B007S2Z1KC EBOK Page 8

  “Rare, please.” He pushed back from the table, feigning relaxation. “Can I help with anything?”

  “No, thank you.” Vigorously, she shook the colander, spattering droplets over the sink and the counter and the yellow blouse. The material darkened to transparency where the water touched.

  Silk, he thought, and his mouth dried.

  “Yeah, I reckoned you’d say that,” he drawled.

  He caught the sparkle in her eyes before she primmed up her pretty mouth. Lifting the lid from the largest pot, she handed him a spoon. “Here. You can dish up.”

  “Sure.” He joined her in front of the stove, crowding her just a little to gauge her reaction. Maneuvering neatly around him, she fetched up again by the sink.

  Beautiful, stubborn and evasive, he amended, and wondered why that particular combination made him grin. He ladled rice and vegetables into a blue serving dish. “Smells good. What is it?”

  “Pilaf. And I made a salad.”His mother would have served baked potatoes and chunks of iceberg with the steaks. Clare emptied the colander into a large wooden bowl, mingling unidentifiable red stuff with unrecognizable green stuff.

  Oh, yeah, he thought. Way out of his league.

  She pulled matching salad servers from a pottery cache pot and whipped the whole thing over to the table. “The dressing’s bottled, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s fine,” he said truthfully.

  She looked at him through those ridiculous lashes of hers before turning to retrieve the steaks from under the broiler. Did she really think he gave a crap about the salad dressing? Did she actually care what he thought? Her unexpected uncertainty, so at odds with her usual cool control, twisted something inside him.

  What he was doing here, putting the moves on Saint Joan?

  She got to him, he admitted. Maybe he wanted to ruffle her a little in return, test the uneasy attraction between them. Nothing more. He couldn’t afford anything more. He was already opening up to her more than was wise. But he was beginning to think he couldn’t be satisfied with anything less, either.

  They served up, sat down. Whatever jokes the reverend had made at Clare’s expense, the steaks were cooked to perfection. Matt poked surreptitiously at the unfamiliar-looking salad, but it was fine. It was good. He told her so.

  “The rice is sticky.”

  He shrugged. “If you say so. I like your salad.”

  “Anybody can rinse lettuce.”

  He inspected the leaf impaled on his fork, wondering at the quiet self-deprecation beneath her bright exterior. “Is that what this is?”

  That made her smile. “All right, Belgian endive. Anybody can rinse endive.”

  “Yeah, but not everybody eats it. Especially not at this end of town.”

  “I grow it.”

  “Why?”

  She met his eyes directly. “What do you want to know, Sergeant? Why endive? Or why here?”

  He wanted to know everything. “Tell me both.”

  “Endive sells,” she said bluntly. “I’ve spent the last three years cultivating not just the land, but buyers for our produce. We can’t compete in the grocery market, but we can make a profit selling locally to restaurants and small specialty stores. And they want specialty produce.”

  Her business focus impressed him. He’d figured her as a good-works type. “And what do you do with your profits?”

  “Expand,” she replied promptly. “Hire more kids who need an alternative to gangs. Reclaim more unused and misused space in the city.” She leaned forward across the table, her dinner momentarily forgotten. “Children should look out their windows at flowers and vegetables, not broken concrete and crack vials.”

  Her passionate explanation convinced him of her sincerity, if not of her arguments. “Nice dream,” he remarked.

  “It’s not a dream,” she insisted. “It’s my job.”

  Her dedication pricked him, reminding him of a time when he hadn’t felt so burned out, so used up and cynical. A time when he’d believed the public he served actually gave a rat’s ass about his presence on the streets. “Yeah? Who hired you?”

  “I draw a salary from the project.” That slight, self derogatory smile flickered again. “Which enables me to live in this luxury.”

  He looked around the run-down kitchen with its outdated appliances. “I can see that.”

  Her fork made a crater in her pile of rice. “So, what made you decide to become a policeman?”

  Spilling his dreams didn’t fit in with his ideal of an uncomplicated, enjoyable, physical relationship. He temporized, gave her an honest but standard response.

  “Someone’s got to do it. There’s always work for a cop.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That’s it? Job security?”

  Her quick challenge made him smile. “Great retirement benefits.”

  “If you live to collect them. Was your father a policeman?”

  “Thirty-one years. Twenty-five on the beat and six behind a desk, after they chained his butt to it. Got a gold watch and everything.”

  She ignored his attempted banter. “Uncles? Brothers?”

  “Not my uncles. Little brother’s MP, big brother’s SBI.”

  The Military Police and the State Bureau of Investigation. She raised her eyebrows. “What about your mother?”

  He eyed her warily. “What about her?”

  “What does she do? How does she feel about having a family in law enforcement?”

  Matt dug into his steak, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “She dealt with it,” he said finally. “That’s what cops’ wives do. They deal with it, or they walk.”

  “I imagine the divorce rate is pretty high in your profession.”

  She imagined right. He didn’t say anything.

  “Which must add another level of risk for anyone you’re involved with. They not only have to accept the danger of your job, but the uncertainty of the relationship.”

  The risk didn’t stop the badge bunnies. Maybe the danger was part of the thrill. But he could see that a woman like Clare wouldn’t want to hazard her life and her heart on a cop.

  He grunted.

  “Were you ever married?”

  He set down his knife and fork. “You are one pushy woman, you know that?”

  “Thank you.” Her smile flickered. “I wasn’t always.”

  Matt heard some clue to deeper feelings in her voice. Like any good detective, he followed it up.

  “You were a good little girl?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her smile mocked herself now. “The best. Did as I was told. Spoke when I was spoken to. Made decent grades and went to a good college and married a professional man.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got shot.”

  Matt sat back in his chair, watching her carefully, reading the strain in her cameo-pure face. So her marriage to a professional man hadn’t kept her safe after all. “I’m sorry.” This time he meant the neutral words, the professional expression of condolence. “That must have been rough on you.”

  “Yes. I was devastated,” she said. “Mother and Daddy wanted me to come home to the Main Line. That’s an area just outside of Philadelphia,” she explained.

  “Nice area?”

  “The nicest.”

  “And?”

  “And while I was packing, it occurred to me that doing the expected thing all my life hadn’t made me happy. It hadn’t kept Paul safe. And it wasn’t enough anymore.”

  “So you moved here instead.”

  She nodded. “Paul was prosecuting a big drug case when he died. The man they’d arrested got off with a simple possession. I figured if the legal system couldn’t deal with the problem, I’d quit my teaching job and tackle it myself, one kid at a time.” She met his gaze, her brown eyes rueful. “Pretty arrogant, right?”

  His heart squeezed in his chest. “Pretty crazy.”

  “Maybe.” She looked away, as if unwilling to debate the point. “How’s the unp
acking going?”

  He didn’t have to be a detective to identify a change of subject.

  “Fine, thanks,” he said politely. “My stereo’s hooked up.”

  “Really?” She swallowed. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

  He smiled and jerked his head toward the hall, where the strains of a trumpet shivered on the air. Classical, he thought, not jazz. “Not the same as you, sugar, that’s for sure.”

  “Do you want me to put on something else?”

  “No,” he said simply. “I like it.”

  They talked about music, covering the awkward moment, smothering their mutual awareness under a blanket of polite conversation. He wasn’t used to working for a woman’s attention, but he was an investigator, practiced at getting people to open up, to talk to him. As they talked, she relaxed. He liked her voice, her quick mind, her ready smile. There was something different, something seductive, in this casual exploration of tastes and ideas, in the slow growth of liking and the gradual buildup of tension. Sexual tension.

  He registered the widening of her pupils and the slight increase of her breath, signals of a woman’s interest, invitations of desire. Her hand strayed unconsciously to touch her hair and neck, and his body responded with a force that surprised him.

  His gaze followed the movement of her fingers, slipping from the faintly pugnacious curve of her jaw to the fine bones below her throat. Between the front panels of her shirt, her chest was smooth and delicately freckled as an egg. He wanted to nuzzle the silky fabric aside, nipping at her fingers, to taste her baby-textured skin.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let me help you clear.’’

  Her smile was tremulous as she stood, reaching for their empty plates. “Thanks.”

  Inevitably, their hands touched as they collected the remains of the meal. They orbited the kitchen, circling one another like two stars drawn by gravity into dangerous proximity. The air was warm and close, still fragrant with the herbs she’d used, humid with steam.

  Matt carried the last of the dirty dishes to the sink and found his arms half full of woman when Clare turned to take them from him.

  Her mouth was soft, her eyes wide and curious.

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “Might as well get this over with.”

  Carefully, he took back the serving bowl and set it on the counter behind her. Her eyes followed the movement before returning to his face. The tilt of her chin was a challenge. Under that watchful gaze, he debated pulling her close, settling for his palms on her shoulders. Silk glided coolly under his palms. She was small and slight, and yet he could feel the muscle in her upper arms. Her hands came up as if she might explore, might push at his chest, and then dropped uncertainly, skimming his sides, to rest on his leather belt. At her light touch, he felt fire.

  He banked it. Just a taste, he told himself. A test.

  He lowered his head. She stood on tiptoe to meet him. He kissed her once, twice, soft, considering kisses as he learned the shape of her lips and the textures of her mouth. Full and surprisingly lush, they tempted him to deepen the contact and tighten his grip on her shoulders. She pressed into him, opening wider, and sucked him into a firestorm of feeling.

  He expected sweet. He expected cool. Lusty and hot, she drew on his tongue in a way that was an erotic revelation. Their mouths mated. She made a little sound in the back of her throat that froze every hair on his body in delight. Every thought of tasting, every impulse toward caution or restraint, fled his mind. Dropping his hands to the subtle curves of her bottom, he pulled her close and feasted on her soft hot mouth, tasting red wine and desire.

  Through his mind’s haze and his body’s need, he felt her short nails curling into his waist. The pinch aroused him even further. Harder, he thought. Tighter. And then became aware that she wasn’t using her hands to grind him closer, but to hold him away.

  Hell. Reluctantly, his hands loosened. She broke contact with his seeking mouth and twisted her head, not into the shelter of his chest, but against her own shoulder. He saw the quick rise and fall of her breath and felt the heavy pounding of his heart.

  Get this over with? It wasn’t over. He’d started something he didn’t have a clue how to finish.

  She didn’t act coy or play dumb or try to put all the responsibility for what had happened onto him. He recognized and appreciated that, even as his body screamed in frustration.

  “Well.” Meeting his eyes, she took another shaky breath. “You think those stories about frustrated widows are true after all?”

  Under the bravado, he thought he heard a need for reassurance. He shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. You do this kind of thing often?”

  She pressed her lips together. “No. Never.”

  “Then I guess they’re not.”

  She nodded, her gaze dropping again.

  After another pause, he asked, “You want to tell me what you think is going on here?”

  Her shoulders moved in feminine parody of his. “I don’t know. I’m not interested in—”

  In you, he thought she was about to say, but she discarded the lie.

  “—in a relationship. I’ve given up on true love and happily ever after.”

  Matt squashed the faint sting of rejection, the unreasonable yearning for something he couldn’t have and told himself he wasn’t looking for. “Okay by me,” he said. “How do you feel about a quick, cheap thrill?”

  She smiled even as she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea for me right now.”

  “So, where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “We don’t,” she said, and turned away.

  Matt rubbed the back of his neck. She was right. He wasn’t about to change his ways, and she was obviously set in hers. But all the same, he felt a moment’s regret that the crusading widow wasn’t tempted to take on the reform of Matthew Dunn.

  Chapter 6

  She should have stayed home, Clare thought.

  The Grace Church basement was full of people eager to meet Detective Sergeant Matthew Dunn, to eat with him and shake his hand. No one would have missed her. He certainly wouldn’t have noticed her absence. If it weren’t for her own inconvenient loyalty to Reverend Ray, she could be home right now sorting her socks instead of quivering at the back of the church basement like a nervous deacon.

  She slipped into an empty metal folding chair, careful not to look toward the front of the room where Matt chatted with the minister. She didn’t want to catch his eye, afraid she would see reflected in those dark, knowing depths the memory of their kiss.

  Passionate kisses had no place in her life. Once she’d wanted love and dreamed of children. Now the idea that she could lose herself again, heart and pride and purpose, to a man who could get shot at, scared her silly.

  To steady herself, she breathed in the aromas of fried chicken and seven-can casserole, of com bread and collards, that drifted through the basement, masking the faint scent of mildew and industrial cleaner. The reverend’s congregation, fresh out of the eleven o’clock Sunday service, filled the rows of folding chairs. Old men in jackets, young men in ties, and girls with beautifully braided hair provided a foil for the blooming print dresses of the older women. Toddlers ran along the sides of the room and ducked under the long tables.

  Clare’s gaze traveled over the other neighborhood residents sitting in silent family groups or leaning alone against the cinder block walls. She recognized Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez, who owned the Laundromat, and Lester Lewis, who slept sometimes at the Baptist shelter and sometimes in the park. A good, representative turnout, she thought.

  Pleating the soft folds of her denim jumper in her lap, she finally allowed herself to look toward the informal podium where Matt stood beside Reverend Ray. Looming large in his dark blue uniform, the police officer dominated the hall. This was the first time she’d seen him in anything but jeans. The crisp, tailored shirt fit closely to his broad shoulders and the long line of his waist. The creased pants hugged
his hips. He looked every inch a cop. Maybe it was the shine on his shoes or his air of watchful authority. Or maybe it was the gun on his hip.

  Clare gripped her hands together in her lap. He was a dangerous man in a hazardous profession. For her own peace of mind, she should avoid him like bean weevils or blight.

  He bent his dark head to hear what the preacher was saying, and his slow grin loosed something warm and liquid that seeped under her breastbone and moved in a flood through her lower body.

  Something she thought she’d dammed up and was done with.

  Attraction, she named it, refusing to acknowledge it as anything more. Desire.

  But it was more. She was drawn to the compassion she sensed beneath Matt’s tough-guy exterior, the sensitivity she was sure he’d deny. She thought of his patience with Richie and Tyler, his obvious ties to his ex-partner Will, the flat reticence in his voice when she’d probed about his family. What old hurts did he hide beneath that neatly pressed uniform and blinding smile?

  Reverend Ray wrapped up his introduction. Matt began to speak, surprisingly forthright, compelling and clear. He might not want to baby-sit bad guys, Clare thought, but he made a convincing public case for the resident officer program.

  “...aimed at creating a more trusting relationship between the police and the community,” he was saying in his deep, easy voice. “While this area will still be served by precinct patrols, you should consider me on call twenty-four hours a day. You have my number. Use it.”

  Did she imagine it? Or did he, for a moment, look directly at her?

  A young mother in the row ahead elbowed her neighbor. “I’d sure like to have him place me under house arrest,” she whispered.

  “Mm. He can holster his gun at my place anytime.”

  Shameless, Clare thought. Not that the same notion hadn’t occurred to her. She wiped her palms on her skirt.

  Matt continued. “And in addition to meeting with volunteers to set up a neighborhood crime watch, I’d like to work with existing organizations to improve neighborhood pride. Yard cleanups, removal of graffiti, that sort of thing.”