Protector’s Temptation

by Marilyn Pappano

  From the backseat, the older boy scowled. “He said if we got caught his family would take care of us, and they did. All that guy had to hear was his last name, and he was quick to forget all about it.”

  AJ scowled back. “His family didn’t take care of you. You got lucky. If I’d arrested you guys, the Calloways wouldn’t be hiring a lawyer for you two or coming up with bail money, either. Their only interest in you would be proving that you had somehow forced their little angel into breaking the law.”

  “Connor wouldn’t go along with that.”

  “Right.” AJ snorted. “He didn’t even stick around to see if you needed a ride home.”

  They couldn’t argue that. Connor hadn’t even glanced back before he’d driven away.

  AJ turned off River Road onto a narrow street that twisted and turned as it followed the banks of Holigan Creek. The houses they passed grew smaller and shabbier, until they reached the shabbiest of them all. A pickup sat on blocks in the front yard, and an air conditioner rattled in the window beside the door. The only sign of life was a dog stretched out in a freshly dug hole beneath an oak tree.

  He turned into the soft dirt of the driveway, stopped, then faced both boys. “Look, I’d rather not see you in jail at all, but for damn sure not because of some spoiled brat like Connor Calloway and not for some stupid stunt like stealing a TV that you don’t even get to watch. I know you’ve got brains in those thick skulls. Use them next time, would you?”

  They mumbled the right words as they got out, but when AJ drove away, he heard Cate’s words echoing in his head.

  They didn’t hear a single thing you said.

  Masiela was taking a break from cleaning the doc’s study when Decker came home from work. He made another brief call—“I’m coming in. Don’t shoot me”—then a moment later the front door opened. She remained where she was, drinking a glass of cold-brewed tea, thinking how familiar those words were. She’d heard them the first time they’d gone to the range together; though, after seeing that she could outshoot him and every other cop there, he’d had the respect to never say them again in that situation.

  She’d heard them the first time they went into a dark building on a call, and the first time they’d chased a homicide suspect into a maze of alleys and twisting streets in the middle of a late-night storm.

  And she was pretty sure she’d heard them that night, just before he’d kissed her, when he’d unholstered her weapon and laid it aside.

  Her eyes closed with the memory. She’d been drunk, but not so much as he’d thought. Not enough to forget sex with the best guy in her life.

  The clunk of shoes on wood announced his approach, then he appeared in the doorway with both hands full of grocery sacks. He set them on the counter before leaving again. She began unpacking the bags, methodically grouping like items together. By the time he made his last trip—stuff she needed for stripping the shelves—she had all the cold food put away except the items needed for that evening’s dinner. “Are you staying home tonight?” she asked, as he came back from the study. She held up a package of flank steaks. “I need to know how much to cook.”

  “Yeah, I’m in for the night.”

  “Barring an emergency.”

  He took a bottle of water from the refrigerator while she washed her hands. She half-expected him to disappear upstairs with it, but instead he sat on one of the stools. “We take call. Anything the detective on call needs help with usually goes to Tommy Maricci first. He’s the one who helped me up off the ground yesterday, right after you and Donovan showed up.”

  She paused in the act of slicing the steak. “What were you doing on the ground?”

  His expression flattened. “You didn’t see? And Donovan didn’t say…?”

  “No. I wasn’t looking.” That one glimpse of Decker headed toward the police car had been more than enough for the moment. She’d been too busy after that, dealing with the pain and preparing herself for more. “What happened?”

  When he didn’t say anything, but his discomfort deepened, a smile spread across her face. “Did you get your ass kicked right outside the police station?”

  “That would have been less painful,” he said drily. He chugged half the water, then set the bottle down. “I got kicked, okay? By a fifty-something-year-old woman who weighs about ninety pounds and was well-known for kicking by everybody in the department except me.”

  It took a snort to stifle her laugh. “Well,” she managed to say. “I guess you know now. So you got kicked in the balls and then found yourself stuck with me. Poor baby.”

  His hazel gaze narrowed. She knew he’d heard her use the phrase far too often to believe she was actually offering sympathy. Changing the subject, he asked, “What are you fixing?”

  “Steak tacos. Okay?”

  He slid to his feet, taking his water with him. “I’m easy. I’m going to change clothes and get some work done.”

  She watched him leave the room, his words echoing in her head. I’m easy.

  She wished.

  If forgiveness and understanding came easily to him, this next week would be much more pleasant for them both. But if forgiveness and understanding came easily, he wouldn’t be the Decker who appealed to, irritated, amused and frustrated her more than any man she’d ever met.

  She did a rough chop of cilantro and jalapeños, then worked them into a paste the old-fashioned way she’d learned from her grandmother: with brute force. She heard Decker come downstairs again and followed the sound of his steps into the front parlor. Music came on, almost loud enough to muffle the noise that accompanied his work.

  There was a certain comfort to the scene. If Masiela let herself admit it, it was the sort of thing she had once dreamed about: she and Decker sharing a house, a life, a bed and more. Of course, in her dream, he hadn’t been antagonistic and scornful. She hadn’t been in hiding. Their being together had been a mutual decision.

  And that dream had been a long-ago, short-lived, obviously impossible thing. It hadn’t taken her long as his partner to realize that he was never going to feel that way about her. They had been buddies, both before and after that night. Buddies was their norm, anything else an aberration. If she hadn’t been drunk, if he hadn’t been…

  Truth was, she didn’t know what he’d been. He was stone-cold sober because she was celebrating. He’d never shown any interest in her before, had never even seemed to notice she was female, except the few times early on when he’d tried to be the macho man protecting the little woman. She’d broken him of that habit.

  He hadn’t been vulnerable. AJ Decker was never vulnerable. He’d never indulged in indiscriminate sex, though it would have been easy for him if he’d wanted to. Far easier than doing it with his partner.

  She’d never known why he’d done it and never really cared.

  This evening she did.

  But how could she ask, when they’d both pretended for so long that it hadn’t happened?

  She finished making the paste and rubbed it into the meat before covering and refrigerating it. Next, she boiled red wine vinegar with sugar and jalapenos, sliced a large red onion and mixed it all together, leaving it on the counter for the flavors to meld.

  After scrubbing her hands again, she went down the hall to the parlor. Decker was in the laborious process of stripping wallpaper. She gazed around the room at the cool, white marble of the fireplace, the wavy-paned window glass, the ancient chandelier overhead, but kept her distance from the windows.

  “What will this room be?” she asked, finding a relatively dust-free wall to lean against.

  He spared a glance from the steamer he was using to loosen the old paper. “I don’t know. Mom says maybe an office or computer room.”

  “And you have no ideas of your own?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’d prefer the library for an office, but then, I come with a lot of books.” She’d bet she could match the good doctor’s medical library volume for volume with her law books
. “You never did work much from home.”

  “I still don’t.”

  “It’s nice, I guess, to have the computer out of the way. Of course, when you have kids, you have to watch them like hawks while they’re online.”

  The muscles tightened in his neck at the mention of children. Had he decided, along with the house and possibly marriage, that he wanted kids after all, or was he still not feeling the need to create little Deckers? Did the doctor want babies, or would it interfere with her career? It wasn’t Masiela’s business, any of it, but she had always thought that Decker never having children would be a shame.

  “I saw you cleaned the library.”

  “I did. The room was pretty spooky. There were cobwebs in every corner—and I’m including the ones under every single shelf. You haven’t done much in there since you moved in, have you?”

  “Nope. I work forty-plus hours a week. I take call, right along with my detectives. I’m on a couple of committees here in town, and I like to kick back and do nothing once in a while. Oh yeah, and I work on this place. I don’t have the energy to clean.”

  “Don’t get testy,” she teased. “Tell me again why you bought this house.”

  “The timing was right.”

  “So you were getting serious about Dr. Cate. This house came on the market. She liked it…”

  He twisted to give her a long, steady look. It was hard to hold his gaze, but she forced herself, looking for some hint of how close she’d come to the truth. She couldn’t find it, not in his eyes, not in the flat line of his mouth. She couldn’t tell if he was annoyed by her prying, or if he felt anything at all beyond resignation that he had to put up with her.

  Finally he turned back to his task. “Only little kids and white-haired old ladies call her Dr. Cate,” he said, his voice as flat as his expression. “And your timer’s beeping.”

  Faintly, over the music, she heard the beep-beep and shoved herself away from the door frame. “I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

  How did she found out Cate’s name? AJ wondered about this as he scraped off a thick wad of paper with more force than was necessary. Yeah, he had her business card taped inside the cabinet door, along with a half-dozen others, but Masiela hadn’t assumed he was dating any of them.

  Must have been the delivery kid from Luigi’s. He’d mentioned “the doc.” Masiela knew he was seeing someone, then she’d seen the card. “Gee, she ought to be a detective,” he muttered.

  Then the sarcasm faded. Really, she should. She had good instincts. She looked at things differently from most male cops, himself included, and she never focused on the obvious suspect without still keeping an eye on the not-so-obvious ones, too.

  So why didn’t he ask her what she’d found in the Rodriguez case?

  He had his reasons. One: he knew everyone involved—the cops, the killer, the victim—way better than Masiela did.

  Two: he knew the details of the case as well as anyone. Reliable witnesses had put Rodriguez in the area with Teri that night, arguing with her on a street corner six blocks away, still arguing at a diner two blocks away, then, ten minutes after her death, alone in his car, stopped for a defective taillight eight blocks away.

  Three: he knew that Teri had wanted out of the prostitution business. She’d wanted to move away and make a fresh start with her little girl. AJ had warned her not to tell Rodriguez, to just disappear one day. He’d offered her money to do it. Not enough—saving hadn’t been high on his priority list back then—but enough to get them out of town. But she’d told the pimp anyway in some misguided attempt to be fair.

  Four: AJ knew Rodriguez wasn’t the kind to let a girl go easily. The last one who’d tried had been beaten to death, her face so battered that her own mother couldn’t recognize her.

  Five: he knew that Masiela’s focus had changed. She wasn’t one of the good guys anymore. She’d stopped caring about right and wrong and justice. He’d watched her in the courtroom a few times—had seen how her face lit up when she came up against one of her former fellow detectives on the witness stand. He’d watched her manipulate witnesses into saying things that weren’t true and juries into believing things that weren’t said.

  She’d been one hell of a detective. But that Masiela, the one who’d been his partner and best friend, was gone. He knew that too well.

  Slowly, he became aware of an aroma drifting on the air—rich, savory, spicy—and his stomach growled. His kitchen had never smelled that good, not even when he was heating one of his mother’s casseroles. Setting his tools aside, he went into the bathroom to wash up, then followed the scent into the kitchen.

  Masiela’s back was to him as she cooked steak slices in a hot skillet, and she was moving to music only she could hear—literally, he saw, when he sat down at the counter and glimpsed the thin, white wire of an earbud threading through her hair. Spread across the counter in front of him was the rest of the meal: guacamole, chunky the way he liked it, along with tortilla chips, sour cream, diced tomatoes, shredded cheddar and a bowl of limp, red onion slices. He fished one out and bit into it, and damned if it didn’t bite back. That was when he saw the jalapeño slices in the bowl.

  With her long hair swaying and her hips doing the same, she managed to match half of the description “domestic goddess.” She had curves, which men weren’t supposed to appreciate under current fashion standards, but everyone he knew did. Especially him. Her breasts were full, her waist narrow, her hips nicely flared. And those legs…sexy woman runner legs.

  Damn.

  This was Masiela, he reminded himself. Ex-partner, ex-friend, defense lawyer, traitor. Stop looking at her and think about Cate instead.

  Trouble was, Masiela was right there in front of him, and wasn’t an easy woman to ignore.

  She transferred the meat to a cutting board that he hadn’t known he owned, turned—and was startled. With her free hand, she pulled the earbuds out and a tinny version of the make-your-ears-hurt music she preferred became audible. “I didn’t realize you were there.”

  “I came to see what smelled so good.” His stomach growled again, giving credence to the words.

  “It’s almost ready. The meat has to rest a minute while I warm the tortillas.” She opened a plastic bag and pulled out a half-dozen tortillas, then browned them, one by one, in a second hot skillet. By the time she’d wrapped them in a warm towel, sliced the meat and set two bottles of beer on the counter, he was all but drooling.

  The first bite was amazing and reminded him of something his father had routinely said since AJ was a kid. If you find a woman who can cook as well as your mama, marry her. Carol Ann had always flushed with pleasure, then swatted at him, murmuring, Oh, Adam.

  But damned if AJ hadn’t found a woman who cooked even better than his mother.

  When he could talk again, he asked, “Is this recipe from one of your grandmothers?”

  “No. I saw it on TV a few years ago and have been making it ever since.”

  “How are the old ladies?”

  “Aging better than any of us have a right to.” She sprinkled a few shreds of cheese over her taco. “They’re roommates in an assisted living place in Dallas. Can you imagine that?”

  AJ chuckled. Her grandmothers hadn’t actually disliked each other. It was just that each had wanted to be her grandchildren’s favorite. The competition had sometimes gotten fierce, but Masiela had never let them force her into a choice. One was her favorite Cuban grandmother, she’d always said, and the other was her favorite Mexican grandmother.

  “My parents had more trouble working out a visitation schedule for them than they did for us kids when they divorced,” Masiela went on. “Mom’s okay with running into Dad’s wife there. She just doesn’t want to see him.”

  “If my grandmothers had ever been forced to share quarters, one of them would have cut off the other’s oxygen. Mom’s mother never believed Dad was good enough for her daughter, and Dad’s mother never forgave her for it.”


  “And your parents have been together how long now?”

  He stopped to do the math. “Forty-five years. Plus the five years they dated first.”

  They had a good marriage, the kind he’d always figured he would have someday. They still lived in the house they bought after he was born, four blocks from his paternal grandparents and a mile from his mother’s folks. They still attended the same church they got married in, still organized every family reunion, still worried about their kids and now their grandkids.

  They were still in love, maybe not as passionately as forty-five years ago, but more deeply.

  Though he’d been considering marriage to Cate, he wasn’t in love with her now. What were the odds he would be in forty-five years? In five years?

  Not something he wanted to consider.

  “So parents don’t always know what’s best for their children.” Masiela finished off her taco, took a tortilla from the towel and began assembling another. “I was just starting to date when Mom and Dad divorced, so she’s never given me advice on men. She says her judgment was so obviously flawed that I’d be better off making my own mistakes instead of listening to her.”

  “She’s still holding a bit of a grudge, huh?”

  Her response was the snort AJ expected. He’d met Carmen Leal a few times and found her pretty, intelligent and about as self-absorbed as they came. He’d figured credit for Masiela’s normalcy went to her grandmothers and Masiela herself.

  “She’s not bugging you for grandkids?” He made another taco, too, easily double the size of hers. She would stop after the second one and munch on chips and guacamole while he polished off everything else.

  At the moment, AJ couldn’t remember if Cate even liked guacamole.

  “The only kids Mom is interested in now have been dead for a thousand years. She sees Yelina’s girls maybe twice a year. Whatever maternal instincts she had were used up with us.”