B007S2Z1KC EBOK Page 4

  “So, what can I do for you?” he asked.

  Her mouth firmed. Unconsciously, she straightened in her chair. “Richie has something he wants to tell you.”

  “Yeah?” He glanced at the kid, who stared defiantly back.

  “Richie?” she prodded gently.

  Matt knew what was coming. He’d resisted jumping to conclusions, as a good detective must, but he’d suspected all along. Though there was little satisfaction in being right this time. No pleasure at all in the woman’s calm, concerned face or the kid’s sullen compliance.

  “I found—I took—” His words stumbled under the heavy silence.

  Matt saw Clare’s hand on Richie’s back, lifting some of his burden with her touch. He appreciated what she was trying to do for the kid. Dragging his book bag from the floor, the boy yanked the zipper open and rummaged inside.

  “Here’s your ball,” he said, offering it in the clear-topped case Matt’s dad had made. “I’m sorry.”

  Even through the Plexiglas glare, Matt identified the jaunty H, the looping A, of the Atlanta Braves star hitter. For an instant he felt like a eight-year-old boy at the ball park. He could almost see the green-and-white diamond, the sun beating down on the bleachers and lighting his father’s face as he turned from the hotdog vendor. Only for an instant, and then he was a cop again.

  “Thanks,” he said easily. “Where’d you get it?”

  Richie’s head dropped. “I... ”

  Clare made a sudden movement, quickly stilled. “Why ask?”

  “Habit,” Matt replied. “I like to know who’s done larceny on my beat.”

  Richie looked scared. Good. Maybe he’d think twice the next time he felt an urge to pinch something.

  “There was no larceny,” Clare said.

  He admired her championship, even if he disagreed with it. The kid needed a lesson. “Wrongful acquisition of property,” Matt said.

  “But you haven’t established intent to steal,” she argued. “The ball’s been returned. You can’t prove he meant to keep it.”

  A tiny hammer began pounding behind Matt’s eyes, matching the driving pain in his leg. She’d been married to a lawyer, she’d said last night. God bless the American justice system.

  “You expect me to believe Richie here never intended to permanently deprive me of my property?”

  “I expect you to understand that he acted impulsively. He’s sorry now.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Richie interjected.

  “Which doesn’t change the fact that you helped yourself to something of mine because you were ticked off I wouldn’t give you a beer.”

  Clare’s face reddened as if he’d slapped her. Matt had a feeling she’d have preferred the slap.

  “Richie?” she said into the silence.

  He wouldn’t look at her. Matt felt an unwilling tug of sympathy for them both.

  “Well,” she said at last. She wiped her palms down the front of her jeans and laced her fingers together. “Whatever your motives were, you’ve given Sergeant Dunn your apology. You wanted to add something?”

  “Yeah.” He raised his head and met Matt’s eyes, surprising him. “I just want to say I won’t do nothing like that again. And if you’ve got something you need done, like chores, you know, I’ll do it. And I’m sorry about the ball. And, like, the beer, too.”

  Nice speech, thought Matt. It worked on Clare, anyway. Her smile glowed like a two-hundred-watt light bulb. He tried not to wonder how it would feel to have that approval beamed his way.

  “Thanks,” he said. “If I think of something, I’ll let you know.”

  The boy nodded. “Right.”

  Clare’s smile dimmed slightly. “Richie, could you wait for me outside?”

  “Yeah, sure.” He hitched his book bag over his shoulder. “Later, man.”

  “See you,” Matt said. Clare stirred restlessly in her chair. She was making him crazy, twitching around. She was making him nuts, period. “What?”

  She waited until they heard the front door close before she spoke. “‘If you think of something’?” she repeated. “What kind of a brush-off is that?”

  His head ached. His leg hurt. And this tiny woman with her big heart and sky-high principles was a pain in the butt. “A polite one, I thought.”

  “If you won’t accept his apology...” She blew out a short, exasperated breath. “I don’t think you appreciate the effort it took him to come here.”

  Matt massaged the back of his neck. “No, I accepted the apology. And I know it was hard. But that doesn’t change the fact he took the ball in the first place.”

  “Which in your eyes makes him a thief.”

  He shrugged.

  “So, what does that make me?” she challenged. “An accomplice?”

  “Misguided,” he said.

  He had to give her credit, he thought grudgingly. She didn’t huff or pout or flounce. She stood like the chief of police calling an end to an interview and fixed him with her intelligent, whiskey brown eyes.

  “I’ll tell Richie you’ve assigned him to the project to work off what he owes you. I’ll supervise him, and you can take payment in vegetables.”

  Matt didn’t like vegetables. He was pretty sure she remembered. It was a neat payback for him as well as a punishment for the kid.

  “Sure, fine.” He could take them. He didn’t have to eat them. He figured she was hardly likely to stand over him making sure he finished his peas. And was struck by an incongruous image of her slim, pale body over him, urging him, begging him to open his mouth.

  She interrupted his brief fantasy. “And I’d appreciate your coming by from time to time to see how he’s doing.”

  She was even beginning to sound like the chief of police, Matt thought, amusement seeping through his irritation in a subversive flood. “You been talking to Dennis?”

  “Who?”

  “Dennis Kelton. Police chief. Mr. Walk-in-the-Neighborhood himself.”

  “No.” She looked about to say something, apparently thought better of it.

  “What?”

  “I thought getting to know your neighbors was the whole point of community policing. What’s wrong with walking in the neighborhood?”

  Her innocent comment hit him where it hurt. Instinctively, he lashed out. “Lady, right now I couldn’t walk you to the door.”

  She stiffened.

  “Then don’t,” she said, and spun on her heel and marched out.

  Matt started after her. And dropped back on the couch as the muscle in his thigh clenched and collapsed. Hurting, humiliated, he gritted his teeth, his hands tightening on the upholstered arms until the rough weave imprinted his palms.

  Only four exercises, he thought in disbelief. Four exercises, not more than thirty-five reps each... He forced his hands open, willing his screaming muscles to relax. Okay, maybe fifty. Pushed too hard, he should have cooled down gradually, not let his quadriceps cramp and curl to aching immobility.

  He’d told Tinkerbell the truth. He literally couldn’t walk her to the door.

  Chapter 3

  His left foot on the clutch, Matt eased his right foot on to the brake, smiling grimly as the blue pickup coasted to a stop.

  At least his driving had improved, he thought. Why the hell didn’t the hospital therapist tell the department that, instead of emphasizing all the things he still couldn’t do?

  “I told you what would happen if you over exercised,” she’d scolded unsympathetically at his one-thirty appointment. “You’re supposed to strengthen that muscle, not strain it. Who do you think you are, some kind of super hero?”

  Supercop, Connie Cameron had labeled him, and the papers had picked up the moniker. Matt hated it. He wasn’t any kind of hero, just a cop doing his job. Another cop, any cop, would have done the same. But he didn’t try to explain that any more.

  He’d rubbed the muscle, tried a smile. “Hardly. You told me twice a day.”

  “Twenty minutes twice a day,” the
therapist corrected. “And I can’t get most of my patients to do fifteen.”

  “I want to get better.” Had to get better. The inactivity of this dead-end assignment was killing him.

  Her square, middle-aged face softened. “You will,” she promised. “But a gunshot does a lot of tissue damage. Just be patient.”

  Patient. Right.

  Matt let up on the clutch and slid his tired right leg from the brake to the accelerator, hitting the gas fast and hard. The Chevy lurched and died. Stalled. Again. You needed two good feet to drive a stick.

  Deliberately, he relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, shifted into first, and restarted his truck. He could do patient, he thought, exhaling.

  In his mind, he heard his partner, Will, chuckle. Over-and-Done Dunn, the veteran officer had dubbed him when they’d first been assigned together. Matt was no longer an eager rookie, burning to save the world and itching for action. But he missed Will’s steady presence. His absence chafed Matt like a sore tooth or the wound in his leg. No hard feelings, he’d said, when Will told him in the hospital that he’d decided to take early retirement.

  It was the only time Matt could remember not being straight with his partner.

  He turned the pickup onto the rundown street he was forced to call home for the next three months. A half-starved cat ran for the bushes alongside an empty house. An old man, well wrapped against the chill, sat motionless on his porch. Three boys hung on the corner, watching with hostile eyes as the Chevy passed.

  Matt found himself scanning the lot across from his place for a boyish figure with red hair. She wasn’t there. Pulling into the drive, he told himself he was glad. He didn’t need the hassles. He didn’t want the woman, any woman, even one with sunlight in her hair and the earth’s warmth in her smile and the devil’s own determination. And then he caught his eyes in the rearview mirror taking one last, quick check across the street, and his mouth quirked up.

  Liar.

  Movement pulled his attention to the front of his house. His cop’s instincts went on alert. Someone crouched on the other side of the concrete steps, half hidden by a screen of bare- branched bushes. Vandal or robber? Matt’s lips compressed. He wasn’t wearing his shoulder holster. His gun was in the house under lock and key.

  Stiffly, he got out of the car, never taking his eyes from the kneeling intruder. His boots crunched on the graveled drive. For all his size, he knew how to move quietly, but it was better if his unknown visitor heard him coming. He didn’t want to startle the guy into firing.

  The jean-clad rump wiggled. Matt stepped away from the vehicle, arms loose, hands ready, and slammed the car door.

  A dark head wearing an Atlanta Braves cap popped into view above the steps.

  “Damn,” said Richie Johnson. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”

  Matt felt his tension ease even as he tamped down his irritation. “What are you doing here?”

  The kid waved a muddy trowel. “Planting.”

  “Planting what?”

  “Flowers, man.” His tone was defensive.

  Matt grinned. So, real men didn’t plant flowers. He approached the porch. Soiled clumps of squiggly roots dotted the ground. A line of holes edged the bush in front of the boy. Tan sticks stuck up like grave markers from mounds by the house.

  “I don’t want flowers.”

  Richie shrugged. “Don’t tell me. Tell her.”

  Matt didn’t have to ask who her was. “Where is she?”

  “Back of her house. She keeps digging stuff up and bringing it over for me to put in,” he confided, faintly aggrieved.

  Matt glanced across the street. Sure enough, here came Tinkerbell, slim arms corded with the weight of the pots she carried, small breasts outlined by her earth first T-shirt. He noticed her nipples. In spite of the sun, the air was chilly. She ought to have on a jacket

  Squashing his involuntary pleasure at the sight of her, he rested his weight on his whole left leg, hooked his thumbs in his back pockets, and waited for her explanation.

  ***

  He was back.

  Clare’s heart gave a foolish little bounce, like a rabbit practicing its hop.

  She didn’t know Matt’s schedule, hadn’t known when to expect him. Isaac, who seemed to distill information from the very cracks in the street, reported that he drove to the hospital. Therapy, she supposed, and wondered again how badly he’d been hurt, and how. In spite of his stiff-legged stance, his broad, hard body looked strong and competent looming over the kneeling boy. His expression was cool.

  She lifted her chin. Well, she had to, to meet his gaze. She didn’t come up to his armpit. “The cabbages aren’t ready.”

  Dark brows raised. “So?”

  She set down her pots by his porch steps. “So, Richie’s planting flowers for you. I had to divide my perennials anyway. You’ve got a really nice selection now. Hosta, daylilies, daisies. They’ll be beautiful in July.”

  “I won’t be here in July.”

  He sounded almost amused, as if he enjoyed baiting her. She refused to lose her temper.

  “Your yard will,” she said. “Your neighbors will. The neighborhood will benefit.”

  He nodded once. “And what about you? What do you get out of it?”

  She wasn’t about to divulge the demons that drove her. “Oh, I’m putting in for the Yard of the Month award,” she said lightly.

  His eyes gleamed. “I pegged you for Garden Club.”

  “First in Flowers,” she retorted.

  “Queen of the May.”

  They smiled at one another. Liking tightened between them like a rope pulled taut on both ends, drawing them together. Little details imprinted on her awareness: dark hair swirling at the neck of his shirt; faint lines fanning beside his eyes; a slight stubble just under his jaw where he’d missed with the razor. She saw the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his broad chest, and her own heart pounded painfully.

  Too close, she thought, and looked away. “Richie, go get the bone meal out of the shed, okay?”

  He scrambled to his feet. “Yeah, sure.”

  She waited until he was out of earshot across the street before she said, “Thanks for letting him stay.”

  Matt shrugged. “Did I have a choice?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Don’t go making it something it’s not,” he warned. “You want to supervise the kid, that’s fine. Don’t go making me something I’m not.”

  She wondered what in his training or experience made him such a hard case. “And what aren’t you, Sergeant Dunn?” He spelled it out for her. “I’m not a role model. I’m not a baby-sitter. I’m not even a particularly nice guy. I’m a cop. The kid messes up again, I’m slapping him with a juvey delinquent action.”

  She refused to be intimidated. “Very tough. You kick puppies, too?”

  His wicked smile splintered his face, shattering her animosity. “No. But I don’t take in strays.”

  “Thanks very much for the warning,” she said dryly. “And I’m so sorry for taking up your time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get these plants in the ground before their little roots wither up and die.”

  “What’s that?”

  Kneeling, she reached for a brown-and-purple clump, welcoming the distraction. “Hosta. Sieboldiana, or it could be glauca. They’ll grow lovely lavender clusters.”

  “No.” His voice was impatient. He looked over her head, across the street. “Who’s that with Richie?”

  She twisted around, shoving her bangs off her forehead with the back of her hand. The lot should have been deserted. The team had knocked off for the day, and Isaac was out with the truck picking up a load of composted manure. But she could see two teens hanging on the chain-link fence by her drive. Three other boys crowded around the open door of the shed where Richie stood balancing a sack of bone meal.

  She bit back an exclamation of dismay, but Matt was quick.

  “Trouble?” he asked.

 
“Maybe not.”

  She got to her feet anyway, unwillingly conscious of his solid presence at her back. She would not let herself depend on the illusion of security offered by his broad shoulders and wide stance. If she ever got involved with a man again—and it was a big if—she wanted a partner, not a protector.

  Across the street, Richie hunched his shoulders defensively, but he was laughing at something. No one had touched him. It wasn’t time to intervene yet.

  “Who are they?”

  “Tyler Boothe,” she answered absently. “Jerome Butler. I don’t know the others.”

  “Vipers?”

  She wondered if he’d recognized the names. Smaller Buchanan didn’t have quite the same problems as nearby Raleigh or Durham, but any detective in the department was going to be up on gang turf and activity in the city’s neighborhoods.

  “Tyler is.”

  “You want me to go over?”

  The offer surprised her. She’d thought he wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t think to defer to her judgment. But her gratification was offset by concern over his earlier words about Richie. She didn’t want some hostile cop moving in on her garden, slapping kids with charges of delinquent activity, and she couldn’t afford to rely on him. She would handle the situation on her own and in her own way.

  “No,” she said.

  ***

  Not, No, thank you, Matt noted wryly.

  What did she think he was going to do, bust them all for disturbing the peace? He watched them posturing, unsure in their growing bodies, laying claim to the space around them with large gestures and big words. Boys.The kid who shot him, Matt reflected, had just turned fifteen.

  One of the taller boys lifted Richie’s cap. He snatched for it, and the thief, laughing, flicked it to a friend.

  “I’d better get over there,” Clare murmured.

  Matt looked down at her in disbelief. She barely came to his shoulder. What did she think she could do with that gang of hormone-proud punks across the street? But before he could say a word to dissuade her, she’d sailed into their huddle like Tinkerbell zipping over a ship full of pirates, broadcasting authority and charm like so much pixie dust. If she weren’t so criminally careless of her own safety, he would have admired her bravery.