Protector’s Temptation

by Marilyn Pappano

  And here she was, back again. But he wouldn’t make the same mistakes this time. He wouldn’t think of her as a friend. He wouldn’t forget that he couldn’t trust her.

  “I still have my condo,” she said, though he hadn’t asked. “I haven’t been staying there for a while, though. Not since Kin—someone trashed it. I’ve spent the last two weeks in a different motel every night.”

  He checked the fit of the second piece of wallboard and put in a couple nails before asking, “You have proof?”

  “No.”

  “Then you should know better than to slander someone, being a criminal defense attorney and all.” He didn’t have to look to know her mouth had flattened into a thin line. He’d seen it too many times when she was annoyed. When she finally responded, she would change the subject, and her voice would be cool enough to make the air-conditioning that had just kicked on unnecessary.

  It was a few minutes in coming, but she proved him right. “When I heard you’d left to go back east, I figured Atlanta or Charlotte. Why Copper Lake?”

  “They were hiring.”

  “And it’s close to your parents.”

  He grunted.

  “Do you like it?”

  He scored a piece of wallboard, then broke it in two with a little more force than was needed. He wasn’t socially stunted. He could carry on a conversation. He talked to people he’d rather not talk to all the time. And since he was going to have to talk to Masiela for the next week—because there was no way she’d be quiet for that long—he might as well get used to it and not give himself a headache.

  “Yeah, I like it. It’s different from Dallas.”

  “Not so much violent crime?”

  “We have our share. But not so much that we need dedicated homicide, burglary or sex crimes squads. We just have the one detective division, and everyone works whatever comes up.”

  “And you’re in charge.”

  “Yeah.”

  The air rustled as she shifted on the bench. “You always said you didn’t want a supervisory position.”

  Where’s your ambition? she’d teased. And his regular response: I’ve achieved my only goal. He’d wanted to do the work—investigate the crimes, follow the clues and arrest the bad guys. And through their whole time as partners, she’d intended to become another Donovan and prosecute them. They would still have been a team, just working in different offices.

  Then she’d gone into criminal defense instead.

  And she’d defended Israel Rodriguez.

  “I didn’t particularly want to be in charge,” he said, grimly turning his thoughts away from the case that had ended everything between them. “But I had a hell of a lot more experience than anyone else in the department. It’s not bad. I don’t have to do too much supervising.”

  “So a big-city cop can be satisfied in a small town?”

  “Why not? I’ve been here six years, and no one’s taken a shot at me yet.”

  She made a soft hmmph sound. “I guess that counts for something. I can tell you from personal experience that getting shot at as a cop is a whole different thing than getting shot at as a lawyer.”

  AJ glanced at her over his shoulder. “You’ve got no proof of who did that, either, do you?” She represented scumbags for a living. Any one of them, or any one of the people they victimized, could have taken that shot.

  “No,” she agreed, sounding too cheerful. “Just gut instinct and common sense. And since you apparently don’t believe I have either…”

  Once he’d trusted her instincts as much as his own. If she’d said something didn’t feel right, he’d known something wasn’t right. But when she’d turned down a job offer from the DA’s office to defend criminals instead, yeah, he’d lost his faith in both her instincts and her common sense.

  Finally, he faced her head-on for the first time since she’d come into the room. “Look, I already told you, I don’t want to talk about your so-called case. If you’re going to stay here, if we’re going to talk at all, change the subject.”

  Again her mouth thinned and her gaze locked on him. She’d hardly changed in the last six years. Her hair was still silky blue-black, falling straight past her shoulders and parted on one side, so that a few strands fell above her left eye. Her skin was still the color of dark, golden honey, her lips still full, her jaw still stubborn. She was still only five-five, slender and delicate, and still looked as if the only thing she could do with regards to cops was call one or be protected by one.

  But the appearance was deceiving. Underneath that white T-shirt and the black jeans was muscle, courage and determination. She’d more than held her own against men twice her size. She could shoot better than most cops, had a fine appreciation for a Taser and could bring a three-hundred-pound Goliath to his knees with a simple wristlock. When they’d worked out together regularly, she could bench press her own weight and then some, and being shorter hadn’t meant being slower when they went out for a run.

  And underneath all that, she was all soft, delicate, enticing woman. He’d learned that for himself one night.

  Had she ever remembered?

  Would he ever forget?

  Someday. He was sure of it. It just hadn’t happened yet.

  The Decker she’d worked with never would have been so dismissive of a threat, Masiela thought, stifling her sigh. If she were somebody else—or if the shooter had been somebody else—he would have at least been willing to hear her out. She would like to think that, maybe, if the bullet had found its target, he would show concern, but that could just be wishful thinking.

  She’d done more than enough of that where Decker was concerned.

  Change the subject, he’d said. Instead, as the nail gun fired again in rapid succession, she rose from the bench and returned to the kitchen. Taking his make-yourself-at-home invitation to heart, she opened the refrigerator and scanned its contents. Bottled water, pop, beer, condiments, margarine, two oranges and lettuce so old that it was growing something. The freezer held a bag of snack-size candy bars, a half-gallon tub of ice cream covered with rime and a stack of frozen dinners.

  His aversion to cooking apparently hadn’t changed, she noted drily, as she took a bottle of water, then closed both doors.

  There was a window over the kitchen sink, and three of them behind the sofa, letting in the afternoon sun along with a fair amount of heat. Stay away from the windows, he’d warned her. These back windows posed no threat, since a heavily wooded area started where the yard ended.

  She sat down on the sofa, the leather warm through her clothes, and reached for the remote to turn on the TV. But she wasn’t much of a TV watcher, no matter what was going on in her life, and nothing on the fifty or so channels held her interest. Shutting off the sound, she sprawled out on the couch, a pillow stuffed beneath her head, and contemplated living a week in this dining-nook-turned-living-and-bedroom with her less than friendly host.

  And a week was all Decker had given them—maybe enough time to review the files she’d given Donovan. Then he would probably take it to a grand jury, which would take more time, and they would have to hand down an indictment. She didn’t know where she would go when she left Copper Lake—she and Donovan hadn’t looked that far ahead—but one thing was sure: she couldn’t return home until the Brat Pack were in custody.

  She would be lucky if she hadn’t gone insane by then.

  It was six-thirty when Decker came into the room again. “I’m ordering pizza. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He didn’t ask what she wanted, but dialed the number. He probably didn’t care.

  But a moment later he surprised her when he placed the order: one large pie, thick crust and loaded, and the second, thin crust, vegetarian. He remembered, just as she remembered he liked sugar in his coffee, lemon in his tea and lime with his beer. Except, she remembered because he—and his friendship—still meant something to her. He remembered because he had a great head for trivia.

  Wh
en he hung up the phone, instead of returning to work, he got a beer, then eased onto one of the stools at the dining peninsula. He drank half of it before breaking his silence. “You ever see any of the old crew?”

  She would like to say no, but she tried not to tell unnecessary lies. “Sure. In court on a regular basis.”

  “So you’re still defending scum.”

  “Everyone’s entitled to a lawyer.” She knew his response before he gave it, because they’d had this discussion before, starting the day she’d turned down the DA’s job offer.

  “But that lawyer doesn’t have to be you.”

  “Why shouldn’t it be? I know the law. I know police procedure.”

  “And you know you’re helping people who are guilty as sin walk out free.”

  Masiela didn’t respond. She used her best judgment in deciding whether to take on a client. If she truly believed he was guilty, if the evidence was overwhelming, she sent him out the door. But reminding Decker of that wouldn’t win her any points. Most of her clients were guilty of something—maybe not the crime they’d been charged with, but something. Israel Rodriguez had beaten his girls, along with the occasional customer. He’d supplied the girls with drugs to keep them under his control. Though he hadn’t killed Teri Riggs, everyone in the Dallas PD knew he’d killed another of his prostitutes a few years earlier, but no one had been able to make the case.

  Sitting up—somehow she felt too vulnerable lying down while Decker sat a few yards away—she politely asked, “How’s your mama?”

  He blinked, expecting her usual self-defense, caught off-guard by the change. “She’s fine.”

  “Still painting, papering or reupholstering everything that doesn’t move?”

  “Yeah.” He tugged at his ear, a sign of discomfort. “She’s going to do this place when I get it finished.”

  “I take it the outside is her work.”

  “Yeah. She chose the colors, had ’em remove all the curly stuff and got someone to build that porch swing.”

  “Your dad must be grateful to have her attention turned elsewhere.”

  He grunted, then somewhat grudgingly asked, “How are your folks?”

  “They’re fine, too. Mom is on a dig in Peru, and Dad and Katherine are summering in Alaska.” Together, her parents were the most dysfunctional people she’d ever known. Separately, they were competent, passionate people. Too bad their passions didn’t include their children.

  Masiela had been seventeen when they’d divorced, and it had broken her heart. Thirty-six now, she wondered sometimes if that was why she’d never married…though her sister blamed it on the men she met in her work. Cops and criminals: neither known for making the most stable of husbands.

  “And the kids?”

  Five years separated her and the twins, but she had always felt more like a second mother than an older sister. “Yelina is pregnant with her third child, all girls, and lives in Austin, and Elian is in Houston. Still not thinking about settling down.”

  “Like you.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” she disagreed. Not in terms of I could spend the rest of my life with this guy, but more like my biological clock is running out. She’d never met anyone she wanted to spend her entire life with…but that nasty honest streak forced her to admit Decker had come close.

  “You’re just too busy getting bad guys out of jail to do anything about it.”

  Again she stifled a sigh. All trains of thought led back to the same depot: his insistence on taking her career choice personally. She didn’t bother to remind him that she’d never gotten involved in any of his cases. She knew him, trusted him and trusted his work. She also knew that some of his fellow detectives weren’t nearly as conscientious about their investigations. Sometimes they were just sloppy. Sometimes they let themselves fixate so narrowly on one suspect that they ignored the evidence pointing elsewhere.

  And sometimes they were guilty themselves and were planting evidence to lead elsewhere.

  “You’re not settled, either,” she pointed out.

  He snorted. “I’m not leaving Copper Lake. I’m not changing jobs. I bought a house, I go to the neighborhood cookouts and I’ll even open the door to the pesky little trick-or-treaters who come around this Halloween. How much more settled can I get?”

  “You can find a wife and have some little trick-or-treaters of your own.” She said the words lightly, determined to ignore the faint twinge inside.

  Something that looked suspiciously like a blush spread across his face, sharpening her twinge. In their years together, she’d seen him teased, flirted with, shamelessly propositioned and damn near seduced in public, but she had never seen him blush.

  She’d been relieved, earlier, to learn that he wasn’t married. But that didn’t mean things couldn’t change in the very near future.

  Decker in love. What would that be like? He was a good date—she knew that from all the times they’d doubled. He wasn’t the best-looking guy around, but there was something so damn attractive about him—that sense of honesty. Loyalty. Honor. He had confidence by the truckload, his grin was wickedly charming and his body…there was something truly wicked about it, too. There had never been a shortage of women wanting his attention.

  But it was hard to imagine one woman. Hard to imagine him in love.

  Hard to forget that, in the beginning, she’d been half in love with him herself. But then she’d realized that it was likely gratitude instead, because he’d taken her on as a partner when no one else wanted her, and he’d treated her with respect.

  “So who’s the lucky woman?”

  Before she could decide whether he intended to answer, the doorbell rang. He slid to his feet, grabbed some money from an ashtray on the counter, then went down the hall.

  Voices drifted back to her, Decker’s a low rumble, the other younger, less self-assured. “You ordered the doc’s favorite,” the delivery guy said, “but I don’t see her car.”

  Decker said something Masiela couldn’t quite make out. Her own face flushing now, she stood up from the sofa and went to the cabinets to find plates and napkins. He hadn’t remembered her taste in pizza, but his girlfriend’s. And she was a doctor, no less. A selfless do-gooder who saved people’s lives, while Masiela was only a step above the scum she defended and too often sent out to prey once more on innocent victims.

  It was a good thing she wasn’t looking for his affection, though she did miss his friendship. How long had it taken her to stop reaching for the phone whenever she needed support or encouragement or a verbal kick in the ass? How many times had she driven halfway to his apartment before remembering that he wouldn’t let her in? How often had she found herself standing outside the greasy little burger joint where they’d met for dinner every Tuesday, before she remembered he’d dumped her?

  She’d had other friends outside the department, and they’d filled in nicely. But he’d been her best friend. He’d been the one she could always count on. The one she’d thought would never let her down.

  The only one who ever had really let her down.

  By the time he returned to the kitchen with the pizzas, she’d set a shaker of Parmesan cheese and another of hot chili peppers next to the plates and was taking a can of pop from the refrigerator for herself. “Beer, pop or water?” she asked carelessly, as if she hadn’t overheard the conversation.

  “Pop.”

  She took out a can for him, then bumped the refrigerator with her hip to close it. From opposite sides of the counter, they selected their pizza, doctored the slices, gathered napkins and pop, then went to sit at different ends of the sofa. Decker propped his feet up, balancing his plate on his lap, then picked up the remote, flipping through the channels until he found a baseball game. He kept the volume low, though.

  Masiela concentrated on the pizza. The crust was wheat and perfectly thin, just strong enough to support the toppings, not one speck of flour more; and the sauce was delicious, with a hint of sweetness to offset th
e spice. There was a smoky flavor to the cheese, and the veggies were tender-crisp, just the way she liked them.

  Without glancing her way, Decker asked, “How’s it rank?”

  He liked pizza—pretty much all pizza. She, on the other hand, was a connoisseur and had ranked every place she’d ever gone to accordingly. It had become such a joke between them that he’d started ranking pizza joints he went to without her. “This one’s definitely at the top of the list. It’s about as close to perfect as I’ve ever had.”

  “So it gets an eight?”

  A star for each slice in the box—the highest score she’d ever granted. She took another bite of mushroom, onion, yellow pepper and delicately ripe tomato and sighed. “Maybe a nine. Maybe, piping hot from the oven, a ten.”

  He chuckled, a sound she’d thought she would never hear again, and something shivered through her. Exhaustion, she told herself. She’d been living on edge for weeks now, afraid to set foot outside, afraid of another break-in, another shooting, another threat. For the first time in too long, she felt secure. Bad things might still happen when Decker was around, but there was nothing they couldn’t survive together.

  That was all it was. Just relief at being safe. Not bone-deep affection. Not that old partners connection they’d shared. Not the faintest hope that they could share anything again, even the most casual of friendships.

  She was here to keep herself safe, not to set herself up for another major disappointment at Decker’s hands. He’d let her down once, and it had hurt—God, more than anything she’d ever been through. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

  It was after nine when AJ finished work in the living and dining rooms. He unplugged the tools, then stood for a moment, looking at all he’d done. He’d been in the house since the beginning of the year, and it seemed he was going to be living in a construction zone a whole lot longer. In the beginning, he’d felt a real sense of accomplishment when he’d managed to do something by himself—and do it right. Now it was just one more job to check off on a list that was endless.