LITMIR.BIZ

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maybe it was because he had a serious case of the hots for her.

      He choked a laugh. Yeah, like he had a snowball’s chance in hell of scoring with Detective Andrea Matthews. Though he’d prefer to blame department policy on her refusal to go out with him, Andi lived by her own set of rules. From day one, she’d made it clear to every single guy on the force—fellow sufferers with Gabe, who’d like nothing better than to get in the detective’s pants—that she didn’t date co-workers.

      But Gabe wasn’t a man to give up easily.

      She had become a challenge to him…and an attractive one at that. Triweekly workouts at the gym kept her body firm and toned. And she had the most gorgeous mane of curly brown hair she insisted on hiding by twisting it into a bun on top of her head or pulling it back into a ponytail. He’d imagined himself freeing that wild mass of hair, knotting his fingers in it and kissing her senseless, until she was putty in his hands.

      He shoved a knee against the dresser drawer, closing it. Not a bad fantasy for a man to savor while out fishing alone or waiting for sleep to take him at night, he told himself.

      But if fantasizing about her distracted him from his fishing or kept him awake too long, all he had to do was remind himself of her faults. She had a tendency to speak her mind, which bugged the hell out of him. And her tomboy reputation around the station certainly couldn’t be considered an asset. Not to a man who preferred his women soft, feminine and willing.

      But lately he’d begun to suspect that beneath that tomboyish facade lay a sensual woman. It would simply take the right man to peel off the layers to reveal her.

      And he figured he was just the man for the job.

      So far he was batting zero, but patience was one of his strongest virtues—although the lady was definitely putting a strain on it. She stiff-armed anyone who tried to get too close. The only two people on the force who could claim any type of relationship with her were her partner Leo, an overweight, grouchy old man with thinning hair, who happened to be married, and Deirdre, a female officer with whom Gabe had shared a brief and regrettable fling.

      Which was Deirdre’s fault, he thought, silently absolving himself of any guilt over the end of his relationship with her. She was the one who had turned what he’d hoped would be a sexually satisfying relationship into a nightmare, thanks to her possessiveness. And if she didn’t ease up on the harassing phone calls and quit tailing him around town, he was going to add stalker to that list.

      “Gabe?”

      Startled by the sound of Andi’s voice, he snapped his head around and found her peeking through a narrow crack in the bathroom door. That mass of wild, curly hair he enjoyed fantasizing about was tamed now by water and hung well past her shoulders in wet, dark tendrils. He could see just enough of the rest of her body to know that she was wearing nothing but a towel, evidenced by the swell of flesh above the terry fabric that bound her chest and the length of bare thigh visible below it. The sight was enough to make his mouth water and his groin ache.

      “Did you find me something to wear?” she asked hesitantly.

      He considered a moment the proximity of his bed, imagining the two of them rolling around on it, then gave himself a shake and lifted a hand, indicating the sweatpants and T-shirt he held. “Best I could do.” He tossed the clothes onto the bed and turned for the door. “When you’re dressed, come on down to the den. I’ll fire up my computer and we can run a check on the database for missing persons.”

      As he jogged down the stairs, he blew out a long, slow breath, telling himself he had to possess the willpower of a monk for being able to walk away from all that bare flesh. But he had his reasons. The one conclusion he’d drawn after two months of working closely with Andi was that she preferred to be appreciated for her mind rather than her body. Personally, Gabe didn’t understand why a man couldn’t do both…or at least pretend to, when the ultimate reward was her body.

      By the time Andi made it to the den, he had a phone tucked between shoulder and ear and had signed on to his e-mail account. Though he heard the pad of her bare feet on the wooden floor behind him, he didn’t glance her way, yet another way he hoped to prove to her he had no physical designs on her.

      “Drag up a chair,” he told her. “I’ve got Reynolds on the phone. He’s going to check the national database for missing persons for us.”

      He heard the scrape of wood against wood as she shifted a chair into position, then caught the scent of his own bath soap on her skin as she settled beside him. He had to fight the temptation to lean close and inhale the fragrance of her freshly washed hair.

      He tipped the phone away from his mouth. “Reynolds says there are three new names in our region. Twenty-four nationwide. Slow day, I guess. Do you want to narrow the search first by gender or identifying marks?”

      “Gender. There’s always the chance that whoever filed the report failed to mention the birthmark.”

      He relayed the information to Reynolds, then sat back and waited, keeping the phone tucked between his shoulder and ear. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw that Andi had her arms folded over her breasts. Probably to disguise the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. But he didn’t plan for her to hold that pose for long.

      After listening to Reynolds’s report, he said to Andi, “That narrows it to two in our region and eleven nationwide. Want to try identifying marks or would you prefer Reynolds do an age-range search?”

      “Age-range,” she replied. “Same reason as before.”

      With a nod of confirmation, he passed the parameters of their search on to Reynolds, then sat back, mimicking her posture by folding his arms over his chest. He purposefully bumped her elbow with his in the process, and she quickly dropped her arms and shifted out of his way.

      Bingo, he thought, hiding a smile. He dropped his arms to bring the receiver closer to his ear and listened to Reynolds’s report. “That reduces the number to zero in our region,” he told Andi, “and three nationwide.”

      “Tell him to pull up all three,” she replied. “Let’s see what information has been posted about them.”

      “Pull up all three,” Gabe repeated to Reynolds. “Copy what’s posted and shoot them to me in an e-mail, all right?”

      After thanking Reynolds for his help, he disconnected the call and set the phone aside. Seconds later his computer beeped, signaling the receipt of an e-mail. Gabe quickly opened the message and began to scan it, but managed to keep one eye on Andi. She was leaning forward in her chair now, reading the message on the screen. The T-shirt he had loaned her looked more like a tent on her small frame, but he could see the slight impressions of her nipples on the fabric. Thanks to her fall into the lake and the wet shirt it had left her with, he already had a pretty good idea of the size and shape of her breasts, which he would sum up as small but firm and having dark brown centers. The thrust of her nipples against the T-shirt added yet another level of dimension to the image he’d previously filed away, one that would probably drive him crazy later that night when he was alone in his bed.

      She sank back in the chair with a sigh of defeat. “Nothing.”

      He slung an arm around her shoulders and hugged her against his side. “Hey. Don’t look so blue. We’ll identify the guy eventually.”

      She turned her head slowly and gave his arm a pointed look.

      He lifted his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I was just trying to cheer you up.”

      “When I feel I need cheering up, I’ll let you know.” Scowling, she rose and paced away, hugging her arms over her breasts again. “How much longer before my clothes are ready?”

      He bit back a smile, as he closed the screen and shut down his computer. “Twenty minutes or so. They’re in the dryer now. Would you like something to eat while we wait?”

      “No, but I’d take some coffee, if you have any.”

      “None made, but

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