by MCCOY, JUDI
The waitress brought their water and arranged place mats and silverware. Instead of ogling her, he realized he’d rather tempt fate and converse with Ellie. “I’m not such a bad guy, but I have a tough job to do, which sometimes makes me testy. Having you show up in places you shouldn’t only adds to my annoyance quotient.”
“Then you’re not planning to arrest me?”
“Not unless you’ve done something illegal.”
Her ramrod posture relaxed a little. After shrugging out of her dark green rain slicker, she hung it on the back of her chair, but that only called attention to her bountiful breasts encased in a formfitting gray sweater.
“I’m a law-abiding citizen,” she reminded him, following his wayward gaze. “And the part of my anatomy you’re supposed to be focused on is up here.”
He grinned. “Just checking out the scenery. And I already figured you for law-abiding.”
“That’s right. You decided early on I was too nice a person to commit murder.”
“Yeah, I did. And you went off on me when I said so. What was that all about?”
Ellie took a sip of water, then exhaled a breath. “I apologize if I was harsh.”
“You mentioned someone called the D?”
“My ex. It’s not a fun topic.”
The waitress served their soup and sandwiches. “Anything else I can get for you?”
“Not right now,” he answered. “I’ve been there,” he added when the girl shuffled away. “And I agree. A failed marriage is never a laughing matter.”
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Sam took a bite of his pastrami, caught her watching him, and realized he was eating with gusto. “Sorry. This is the first decent meal I’ve had in a couple of days. Under better circumstances, I do fairly well at carrying on pleasant dinner conversation.”
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “So am I really in trouble for talking to Rita Millcraft?”
He thought while he chewed and swallowed. “Investigating a murder isn’t for amateurs. Ask the wrong person the right question, and anything might happen. That’s the reason I told you to stay out of it.”
“Any chance you can tell me what you found out so far?”
“Only if you promise to retire from the PI business.”
“I’m not—that’s not—” She sighed. “All I’m trying to do is rescue a missing bichon.”
“So you checked the shelters?”
“I did. I also hung flyers with Buddy’s picture, spoke to most of the doormen in a three-block radius, and all the street vendors. Nobody has a clue. I only went to Rita because I heard from David Crane that someone stole her dog under circumstances very much like the professor’s. I’m hunting for anything that could lead to Buddy’s return.”
“How do you know the vet?” And why do I care?
“Rudy is one of his patients, and you already know he was Buddy’s vet, too.”
“So he told you I called him in for questioning, and he let me know about Ms. Millcraft.”
She nodded but kept mum.
“His info convinced me to talk to the detectives working Ms. Millcraft’s case, see if there’s a connection.”
“Have you made a decision? Because I think there is.”
“Well, guess what. So do I.”
Ellie rewarded him with her first real smile of the night. “You do?”
“It might surprise you to learn I’m even considering your theory. I’m starting to think Albright was killed because of his dog.”
“ ‘Surprise’ is putting it mildly,” she responded, sliding her empty plate to the side. “Guess I was hungry after all.”
“My mother says it’s good to have a healthy appetite.” It was a nice change, sharing a meal with a woman who actually ate instead of counting calories or fat grams. “Think you have room for dessert?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I don’t kid. Besides, half the fun of eating is knowing there’ll be something sweet at the end.”
She rested her chin on a fist and stared at him. “All right, now I know you’re joking.”
“About what?”
“First you act as if you approve of my packing away as much food as a man. Then you ask me about dessert.” She ran a finger around the edge of her water glass. “Women are supposed to eat like birds so they stay slim and delicate.”
“Who the hell passed along that bit of wisdom?”
“My ex, my mother, the fashion magazines, Holly-wood, and just about every designer and style expert on the planet.” She raised a shoulder. “If you ask me, it’s a conspiracy.”
“Well, what do you know. I agree with you there, too. Personally, I enjoy women with curves. What’s the fun in snuggling with a stick, when you can snuggle with a pillow?”
She rolled her eyes. “You are so full of it.”
“Think what you want, but I’m serious.” He signaled for the check. “Sure you don’t want coffee or something else?”
Standing, she shrugged into her coat. “No, thanks. It’s late, and I have to get home. I’m an early riser.”
Sam signed the charge slip, left a tip on the table, and tucked the paperwork in his billfold. “Me, too, though it’s not always by choice.” He followed her out the door, where they stood on the sidewalk.
“Thanks for dinner,” she began. “And for sharing what you know about the case.”
“And thanks for your promise to stay out of my way while I do my job. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”
Chapter 11
Ellie flinched when Ryder caught her arm a second time. Though his grip was less threatening than it had been at Rita’s, it was still proprietary and definitely made her uncomfortable. And what was his last comment? Something about her promise to “stay out of his way and let him do his job.” She hadn’t agreed to any such thing, but this probably wasn’t the best moment to point out his error.
When he steered her toward a tanklike gray sedan parked in a TRUCKS ONLY zone, she guessed his intentions and planted her feet. “I can walk myself home.”
Clenching his jaw, he opened the passenger-side door. “Not on my watch, you can’t.” He spotted a paper tucked under a wiper blade, muttered a string of curses, and snatched it off the glass. “Get in and buckle up.”
The set of his shoulders told her there was no point in arguing. Besides, she could think of just one thing someone would tack to a windshield, and giving him grief for the way he’d treated her at Rita’s seemed only fair.
Biting back a smile, she took her seat and strapped on her belt. “Is that by any chance a parking ticket?”
He slammed her door, trotted to the driver’s side, and slid behind the wheel. Then he reached to open his glove box, but she grabbed the paper from his fingers before he did the deed.
“Oh, my God. It is a ticket! You are on a par with the rest of us mortals.” Her chortle eased to a snort, then a cough as she caught the devilish glint in his eyes. “Sorry, but it’s difficult imagining you, Mr. Big Shot Detective, breaking the law in such an everyday-citizen manner.”
Swiveling on the bench seat, he made a grab for the ticket. “Oh, really? Who says?”
When she held the ticket overhead and opened the glove box, a raft of identical pages fluttered out. “Holy crap. You’re one of those people who ignore their parking citations—a—a scoffer or whatever the term is. The city publishes an annual list of their most wanted, and I bet you’re their number-one culprit.”
“Not even close,” he insisted, leaning toward her. “Now give it over.”
She turned on the map light, gathered a stack of loose citations, and shuffled through them with her free hand. “Jeez. Some of these go back three years.” Returning the pile to the glove box, she added, “They’re going to throw the book at you, Ryder. You might even get a write-up in the Times. I can see the headline now: Local detective named one of Manhattan’s biggest scoffers!”
Edging closer, he blew out a breath. “Not u
nless I pop in the system, and that’s not going to happen.”
“Oh? And why not?”
He edged a few more inches in her direction, and the interior of the sedan shrank to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. “I have a buddy in Violations, and we have a deal.” He moved closer still. “Now stow tonight’s with the rest of them.”
When his breath fanned her cheek, Ellie’s heart skipped a half dozen beats, and she acted without thinking. Like a pigmy warrior taunting a hungry lion, she shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Light from an overhead streetlamp cast shadows on his handsome face, but those damn eyes still smoldered with danger. His lips curled into a smile that should have frightened her but instead set her insides dancing to a rhythm she hadn’t felt in several years.
He sidled over another inch, pressed his chest against her shoulder, and made a grab for the lone ticket. “Then I guess I’ll just have to take it.”
The little air she managed to inhale caught in her throat, and she stumbled into gear. “I . . . um . . . ah . . .” Pushing the paper at him, her hand met a wall of muscle. “Here. There’s no need to get physical.”
“Physical?” he asked, as if he enjoyed the idea. His long fingers circled her wrist, and he focused on her mouth, staring as if he still longed for a taste of the dessert he’d denied himself earlier. “Maybe I should arrest you, have you remanded into my custody.”
She gasped. “You wouldn’t dare.”
His thumb skimmed her skin in gentle yet insistent circles. “Who’s going to stop me?”
The thought of closing her eyes and willing him away was tempting, but a sixth sense told her he’d move in for the kill if she did. She had no intention of starting something it would be stupid to finish. She pursed her lips in disapproval, but that only seemed to intrigue him further.
“You have an interesting mouth,” he said, getting so close his nose bumped hers. “It reminds me of pink rose petals, but that little pout gives it a certain edge.”
Rose petals from the dastardly detective? She squirmed backward and found herself plastered against the door. “You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t?”
“Nu-huh.”
“Care to tell me why?”
“Because—because—you’re an officer of the law. That means you’re too much a gentleman to take advantage of a defenseless woman.”
His hungry expression shifted to amusement. “Believe me, sweetheart, with that mouth, you’re the least defenseless woman in Manhattan—probably all five boroughs.”
She bit her lower lip, realized it again called attention to the object of his fascination, and sighed, too confused by the insistent two-step tapping in her belly to continue baiting him. “How about if I remind you that we’re working together?”
He stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. “What in the hell gave you that idea?”
“I just thought—”
“I already have a partner—a professional who knows this business as well as I do. The only reason you haven’t met Fugazzo is because he’s on family leave, and the department’s too shorthanded to give me an interim partner.”
Ellie remembered the medical examiner, Dr. Bridges, asking him if someone had had a baby, but didn’t think to connect the dots. “You might have mentioned it before all this,” she said, giving a wounded sniff.
He gazed at the ceiling, then back at her. “You are, without a doubt, the most obstinate, hardheaded, contrary, disobedient, hardheaded—”
“You said that already.”
“Don’t remind me—the most frustrating woman I have ever met. What will it take to make you understand this isn’t a game? Albright was murdered, and whoever did it is still out there. The killer is interested in dogs. You own a dog—”
“I have a worthless kennel hound no one wanted. Of course, Rudy’s not worthless to me—he’s the most important thing in my world, and I’d fight to the death if someone tried to—”
“Get to the point,” he ground out.
“The killer’s only interested in champions, canines that proved they can win big in a ring.”
“And what makes you so sure about this theory?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Jimmy’s a best-in-show winner. Buddy’s won the most megacanine prize of them all. I bet if you ask some of the other detectives working stolen property, you’d come up with a couple more missing pups, and they’d all have top-of-the-line pedigrees and successes.”
He smirked. “Too late. I already put out the word.”
She said, “Oh,” though she wanted to say, “Thanks for telling me, you big idiot” in the worst way. “Good.”
“I’ve been at this job long enough to know how to get things done.”
At a loss for words, she raised her nose and stared out the window. He settled behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine powered to life, purring like a high-performance racing machine. Okay, she conceded, the iron tank was a disguise so people would only think it was a reject from a used-car lot. He pulled into traffic and stepped on the gas.
“I thought all cops had a roof thingy. You know, a light that reminds regular folks of the specials running in one of those big discount stores?”
“Official use only,” came his terse reply. Dodging a taxi, he took a right at the next corner.
“So your visit to Rita wasn’t official?”
“It was.”
“Then . . .”
He crossed two lanes and hung a left, leaving a trail of blaring horns in his wake. “I parked too far away to justify the light, plus I have a sticker. A beat cop is supposed to pay attention to the department decal, but it’s a good bet he was a rookie, maybe even a patrolman buddy who thought it would be fun messing with my head. I’d have to interpret the scrawl at the bottom to see exactly who wrote the citation.”
“Mess with your head?”
“Yank my chain. It’s probably somebody who already knows I have a couple of tickets, and thinks adding another is cute.”
She found it hard to believe an officer would be so devious. “But it’s childish, and it could get you in trouble.”
He stopped the car at a light and glanced in her direction. “Who are you—Mary Poppins? Guys on the force pull practical jokes all the time, even on television cop shows.”
“I don’t watch cop shows.” Too bad if he thought her the personification of a fictional Goody Two-shoes. She hated the cruelty, the violence depicted these days on both the small and large screens. “Too much bad stuff.”
“The writers make up most of the shit on TV, but some of it is real. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there, and they use the best of it for their stories. Look what happened to your pal.”
What had killed Professor Albright? “Not to belabor the point, but are the test results in? Do you know exactly what caused the professor’s death?”
Ryder drove past her apartment building, found a spot with a sign marked DELIVERY ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED, and pulled into the space. Reaching under his seat, he retrieved the blue-light special, climbed from the car, and slapped it on the roof. By the time he arrived on her side, she was ready to beat a fast retreat.
“Thanks. I can take it from here. My apartment’s just around the corner.” After their close encounter in the tank, she wasn’t sure she could handle more private time with him. “This neighborhood is perfectly safe.”
“Not so fast.” He caught her by the elbow again. “It won’t take long.”
Ellie breathed a sigh of relief. He said the dome light was for official business only, which meant he thought of this escort as part of his job. Now he announced he wouldn’t be long. The tiny zaps of electricity his touch sent zinging through her veins and the “dying-for-dessert” look in his eyes were merely her imagination running wild. Viv was right—she’d been celibate too long. All she needed was a serious bout with a vibrator . . . once she grew brave enough to buy one.
They covered the distance in silence
and reached her building in minutes. Aware she was almost free of him, Ellie tried for bright and breezy. “Good night, and thanks again.”
“If I remember, you live inside the building.”
Anchoring her feet, she put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to be a pain about this, aren’t you?”
“What’s the problem? Afraid of what’ll happen if I walk you to your door?”
“Afraid? Me? Of course not.”
“Then prove it,” he dared.
Feigning nonchalance, she shrugged, fished the keys from her shoulder bag, and took the stairs. Moments later, they were at her apartment. Before she used the key herself, he pulled it from her fingers and unlocked the door.
“Want me to come inside and check things out?”
“There’s no need. I have Rudy, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. The ten-pound dragon slayer.”
“Twelve pounds,” she corrected. “And he can be a regular Cujo when the situation calls for it.”
Ryder made a rude noise, then clasped her upper arm and pressed her against the doorframe. “I doubt it. Besides, there are things I’m pretty certain he can’t do for you.”
His honey-colored eyes focused on her mouth. His fingers skimmed her neck and captured her jaw, while he slid a knee between her legs. Inching forward, he claimed her lips, and the kiss ignited her insides like a match to kindling. In seconds, the joining burned as hot as an out-of-control forest fire, searing her blood and turning her muscles to candle wax.
She opened her mouth to protest and he slipped his tongue inside, then moaned as if he was tasting his favorite after-dinner treat. Lost in the warmth of his body and the pressure of his upper thigh nestled intimately into her sweet spot, her head slumped against the wall and her knees buckled.
Just as she was about to wrap her arms around him and beg for more, he drew back. Seconds passed before she found the courage to raise her eyelids and look at him. When she did, he was grinning.
“Let me know if your fuzzy pal can make you melt the way I just did, okay? Because if he does, I’m going to retire.”