Several minutes later, Frankie spoke up again. “I’ve got one here who’s a saint.” Looking at the screen, she enumerated the name’s list of attributes. “According to his background, Steven Miller currently teaches eighteenth-century poetry at the University of Bedford. He volunteers at a soup kitchen, and on Sundays he sings in the choir at his church.”
“Do clocks stop when he walks by?” White Hawk asked.
“No, the guy’s good-looking,” Frankie answered, pulling up the man’s photograph. “If you like pretty boys.”
“Not my thing,” White Hawk said dryly.
“He sounds almost too clean,” Luke commented. He didn’t bother getting up and taking a look at the profile on Frankie’s monitor. Instead, he said, “Okay, put him on the list, too.”
Frankie smiled at him. “He’s already on it.”
* * *
In the end, they kept all twelve names, arranging the candidates in the order they believed was the degree of possibility that the man was the serial killer they were after, with the top name being the most likely.
Luke stared at the list once it had taken final shape. His gut was telling him that this wasn’t the way to go, but then his gut wasn’t exactly being impartial here, he thought.
He looked at Frankie.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” he asked her.
“Do I want to catch him?” she asked incredulously. “Absolutely. You bet.” There was no hesitation on her part.
“No,” he amended. “I mean do you want to go through with this and be the bait?”
“It’s a little late in the game to be pulling out.” She watched him uncertainly.
“Not pulling out, exactly,” Luke corrected. “Officer Moretti looks enough like you to step in and take your place.” His voice was picking up speed, as if he talked quickly enough, he’d get her to agree. “When she shows up, she can tell the guy that it was an old photo of her on the website. What?” he asked, aware that Frankie was staring at him incredulously.
“You actually went looking through the ranks for someone who resembled me?” she asked in disbelief.
Her eyes were blazing but he wasn’t about to back down.
“I thought, in case you changed your mind, we should be prepared.”
“I’m not about to change my mind,” she informed Luke. “So change your tune and let’s get this show on the road. I’ll email back to these men and suggest we meet at...”
Frankie looked from one detective to the other, waiting for one of them to suggest a coffee shop they could use.
Luke thought for a moment, then said, “There’s a popular coffee shop right across from the shopping center right off Main and Surrey. It’s called Fast & Hot.”
Another detective, Jorge Martinez, laughed as he passed by on his way to the break room. “That sounds like the way you like your women,” he commented.
White Hawk shot the older detective a disapproving look. “Don’t pay any attention to Martinez,” he told Frankie.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me,” she answered, even though the comment actually did bother her. “Okay,” she said, turning her attention to Luke. “How do you want to do this?”
“I don’t,” he told her flatly.
But he knew they had to get this serial killer before another victim was added to the mounting body count and if the killer was setting his sights on Frankie, that meant that he wouldn’t be killing another woman. And he and White Hawk would be right there to catch the serial killer before anything got out of hand.
Frankie was looking at him expectantly, waiting for orders.
“Write to each of these guys and make arrangements to meet them at Fast & Hot. We’ll space them apart and do three a day. Or, more accurately, three in the late afternoon. Presumably they all have jobs, so tell them you’ll meet with them at, say, 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30.”
She looked at him innocently. “What if the 5:30 guy doesn’t want to leave by 6:30?”
“See that he does,” Luke instructed. “Tell him you have a family emergency and you’ll get back with him. This pre-date meeting is just to test the waters, understand? Any guy who stands out as a possible suspect, you’ll call him back, apologize for having to leave so abruptly and say that you’d like another opportunity to get to know him better.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she told Luke.
“I know—but I wish there was someone else executing it,” he told her honestly. “I know you’ll be wearing a wire for this, but if at any time during this pre-date you feel spooked by the guy you’re talking to, I want you to let us know and we’ll pull you out of there fast.”
“And just how do you propose I let you know that I feel spooked?”
“The usual way,” Luke replied. “I’ll give you a safe word. Just say it and White Hawk and I will be at your side before you know it.”
“Like the cavalry,” she commented. Something she knew that her cousin certainly could have benefited from. “Okay, what’s the safe word?”
“Cupcakes,” Luke told her. “Just say cupcakes and you’re out of there.”
“Cupcakes?” she repeated as if he had just said a foreign word.
Luke nodded. “Uh-huh.”
She surprised him by laughing. “Now you have me wanting one.”
For the first time since this undercover operation had gotten started, Luke grinned. “We’ll stop at a bakery on the way home and I’ll get you a whole box of them,” he promised.
“On the way home,” she repeated. “Whose home?” she asked. “Mine? Yours?”
“Take your pick,” Luke told her. “Unless you just want to go home with the cupcakes,” he said, thinking that she might be feeling too much pressure if they got together again so soon.
“No, you’ll make a nice side dish,” she told him, doing her best to keep a straight face.
But even as she said it, she knew she was getting carried away.
As attracted as she felt to this man, Frankie understood that this was just temporary on his part. And although she intended to enjoy herself for as long as this lasted, she wasn’t about to fool herself into thinking that there was anything permanent on the horizon. Not when it came to Luke. The reputation he had existed for a reason.
He was a player.
A charming player, but nonetheless a player. At some point in the scenario, players picked up their marbles and went on to another game.
“Okay,” she declared. “I’d better get busy and write back to my perfect dates before they all lose interest and decide that they want to go on to someone else.”
“They’re not going to lose interest that fast,” Luke told her.
How about you, Luke? she asked him silently. How fast are you going to lose interest and seek out some greener grass?
With effort, she pushed the thought out of her mind. She had work to do.
And a serial killer to catch.
Chapter 21
In the end, when the workday was over, Frankie wound up driving home alone.
Walking into her apartment, she tried not to think about it, but somehow, her apartment felt lonelier and emptier than it had before she had allowed Luke into her life.
“Certainly didn’t take long, did it?” she murmured under her breath as she locked the door behind her and slipped the chain into its metal slot. “Wonder if this was some kind of record for him?”
The “him” was Luke.
After they left the squad room on Sunday, he had followed her to her apartment. His thinking at the time, he’d told her, was that after they’d had dinner he’d leave and drive home.
But dinner—which turned out to be Chinese takeout—was followed by “dessert,” a very long, sumptuous, steamy dessert. Ultimately, Luke didn’t leave
her apartment to go back to his place until it was well into the wee hours of the morning.
“Thought that was going to be an ongoing thing, didn’t you?” Frankie mocked herself as she rummaged through her refrigerator.
Nothing looked good to her, so she took out the remainder of the loaf of bread that was there and put the last two slices into her toaster.
“Well, surprise. I guess you scared him away by sticking to your guns and insisting on doing what you’re being paid to do—catching a killer.”
She supposed that if she had backed down and gone along with his idea of using a police officer to go under cover, maybe Luke would be here tonight. But that would be selling out.
Worse, she’d be letting Kristin down. When she had walked into Kristin’s apartment and found her lying on the floor, dead, she’d vowed that she would find the person who had killed her cousin, and no matter how long it took, she fully intended to do just that.
If that lost her O’Bannon, well, so be it.
Frankie fought to block out the deep, bitter pang she felt.
There were more important things than ripped arms, a hard, muscular chest and a killer smile—not to mention a man who made her want to make love until she couldn’t breathe from exhaustion.
“C’mon, DeMarco, get a grip,” she ordered. “You know that O’Bannon would have left sooner or later—it just turned out to be sooner than later, that’s all. Deal with it!”
Struggling not to cry, she buttered her toast, put it on a plate and took it to the living room. With a resigned sigh, she planted herself in front of her TV monitor and went channel surfing, searching for something that would sufficiently numb her mind as well as her aching heart.
Frankie spent the next half hour nibbling on toast she didn’t taste and flipping from one program to another.
She couldn’t find anything to watch, anything to even mildly distract her from her thoughts.
Pushing aside the plate of half-finished toast on the coffee table, she decided that she might as well just go to bed and begin the frustrating task of trying to fall asleep. No easy feat, considering that she felt wound up enough to snap right in half.
Frankie had just gotten up and shut off the TV when she heard the doorbell ring. Her first instinct was just to ignore it. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and besides, it wasn’t as if she had friends who were inclined to come over at the drop of a hat. Everyone she knew worked at the precinct, and none of them would have any reason to visit at this hour.
The person on the other side of the door was either selling something—solicitors seemed to be driven to come by at all hours—or someone who had mistaken her apartment for someone else’s and ultimately needed to be steered in the right direction.
But whoever had rung her doorbell was obviously persistent because they rang it again.
And then again.
When she didn’t answer the third ring, it was followed by a rather urgent knock on the door. The banging just darkened her mood.
Whoever it was was going to be sorry, Frankie silently promised as she paused to pick up her service revolver before heading for the door.
“Who is it?” she called out through the door even as she cocked her gun.
“The cupcake fairy.”
She stared at the door in disbelief. “Luke?”
What was he doing here now? When they’d left the precinct, he’d told her that he had something to take care of just before he drove off in the opposite direction.
She heard him say, “Okay, you guessed my secret identity. Now c’mon, Frankie, open the door. They’re getting cold.”
He wasn’t making any sense. It was an unusually warm evening, given the time of the year. “What’s getting cold?” she asked as she removed the chain, unlocked the door and pulled it open.
She had her answer before Luke was able to say another word. Or rather, she smelled her answer.
And the aroma made her mouth water almost immediately.
Luke regarded her for a moment. Intentionally or not, she was blocking the doorway. “Can I come in?” he asked, taking nothing for granted.
Reacting immediately, Frankie quickly stepped to one side. “Oh, yes, sure,” she said, letting him walk in. “Did you just pick those up from the bakery?” She nodded at the eight-by-ten covered pan he was holding in his hands. The lid was see-through and she could still see the dozen cupcakes in the pan even though they were giving off heat and fogging up the lid.
“No, I just pulled them out of my oven,” he told her with a smile.
She looked at him quizzically. “You asked your mother to come over and make cupcakes?” As far as she could see, that seemed to be the only viable explanation since he was telling her that they weren’t store-bought.
He shot down her theory. “This is the thing I had to do in my kitchen rather than driving straight to your place right after work.”
She was still chewing on what he’d told her. “You baked those,” she said in disbelief.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You actually bake?” she asked in awe.
She was still having trouble wrapping her mind around that. Luke came off like such a he-man type. A hunky-looking protector who could fight with one hand tied behind his back.
Hunky protectors didn’t bake.
She had just gotten herself to come to terms with the fact that he could cook breakfast.
“Haven’t figured out how to fakely bake anything, so, yes, I actually bake,” he told her. He took the pan of cupcakes into her kitchen and removed the lid, placing it next to the pan. He tilted the pan slightly to allow her to look over its contents. “Care to try one?” he asked.
She regarded the cupcakes for a long moment. “It’s not going to knock me out for a week is it? So you can get Moretti to step in,” she explained when he looked at her, confused.
“No,” Luke assured her, then looked at Frankie thoughtfully. “Although, now that you mention it, that doesn’t sound like such a half-bad idea.”
The aroma was really getting to her. She could almost feel her mouth watering.
Frankie gave up resisting.
“Why would you go to all this trouble?” she asked, taking a couple of plates out of the cupboard and then two forks from the utensil drawer directly below it.
Luke shrugged. “You told me that saying the safe word made you hungry for cupcakes, so I thought I’d make you some of my mom’s special ones.”
“Special?” she questioned. Just what did he mean by special?
A smile was playing on his lips.
“Taste them,” he told her.
“And you’re sure they won’t put me to sleep?” she asked, hanging on to a shred of suspicion as she picked up one of the cupcakes and put it on her plate. She carefully proceeded to separate the cupcake from the paper that was wrapped around it.
“I’m counting on the fact that they won’t,” he answered, a wicked look in his eyes. “Here, I’ll have one myself. Will that put your fears to rest?”
She didn’t answer him. Having taken the wrapper off her cupcake, she was too busy savoring what she had just bitten into.
“What is that taste?” she asked. It all but made the inside of her mouth sing.
His grin spread. “Good, huh?”
“Good?” she echoed. That seemed like much too weak a word to use to describe what was going on in her mouth. “It’s fantastic. I don’t think I ever tasted anything like it before. Certainly not in a cupcake.” She took another bite. And then another before asking, “Is there some kind of a secret ingredient?”
He thought of the recipe that had been handed down to his mother, who had proceeded to put her own signature on it.
After debating for a moment, he answered her. “I guess you could cal
l it that. There’s half a cup of Amaretto and a quarter cup of rum in them.”
“Ah, you’re trying to get me drunk,” she concluded, teasing him.
“Well, if you ate all twelve cupcakes at one sitting, maybe just a little,” he allowed, lightly feathering his fingers through her hair. “But to be honest, I’d really rather have you wide awake and clearheaded.”
“You mean, for tomorrow?” she asked.
Luke didn’t want to think about tomorrow. Frankie would be meeting the first three men who had responded to her profile tomorrow. That meant possibly putting her life at risk. If he dwelled on that, tonight would be ruined. “No, I was thinking more like for tonight.”
“Oh?” Rising, Frankie abandoned her chair and came around the table to his side. Lowering her voice by a couple of decibels, she asked, “What about tonight?”
The sound of her sexy voice turned him on even more—as if he needed that. Luke pulled her onto his lap. “What do you think?”
“Do I have to think?” Frankie asked, wrapping her arms around his neck. “That sounds tiring and I want to save all my energy for something else.”
He laughed softly just before he kissed her. “A woman after my own heart.”
If you only knew, Luke O’Bannon, Frankie thought, just before getting lost in his kiss.
* * *
It was more than two hours later that he turned to her in her bed and said, “I should be getting up and going home.”
She really loved the feel of his body against hers beneath the sheets. Taking a breath, she could feel herself getting aroused all over again.
“You should,” she reluctantly agreed, turning into him just as she drew in another deep breath and stretched so her body all but imprinted itself on his.
He laughed softly. His body was reacting to the silent invitation hers was issuing.
“If that’s the way you think you’re going to persuade me to go, you realize that you’re going to fail, don’t you?”
Frankie pretended to sigh as she snapped her fingers. “Oh, darn.” The next moment, with lightning speed, her mouth was pressed against his. The kiss lasted a good two minutes. “How’s that? Ready to go now?”
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