Detective on the Hunt

by Marilyn Pappano

  At least that was something she could actually handle. Her choices were slim: candy, chips and pop from downstairs, Judge Judie’s a few steps down the sidewalk or a cold walk to Creek Café. She’d noticed the dinner special at the café was pot roast with carrots and potatoes and all the bread a person could eat, especially if said person wasn’t worried about fitting into her jeans at the end of this trip. Plus, there was banana split cake for dessert. Yum, she did love roast and rolls and bananas and cake, and God made elastic-waist pants for a reason, right?

  Besides, both exercise and food would help her puzzle through Maura’s actions. The only thing the girl had said that hadn’t surprised JJ was the insult she’d thrown out at the end. Oh, by the way, you were a lousy babysitter. Neener, neener. As if that, and telling her parents not to hire JJ again, held any power fifteen years later. It had been a crappy summer job, nothing more. JJ had just graduated college, already hired by the police department, and was waiting for a start date for her academy class. The babysitting gig had paid decently, gotten her out of the house and given her access to the Evanses’ pool as long as she had Maura with her.

  Oh, yeah, and that remark to Quint. When are you going to take me up on my offer? That hadn’t surprised her at all. What grown woman with functioning hormones wasn’t sexually attracted to six feet of golden-blond, blue-eyed, hard-bodied, tough, stoic, big strong silent type of man? Though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine Quint feeling the same sort of attraction for Maura. He was mature. She wasn’t. She was rich. He wasn’t. She was blown away with just how rich she was. He wasn’t.

  And damn it, JJ was a better match for him.

  She was wiggling her toes, watching the shadows they cast on the wall, when her stomach growled and burbled. Exercise, she reminded herself as she sat up. Cold walk plus good food equaled clearer mind.

  Besides, if she got to the restaurant early enough, maybe she could bring back an extra slice of banana split cake and hide it in the refrigerator downstairs with a threatening note—Thieves Will Be Tased.

  She changed her sweater for a long-sleeved button-down and added another sweater, this one rich purple merino wool, knitted by her mom in cable and basket stitches. After tucking her jeans into knee-high boots, she slid her credit card and ID into one hip pocket, her lipstick and a packet of tissues into one coat pocket and her cell into the other coat pocket and gripped her keys. With the coat zipped to her chin, her hat covering her hair and her gloves in hand, she opened the door and came to an abrupt stop.

  Quint stood inches away, right hand raised as if to knock.

  Her internal thermostat went from comfy to darn near combustible in two seconds flat. His strong nose, square jaw and high cheekbones looked as if they’d been carved from stone as hard as granite but as smooth as glass. He was scowling—habit, she reminded herself—and a muscle twitched at the corner of one lovely blue eye, but she was still happy to see him.

  “Where are you going?”

  It wasn’t I’ve missed you. Or That color brings out the green in your eyes. Or You look beautiful or I want you or I need you or I’ve got to have you. But it was something.

  “Dinner. Creek Café.”

  “You planning to walk?”

  “I checked the temperature. It’s thirty-one degrees.”

  “With a windchill of twenty.”

  She wondered exactly what twenty degrees of wind felt like, then grinned. “I’m tough.”

  For a moment, he didn’t respond, long enough for her to realize that she was standing unusually close to him. Close enough to see the ribbed neck of the shirt he wore in the opening at the top of his jacket. To notice the stubble on his jaw, as pale gold as the hair on his head, with a few gray hairs sprinkled in. To smell the cologne he wore, a subtle, spicy, grassy scent. To get a close-up view of that muscle at the corner of his eye as it twitched again. She was starting to feel just a little light-headed when his husky, raspy voice broke the quiet.

  “You are tough,” he agreed, and she pretty much fell into full light-headedness. Him acknowledging her toughness was better than telling her she was beautiful. “But save it for when you need it. Invite me, and I’ll drive.”

  “Will you have dinner with me?” she asked quickly, before he could even consider changing his mind.

  “Yes.”

  For another moment, they still stood there. The only direction she could move was backward, and that was the wrong direction for going out. After one deep, deep breath of the smells of him, she said, “I can’t come out if you don’t move.”

  A faint flush colored his face, and he took a large step back. She closed and locked the door, and he followed her down an ordinary staircase to the second floor. The staircase that took them to the first floor was grand and lovely and allowed them to walk side by side.

  She liked being at his side.

  When she stepped out of the hotel, she got a full-body blast of twenty-degree cold. Her jeans only slowed the chill, and her bare skin stung. Hastily, she shoved her hands into her gloves, doubly happy Quint had come along, because walking out here alone, she would have written off her refreshing walk and dashed the short distance to Judge Judie’s. While the food there was good, it wasn’t pot roast.

  The vehicle parked on the street was a pickup truck, but that was where the similarities to his official vehicle ended. This one was from the ’60s, she estimated, and probably had enough miles for two or three lifetimes on it. Its paint style was classic blue and white, and inside it held a bench seat instead of now-standard bucket seats.

  This was the kind of pickup generations before them had used for making out on a pretty night in an out-of-the-way spot.

  She wondered if it worked equally as well on a frigid huddle-together-for-body-heat night.

  They made the drive to Creek Café in silence, but it was companionable. JJ was a talker. All the people in her family were, and most of the guys she’d dated seriously. It was nice to meet a man who spoke mostly when he had something to say. Did he think it nice that she didn’t need his assistance in carrying on a conversation?

  “It didn’t get above freezing today,” she remarked as they made their way into the restaurant, “and the sidewalks are still yucky, but the streets are mostly clear. That’s weird.”

  “The wind.” Quint opened the door and let her enter first. “Friction.”

  “Ah.” Like water carving a hole into rock, the friction caused by the constant wind wore away the ice the same way.

  An older woman sat on a stool behind the counter, glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Hair the color of old iron was pulled into a bun resting low on her neck, and lines stretched across her skin like trails on a road map. She wore a T-shirt, a fuzzy jacket, a denim skirt that fell to her ankles and a pair of yellow house slippers. She gave JJ an uninterested look before turning to Quint. “Heh. Where you been?”

  “I’m always around, Great-Aunt Weezer. How are you?”

  JJ looked at the woman with renewed curiosity. Nope, no family resemblance. Miss Weezer appeared to be about one hundred and eighty, cranky enough to make Miss Georgie seem pleasant and had all the cuddly warmth of a prickly pear cactus. She was Native American, tall and bony, with eyes darker than a starless night.

  “What brings you out on a night like this?” Quint asked.

  “My niece. Said I needed to come hang out with the family. Do I look like I need to hang out with the family? I see them every week, sometimes twice. Isn’t that enough for a sane person?” She shifted on the stool, crossing one leg and bringing one feathery house shoe into closer view. It actually had a chicken’s head with a red comb and a carrot-shaped beak sewn above the toes. “What she really meant is Anita called in, so they needed someone to sit here and say, ‘Welcome to Creek Café. Sit wherever you want. Thank you for coming.’” The old woman scowled. “Welcome to Creek Café. Sit wherever yo
u want. Read the specials on your way by or let the waiter tell them to you. Just go sit down.”

  By the time Quint signaled JJ to go on, she had her lips pressed together hard to keep from grinning. She headed for the smaller dining room, making a beeline for the same booth where they’d eaten lunch, and slid into the same seat as before. “Isn’t she a ray of sunshine.”

  He shrugged. “Great-Aunt Weezer’s what they used to call a character.”

  “I recognize characters when I see them. Evanston has its share. Whose great-aunt is she?”

  “Ben Little Bear’s. Just because we call someone by family terms doesn’t mean we’re blood related.” He shuddered a bit at the thought.

  “I know. I have aunts, uncles and cousins whose family trees don’t even grow in the same universe as ours.” She didn’t bother to open the menu. She’d scanned the specials board on the way past, as Miss Weezer had suggested, to make sure her first choice was still listed. It was.

  They spent the next few moments settling, removing their coats and gloves, unrolling the silverware, getting comfortable. She realized belatedly that he wasn’t in uniform. His long-sleeved T-shirt was a thermal weave the color of oatmeal, and over that he wore a green-and-blue-plaid shirt that looked as soft as a baby’s cuddle toy. How had she not noticed in time to get a good look at him in jeans that were sure to be faded and snug?

  Oh well, there was always the walk back out to the truck when they were done. So far, he’d politely allowed her to go first, but she would give him the honor when they left.

  After a teenage waitress took their order, with a shy, “Hello, Quint,” and a lingering, yearning look for him, JJ crossed her legs, folded her hands together and met his gaze. “Now, Officer Foster, tell me about that offer.”

  There was something sweet about a man his age—a man with his looks and his life’s experiences—blushing. He would probably prefer to blame the color in his cheeks on the cold night, but nope, that would have been redder, rawer. This was definitely a blush.

  “You know she was hungover,” he mumbled.

  “I could smell the booze and the weed. But that wasn’t an unfounded statement. You blushed then, too. Come on, confession is good for the soul, or so they say.”

  He shifted his gaze to the window, and the tic beside his eye started again. This time, his jaw went taut, too, and an air of tension radiated from his entire body. He was really affected by this, she realized, her humor fading. Clearly he hadn’t crossed the line of professional conduct, or Maura wouldn’t have said, “I’ve been waiting.” Did he blame himself that it had happened at all? Had he given her a reason to think he wanted her?

  JJ reached across the table, her palm up, then rapped her knuckles on the surface to get his attention. He stared at it a long time before slowly resting his fingers there. She curled her own fingers loosely, savoring the heat and texture and strength of even that small part of him.

  “When I’d been on the job about six months,” she began conversationally, “I pulled a big ole Cadillac over for speeding one night. The guy was in his fifties, smelled like he’d bathed in moonshine, hadn’t shaved in days, hadn’t washed his hair in weeks. Even his cigar looked like he’d been chewing on it for a month or two. He grinned this big snaggletoothed grin and said, ‘This is your lucky day, missy. You keep that ticket book where it belongs, and Daddy’s gonna show you what it’s like with a real man.’ Then he drew my attention down, where he wiggled his thing at me.”

  Fifteen years, and she remembered the scene so clearly. The humidity heavy in the air. The croaking of tree frogs and hooting from nearby owls. The ticking of the big old engine as it cooled, and the unpleasant stink emanating from the cranked-down windows. And the kicker: his dark pants undone and his pale, soft, fat flesh. A huge shudder rippled through her.

  “I gagged. I actually threw up a little bit in my mouth. And then I threw up a little bit on him. By the time I hustled back to my car, I wanted a bath in moonshine. You know, that’ll kill just about any germ.

  “But you know what? It worked. I didn’t write him a ticket. All I wanted to do was put as much distance and clean air between us as possible. The whole thing put me off sex and men and Cadillacs and moonshine for a long time.”

  A bit of tension eased from his hand, but he still looked ill—guilty? repulsed?—from the memories of his own experience. Because there was something more to his experience than hers.

  “You stopped Maura for a traffic offense. I’m going to guess speeding, since she thinks the faster, the better. She offered you sex if you didn’t write the ticket, and judging by her behavior today, when you turned her down, she cussed you out and threw the ticket away. Am I right?”

  “She tore it in little pieces first.”

  “She can’t be the first woman who ever hit on you to avoid a ticket. Women appreciate guys who look like you.” Then she shrugged. “And women who think avoiding a $150 ticket is worth having sex with a stranger have no standards, period.”

  “No,” he admitted. “She wasn’t the first.”

  JJ pictured a cleaned-up Maura, sober and cheery and dressed to thrill, and a wry smile tipped her mouth. “You considered it. For an instant, maybe half that, you wondered, Why not? She’s beautiful, she’s fun and willing—and we’ll just ignore the fact that she’s young enough to be your daughter—and for a moment, like any living, breathing man, you wanted to take her up on the offer.”

  That was what bothered him so much. He had been tempted. She would laugh if he weren’t so damn serious.

  What about the situation made the guilt such a big deal? It wasn’t just the professional aspect, because he hadn’t accepted. It wasn’t the overlap of his personal/professional lives. Claire at the hotel had told her that Sam’s wife had been the target of a crazed killer and that Daniel Harper’s wife had been followed to Oklahoma by a psychotic stalker. In a small town, you got overlap. JJ doubted it was the age difference. After all, Maura had offered a quick-and-dirty deed, not an ongoing affair, and while JJ figured Maura would drive Quint totally mad in record time, he could surely tolerate a snotty, snobby, superficial, whiny brat long enough for an orgasm.

  So that left his own relationship status at the time. Either he’d still been with Mystery Woman, or he had been mourning her, nursing the heart she’d broken. Either way, considering sex with Maura even for a moment must have seemed like a betrayal to the woman, to himself, to them as a onetime happily-ever-after couple.

  That said good things about his idea of commitment. Not-so-good things about his stance on casual sex. JJ liked commitment. But she only had time for casual sex.

  “Aw, Quint, where we would we be without temptation? You didn’t betray your morals or ethics.” Or the foolish woman who broke your heart. “We’d damn well better be tempted by someone or another, or humans aren’t long for this world.”

  He met her gaze, his eyes dark and shuttered. “So you were tempted? You were tempted by Cadillac guy?”

  “Oh, hell, no. But once, for about half a second. With a twenty-year-old kid. Young enough to be my son,” she said ruefully. “He was just so pretty. All golden skin and big brown eyes and muscles on muscles and the most incredible dimples. Even my mom admitted to lascivious thoughts about him. I was arresting him on a drug charge, and he made the offer, and...it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. He was so amazingly, perfectly, breathtakingly gorgeous, and if I turned him down, that chance would never, ever come again.”

  She couldn’t overstate what a vision of sheer masculine loveliness that young man had been. He was her sisters’ if-I-was-going-to-cheat fantasy guy. Their aunt Jada, the author, had written him into one of her books, where he tempted her fortysomething protagonist almost beyond bearing. He was God’s gift to a beauty-appreciating world.

  “Then the kid, whose intelligence will never be a threat to his beauty, said, ‘You’re awfully old, you
know. But, hey, if it keeps me out of jail...’” Her grimace was part amused, part still annoyed. “Old. That was last year. I ratcheted down those handcuffs and hauled his ass off to a marked unit so quick that he tumbled into the back seat.”

  She sighed as the waitress served their meals, gave their touching hands an anxious look, then disappeared without a word. “Of course, his lawyer met us at the jail, so he didn’t even set foot in a cell, and his only punishment was a slap on the wrist. He deserved at least a month on a county work crew for calling me old.”

  Quint used the waitress’s look and the food as a reason to pull his hand from hers. For a long time, he kept his attention on the plate of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy and green beans. It all looked and smelled wonderful, but her own meal looked and smelled even better. Instead of a plate, it was served in a large, flat bowl: chunks of beef, wedges of potatoes, large rounds of carrots and slices of onion and celery, bathed with gravy made with homemade stock and red wine. The basket of hot yeast rolls was the final fragrance needed to complete her culinary ecstasy.

  She was eating the absolute best pot roast in the world. Now she could die happy.

  Then she looked across the table at Quint.

  Well, not quite yet.

  * * *

  The table had been cleared of dishes except for coffee cups, saucers and spoons. A plastic bag held a container with JJ’s dessert. The checks had been paid, and Nalria, Ben’s cousin who’d waited on them, had collected her tip, then gone home to catch up on schoolwork. The main dining room was busy, but with half a dozen empty tables in the smaller one, no one was rushing them to leave.

  For the first time in a very long time, Quint was in no hurry to go. He didn’t linger over meals, didn’t draw out visits beyond minimum social or parental requirements. He’d left the family’s Christmas Eve gift opening and buffet after one hour, one minute, and had skipped out on Christmas Day dinner after two hours. He did what had to be done, he finished, he left.