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  “No.”

  “Clare...” He expelled a short, sharp breath of exasperation. “I’m a detective. That’s what I do, look into things. It’s no trouble.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s trouble for the kids, trouble to the project. Matt, I have to trust the people I hire. I can’t ask them to trust me otherwise.”

  Her danger worried him. Her priorities made him crazy. But he couldn’t force her to accept his help. He was a cop, she was just a woman who lived on his beat. They had no personal relationship.

  “Fine,” he snapped. “You’ve got my number. Use it if you change your mind.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  It was that damn Joan of Arc thing again, he thought. In spite of the destruction around her, she seemed perfectly calm, clear and resolute, like she was tackling some medieval fortress with only her courage and her God to sustain her. He wasn’t used to that kind of courage from a civilian.

  He admired her. Feared for her. And hoped like hell some enemy archer wasn’t waiting to shoot her off the wall.

  “Let’s both hope you don’t have to,” he said.

  Chapter 5

  “I thought you didn’t want kids defacing the walls.”

  A little shiver ran through Clare as she recognized Matt’s brown velvet voice behind her. Of course, the words were confrontational. The man himself, solid, strong and hostile, was a danger to her rapport with her crew and a threat to her peace of mind. But his dogged adherence to duty compelled her respect. His understated humor roused her liking. And his voice was invading her dreams.

  Dropping her brushes in a cleanup bucket milky with diluted gray latex, she slowly turned around. No one could look as good as that voice promised.

  Matt did.

  He stood behind her, thumbs hitched in his belt loops, his broad shoulders encased in dark cotton and his black boots making a statement among the empty gallon plant pots and discarded paint rags. Tug a Stetson over that dark hair, she thought, and he’d look like Marshal Earp taking on the bad guys in Tombstone. A rush of contradictory feelings washed through her, warm and confused.

  Defensively, she wiped wet hands down the front of her jeans. “Making a habit of sneaking up on people, Sergeant?”

  Coffee dark eyes gleamed. “Let’s just say I’m making it part of the new job to check up on you.”

  That’s what she was afraid of. She’d been grateful for Matt’s quick support yesterday when the lot was flooded. And in theory, she approved of a police presence in the neighborhood. But when that presence was 220 pounds of hard, handsome cop, she panicked. She wasn’t certain she could trust him with her kids. What had the legal system ever done for them? And she was damn sure she couldn’t trust this edgy attraction she felt.

  She’d already had the experience of being the subordinate partner in a relationship. Wouldn’t intimacy with a cop be just as bad as marriage to a lawyer? Worse. There was that notorious esprit de corps to consider, as well as the macho code of silence.

  Besides, if she did get involved with a man again, Clare resolved, it wouldn’t be one who got shot at for a living. Physically and mentally, she took a step back.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I can manage.”

  “Uh huh.” Amazing how much skepticism he could pack in two nonverbal syllables. He jerked his chin toward the side of the shed, where Richie and Tyler laughed and shoved and scribbled on the wall. “Didn’t you just paint over that this morning?”

  She pretended surprise. “Why, yes, Sergeant, now that you point it out, I believe I did. What were you doing, watching from your window?”

  She thought he actually colored under his tan. She wished she didn’t find that slight embarrassment so appealing. “I work out in the living room. I get a pretty good view of the street.”

  The memory of him answering his door, shirt off and skin sheened with sweat, sprang into her brain. “Yes. Well.” She cleared her throat. “Why didn’t you come over? The project can always use another pair of hands.”

  “You made it pretty clear you didn’t want me hanging around.” He nodded toward the boys. “Besides, I could never clean up after a bunch of vandals and then stand around and watch them muck up my hard work.”

  “They are not mucking up.” She hoped. “They’re designing a mural.”

  “No kidding.” He squinted, but the boys’ pencil scratchings barely showed against the fresh gray paint. “They any good?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” she answered honestly.

  That surprised a smile from him. “Yeah, well, it’s a good idea.”

  His praise made her breathless. Silly, she scolded herself. “I just told them I wanted them to cover where the spray paint showed through. They decided to do the mural.”

  He had no clue, apparently, how he affected her. “You should get them some really bright colors,” he said. “Do it up right.”

  “I’ll put it on my list,” she promised dryly. “Right after ‘pay the water bill.’”

  She thought for a minute he hadn’t heard. He continued to stare over her head. She turned to follow his gaze to where Tyler stretched to draw on the siding above Richie. Scrunched beneath him, Richie traced a row of circles. Clare couldn’t tell if he was drawing apples or potatoes. Or even pumpkins.

  “My partner—” Matt stopped. “Ex-partner, now. His family owns a paint store over on Harnett. They keep discards in the back, stuff people order and then decide they don’t want. It’s no good to him. He’d probably let you have it for free.”

  She jerked her attention away from his dark, melancholy eyes—why did the reference to his partner make him sad?— and focused instead on what he was saying. “That sounds wonderful. Would he do that? Let the kids pick out colors and everything?”

  “He would if I took them.” The full mouth compressed. “He figures he owes me.”

  Her first instinct was to refuse. She didn’t need Matt’s help. Or his interference. She didn’t want him on her lot, challenging the barriers she’d built to protect herself. And then she was disgusted by her own selfish preoccupation. For heaven’s sake, the man was offering her free paint. More than that, he was offering his time to her kids. If only he wouldn’t play Officer Tough Guy with them...

  She studied his face, the combative jaw, the crooked nose, the shrewd, surprisingly warm eyes. She was willing to take that chance on him, Clare decided. Would her boys do the same?

  “You’re thinking too hard,” he said. “Yes or no?”

  She flushed, as if he could read her misgivings in her face. “Yes. Thanks. I’ll talk to them. When would you want to go?”

  He shrugged. “Now is good.”

  His quick follow-through pleased her. She was used to bureaucratic runarounds and Paul’s deliberate ways. “Now is great.”

  Maybe once he was safely out of sight with the boys, her heartbeat could return to normal.

  Calling the boys over, she explained Matt’s offer. Richie’s quick enthusiasm faded under Tyler’s cynical regard, but both agreed to go. Clare was relieved to see that Matt took their lukewarm response in stride.

  He tossed Richie his keys. “Get in the truck. I’ll be right there.”

  As the boys ambled across the street, Clare smiled her approval. “I appreciate your giving him the keys like that. It’s important for Richie to feel that he’s earning your trust.”

  “He takes my truck for a joyride and I’ll shoot out the tires,” Matt said. Her startled response must have shown, because he grinned at her then. “Joke,” he explained.

  “Of course,” Clare said. Under that tough exterior, he was really kind.

  “I’d shoot the kids,” he said, deadpan. “Too expensive to replace the tires.”

  This time, after a heart’s beat pause, she laughed with him.

  It had been a long time since a man had teased her with a smile in his eyes.

  “So.” He rubbed his jaw. “I’ll see you about seven.”

  She blinke
d, distracted by the slow movement of his knuckles over his chin. “What?”

  “Dinner. You invited me. Remember?”

  “Maybe I thought you’d forget.”

  He looked at her from under straight, dark brows, and her breath caught.

  “I never forget an offer,” he said.

  Through the rear window of Matt’s truck, Clare could see the red bill of Richie’s baseball cap as he turned to stare. Tyler, leaning against the open door, nudged him and whispered. Her hot cheeks got even hotter. Having just assured them they’d be perfectly all right in Matt’s company, she could hardly balk at spending an evening with him.

  “Seven o’clock,” she confirmed.

  And wondered, as she watched him walk away, just what she had agreed to. Sure, she worked with men. But she hadn’t been on a date in nine years. She hadn’t cooked dinner for a man in three. And she had never, even in her wildest adolescent fantasies, entertained a man as rough, tough and in-your-face sexy as Matt Dunn.

  ***

  Just dinner, Matt reminded himself, waiting on the front stoop for Clare to answer the door. He’d brought steaks and a bottle of red. Not a drinking woman, she’d said, turning down his beer, but this was a first-class bottle of merlot. Idly, he wondered if she’d warm a little under the influence of the wine. It would be nice to see what that mouth of hers could manage besides sass.

  Not that he had anything more in mind. A cop couldn’t afford personal involvements. Matt had seen what divided loyalties cost his father. He’d experienced firsthand the toll The Job took on an officer’s wife and family. Maybe once upon a time, he’d thought it would be nice to do the white house and picket fence thing. But that was before Marcia—or was it Amy?—had told him what a cold, preoccupied son of a bitch he was, and long before Will’s wife had put the pressure on Will to quit.

  These days, Matt was happy if he could keep things emotionally simple and physically satisfying. He told himself he liked them that way. He knew enough about repeat offenders to accept that there was no way of reforming a cop married to The Job. Still, he tried to play according to his own personal rule book. No ties, was one of his rules, but no bruises, either.

  The last thing he needed at the start of an unwelcome new assignment was to tangle with a woman with honest eyes and a vulnerable mouth. A woman whose emotions ran as deep as her sense of honor. A woman—admit it, Dunn—a woman like Clare.

  But he sure would like a taste of that mouth.

  She opened the door then and smiled at him, and all the red blood cells in his body started leaping around, flexing muscles and calling attention to themselves. He’d been around the block often enough to recognize and appreciate her effort to dress up. Nothing fancy or overdone, just a suggestion of color on her cheekbones and a slick of shine on her lips. She wore white jeans and a hot yellow shirt in a silky material that brought out highlights in her whiskey brown eyes and sherry gold hair.

  Down, boy, he thought.

  “Come in,” she invited.

  Classical music drifted in from the living room, unidentified aromas wafted from the kitchen. Matt entered her house suspecting he was playing out of his league.

  Shifting his weight, he offered her the paper bag with the bottle.

  The sack crinkled as she accepted it.

  “Hope it goes,” he said, knowing it would. He’d asked at the store.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” she said politely. “Come on in the kitchen. I’ll get glasses.”

  He followed her down the narrow hallway, conscious of the push-pull of attraction, wondering if Clare was equally aware and what she planned to do about it. Hell, he wished he could be sure of what he planned to do.

  “I brought the steaks.”Place mats and flowers graced the battered kitchen table. A colander of greens rested in the cracked ceramic sink, and pots steamed gently on the old electric range. Handing off the meat, Matt eased into the chair facing the door with a sense almost of homecoming. Which, when he thought about it, was odd, because Clare’s kitchen looked nothing like his mother’s modem, immaculate galley, and Clare had even less in common with Mary Dunn.

  His mother was a tall, dark, gentle woman, whose loving ways and cheerful patter had been a perfect foil for her tough, taciturn husband. Matt was eleven or twelve before he recognized the toll that being Patrick Dunn’s wife took on her, on her mouth that could never be silent, on her hands that could never be still, as if she alone had to fill the house’s hollow quiet.

  Clare, on the other hand, was sharp and shining as a knife. She talked like a drill instructor and moved like a thoroughbred.

  Tonight, though, there was a restless energy to her movements. She paced to the cupboard to get glasses, to a drawer for a corkscrew, back to the counter for the wine. She made three separate trips to line them up on the table in front of him, and then darted back across the kitchen to stir something on the stove and flip on the broiler. Matt pried the foil from the neck of the bottle, watching her. It didn’t take nine years on the force to see that beneath her bright, hostessy manner she was nervous. But was it the same edgy awareness that deviled him or something else?

  Was she in trouble?

  He poured the dark wine into the delicate, wide-bowled glasses she’d provided. Wedding gifts, he bet, as out of place in this rough neighborhood as Clare herself. He pushed a stem toward her and waited to see if she’d take the bait.

  “Thanks.” She scooped up the glass and stepped back out of reach.

  He bit back a grin.

  She sipped, her tongue darting over her bottom lip to catch a drop of wine. His body reacted predictably.

  “Mm. This is nice.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t mean the wine, though that was okay, too.

  She must have caught him staring at her mouth, because her chin went up. “So. How did things go at the paint store?”

  “They went all right.”

  “It was good of you to take the boys.”

  He felt as if he’d received a commendation. He didn’t want that feeling, not from her. He didn’t deserve it. “No trouble. Will likes kids.”

  “Will? That’s your partner?”

  “Ex-partner.” If he said it often enough, maybe he’d learn to accept it.

  She studied him silently over the top of her wineglass, as if deciding whether to press and where. “Recently an ex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How recently? Before the shooting?”

  Her husband had been a lawyer. “No. After. What’s with the cross-examination?”

  “Sorry.” She took a sip of wine. “So, why did he quit?”

  “Family reasons,” Matt said. With a feeling of sickness in his gut, he remembered Will’s near-fatal hesitation the day of the shoot out. Forget it, he’d told his partner. It could have happened to anybody. But the guilt and the gratitude and his wife’s reaction had eaten away at Will.

  “Big family?” the lawyer’s widow wanted to know.

  “Yeah. Five,” Matt said, forestalling her next question. “All girls.”

  Her gaze turned teasing. “You don’t like girls?”

  He liked her. Too much. “Let’s just say I’m not exactly daddy material.”

  “Then I appreciate your spending time with Richie and Tyler even more.”

  He shrugged. “Will did all the work. He helped them pick out colors, gave them some stencils for lettering. I just drove.”

  “Doesn’t that make you an accomplice?”

  “Only in the commission of a crime. So as long as they use the paint for lawful purposes, I’m free and clear.”

  Those whiskey-colored eyes met his with an amusement more intimate than a kiss. Free and clear? If he didn’t watch himself, he’d be cuffed, booked and fingerprinted.

  But Clare was the first to look away. “They’re really quite excited about the mural.”

  “Maybe,” he conceded, struggling for distance. “And maybe you can cover up the graffiti on your shed. But what are y
ou going to do to prevent them from taking after the garden again?”

  Provoked, she set her glass down so sharply he half expected the stem to snap. “First of all, if the garden was vandalized, Richie and Tyler aren’t the ones responsible. Secondly, vandalism is a crime of opportunity. I shouldn’t have left the lot unsupervised.”

  “So, what are you going to do? Hire a guard?”

  “No. I spoke to Reverend Ray. I’m going to turn part of the lot over to the church’s daycare co-op.”

  He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m giving the kids little garden plots. The mothers will be on site to keep an eye on things.”

  He didn’t want to argue with her. Whatever his personal feelings on the subject, her position was in line with the reasoning behind his current assignment. But concern for her wouldn’t let him keep his mouth shut.

  “Yeah, that might work. If a lack of supervision is the only reason behind the attack on your lot.”

  She raised a slim eyebrow, in control again. “What other reason could there be?”

  “You’re assuming you’re a random target,” he told her. “But if you’re serious about providing an alternative to the gangs around here, if you’re hiring away from the Vipers, you could be ticking somebody off.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Her quiet satisfaction jolted him. “These aren’t just taggers, Clare, kids painting buildings. These are dangerous men. Businessmen.”

  “I know what they are,” she said.

  She wasn’t scared. Why wasn’t she scared? He was beginning to be scared for her, and he hated the feeling. “Well, don’t you think that should make you a little bit cautious?”

  Those sun-tipped lashes came down over her eyes. She turned to put the steaks under the broiler. “What it makes me is determined.”

  He couldn’t figure her out. He wasn’t even sure why he tried, except that in his line of work he was used to fitting motive to behavior.

  “How do you want your steak done?” she asked from over by the stove.

  So she didn’t want to talk to him. He shouldn’t care. He wasn’t interrogating an evasive witness, he reminded himself. He was having dinner with a woman. A beautiful, stubborn woman. And they’d talked long enough.