All a Man Can Ask

by Virginia Kantra

  “It’s convenient.” Aleksy grinned, and her pulse jumped for reasons that had nothing to do with fear. “Lucky would have been if I bunked in with you.”

  She inhaled sharply and almost choked on her wine.

  When she was done coughing, Jarek murmured, “He’s so damn tactful.”

  “That is why he gets all the girls,” Eric called from the dining room.

  Faye eased her grip on her wineglass. “All of them?”

  Aleksy colored under his sunburn. “Hey, no, not all.” He treated her to one of his charm-the-teacher grins and added, “Not yet.”

  Her heart lurched.

  Jarek’s eyes narrowed.

  Tess reappeared in the doorway. “I must have missed something. I could have sworn you called your brother tactful.”

  “I was joking,” Jarek explained. He looked at Faye, a mixture of sympathy and warning in his eyes. “Pop was kidding, too. Not about the number of women, though.”

  Aleksy raised both hands. “When you two are done assassinating my character, could we eat?”

  “The paprikas is ready,” Tess said.

  “It smells wonderful,” Faye said again, because it was true and she wanted to change the subject. She wasn’t ready to jump off that particular cliff yet.

  But as the meal progressed, she felt herself falling for the Denkos. All the Denkos.

  Dinner was so much more than she was used to. More laughter. More arguments. More food. They talked constantly, over spilled milk and circulating dishes—chicken and mushrooms smothered in sour cream sauce, mashed potatoes with yellow pats of butter sliding down the sides, slivered cabbage and fragrant rye bread.

  Mary was taking a rolled pastry covered in nuts and powdered sugar off the sideboard. Eric and Jarek, with Allie on his lap, debated the merits of spinners or minnows to catch some kind of fish. At the other end of the lace-covered cloth, Tess and Aleksy argued about the latest crime stats to come out of Chicago.

  When Faye couldn’t take another bite, when she was stuffed with food and drunk on noise, she grabbed the empty bread basket and headed for the kitchen. No one stopped her, no one jumped up and took the basket away and said, “Oh, no, let me.” It made her feel part of it all, even as she fled.

  Aleksy wandered in as she was arranging slices of bread. “Need a hand in here?”

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “No, thanks. I’ve got it.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.” Because she was bursting out of her skin with feelings and paprikas, she blurted, “Thank you for inviting me.”

  He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is for me,” she said. “I live alone, remember?”

  “Yeah, so do I.”

  “Yes, but this is your family.”

  “Ordinary family. Ordinary family dinner.”

  “Ordinary for you and Norman Rockwell, maybe.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What, your family didn’t have dinner?”

  “Not like this.” She ducked her chin to hide an old inadequacy. “I was an only child.”

  But he didn’t let it go. “I thought you education types considered that an advantage? Both parents’ full attention and all that.”

  “My parents divorced when I was four.”

  “Yeah?” Aleksy propped against the island and helped himself to a piece of bread. Something had sent Faye running for cover in the kitchen. He didn’t intend to leave until he knew what it was. “That can be tough on a kid. Allie was about four when Jarek and her mom split.”

  Faye’s brown eyes widened in distress. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  He wasn’t above using sympathy as an interview technique. But he hadn’t counted on Faye’s frustrating lack of self-regard. Whatever memories had shadowed her face a moment ago were forgotten in her instant concern for somebody else’s kid. Where the hell were her personal boundaries? Where was her professional detachment?

  “Hey, it was a while ago. She managed. Everybody manages, right?”

  “I’m sure it helped that Allie has a father who cares about her,” Faye said in her earnest teacher voice. “An uncle. Grandparents. Stepmother.”

  Bingo, he thought, watching her eyes. “Your mom never remarried?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  He waited. Nothing.

  His gut tightened. His detective instincts stirred. After eight years on the force, he knew too much about the sick and sorry things that could go on in families to be easy with her brief response.

  “Nice guy?” he persisted.

  “Bob and Neil were both nice. I mean, neither of them had much time or interest in a child, but they were kind.” She smiled faintly. “Neil remembered my birthday one year.”

  “Whoop-de-doo for Neil,” he said, and enjoyed her stifled laugh. “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.” Her hands stilled on the bread bag. Her eyes were far away. “He bought me flowers. Pink roses, and Mother was jealous.”

  Aleksy tried to think of the reasons Faye’s mother could have to be jealous of her fourteen-year-old daughter. Tried not to think of them, as a quick, hard dread cramped his stomach. “What did she do?”

  “Do?” Faye’s lashes fluttered in confusion. “Well, she sent me to live with Aunt Eileen for a while.”

  The dread eased. “That sucks.”

  “Not really. I liked living with Aunt Eileen.”

  Okay, now he was pissed off. With her mother, for choosing her shiny new husband over her daughter.

  With Faye, for accepting her fate.

  With himself, for caring.

  “That’s no excuse for sending you away. She could have divorced the bastard.”

  “Well, she did, eventually.” Faye pulled a wry face. “I think she caught him sleeping with one of her graduate students.”

  “God. It’s a wonder you’re not more screwed up.”

  Oh, oops. Way to be a jerk, Denko. But it was too late to take it back.

  And Faye, remarkably, was not offended. “Thank you. I think. I suppose I have my share of neuroses. Fortunately I also had Aunt Eileen.”

  “You were close?”

  “She bought me my first paint set,” Faye said simply. “Sometimes all it takes to make a difference in a child’s life is one person to believe in them.”

  “An aunt,” he said. It wasn’t enough.

  She smiled at him, and something snagged in his chest. “Or an uncle. I’ve seen you with Allie, remember.”

  He wouldn’t be distracted. She had no idea what kind of guy he was, what made him tick. But he was beginning to get a very good idea of what drove her.

  All it takes to make a difference in a child’s life is one person to believe in them.

  “Or a teacher,” he guessed. “I bet you were a hell of a teacher.”

  Her smile faded. “I used to think so.”

  She looked so sad. Forlorn little pixie. To comfort her, to comfort them both, he leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her down-turned mouth.

  Her lips parted in surprise. He felt the soft escape of her breath, saw the blood rise warm and irresistible under her baby-fine skin, watched her pupils dilate with desire and confusion.

  And because he was a cop jerk bastard who took whatever was offered, he kissed her again.

  Chapter 8

  She tasted as sweet as the wine she’d been drinking and spicy as paprikas and, like the wine, she went to his head.

  Her lips were full and soft and moist. Tasty. Aleksy traced them with his tongue. Nibbled them with his teeth. Faye hummed encouragement and curled her fingers in his shirt.

  Hot damn, he thought, and then her tongue touched his and he didn’t think at all. His mouth covered hers. Plundered hers. Again. His head was pounding. His heart was pounding. And she—it was the greatest thing—the cream puff art teacher kissed him back.

  Her arms lifted to his shoulders. Her head fell back, in invitation or surrender, exposing the pale angle of her jaw and the fine veins just under her skin. He set
his mouth to the tiny, wild pulse in her neck and heard her moan.

  He dragged her against him, reveling in the feel of her, all delicate bones and smooth skin and slight curves. So soft, so small. He devoured her mouth. So warm, so sweet.

  So hot. He was burning up. His brain was on fire. He wanted her. Wanted to take her, hold her, have her, now.

  He backed her against the island, and she lifted herself up on the countertop. Oh, yeah, that was good, even through the barrier of their clothes. He fit himself to her, heat to heat. The bread basket hit the floor. Her hands clutched his hair, and he—

  “I suggest we have that talk.” His brother’s voice was hard and cold. It sluiced over Aleksy like rain in February. “Now.”

  Aleksy swore. Fiercely. Four letters.

  “Not in my kitchen,” Jarek said. “Not with our parents and my ten-year-old daughter on the other side of that door.”

  Faye gave a little moan and covered her face with both hands.

  “Shut up,” Aleksy snapped over his shoulder.

  He turned his back on his brother, shielding Faye with his body. Circling her wrists gently with his fingers, he tugged to reveal her face. It was scarlet with humiliation. Her eyes were bright.

  He cursed himself. He’d made her cry.

  And then her gaze met his, and her lips curved in rueful amusement and he realized it wasn’t tears shining in her eyes. It was laughter.

  She thought this was funny?

  She bit her lip, still erotically swollen from his kisses. “I’m sorry,” she said. To him? To Jarek? “I came in for more bread.”

  Jarek’s gaze flicked to the basket on the floor. “So I see.”

  Faye shifted her knees together, displacing Aleksy from between her thighs. “I, um—I guess I got distracted.”

  “I guess you did,” Jarek agreed.

  Aleksy bunched his shoulders, spoiling to take a swing at something, but his brother’s tone was perfectly respectful. Admiring, even.

  “Well.” Faye hopped from the counter. “I’ll just…” She dropped to her knees beside the scattered slices of rye. She began to dust them off, one by one, with her fingers and tuck them in the basket.

  Some of Aleksy’s resentment waned. She might be amused but at least she wasn’t unaffected.

  Wordlessly Jarek retrieved the bread bag from the counter and handed it to her.

  “Oh.” The color that had begun to retreat from her face flooded back. “Thank you.”

  Both men watched as she removed the slices that had been on the floor and replaced them with bread from the bag. By the time Aleksy figured out he could be helping her, she was already on her feet, clutching the basket.

  “Got everything?” Jarek asked politely.

  She looked at Aleksy. “Not yet.”

  Desire jolted through him. Her innuendo was completely unexpected. He wasn’t sure his system could take any more surprises.

  “Better get out there before they send in another search party,” he said roughly.

  She hesitated, as if she had something more to say. And then she nodded and left.

  Aleksy braced his shoulders and faced his brother.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Jarek demanded.

  “I wasn’t thinking, okay?” Aleksy ran a hand through his hair. Because he knew Jarek was right, because he felt knocked off balance and guilty as a suspect with a smoking gun, he tried to shrug it off with a joke. “You know how it is when you eat one of Mom’s meals. All your blood gets diverted from your brain to your stomach.”

  “Your blood was diverted, all right. And somewhere south of your stomach.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “What, you’re insulted?”

  “Not me.” Aleksy struggled to explain feelings he didn’t understand himself. “Just be careful what you say about her.”

  “Nice of you to be concerned. Too bad you weren’t thinking about her before you backed her up against my kitchen counter.”

  “I only kissed her, for God’s sake.”

  Although if Jarek hadn’t walked in when he did…

  “What do you want from her, Alex?” Jarek asked in his let’s-be-reasonable voice. Rookies and criminals were sometimes tricked by that mild tone into relaxing their guard.

  Aleksy knew better.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you want to sleep with her? Because if you do, I’d say you’re making progress there. Or do you want to keep her safe? Because if you’re starting to make headway on this case, then the best thing you can do for Faye Harper is to stay as far away from her as possible.”

  Good old Jare. You could always count on him to take a two-horned dilemma and…run you right through the ribs with it.

  “Am I?” Aleksy asked. “Making headway on the case?”

  “I think so,” said Jarek. “That Pilothouse in Toronto? The buyer was a Ziad Amir. He’s with some international aid group headquartered there.”

  Adrenaline surged through Aleksy. He knew the name, if not the man. Before he was yanked from the case, he’d studied every file the feds had let him get his hands on.

  “Yeah. Great organization. Providing aid to refugees and guns to terrorists,” he said.

  “Of course, we don’t know for a fact the boat across the dock belongs to Amir,” Jarek cautioned. “Or that he was visiting Freer. It could be a coincidence.”

  Aleksy paced. “Frickin’ big coincidence.”

  This could be it. This could be the thread that led him to Karen’s killers.

  He stopped, brought up short by the realization of Faye’s danger and the side of Jarek’s refrigerator. “I have to get her out of that cottage.”

  “That might be difficult. Especially if the two of you are involved.”

  Aleksy shook his head. His blood supply might have relocated permanently to his groin, but some things didn’t require much thought.

  “Brother, you don’t know me. The one thing I know is how to scare off a woman I’m involved with.”

  But Aleksy hadn’t counted on the jolt of lust that zapped him when he walked out of the kitchen and saw Faye sitting beside Tess at the dining room table, her eyes lit with laughter and a tiny red smudge on her neck.

  His mark on her skin.

  He wasn’t prepared for the admiration that crept through him when she acknowledged his presence without missing a beat of her conversation with his father.

  He watched her teaching Allie to fold a stumpy origami swan out of a paper napkin and the tenderness that welled in him cut him off at the knees.

  Scare her off? Of course he could.

  But for the first time in his life, Aleksy thought he might regret seeing a woman go.

  “And then you tuck it inside like this, see?” Faye reverse-folded a ninety degree angle in her napkin to form the neck of the swan, glad she had something to occupy her hands.

  Every time she glanced at Aleksy her fingers tingled and her palms itched. And not for a pencil. Oh, she still longed to draw him, to try to capture his dark, sharp looks and all-male energy on paper. But Faye couldn’t fool herself. Her appreciation of that hard, muscled chest and sculpted back wasn’t strictly artistic anymore.

  Seeing him with his family had blunted his edge, made him seem less dangerous. But not less desirable, she admitted to herself.

  She envied his connections with his tight-knit family.

  And she wanted to touch him again.

  Faye creased the point of her napkin. “And you make the beak the same way,” she said, keeping her hands and voice steady, demonstrating for Allie.

  The girl squinted and nodded. “I get it. I got it!” She cried and waved her lopsided swan around.

  “Very nice,” said her grandmother.

  “Let me see,” Eric said.

  Allie skipped from her seat. Faye smiled in pleasure, her gaze following the girl around the table until it smacked into Aleksy, standing by the oak breakfront.

  The expression in his e
yes melted her bones.

  The phone rang.

  Tess got up to answer it and reappeared a moment later, still holding the phone. “Jarek?”

  He cupped his hand around the receiver and went into the kitchen. The conversations went on around the table, Eric admiring Allie’s origami, Tess talking to Mary about doing a feature for the food section of the Eden Gazette and Faye trying to remember how to breathe.

  She barely registered Jarek’s return or his excuses.

  “—have to go out for a little while.”

  Aleksy turned his head and something in the look the two brothers exchanged snapped Faye back to full attention. “Anything serious?”

  “Domestic disturbance,” Jarek said easily. “Nothing to worry about.”

  Eric frowned. “What kind of domestic disturbance call requires the chief of police on a Friday night?”

  “We’re a small department, Pop. I’m just providing cover for the responding officer.” He bent to give Tess a brief, hard kiss. “Have coffee without me.”

  Faye had heard enough in the hallways and teachers’ lounge to know that domestic violence often turned on those who tried to intervene.

  Maybe Tess knew it, too, because her manicured nails pressed Jarek’s sleeve. But all she said was, “I’ll keep some hot.”

  As Jarek turned to go, Faye saw the black, snub shape of his gun at his waist. And her heart, which had been pattering along in pleased anticipation, gave a hard, uncomfortable bump.

  How could Tess just let him go, without a warning or a protest?

  Every time Jarek left this house, wearing that gun, he risked more than his life. He risked her heart.

  Faye hated risk.

  Aleksy said something that made Mary Denko laugh, and Allie walked her father to the front door.

  Faye stayed where she was while a new fear uncurled in her stomach. Getting involved with Aleksy could be dangerous in ways she had never imagined.

  Aleksy glanced at the passenger side of the TransAm. Faye sat with her face turned to the window and her wrist cradled in her lap. Since leaving his brother’s house, she had barely looked at him, had hardly spoken.

  Obviously he wasn’t going to have to work very hard at scaring her off. Somebody or something had already done it for him.