack grasp.

  Clare watched Richie saunter toward the house, and her heart went out to him. She recognized the out-thrust lower lip, the bravado that masked his hurt and shame, and bristled in defense.

  “Was that really necessary?” she asked.

  Dark brows shot up. “I thought so,” Matt stressed slightly. “It’s not good for the department’s image to have one of their cops seen ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor.’”

  “I didn’t mean taking it away,” she said impatiently. “I meant embarrassing him like that.” She tried to explain. “He just wanted to be accepted by the other men as one of the guys. He doesn’t have a male role model living at home. He’s very sensitive.”

  Matt rubbed his jaw. “He’s how old? Eleven? Twelve?”

  She nodded. “Eleven.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “Hey, to an eleven-year-old, sensitive is remembering to put the toilet seat down. He’ll be okay.”

  She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling at his unfeeling remark. “I certainly hope you’re right.”

  His intent gaze focused on her face. Sizing her up, she supposed. She returned the look calmly, trying to keep her attention from straying to the intriguing curl of hair just below the hollow of his throat.

  “You want it now?” he asked in his deep voice.

  She felt her face flame. “What?”

  “The beer. Do you want one now?”

  Oh, lordy. If she’d needed any proof this man was trouble, her idiot response to his innocent offer was it.

  “No. No, thank you.” She ought to march herself across the street and get back to work right now. And yet some perverse impulse made her reluctant to leave.

  “Well.” She glanced toward the porch, expecting to see Richie emerge from the house with his soda. “I’ll let you get back to your unloading. Let me know if I can help out at all, introduce you around.”

  “That won’t be necessary, thanks.”

  She felt dismissed and didn’t like it. She’d worked too hard on feeling useful. “I’ve made a lot of contacts in the past few years. I think it’s wonderful that the police are establishing a presence in the neighborhood, but the most important thing is to develop trust. This isn’t really a bad place to live. There’s some gang activity, and the usual family disturbances. Drug problems. But there are good people here, people who want to see things improve.”

  He picked up his beer can, twisting it around between his large hands. “Maybe we should get this straight, Miz Harmon. I’m a detective. I’m only here long enough to get things up and running before they assign a regular patrolman to take my place. In the meantime, I’m less interested in the folks who want to see things get better than I am in the ones who don’t.” His dark eyes met hers directly. “No offense.”

  Like being told she had nothing to offer and he had no interest in her could possibly offend. She smiled brightly. “None at all, Sergeant. Have a nice day.”

  She tramped back to her cabbages.

  She didn’t give Matt Dunn another thought.

  ***

  Well, all right, Clare admitted later that night, tapping through her payroll files. He’d crossed her mind once or twice. His large, dark figure had loomed in the corners of her vision all day.

  Hooking her feet around the legs of her chair, she hit Enter, frowning over the totals that appeared on her computer screen. It wasn’t like her to lose her cool. Why, she’d been almost rude this afternoon. While she might not admire the sergeant’s style, he’d meant well with Richie. And his easy manner with her crew had impressed her. She toyed with the idea of taking him some supper or something as a sort of goodwill gesture, but her cooking wasn’t the kind that made friends and influenced people. Anyway, the delivery of several large pizza boxes across the street around five-thirty nixed that idea.

  Clare told herself she was glad. Matt had made it clear he wasn’t interested in either a professional partnership or neighborly assistance. And in spite of her undeniable physical response to the man, anything else was just out of the question.

  She couldn’t help her nurturing streak. Going out of her way to help came as naturally to her as rising early or flossing her teeth. Conscientious Clare, Paul had called her with gentle mockery. Even early in their marriage, she’d tried to make a difference in the lives of the sheltered young teens she taught French.

  Paul’s murder had driven her from that safe, middle-class middle school to the neighborhood where he’d died. Now she invested her time, thoughts, sweat and money in her husband’s cause, fighting to avenge his death one reclaimed kid at a time. But her increased dedication on one level was accompanied by a new caution, a careful emotional separation. She never invested her heart. Never again her heart. The price was just too high.

  The cursor blinked impatiently against the glaring white screen, waiting for Clare to feed it the numbers that would spell out how deeply the project was in debt. She wouldn’t give it the satisfaction.

  Pushing the mouse away, she wandered into the kitchen, tugged open the refrigerator door and stared at her dinner options. Scrambled eggs or yogurt? Or maybe she should fix herself some soup?

  She frowned. This restless indecision wasn’t like her. Maybe she did feel some slight attraction to the tall, black-haired cop with the woman-slaying smile and intriguing limp. She could resist it. She had to resist it. She’d stay out of his way, and he’d better keep out of hers. Just because they were neighbors didn’t mean she had to go knocking on his back door begging for sugar.

  The doorbell shrilled. Closing the refrigerator, Clare hurried through the narrow hallway to the front of the house. She checked her watch. Almost nine o’clock, late for visitors. Turning on the outside light, she peered cautiously through the glass inset at the side of the door.

  Sergeant Matt Dunn stood on her front porch with his hand on the bell and a face like thunder.

  It was a sure bet he wasn’t after sugar.

  Chapter 2

  Her heart kicked in her chest as adrenaline spurted through her system.

  Natural alarm at the late night call, Clare told herself, refusing to acknowledge t
he purely feminine apprehension that shivered through her at the sight of the tall, dark figure looming at her door.

  The golden light above the porch threw half his face in shadow, accentuating his slightly crooked nose and the dark hollows of his eyes. He looked tired as well as angry. His hair was mussed. His emerging beard bristled gold on one side where it caught the light and deepened the darkness on the other. Paul’s beard had been sparse, almost boyish. She wondered how often the man on her porch needed to shave.

  Annoyed with herself for noticing—his personal habits were none of her business—she tugged on the door.

  “Sergeant Dunn.” She smiled politely. “What can I do for you?”

  “Can I come in?”

  And a very pleasant evening to you, too, she thought, both irked and amused. “Do you have a warrant?”

  The full mouth compressed. “Do I need one?”

  The man had a chip on his shoulder the size of a prize pumpkin. “I was joking,” she explained, stepping back. “Please. Come in.”

  The close walls amplified the heavy sound of his boots as she led him down the hall. She felt, absurdly, that he stalked her. “Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea? A soda?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Obviously not a social call, Clare decided. She tried again to defuse the situation, ignoring both his harshness and her uncharacteristic awareness of his male presence. “How about a beer?”

  He hesitated just inside the doorway, his dark eyes cataloging, judging, as they ranged the room. She tried to imagine how her home appeared to him, a stranger. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen needed fixing up. The avocado appliances were relics of the sixties. She hadn’t mopped the scarred linoleum in weeks. But ferns thrived in the moist air over the sink, and herbs bloomed in pots along the windowsill. Fiesta ware stacked in glass-fronted cupboards lent a bright note of whimsy to the dated fixtures and scarred wooden table.

  He took a deep breath, and she thought his shoulders relaxed. “Coffee, maybe.”

  “I’ll have to make it.”

  “Never mind, then.”

  She shook her head, embarrassed he’d misunderstood her. She never turned anyone away. “No, I meant, sit down. You’ll have to wait while I make it.”