LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Both your parents are gone?”

      “No. Well, my mother—” She stopped.

      “Your mother?” Jarek prompted gently.

      Her mother was a drunk.

      “She needed me, too,” Tess said. Sure, Isadora DeLucca was sober now. But what would she do if Tess left her?

      Tess picked up her drink again. “Anyway, here I am, thirty years old and living two miles from home, defending truth, justice and the American way for twenty-two thousand a year.” She laughed self-consciously. “Now you’ll tell me I have a Super Girl complex and I’ll have to slug you.”

      “No,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

      “Right. You’ll just think it.”

      He gave her one of his straight, cool looks. “You have no idea what I think of you.”

      Her heart slammed into her ribs. She had a slow-motion moment when the smoky, raucous bar swirled and faded and refocused with Jarek as its center, his calm eyes and his firm mouth and his blunt-tipped hands turning the bottle.

      She felt the heat crawl in her cheeks, and then a new voice rattled between them like ice cubes dropped into a glass.

      “Are you going to introduce me to this seriously hot-looking babe, or do I need to find an excuse to drive to Mayberry?”

      Tess blinked.

      A man stood at Jarek’s shoulder. She recognized one of the detectives from the booth by the door, the young one with the ruffled hair and creased jacket.

      Jarek looked resigned. “Tess, this idiot with the suit and no manners is my brother Aleksy.”

      The Boy Scout. She recovered enough to offer her hand. “Tess DeLucca.”

      “Alex. It’s a pleasure.” His smile was wide, his handshake firm, and his eyes assessing.

      She let him hold her hand two beats too long, aware of the look that passed between him and his brother.

      “You don’t mind if I join you?” he asked.

      Jarek stood. “Actually, we were just leaving.”

      “There’s gratitude,” Aleksy complained. “You owe me.”

      Jarek tossed two quarters on the cloudy surface of the bar. “That’s for the phone call. We’ll settle the rest later.”

      “Wait a minute.” Do not overreact, Tess told herself. “He called to tell you I was here?”

      Jarek hesitated.

      “Take the fifth, bro,” Aleksy advised him.

      Tess stiffened with sudden certainty. Of course he called. Her stomach sank. Cops stuck together. Why else would Jarek show up at two in the morning at a cop-and-groupie bar on Belmont? Because he’d been drawn by some magical, electrical connection between them? What a joke.

      But not nearly as big a laugh as the fact that somewhere at the back of her pathetic, needy little mind, Tess had accepted that he must have done exactly that.

      Because he drew her.

      “What did he tell you?” she demanded.

      “Aleksy mentioned there was a woman here asking questions,” Jarek admitted quietly. “From the description, I thought it might be you.”

      “And you drove down here to shut me up.”

      “Actually, he drove down to shut Nowicki up,” Aleksy said.

      She waited for Jarek to deny it. He didn’t.

      She straightened her spine. “Excuse me. I’m going home.”

      “Let me take you,” Jarek offered. “We can argue in the car.”

      She wouldn’t go home with him if he were the sexiest man alive and she hadn’t had sex in a billion years. Which was a good thing, because at least one of those was true.

      “I have my own car,” she said.

      His gaze went to her drink. “Are you okay to drive?”

      “It’s soda water,” she said through her teeth.

      He nodded. “Fine. I’ll follow you, then.”

      Aleksy raised an eyebrow. “You’re not spending the night at Mom and Pop’s?”

      “Why?” Jarek asked.

      “To see Allie.”

      “What’s the point? She’ll be busy getting ready for school in the morning. She won’t have time for me.”

      “Who is Allie?” Tess wanted to know.

      “His daughter,” Aleksy said.

      Tess sucked in a breath. “You have a daughter? Who lives with your parents?”

      Jarek’s eyes narrowed at her tone.

      “Just since Linda died,” Aleksy explained. “That’s why he took the job in Pleasantville.”

      Jarek shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay. I think we’re done here.”

      “I guess we are,” Tess said.

      He had a daughter.

      And he hadn’t shared even that much of himself with her. Not over breakfast, when they’d talked about their families, not tonight when she had asked him directly about his reasons for moving to Eden.

      Maybe he didn’t think the daughter was important.

      Maybe he didn’t think the interview was important.

      Maybe—and this was depressingly likely—Tess wasn’t all that important, either.

      She slid off her bar stool. Well, the hell with him. It wasn’t like they had a personal relationship. She didn’t even want a personal relationship. Not with any man. Certainly not with Officer Frosty here, with his hot kisses and his cool silence and his family secrets. Tess had more than enough family and plenty of secrets of her own.

      She tugged her sweater down over her suddenly cold midriff. Jarek Denko was only another story. Twenty column inches and maybe a picture above the fold. And she wasn’t about to let his tall, dark and silent routine stop her from doing the one thing she did well.

      “Nice talking to you,” Aleksy said cheerfully.

      “I’ll bet,” said Tess.

      She stalked out of the bar.

      Chapter 3

      He could have handled that better, Jarek acknowledged as he drove north.

      He watched the baleful gleam of Tess’s red taillights five car lengths ahead. She’d indulged in one short burst of speed and temper as they merged with a couple of trucks making an early morning run on Highway 12. But she settled down quickly enough. He had no trouble following her car. He wished he could follow her thought processes as easily.

      His hands tightened on the steering wheel. On the job, he was known for his ability to take all the facts of a case into account. But he’d sure miscalculated with Tess. He’d underestimated her determination to make him a news item. He’d misjudged the timing and the amount of the personal information he’d needed to give her to keep control of her story.

      And he definitely hadn’t reckoned on his own reaction to their kiss.

      He practically broke a sweat just thinking about it. About her. She was hot. And unexpectedly sweet. When he kissed her, his body went hard and his mind went blank. For a minute there, kissing her, he’d felt hot, too. Hotter and more dangerous than a stolen pistol, and about as likely to go off. Heady stuff for a disciplined cop and responsible family man.

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