Kate’s chair creaked as she leaned back, staring up at him, eyes wide and wary. “You don’t need me,” she countered. “I told you, anyone can go. All you need is a costume.”
“No way. I need someone on the inside to vouch for me. Someone to say I’m okay, that I am who I say I am. And that definitely won’t be Lieutenant Michael Turco of the FHP.”
She didn’t explode, as he’d expected. Kate went very, very still. And pale. Even her lips—her full, shapely lips—were pale. Less kissable lips on an attractive woman Michael had yet to see. She seemed to bristle like some porcupine about to throw its quills.
“You want me to lie to my friends?” Kate breathed.
His only choice was to fall back into police mode. “Standard undercover procedure,” Michael declared. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why Bill Falk steered me to you. I need your help.”
“My help to fool my friends!”
“If that’s what it takes to find this psycho, then absolutely ‘yes.’”
“You’re despicable!”
Michael actually grinned. He’d been spoiling for a fight. Someone to yell at, someone to arm-twist—figuratively speaking. Someone to blame for Mark having to learn, by baby steps, to live a life that would possibly never be the same.
“Despicable,” he drawled. “Now there’s a fifty-cent word. Must come from working in a lawyer’s office.”
Kate rolled her chair back so hard she hit the office equipment table behind her with a thud that rattled her teeth. As the copier and the fax machine thumped back into place, Kate bounded to her feet, fists clenched. But her belligerence wasn’t as effective as it usually was. Her Nemesis had also shot to his feet. In spite of all her inches, she wasn’t looking down on Michael Turco, she wasn’t even nose-to-nose. He topped her by at least five inches, compounding the intimidation of towering physical bulk by an infuriatingly feral grin, his strong white teeth flashing. The better to eat you with, my dear.
“Out!” Kate ordered, even as she knew there was no way Lieutenant Michael Turco was going to move unless he damn well wanted to. “Get out, I can’t help you,” she hissed, hoping he hadn’t heard the slight hitch in her voice. Legally, she didn’t have to cooperate. Morally, she was on shaky ground if she didn’t. Professionally, she could be in serious trouble.
Michael thought of his brother the last time he’d seen him. Mark, the dashing Black Knight, struggling to master transfers from bed to wheelchair, Mark attempting to learn to read, stumbling through a few terse sentences of conversation. No way was Michael going to lose this contact with LALOC. And to hell with politically correct.
Kate’s knees buckled. She found herself back in her office chair. The frighteningly powerful hands which had put her there came to rest on the table behind her, pinning her in place. The lines of hard living scoring the FHP officer’s harsh face loomed scant inches above her. The depths of his dark eyes were bottomless. Kate fought the sensation of falling, falling, losing control . . .
No! This was not a road she was willing to travel. She controlled her life. There wasn’t room for anyone else. And no man—no matter how intimidating—was going to get so much as his big toe in the door.
Then again, there was something called her job, her obligation to Barbara Falk who tolerated Kate’s unusual hours, her even stranger avocations. Barbara Falk, who was also her friend. Not to mention the wandering Black Knight she had run into enough times to know where all the charm in the Turco family had gone.
Michael’s growl penetrated Kate’s distress. “Now listen very carefully,” he instructed. “I know you don’t have a boyfriend, Barbara Falk told me so. Therefore, you are about to acquire one. Me.” Ignoring Kate’s outraged protest, Michael stormed ahead, a jet liner on a take-off run. “You are going to take me to every damned Event you go to and you’re going to tell everyone I’m exactly who and what I say I am. Do. You. Understand?”
“Yes. But I won’t do it.”
Michael closed his eyes, took a deep breath. He’d blown it. He’d done exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He’d lost his temper and blown his one chance to penetrate LALOC. He couldn’t just show up at the damned events on his own. Everything about him screamed cop. Without this woman to vouch for him, he was sunk.
“And, besides,” Kate muttered, her strong chin tilted defiantly in his direction, “no one would ever believe it.”
Was that a blink? Didn’t this stubborn female understand she’d just won? They were in a stand-off, eyeball to eyeball, yet something about the way she’d added that last remark . . .
Okay, two could play that game. Michael straightened up, stepped back. Not quite knowing what to do with the hands that still threatened to slip around her neck of their own accord, he assumed the position of Parade Rest, feet spread, arms akimbo behind his back. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“During my six years in LALOC I’ve spent a lot of time convincing a remarkable number of people I wasn’t interested in sharing their beds. Absolutely no one is going to believe I’ve changed my attitude.”
Impossible! There she sat, looking like a Viking goddess, wisps of blond hair escaping from her fancy braid, framing her face in a halo of silver-gold. Her nose was as strong as her chin, but her features were so well put together Michael had no trouble picturing her as a Valkyrie sent to bear mere mortal men to a very special kind of Valhalla, preferably one here on earth. Then again, what a way to go! The male members of LALOC probably fought harder for her favor than they did to become knights. One look at her, and lust was rampant . . .
Kate enjoyed the thoughts flitting across her adversary’s face. Michael Turco wasn’t a man who gave much away, but somehow she knew what he was thinking this time. She even caught the moment the Awful Thought occurred to him. His inky pupils almost seemed to roll back in his head.
“You’re not . . . you can’t be . . .” Michael stammered to a halt.
Wide-eyed, Kate looked up at him. “What?” she inquired, managing an innocent flutter of her long lashes.
Halt! Stop and think. Michael considered everything that had happened since he walked through the door into Barbara Falk’s office. He’d been intent on his purpose, the classic example of a cop with tunnel-vision focus on his objective. Until he’d caught sight of Kate Knight. There was no way the sexual tension they’d struck from each other was one-sided. He didn’t believe it. Therefore . . .
“No, you’re not,” Michael declared, answering his own question. “So what’s the story?”
Kate seemed to deflate, her chin descending, eyes wandering toward a large framed photo on the wall of Golden Beach when it was little more than a gleam in an early developer’s eyes. “I—I just don’t ah–date,” she murmured.
“You’re celibate?” Michael didn’t know if he wanted to shout ‘Hallelujah’ or mourn. An infinitesimal nod of her head was all the answer he got. “Jesus, what a waste,” he breathed.
The heightened awareness of male and female, the aura of pure sex that filled the small office, was not a figment of his imagination. And he’d been right, it wasn’t one-sided. Kate Knight bristled with awareness of him. Which was why she was running scared.
Michael repressed a sudden flare of purely masculine satisfaction. Business. This was business. “Okay,” he announced, “we’ve got that straight. “You’re smart enough and tough enough to deal with the flak. Afterwards, you can tell everyone your foray into the world of sex didn’t work out. You can say you’re off it for life, for all I care. But as of now you’ve got a real live, living, breathing boyfriend. And, don’t worry, unless you decide to slip me Viagra, I’m tough enough to keep my hands off. We just won’t tell anybody. Well?” Michael demanded as Kate continued to stare at the 1920s-era photo on the wall.
“It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Kate sighed. So did her job.
“If I’m willing to wear a damn costume, believe me, it means a lot to me.”
�
��And you’ll really keep your hands off?”
Instead of an instant affirmative, Michael considered that one carefully. “Unless you change your mind,” he offered.
Kate swung round to face him squarely. “I won’t.”
Michael didn’t want to be attracted to her. Hell, he didn’t even want to like her. Lords and Ladies of Chivalry, that was the name of the game. He was probably going to have to remind himself of that nearly every moment he was with Kate Knight. Inwardly, he groaned. Investigating the members of LALOC was going to be more hazardous than he’d expected.
“Then we have a deal,” Michael said, holding out his hand.
For a moment Kate studied his rugged features before grasping his hand in hers. It took all her will power not to pull away, not to show what his touch did to her. This was wrong. It wasn’t going to work. It was going to upset all her carefully laid plans, ruin her life. If fate had decreed she had to do this, why with this particular man? Why someone who turned her emotions inside out, made a mockery of the nun-like woman she had made of herself?
Kate was still sitting with her chair hard against the table with the copier and the fax machine long after Lieutenant Michael Turco left the office, softly closing the door behind him.
Kate usually bounded up the steep cement steps that led to the door of her elderly mobile home. Today, the steps seemed like Mount Everest. Kate Knight, LALOC warrior who prided herself on her physical strength and steady nerves, was nothing but a shattered hulk.
The man was impossible! Kate fumbled for her key, threw open the lightweight aluminum door. As she slumped along the narrow hallway, her hand automatically switched on the air conditioning before she threw herself into one of the two chairs at her tiny dining table and buried her face in her hands. Viagra, she scoffed, steaming as the first wisps of cool air began to filter into the room which served as living room, dining room and kitchen. If ever there was a man who had no need for Viagra, it was Lieutenant Michael Turco. He was a menace. A feminist’s Awful Example of macho male virility ready to bulldoze anybody and everybody into doing exactly what he wanted. Particularly female bodies. Kate flipped her French braid to the front, ripped off the ribbon, and began to chew on the rubber band beneath. Damn him, damn him, damn him! How dare he do this to her?
Kate’s teeth clamped tight around a mouthful of blond hair and elastic. A vision—a highly unwanted vision—of Michael Turco as a rookie FHP trooper bloomed before her. Young, probably eager, without the harsh lines that now marked his face. Snappy gray uniform, black boots, one of those wide flat-brimmed campaign hats. Gun on his hip, spring in his step. The ultimate image of a Bad Boy, the kind women loved. Dear Lord, he must have had females chasing him down the highway. Or else . . . they drove ninety miles per, figuring it was worth the fine to get a ticket from Michael Turco.
Kate’s vision was photo clear. Trooper Turco flashing the lights of his black and tan, stopping behind her on the grassy verge of I-75. That craggy face—which must have exuded strong character even way back then—bending down to her window, asking for her license and registration, disappearing back into his vehicle to run Kate Knight through the system. Finding . . . what? How detailed were those files? Would they say Kate Knight hadn’t existed until seven years ago?
Her bubble burst. Dreams were stupid, stupid, stupid! That’s why she’d turned her back on them.
I’ll be in touch, he’d said as he went out the door. Touch. Touch was what terrified her. The man didn’t know what he was asking. They would be living together for a weekend. Several weekends . . . in close quarters. If the hands he’d placed on her shoulders had seared her soul, what would happen when the two of them were confined in the intimate space of . . .
“Kate, hey, Kate, guess what?” Mona Ellis, Kate’s next-door neighbor, swung open the door, bounded down the hallway. “I got a promotion and a raise! Yee-aw-aw!” Mona pumped her arm in triumph while filling Kate’s single-wide with her personal version of the Rebel Yell. “Assistant Manager,” she crowed. “Would you believe?” Mona’s exuberance dimmed a bit. “Not that I get paid much more, but it sounds good, y’ know.”
“You get to work twice as hard for a dollar more an hour?” Kate suggested wryly.
“Yeah, something like that.” Though Mona’s figure was slight, Kate’s old couch sagged as she plopped down onto its faded flower-print cushions. The smile on Mona’s cherubic face sagged as well. Her short brown curls seemed to have deflated with her spirits, clinging limply to her cheeks in the still stiflingly hot room.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “It’s just that you’re so good at your job, but you barely make enough to get by.”
“This’ll be the most I’ve ever made.”
“Right.” Her cynical tone echoed hollowly in Kate’s ears. If only she could take back the way she’d reacted to Mona’s grand announcement. All too often, that’s how their conversations went. Mona bubbled, Kate tossed on the ice water. She wondered why Mona stuck with her. Maybe it was simply propinquity. The inevitable bonding of two women, approximately the same age, living in aging mobile homes on tiny plots of land in a neighborhood real estate agents avoided like the plague.
Okay, Kate conceded as Mona burbled on about her new responsibilities, she’d become what used to be called a sour old maid. What was the twenty-first century version of that condition? Kate wondered. Independent single? Single professional female? Oops! Not quite. That expression conjured thoughts of the world’s oldest profession.
Kate shook her head. So what was she? Reality, she feared, would not agree with her customary smug satisfaction over the way she’d managed her life. So where was the truth?
Worst-case scenario, she was a female worker in a world still predominantly male. She was a cog on a male-created wheel. She might earn a bit more—a very little bit more—than Mona, but she was a cipher, a null, a zero on some very insignificant outer portion of the Wheel of Life. Yet, until today, she’d never felt that way. Or was that what had been bothering her lately? The vague restlessness, the odd discontent for which she had no name?
“How’s the new gown coming?” Mona asked.
“What? Oh . . . the gown.” Bless Mona for never taking offense, no matter how surly Kate’s reactions. “Except for about ten yards of trim and a headdress, it’s done.”
“Well, you’ve got ten days yet,” Mona pointed out with her customary optimism. “Do you–uh–think you’ll have time to do the trim on Bubba’s tunic too? If not, he can wear his old one,” she added hastily.
“No problem. Drop it by any time.” Kate smiled at her friend, relieved at being given an opportunity to make up for her churlish behavior. She was not so devoted to the principles of LALOC that she insisted on making every stitch of clothing by hand. Her sewing machine was very much a part of her alternate life, a permanent fixture in the mobile home’s tiny second bedroom which she’d set up as a workshop.
“Oh, Lord!” Mona’s high spirits burst like a pin-stabbed balloon.
“What?” Kate demanded.
“Do you suppose? . . . I never thought . . . will I have to work Saturdays?” Mona groaned. “The new job, you know.”
“Didn’t they tell you?”
“No.” Mona looked as if she were about to cry. “I had seniority,” she murmured, almost to herself. “I haven’t worked weekends for a couple of years now.”
“You’ll just have to plan ahead,” Kate consoled, “make sure there’s someone to cover for you when you’re away.”
“I knew it was too good to be true.” Mona sighed. “New job, more money. I even thought maybe I could replace the old junker.”
Even in their unpretentious neighborhood Mona’s 1982 pickup was a joke. After it broke down on the way to a LALOC event six months earlier, Kate had been forced to replace her Malibu with a van. Well-used, but not worn into the ground like the ancient pickup which sat, rusting, under Mona’s ramshackle carport. Now Mona walked the half mile to work at the sales center o
f Golden Beach’s largest orange grove.
“You know what me and Bubba would like?” Mona said, her blue eyes alight with the glow of dreams. “A real house. Nothing fancy—just a little ol’ cracker shack. But something with more than a half-pint lawn . . .”
“Which you’d have to mow.”
“Flowers . . . maybe a fence.”
“White picket,” Kate supplied.
Mona hung her head. “Okay, so I’m crazy. I never said it was anything more than a dream.”
Kate dashed across the length of the small room, flung herself onto the couch next to Mona. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried as she hugged her friend’s slight shoulders. “I’m a beast, an idiot, a cynical dried-up old prune. If you don’t dream, life passes you by.” Oh, yes, she knew all about that. But until this afternoon—when she ran head-on into Michael Turco—she hadn’t realized what she had done to herself. She’d opted out. Stepped aside . . . and hadn’t so much as waved as the mainstream world whizzed past, while she hid in a stagnant pool in a quiet Florida town, with an occasional foray into the well-defined concepts of a society hundreds of years in the past.
No, she wasn’t a latter-day Flower Child. She wasn’t a total dropout. She didn’t do drugs; she had a productive, useful job. Nor was she protesting anything, as had many of the socially conscious Flower Children, not all of whom had been Dropout Druggies. They’d had ideals, hopes, and dreams that had been passed to a new generation. But Kate Knight? When had she stood up and taken sides on any issue, from saving turtle nests to fighting rampant overdevelopment? Never. Not once. Not even in college had she tried to save the whales or defend a redwood.
Nor had she done anything useful beyond the confines of her job. She had given up dreams, even given up all thoughts of the future. Oh, yes—for more years than she cared to count, she’d been facing the world with a double case of tunnel-vision. One set of tracks led to her job, the other to LALOC. She was a paralegal, she created costumes. She played at being some sort of hermaphrodite cross between a medieval lady and a warrior. And until today—this particular day when she’d met Lieutenant Michael Turco of the FHP—she’d gone through the motions quite happily. Even smugly. All was right with the world of Kate Knight.
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