Reunited with the P.I.

by Anna J. Stewart

  “I think you’ll be too busy rattling windows. I’ll call you!”

  “Rattling windows?” Simone mumbled, shaking her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what gets into that girl’s—Vince!” She stopped short inside her office where she found him sitting behind her desk. “What are you doing here?”

  Part of her braced herself for whatever verbal assault he’d returned to lob at her, but the other part, the part that was in love with him, had never been so happy to see anyone in her life. Two weeks had felt like a lifetime. She sagged, tried to stiffen her spine, but she was exhausted. Given everything she’d been through recently, she knew two weeks could very well be a lifetime.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware.” He kicked his feet up on her desk, probably in an effort to annoy her. It worked. She stalked over and smacked her hand against his boots. “But I really hate being lied to.”

  “Too bad.” She tossed her messages onto her desk. “I repeat, what are you doing here?”

  “You got Jason out of prison.” He leaned back, folded his hands behind his head and stared at her. “You didn’t want anything getting in the way, including your relationship with me, so you led me to believe you weren’t doing anything to keep up your end of the bargain.”

  He was here out of gratitude? Pride shifted between them. “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Don’t!” He shot to his feet and grabbed hold of her arms. “No more lies, Simone.” He kissed her, a brief pressing of lips, almost gentle, but she leaned into him, caught hold of him and a soft sob escaped. “You put him first,” he murmured against her lips. “You put me first.”

  “Not in the beginning.” He deserved the truth. And she didn’t want any more lies between them. “I couldn’t see any way to do it, but then Eden offered to help.”

  “I talked to Eden last night. She told me everything.”

  “She’s been doing a lot of sharing recently. You had her run a game on Denton’s lawyer to make him late for court.”

  He grinned. “You play things your way, I’ll play things mine. What do you say? You want to give us another shot? A real shot this time? An equal shot?”

  “Yes.” Her whispered response was doused by the disappointment crashing through her. “Yes, I do, but I can’t, Vince. Not now. The timing.” She broke off, wondering how to tell him what was coming down the road. “It wouldn’t be fair... I can’t focus on you, on us until...”

  “Until Chloe’s killer is caught?” He kissed her again and drew her into the circle of his arms. She slipped her arms around him, clung to him, afraid to let him go again. “Eden told me that, too. Maybe you all could use some help with that? Seeing as I’ve got a new assistant manager at the bar now, I’m reopening my investigation business. Helping to close a twenty-year-old murder case sounds like a good place to start.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Of course he’d offer her everything she needed. “I love you. I promise, I’ve learned from the past. I won’t—”

  “We aren’t going to make promises neither of us can keep,” he said. “But what we can do is promise to always talk. To communicate. To be honest with each other.”

  “And maybe set strict office hours so as not to interfere with our personal time?” She smiled against his chest. “I can make that work if you can.”

  “Sounds like an arrangement I can live with. What do you say?” He leaned back and looked into her eyes. “Wanna take another chance and marry me again?”

  “I do.” She lifted her head and kissed him. “I really, really do.”

  * * * * *

  Be sure to check out the first book in

  Anna J. Stewart’s HONOR BOUND miniseries

  MORE THAN A LAWMAN

  available now from Harlequin Romantic Suspense.

  And look for the next HONOR BOUND story from

  Anna J. Stewart, coming in October 2017!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from

  CAVANAUGH ON CALL by Marie Ferrarella

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  Cavanaugh on Call

  by Marie Ferrarella

  Prologue

  Alexandra Scott eased herself slowly into the closest chair at the kitchen table. Her eyes were still half closed even though she’d already showered, dressed and poured the obligatory mug of inky-black coffee that she needed to jump-start her day.

  Holding the oversize mug with both hands, she forced herself to take a deep sip of the brew. It tasted like hot sludge. Scottie hated black coffee, but she wasn’t drinking it for pleasure. She was drinking it because she had to. If she didn’t, she was liable to wind up sleepwalking through half her day—if not more.

  The strong, black liquid landed in the pit of her stomach, spreading out like an oil slick: thick and impenetrable. Slowly it flowed through her entire body, rousing everything in its path until the sum total of her was not only awake but keenly alert.

  Setting down the mug, the homicide detective took a deep breath and then blew it out again. Her breath made the wayward strands of dark blond bangs move ever so slightly.

  She pushed them back impatiently. She wasn’t one who fussed with her hair, but it would be nice if it could stay put.

  How was it that mornings kept arriving faster and faster these days? It felt as if she had just laid her head down on her pillow and here it was, time to get up again and face a full day.

  There should be a law, Scottie thought as she reached for the paper she’d automatically picked up at her front door and brought in with her, that mornings weren’t allowed to arrive until after a person had had six decent hours’ sleep. After all, it wasn’t as if she’d been out carousing, enjoying Aurora’s limited nightlife. She’d been out keeping the citizens of that same city safe so that they could enjoy carousing or whatever it was that people enjoyed doing these days. She really wouldn’t know about that. Working one job or another since before she’d turned eighteen, for the last few years she’d been a homicide detective and that had consumed almost all of her life.

  Not that she minded, but it would be nice to get a good night’s sleep every now and then.

  Stifling a yawn, Scottie blinked once and tried to focus on the newspaper in front of her.

  The local paper was her one attachment to her past. While everyone she knew got their news in sound bites or from the internet, Scottie still preferred to get hers from newsprint. Her late grandfather, the man she’d b
een named after, had been a journalist and, in a way, though the man had died when she was seven, reading the newspaper—when she had the time for it—made her feel close to the man.

  She missed those days. Missed not feeling as if the world was on her shoulders.

  “C’mon, Scottie, drink up. Don’t dawdle,” she urged herself under her breath. “You’ll be late for work and you don’t want th—”

  Scottie almost dropped the mug she’d raised to her lips. Moving like someone in a dream, she set the mug down, her eyes never leaving the story above the fold. The one she’d just fleetingly—and unconsciously—glanced at.

  She’d had no intention of reading any of the stories on page one. She’d only meant to glance at a few words here and there in passing, drink the rest of the vile black brew and go. But something had just jumped out at her, commandeering her eyes and grabbing her full attention. When she thought about it later, she wouldn’t have even been able to explain why. There was just something—something—about the story that forced her to sit up and actually absorb the words.

  Scottie got no further than the first three lines of the first paragraph before the taste of bile rose in her throat and filled her mouth at the same time she felt the pit of her stomach sink, pinching the sides together.

  No!

  “No, no, no, no!” she cried out loud, her voice bordering on outrage. “This isn’t happening. This has to be someone else. It has to be.”

  But even as she shouted the words at the news article on page one, Scottie had a sick feeling she wasn’t being paranoid.

  She was correct.

  Ethan.

  She had to call her brother and once she had him on the phone, he’d tell her she was wrong. Not in so many words, but by his tone, his inflection. By the unspoken hurt in his voice that she would even think he was involved. She’d known Ethan his entire life and she’d know if he was lying or trying to keep the truth from her.

  Willing her hand not to tremble, Scottie hit the number on her cell that would connect her directly to Ethan’s phone, all the while telling herself that this was just a coincidence. An awful, unsettling coincidence. She had worked much too hard to get him back to the straight and narrow and he had worked with her. He’d been clean and out of trouble for almost five years now. Five whole years.

  He wouldn’t do this.

  Not to himself.

  Not to her.

  “This isn’t you!” she fairly shouted at the newspaper as she listened to the phone on the other end ring.

  On the sixth ring, Scottie snapped to attention. She heard Ethan’s voice.

  “This is Ethan Loomis. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message and your number and I’ll get back to you.”

  Fear and anger had her throat suddenly so dry she could barely get the words out. “Ethan, this is Scottie. Call me. Now!”

  When she terminated the call, Scottie picked up the newspaper and finished reading the article.

  Her hands were shaking.

  Chapter 1

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Detective Bryce Cavanaugh watched in disbelief as his partner, Detective Peter Phelps, a tall, thin man whose suit jackets hung loosely off his body, packed the last of his personal items into a cardboard box. “You’re actually leaving?” Bryce questioned.

  “And they said you’d never amount to anything as a detective,” Phelps said dryly, tossing a half-empty bag of stale chocolate-covered wafers from last Halloween into the box. “Yeah,” the older man said more seriously. “You figured it out. I’m leaving.”

  “Was it something I said?” Bryce’s voice cracked, trying to cover up the fact that if this was on the level, it left him far from happy and somewhat surprised. He wasn’t averse to change, but he didn’t exactly welcome a major shake-up, either.

  “Hell, it’s everything you said,” Phelps answered tongue in cheek as he opened one drawer after another, checking for anything he might have left behind. “But if you’re asking why I’m leaving the police department, you don’t have anything to do with it.”

  Bryce took a seat on the edge of his partner’s desk, crossing his arms before him. “Then educate me, Phelps. Why are you suddenly spring-cleaning your desk two months late?”

  The frown on Phelps’s long, gaunt face went clear to the bone. “Alice’s mom is sick,” he said, referring to his wife’s only living parent.

  Bryce knew enough to look immediately sympathetic. “Hey, I’m sorry to hear that.” Still perched on the desk, he leaned in to get into his partner’s face. “But I still don’t see the connection.”

  Phelps put down a copy of the 1983 Dodger Annual yearbook for his favorite baseball team, pressed his thin lips together and sighed. The sigh sounded as if it came straight from his toes. “The kind of sick where she needs her family around her, doing stuff for her.”

  Bryce still didn’t see the problem. “So? Bring her out here. You’ve got those extra bedrooms since your kids went off to college—” He didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Phelps eyed him as if he’d lost his mind. “Look, I feel bad for her, but there’s no way that harpy’s moving in with us. Not unless you wanna see my face on a mug shot posted in Homicide with the words ‘Rogue Cop’ over it.”

  Bryce was trying very hard to understand what the other man was saying. “So what’s the plan? You and Alice’re moving in with her?”

  Phelps shivered. “Different scenario, same results. Alice and I are renting a place up there.”

  “There” being Fresno, Bryce recalled.

  “She’s going to play Florence What’s-Her-Name and I guess I’m gonna see if I can finally write that crime thriller I’m always talking about.” The contented, wistful expression on his face faded and Phelps got back to the present. “Officially, for now I’m taking an extended leave of absence. Don’t look so glum. I’ll be back,” Phelps promised. “After all, you never forget your first,” he added with a wicked grin, followed by a heartfelt sigh.

  Bryce shot the man a look that said he wasn’t amused. “Seriously, just how long is this ‘extended’ leave going to be?”

  Bony shoulders rose and fell beneath the loose-fitting jacket. “A few months. Six on the outside. Doctors say that the old girl’s on her way out. Could be anytime now,” he said a little wistfully. And then reality set in. “’Course, she’s got the constitution of a rock. She just might hang around for another ten, twenty years just to stick it to me.” Phelps laughed dryly as he put the last of his things into the cardboard box.

  He paused. “Not everybody’s as lucky as you are, partner. Your family gets along and they all have each other’s backs no matter what.” He picked up the box then put it back down again and, only half kidding, said, “Any chance I could get adopted? I wouldn’t take up much space.”

  Bryce laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to ask.” And then he sobered as he scanned the squad room. “It won’t seem the same without you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ll forget about me the second I walk out the door.” Phelps saw that his partner was looking at something or someone over his shoulder. Turning, he saw a slender blonde crossing the threshold, a miniature version of his cardboard box in her hands. “Sooner, maybe,” he commented. “Well, off I go.” He put his hand into Bryce’s, shaking it. “It’s been good. Maybe with luck, I’ll see you soon.”

  And then Phelps looked around. “Anyone know where I can pick up some hemlock, cheap?” he asked, raising his voice so that it carried to the rest of the inhabitants of the squad room.

  A cacophony of voices answered him as he made his way, nodding through the maze of desks and detectives, toward the exit.

  He passed the blonde who was walking in. Assuming that she was there to take his place, Phelps nodded in her direction and, in a lo
w voice, said, “The desk’s in the rear of the room. So’s your partner.” And then he smiled broadly. “Good luck with that.”

  * * *

  Scottie’s arm tightened around the small box she was carrying. It was only half filled, but she hadn’t been able to find a smaller box when she’d cleaned out her space in Homicide.

  The transfer had come through so quickly, Scottie thought, it had almost taken her breath away. She’d been prepared to make several requests and to write long petitions before she got the okay to make the transfer from Homicide to Robbery. She’d been certain she would have to plead her case and be movingly convincing before the approval was given. After all, she’d been fairly certain she had done a more than decent job in Homicide.

  She’d certainly managed to clear all her cases. But then, on the other hand, Aurora was not exactly a snake pit of crime. It habitually made the FBI’s top ten list of safest US cities for its size and she liked to think she was part of the reason for that. She worked hard, kept to herself and never challenged authority. As far as she knew, that was the winning formula for a valuable employee.

  She’d thought that her commanding officer would have put up more of a fuss about losing her. But to her surprise, after she’d put in her request, stating only that she felt rather burned out working Homicide—it was the only thing that occurred to her to use as her reason for requesting the transfer—it had been granted the next morning. The captain hadn’t even tried to talk her out of it.

  Her partner, Joe Mathias, had appeared a little surprised as well as dismayed when he’d learned she was transferring, but not enough to try to get her to change her mind or to attempt to block the transfer.

  They had worked well together, but only in the way that two cogs located on the same machine worked well. They had never socialized after hours—her choice—and they didn’t even know any personal details about one another—also her choice. Mathias had tried—he had pictures of his wife and kids on his desk and on occasion would tell her about something he and his family had done over the weekend—but Scottie had zealously kept her private life just that.