She looked cute with her cheeks turning pink. He wished she'd lose the navy blazer and slacks. Plain-clothes, that was not. She might as well be wearing a uniform. That was her uniform. She must have a closet full of identical slacks and white Oxford cloth shirts.
He had to slow down, with the sidewalk still icy. A thin blanket of white still cloaked lawns and weighted the branches of trees and the gray framework of shrubs. He'd forgotten how damn cold winters were here. The snow wanted to melt, he'd swear it did. Daytime highs of nineteen degrees Fahrenheit made sure it didn't happen.
The snow had been plowed from major roads, leaving a sheet of black ice that kept traffic slow. Will grabbed Trina's arm when they crossed the street in front of the courthouse. In dress shoes, his own traction wasn't good.
Rock salt crunched underfoot as they climbed the granite steps to the imposing old building.
"You really think Jimmy is a possibility?" he asked, incredulous even though he knew better than most that the average criminal wasn't a hulking creature with a perpetual sneer. In law school, he'd attended a family court hearing just to see what a father who sexually abused his daughter looked like. The guy was maybe five-four, soft and meek. Will remembered feeling the same incredulity. Him? How could he be a monster?
"Don't know." She slipped through when he held open the ornate entry door. "Shuh's office is upstairs."
She led the way.
His Honor looked irked at being interrupted until he heard this new young D.A. was Sheriff Murray's son and the investigating officer was Abby Patton, after which he listened to the circumstances and signed with a flourish. "Give Abby my best."
"Glad to."
"See you in court," the judge said with a nod, returning to his phone call while Will retreated. The moment the etched office door closed behind him, he pulled out his cell phone and called his aunt.
"Will?" She didn't sound entirely pleased to hear his voice. Given that she'd been snubbing him for six years, she probably wasn't any more pleased than he was to find out they'd be working together on a case that looked likely to end up at trial. "I'll be by your office in five minutes," she said. "Who signed it?"
"Duane Shuh."
"Hmph." Dead air told him she'd hung up.
"Nice," he muttered.
"Who's nice?" Trina asked.
He ignored the question. "You done for the day?"
Matching her footsteps to his as they returned around the rotunda, she said distractedly, "Huh? Oh. Yeah, I suppose." She heaved a sigh. "I thought I'd drive by McCartin's place on my way home. Just to see what it looks like."
Just like his mother, she couldn't let a case go once she started worrying at it. "You mean," he said, "to check out whether a neighbor would be likely to hear a woman scream if he was holding her in his garage."
"Something like that," she admitted.
Out in the cold, they started down the broad steps again. "At his own house." Will shook his head. "That seems risky. Our perp has been so careful."
"Yeah, but where, then?"
"I don't know." He grabbed her arm again when she slithered on the sidewalk just as a Saab, loaded with skis, drove by too fast. This time, Will didn't let go, and Trina didn't object.
"Dinner?" he asked. "Sweet and sour prawns?"
"Bribery, just so you can pick my brain." She paused, as if to give him a chance to deny it. "Okay, but let me go home and change first. And drive by McCartin's house."
"See you," he said, turning into the first entrance to the Public Safety building while she continued down the sidewalk to her Explorer.
While she got in, he looked up and down the street, real casually. He didn't see a big pickup truck with a canopy or any black SUV but hers. Didn't see anyone just sitting in a parked vehicle of any kind, and no other vehicles started up to follow her when she set off down the street and turned the corner.
Will didn't consider himself a paranoid guy, but he couldn't shake his sense of unease when he returned to his office. It had undoubtedly just been chance the other night. Some guy had been waiting for his girlfriend to come home and gave up when she didn't. Or Will had been thinking about Trina and just didn't notice the sound of another resident at the apartment complex coming out.
But he still thought, I shouldn't have asked her over. I should stay away from her until she and Mom catch this guy.
Then he pictured calling and trying to think of a good explanation for canceling, one that wouldn't hurt her feelings. He was scowling when he walked into his office.
"Happy to see you, too," his aunt snapped, turning from the bulletin board where he'd posted comic strips that amused him. She held out her hand.
He put a signed copy of the warrant in it. "The frown wasn't for you."
"No?" Looking uncannily like his mother, she gazed stonily back at him. "Just your natural expression these days?"
He went around his desk and sank into his chair, feeling the same bone-deep exhaustion he had in college when he got mono. Actually having a conversation with his aunt after all these years was proving to be a real pick-me-up. "I've been a son of a bitch. Tell me something I don't know."
Looking intrigued, she planted a fist on her hip and considered him. "Well, well. Is the Will I once knew and loved stirring inside?"
"I think I went a little crazy when they told me about Gilly." Uh-huh. What an excuse for leveling his rage at the people he loved most.
Unimpressed, voice unyielding, Aunt Abby said, "I think you'd turned into a jackass sometime before that."
"You noticed?" He gave a tired laugh. "Why didn't you take me down a few pegs?"
"I tried. You were too busy feeling godlike."
He muttered an imprecation. "I'm sorry, Aunt Abby. Sorrier than I can ever tell you."
Just like his father, she said, "You're telling the wrong person."
"I'm getting warmed up," he admitted.
"You know she'll forgive you in a heartbeat."
"I know she'll say she does," he corrected. "Maybe she'll even believe it herself. But we both know she's never going to feel the same about me."
Amazingly, Abby Patton's blue eyes softened. "Will, here's a tip. Your mother never has felt any different about you. Sure you hurt her feelings. But she doesn't love you any less. No more than she loved you any less after you were such a shit about Scott. She almost lost him, thanks to you, but did you ever, for a moment, think your mother didn't still love you?"
There seemed to be a great stillness inside him. Made mute, he shook his head.
"Well, then?" She smiled, catlike, held up the warrant and said, "Good to work with you, Will Patton." The next second, she was gone, leaving him to gape after her.
* * *
WHILE HE COOKED and they ate, Will kept conversation easygoing and off the one subject that undoubtedly preoccupied them both.
Trina kept thinking, He wants to know what's happening real bad, to give up his evenings like this. What other explanation was there?
It was idiotic of her to wish they could keep talking like this forever, about nothing and everything, with no ulterior motive on either side.
Only when he poured the coffee did Will say, "So, you didn't like Gavin either."
"I wasn't kidding about my skin crawling." She reached for the cream. "Jeez, Will! He's really a friend of yours?"
"What did he say to you?"
"Not so much that was overt. But he mocked, he sneered, he seethed." A shudder traveled up her spine. "He tried to shock me. I don't think he liked the fact that a woman was interviewing him."
Worry lines aged his lean face. "I thought maybe he'd changed. He was married, you know."
"And arrested twice for beating his wife. And that was only in the three or four months they lived here in Elk Springs before the divorce."
He swore.
"Yeah, you know how to pick 'em."
His voice became dangerous. "Don't keep saying that."
Startled and intrigued, she tilted her he
ad back to study him, standing on the other side of the table with the coffeepot still in his hand. "That I don't like your friend?"
"I told you I never liked him."
"But you hang out with him."
He slammed the coffeepot down on the table. "Do you want to know why? Goddamn it, I'll tell you why! Guilt!"
"Guilt?" she whispered.
Will sank into his chair as if his legs didn't want to hold him. "I treated him like shit in high school. Somewhere along the line, I grew a conscience. I've been trying to make up for it ever since."
Finally, she got it. His arrogant persona was a cover. Beneath the expensive clothes, the commanding figure, the sexy voice, the intelligence that reputedly made him a brilliant trial attorney, was a man who knew he had more going for him than most people did, and felt guilty about it.
Trina was appalled to realize that her teenage crush had just metamorphosed into something a lot deeper and scarier.
"Um." She had to clear her throat. "You know that's ridiculous, don't you?"
He glowered at her. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"From what you've told me, Gavin Husby was a creep in high school, too. Instead of laughing off his nastiness toward women, you called him on it. Why do you now see that as treating him like shit?"
"It was more than that." He rubbed his hand over his jaw, making a rasping sound. "I knew he had trouble at home. Maybe I could have made a difference. Instead, I just didn't see him as measuring up. He wasn't a good enough athlete, he wasn't good-looking enough, he wasn't popular enough." Will's tone was filled with self-loathing. "My friends were the best. We knew we were. Man, he was like an ugly blot on a beautiful picture."
"And yet, you and your friends did tolerate him, at least some of the time."
He made a vague gesture. "Some of the others put up with him better than I did."
"Travis?"
"No, he hated Gavin's guts." He shook his head. "I don't know. Justin. He thought Gavin was funny. Egged him on, sometimes. Dirk. Even Vince. Vince is so easygoing, he always wants to see the best in everyone."
"Okay. So you've been including this guy ever since you graduated from high school because you feel guilty you didn't treat him better when you were no better than a teenager yourself."
His mouth twisted. "You think that's a good enough excuse?"
"I think you're wasting your self-pity on a scumbag." She shrugged. "Just my opinion."
His eyes sharpened and he gave a soft laugh. "I can just hear you when you have kids, bucking 'em up, sending them back out into the fray armed with common sense."
The sting surprised her. "So I sound like an old-fashioned schoolmarm?"
"No." His voice caressed her. "You sound like a mother."
She tried to make her shrug careless. "No chance of that happening for a while."
His eyes narrowed, just for an instant. He swallowed coffee, watching her over the brim of the cup, finally setting it down. "You know too much about me, Trina Giallombardo. Time for you to confess something."
She felt herself stiffen. "Confess?"
"Why this massive inferiority complex?"
She blinked in genuine surprise. "What are you talking about? I like myself just fine!"
"Then why are you always implying that you don't see yourself as attractive?"
"I know what I am and what I'm not," she said with dignity. "I'm okay looking. I'm not a…a Nita Voss or Christine Nylander."
"You mean, you're short, dark-haired and curvy instead of tall, long-legged and blond. So what?"
"So nothing," she floundered. "They're beautiful. I'm pretty on a good day."
"Why did you pick them as examples?" he asked softly.
Uh-oh. She shrugged as if the whole conversation was absurd. "What am I supposed to say? I'm not beautiful like Amy Owen and Karin Kristensen? After seeing their bodies, I can't feel all that envious of them!"
He contemplated her, and she had a feeling he was looking a lot deeper than she wanted him to. "Were there girls in your own high school class you were jealous of?"
"Um…" Her mind was a gigantic blank. She couldn't think of a single name. Not one! Compared to her own classmates, she'd felt smart and been as popular as she wanted to be. The last two years of high school, after Will was gone, she'd been content, living in her own little bubble. A few friends, a boyfriend briefly, a date to the prom and a determined vision of her future. She wouldn't be just a cop, she'd be a detective. As good as Meg Patton.
Always Pattons, she thought in shock. On a squeeze of misery, she realized that she'd been entirely shaped by the Pattons all unknown to them, by her hopeless desire to measure up. If that wasn't pathetic, she didn't know what was.
"Nobody you'd know," she finally said, voice gruff. "I was using your classmates as a for-example."
"Uh-huh."
"I was!"
"You know what I think, Trina Giallombardo?" A half smile played with the corners of his mouth. "I think you had a crush on one of my friends. Now, which one was it?"
Humiliation burned her cheeks. Just to get it over with, she blurted, "You. Who else?"
His smile died. They stared at each other.
Struggling to find air in a room that seemed to have become a vacuum, she said in a small, desperate voice, "It was a long time ago. I knew you'd never notice me."
Sounding strange, he said, "You were wrong."
Now she really couldn't breathe. "What?"
"I've noticed you."
His pretence infuriated her for reasons she couldn't have defined. "Oh, come on! I was invisible to you. One of the masses who parted to let you pass."
"Then why did I recognize you when you came with Mom to tell me about Amy's murder?"
Her mouth opened and closed.
"But that isn't what I was talking about anyway." He got to his feet, as fluid and athletic now as he'd been on the court when she watched from the bleachers, all those years ago. He circled the table and held out a hand. "Come here."
She stared at his hand as if it were a bomb she had no idea how to defuse.
"This is the third time I've had you to dinner," he said, in a tone of reason. "Why did you think I kept inviting you?"
Licking dry lips, she stole a glance up at his face. "Because we were working together?"
"I haven't had anybody from the D.A.'s office over for dinner yet. In fact," he looked thoughtful, "except for Travis, you're the only person who has sat at that table."
"Really?" She despised herself for the way that single word squeaked out.
"Really." He waggled his fingers. "Come on. Don't be a coward."
If there was one thing she wasn't, it was cowardly. Trina took a deep breath, grateful that air did seem to rush into her lungs, and pushed her chair back. She stood to find herself alarmingly close to the man she'd been in love with forever.
"So?" she said, tilting her chin up in pretend brazenness.
He smiled. "So this." He reached out and cupped her face with his big, warm hands. One thumb brushed her lower lip, sending a burst of sweet feeling that was almost painful shooting to her toes and fingers.
She exhaled with a soft sound that darkened his eyes. When he bent his head, her lids seemed to flutter down of their own volition.
The touch of his mouth was as gentle and undemanding as the pad of his thumb. He brushed her lips, tugged gently on them, grazed them with his teeth. Paralyzed by her reaction, she just stood there, hands at her side, neck becoming weak so that her head fell back.
He half laughed, half groaned. "Do you plan to kiss me back, sweetheart?"
Sweetheart? Had he said that, or was she home, deep asleep and dreaming?
"I'm stunned," she whispered.
He nuzzled her ear, his voice a soft rumble. "Does that mean you don't want to kiss me?"
"No!" Her eyes popped open in alarm. "No. I want to kiss you."
"Good," he murmured, his mouth curved in a smile when it met hers this time.
This time, when he sucked on her lower lip, she sucked on his, too. She lifted her hands to his shoulders and felt muscles bunch under her touch. They toyed with each others' mouths for a sweet eternity, until he muttered something under his breath, tilted his head sideways and abruptly deepened the kiss, his tongue in her mouth, one hand sliding lower to wrap her neck. Hunger buckled her knees, leaving her hanging on for dear life. Everything seemed to come down to the hot urgent contact of their mouths, their tongues, the rough scrape of his jaw, the flare in his eyes when she drew back briefly to look at him.
Then somehow he was gripping her hips, pulling her tight against him, groaning against her mouth. His fingers squeezed her buttock. "I think," he said against her cheek, his voice as scratchy as his unshaven jaw, "if you're going to leave, you'd better go now."
This was the nicest dream she'd ever had. Don't let me ever wake up.
"Are you asking me to stay?" she whispered.
He laughed and nipped her lower lip. "Do you want me to beg?" he asked, in a voice that sounded shaken despite the amused undercurrent.
"Um…" Giddy with amazement, she pretended to think. "Since you're giving me the chance to live out a high school fantasy…sure."
This laugh was rough. "What I'd really like," he said, "is if this didn't have anything to do with high school."
She couldn't say she blamed him, the way his old friendships had been playing out lately. Trina kissed his throat, loving the way his Adam's apple jumped. "That's okay, too," she murmured. "Just so I get my begging."
"Trina Giallombardo," he obliged, "please will you stay tonight? I could go down on bended knee…"
Except that he was pretty much holding her up, since her legs were feeling about as reliably sturdy as a couple of lengths of licorice.
"Please is good enough," she decided. Common sense did kick in. "Assuming you're, um, prepared."
"I haven't used them in one hell of a long time, but yeah. A man lives in hope."
She almost wished he'd had to go out and buy some, nuisance though that would be. The fact that he had condoms on hand just like he kept garlic in the kitchen cupboard for the next time he needed it made her feel commonplace.
Implying that she was the first woman he'd wanted in a long time was nice, though. She appreciated kindness.
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