CHAPTER 2
When Angie woke up the next morning, every single light in her apartment was glaring. Wincing, she rolled over and hid her eyes from the brightness she’d used to ward off her silly fears during the night.
So she’d nearly been killed. So what? She’d survived, hadn’t she? And the bad guy had been caught, so she didn’t really need to send her electric bill through the roof.
But she’d probably do the same tonight.
She really wished she’d somehow managed to save herself yesterday. Then she’d have felt stronger during the night. Invincible.
Maybe next time.
Getting up, putting on an old pair of glasses to replace the broken ones, she took comfort in her small, cozy and slightly messy apartment. Small and cozy being nice words for what was really postage-stamp-sized.
But cluttered or not, it was clean, it was her home, and she refused to let anyone frighten her here.
“There. Take that, monsters. I’m not frightened.”
In the bathroom, she gave herself a good, long, hard look in the mirror. She appeared to be the same as yesterday, average height, average body, average everything.
But she wasn’t the same, not at all, and wouldn’t be ever again. “You know what? No more simply existing,” she told her reflection. “That’s not good enough for you.”
With that small but effective pep talk, she went into the kitchen and had her usual breakfast of champions—a bagel that had more cream cheese than bagel.
A woman needed her protein.
By the time she left for work, she’d taken several phone calls from her worried parents and friends, wanting to make sure she was okay. And mostly, she was.
But what had happened to her yesterday had been a sign. A change-her-life kind of sign. A become-a-new-woman sign.
She knew this, and didn’t plan on wasting it. She’d been reminded—violently—how fast it could all end. And she wasn’t ready for an end, not by a long shot.
In light of that, she pulled out the local junior college application she’d received in the mail last month. Classes were due to start this week, a coincidence she’d taken as another sign. She might love painting, but she couldn’t support herself that way. Time to find something she could do with her love of the arts that she could make a living at.
Without giving herself a chance to talk herself out of it, she filled in the required forms, wrote a check for late registration and stuffed them into her pocket to drop off on her way to work.
It felt…incredible. And she didn’t understand why it had taken her so long to do it, why she hadn’t seen what she’d needed to do a long time ago.
The phone rang again, and Angie answered with an indulgent laugh, feeling better, wondering which of her friends had felt the need to check up on her this time.
“Angie Rivers?”
The laugh backed up in her throat. She instantly recognized that low, deep, slightly husky voice. She had a feeling a hundred years could go by and she’d still recognize it.
That voice had been the first she’d heard after her terrifying ordeal yesterday. That voice had gone along with warm, strong arms and eyes filled with rage and concern, for her, in a way a man’s never had before.
That voice liquefied her bones.
With her spare glasses perched on her nose, she glanced at the front page of the newspaper sitting on her table, a page on which both she and Sam O’Brien—decorated, revered, respected detective—were splashed across.
“Yes, this is Angie,” she said, having to sit down because suddenly she was made of Jell-O, with no bones in her entire body.
“This is Sam O’Brien, from yesterday—”
“I know.” She was still looking at the picture of the two of them on the floor of the bank in the aftermath of the attempted robbery. She’d already inhaled every little tidbit about what had happened.
About Sam.
The newspaper didn’t say he was tall, with wheat-colored, sun-bleached hair cut short to his head, which only emphasized his sharp, light brown eyes. It also failed to mention he was built with a rugged, athletic physique that revved her hormones, but then again, the reporter hadn’t been held in his warm, strong, wonderful arms.
Angie had.
She sighed, then shook her head. She had a plan, and a man did not fit into it. Never had, in fact, though she’d tried. She just didn’t seem to have what it took to please one—not the drive, not the easy sensuality so many other women had.
So she’d given up.
Until yesterday, that is, when she’d come far too close to death. Now she knew she would never give up on anything, not ever again.
Life had to be lived, mistakes and all.
“We need you to come down to the station,” he said. “We have some more questions. Do you need a car sent for you?”
A ride in a squad car down to the station. An adventure she could really do without, if she had a choice. “That’s not necessary. I’ll…stop by.”
“Okay, then.”
He was going to hang up now. And though she couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t ready to let go, to stop hearing him. She’d like to be able to attribute it to lingering shock or fear, but she knew better.
Nothing about his voice reminded her of shock or fear. Instead it invoked visions of things she’d never shared with anyone but had always fantasized about; lying in bed on a Sunday morning sharing the funny section of the paper, late-night forays into the freezer for a tub of ice cream that they’d feed to each other with one spoon, or better yet just eat off their bodies, phone calls during the day just to hear each other… “Are you the investigating officer then?” she asked. Subtle, Ang.
“No, that would be Detective Owens. He’ll be questioning you.”
But Sam had called her himself. Maybe he was dreaming of the comics and ice cream, too. Maybe he yearned and ached and burned for things he couldn’t quite put into words but knew he wanted.
With her.
“Owens asked me to call,” he clarified.
Which pretty much dispelled both the fantasy and any lingering hope that somehow this strange, inexplicable attraction was two-sided.
“Sometimes,” he continued, “in traumatic events like this, a familiar voice helps.”
Was that what all this emotion crowding her chest was about? Because he was familiar? Because he’d been her hero in a terrible incident?
That was pathetic.
Even more so because he clearly felt none of what she’d allowed herself to feel. “I see,” she said, grateful that at least he couldn’t see her. “Well…thank you.”
“No problem.”
Wait. She wanted to tell him how much his actions yesterday had meant. How much she’d learned about herself since. How—
Click.
Dial tone.
With a little sigh, Angie had to laugh. She set the phone down and decided to stick with reality. Her reality.
Which at the moment, she thought, glancing at her clock, meant work.
But later, she promised the new easel standing in her living room, later she’d paint. Just because she could.
* * *
Sam spent the morning chasing dead ends, trying to crack the identity-theft ring that had already spent over a million dollars in stolen credit in the past calendar year alone.
Back in his office, he collapsed in frustration at his desk before a commotion outside the door caught his attention. He tried to ignore it, but wasn’t lucky enough for that.
A shadow crossed his desk. “Well, if it isn’t our local hero.”
Sam glanced up at his partner, who until a second ago had also been his best friend, and scowled. Most people went running from that fierce, foreboding glare, or at least walked quickly away.
Not Luke Sorrintino. He was dark-haired, darker-skinned and full-blooded Italian, and he didn’t scare easily. While he was only medium build to Sam’s tall, broader one, he was probably the toughest man Sam knew, and he rarely smiled.
But he was smiling now, broadly.
“What do you want?” Sam asked, already wary.
“Two things. First…” He tossed down the morning paper.
Front page, dead center. Sam on his knees on the floor of the bank, with a beautiful, disheveled woman in his arms, staring up at him with huge, grateful eyes.
Angie.
God, she looked so small, so defenseless. So absolutely, heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. Her sweater hung off one shoulder, revealing soft skin, which according to the color photo, had already started to bruise from her captor’s cruel grip.
Sam’s jaw went tight. A headache kicked in. She’d gotten hurt after all.
“You seem pretty…involved,” Luke noted.
Sam’s eyes honed in on his face in the picture. Sure enough, he wasn’t just holding her, he was holding her, cradling her against his chest, one hand spread over her exposed throat. His expression was intense to say the least, and zeroed in one-hundred percent on Angie’s upturned face.
It looked startlingly intimate, and if he didn’t know that he’d been concerned only with making sure she hadn’t been cut by the punk’s knife, that she was looking at him like that only because she could hardly see…damn. Take away the bank setting, take away the fact that there was a bleeding criminal on the floor behind them, and they could have been…lovers.
“Interesting,” Luke said.
Sam eyed his friend. The two of them had been through a lot together. High school. The academy. Being rookies. They’d been through family and wives unable, or unwilling, to handle the demands of their jobs.
Death and mayhem. They’d seen or done it all.
Were still seeing and doing it all.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Luke actually kept grinning, which really made Sam pause. “There’s a delivery for you.”
“Yeah? So bring it in.”
“Delivery woman insists on giving it to you herself.”
Delivery woman?
With a long, warning look to Luke, Sam rose to his feet and came to the door of his office. He wasn’t pleased to see a small crowd of cops who plainly had nothing better to do than stand around and smile stupidly.
In the center of the group was a huge bouquet of wildflowers sprouting three feet wide out of a basket. He couldn’t see the face of the person behind it, only that she was wearing sandals, with bright pink polished toenails and a dainty little gold toe-ring.
Then from behind the basket peeked a smiling face.
Angie.
Around him there were hushed whispers and more than a few teeters and muffled laughter.
Sam ignored them to stare at her in disbelief. Flowers. Lord, she’d brought flowers to the toughest, meanest cop in the precinct.
He’d never live it down.
“I’ve brought a thank-you for yesterday,” she said in a sweet, musical voice that somehow had him stepping from his office doorway toward her.
He managed to stop himself a few feet away, very aware of their audience. “You already thanked me.”
If his gruffness startled her, as it tended to do to most everyone else, she didn’t show it. Her smile brightened even more, if that was possible, and she lifted a shoulder. “Truth is, Detective O’Brien, I could never thank you enough. You’ve given me more than you could ever know.”
He didn’t want her gratitude. What he did want couldn’t be said in polite company.
She peered into his small, none-too-tidy office. “Besides, it looks as though you might be able to use some color in that room. How do you work in there? It’s dark as a tomb.”
Sam found himself staring at her petite form as she walked past him and into his office as if she owned the place. Her nicely rounded bottom sashayed beneath her sundress, as she marched right to his overcrowded desk.
“Wait—” No use, she was already making room, stacking piles of carefully sorted paperwork together—negating hours of work—and setting the basket down.
Then she moved to the window and reached for the shades.
“No—” He hated having all that bright sunshine pouring in over his shoulder when he was concentrating. “Don’t open—”
Too late.
She yanked the string, throwing light into the room. “There. That’s so much better, isn’t it?” She tossed her hair out of her eyes—hair that he couldn’t help but notice was a million different colors, like a doe’s coat, and smelled even better than the flowers she’d just settled.
She smiled at him. “This is really a bad color for your office walls. Drab gray. It’s not at all conducive to happy work patterns.”
He’d never even noticed what color the walls were, and didn’t care to now. Nor was he thrilled about noticing her hair color.
He had work to do.
“You know, I always had the secret fantasy of going through the police academy,” she said wistfully, looking around. “I had this dream of rounding up all the bad guys and putting them behind bars.”
The thought of this far too cheerful, happy, bouncy, flowers-carrying woman going through the academy brought a fine sweat to Sam’s brow. “You wouldn’t like it,” he said quickly.
“Oh, I think I would. Well, except for the shooting part.” She shivered. “I’m not crazy about weapons.” Her smile faded and a shadow flickered across her face. “Give me a paintbrush any day.”
Sam knew she was remembering yesterday, having a flashback to when she’d had the blade of a knife pressed against her slim neck. Damn it, he didn’t want to know this. Didn’t want to know how traumatized she was, or see how badly she was bruised. He searched her with his gaze, but couldn’t see a thing with her halter-top sundress that covered her to the throat. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes. Thanks to you.”
She was as small as he remembered, barely coming up to his shoulder. But where had all her defenseless vulnerability of yesterday gone? She looked totally, utterly capable of anything, especially ruining his day.
“You found a spare pair of glasses,” he heard himself say inanely, gesturing to the frames she wore.
“They’re ancient—oops.” She bit her lower lip to hold back a smile. “Probably shouldn’t tell that to a police officer. I could get a ticket for driving with an old prescription, right?”
He was relieved to discover she hadn’t just purchased the thick, blue-rimmed, almost horn-shaped glasses. He felt an odd pang at the knowledge she probably couldn’t afford a brand-new pair. He wondered if the bank wouldn’t cover the cost for her, and opened his mouth to suggest something to that effect when the curious whispers behind him registered.
He whirled to the doorway, and found Luke and two rookies leaning in, unabashedly eavesdropping.
“Need something to do?” he inquired. At his cold voice, the rookies instantly scattered.
Luke just grinned before slowly straightening and walking away.
Angie was staring at him with those huge brown eyes. “Wow,” she said, impressed. “That was a pretty scary cop voice. Really fierce. Do you use that on criminals to make them confess?”
Yeah, or on unwelcome guests to get them to leave. But he found he didn’t have quite the heart to say it. A surprise, and it only worsened his mood.
He really had a ton of work to do. He wanted—needed—to crack his priority case, and soon, as the suspects were probably right this minute stealing mail or trash, racking up more uncollectible debt by the minute.
“You know,” Angie said, sizing up his office, the wheels visibly turning in her head. “You could really use a paint job on these walls.”
“A paint job,” he repeated slowly.
“Maybe pink? It would most definitely help ease your tension.”
Oh yeah, that’s what he needed. Pink walls. “I’m not tense.”
She raised her brow so high it disappeared into her bangs. “Really? Then why is your jaw all tight and bunchy?”
“It’s not.”
“I can see the muscle jumping.”
It jumped some more. “I’m fine.”
“If this is normal for you, you must go home with a heck of a neck ache. Come here and sit down. I’ll rub it for you.”
He actually backed up. “I said I’m fine.”
But she reached for him, pushed him into a chair with surprising strength.
Even worse, he went. Big, bad, tough Sam O’Brien fell into a chair simply because she’d urged him to.
Then her fingers touched the bare skin on his neck, and as if he’d been poked by a hot stick, he surged to his feet.
At his quick movement, a sweet laugh escaped her and she clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry, I’m just so nervous about being here. I have to answer some more questions, and it’s…” She looked away. Swallowed hard. “It’s, um, giving me a bit of a bad time.”
Ah, hell. “No one is going to push you,” he heard himself say. “They’ll go slow and easy.”
“I know.” She backed to the door. “Anyway, I’m sorry. Again.” She was sorry because she’d touched him and he nearly bolted right out of the chair as if he’d been goosed.
She’d turned him on, this woman of the bright yellow sundress, silly blue glasses, sweet smile and expressive eyes. And the shocking jolt of arousal—arousal, for God’s sake—had nearly caused his heart to leap out of his chest.
He was at work, damn it, and if there was one thing he disliked, it was when something distracted him from his work. “I have to get back to my job,” he said, his voice more than a bit strained.
“Oh! Of course.” But her gaze caught at something on his desk and she went wide-eyed.
“What is it?”
Hands over her mouth, she stared at a composite drawing he’d gotten just that morning, of someone he suspected to be deep in the thick of the identity-theft ring he was trying to crack.
She looked pale. Why had he let her in his office? Why hadn’t he showed her the door two minutes ago? “What’s the matter?” he asked again, hoping she wasn’t really going to tell him, hoping she’d simply take her perky little self and go away. Far away. And take the flowers with her.
“Is he…wanted?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, because I’ve seen him downtown.”
This particular suspect had laid low all year, hiding out from the best of the best on the force, including himself. They didn’t even know his name, had only his description from his latest victim, whom he’d conned out of his ID with a door-to-door sales scam. Much as he’d like to have her solve his problem by locating the suspect, he’d followed too many dead ends to believe her.
Angie picked up the picture and studied it carefully, and he studied her just as carefully.
Her fingernails matched her toenails, he noted, but were chipped and nibbled at. Probably her line of work, he figured, then rolled his eyes at himself.
He was noticing her nails, for God’s sake.
Man, he needed a break. A vacation. Yeah, that was it. Maybe Hawaii, with a few bikini-clad babes.
Too bad he never took vacations.
“I do know him,” she said.
“From?”
“I can’t remember exactly.”
He took the picture from her hands. “If you think of it, call in.”
Those expressive eyes stared at him. “You don’t believe me.”
Maybe that was because she thought his walls should be pink. Or that she had dreamed of being a cop when she was afraid of weapons. But telling her so felt a little like kicking a puppy. “It’s nothing personal. We get hundreds of false leads.”
She crossed her arms and held her ground, reminding him that while she could look so vulnerable, she was actually tough as hell. “You think I’m a silly little flake.”
There was no mistaking her hurt now, and he swore at himself. “No—”
“But you don’t think I’ve seen this guy.”
“Okay, fine.” He leaned back against his desk, the desk now covered in flowers. He was going to smell like a garden. “Where do you know him from? What’s his name? What does he do?”
“I don’t know.” She took a step back, making him feel like the school-yard bully. “I just know that I’ve seen him coming and going in the used bookstore next to the café where I work.”
He studied her a long moment, considering. She seemed genuine enough. “You’re certain.”
“Absolutely.”
“Those glasses don’t look too reliable.”
“I can see perfectly.”
He sighed. “Fine. I’ll check it out.”
The look she shot him was purely female, purely annoyed. “But you don’t expect to find him, right?”
“Well…”
“Truthfully.”
How to tell her how many false leads he’d followed? How many times people thought they saw one thing but in reality saw another? “Look—”
“Oh, never mind.” She sent him a smile, completely devoid of the brilliance from before, which for some reason made Sam hurt inside.
“Angie—”
“No, really.” She lifted a hand to ward him off. “You’re busy. Don’t give it another thought.” She headed to the door. “I’m going to go answer those questions now.”
“Yeah. Angie—”
“Bye, Sam.”
Then she was gone and he was staring at the door, torn between relief and a self-disgust because he knew he’d been curt and rude.
Damn, he hated working with people.