LITMIR.BIZ

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and Jake was tempted to deck him again.

      “I’ll get him into bed for you and get his shoes off,” Jake said instead.

      “The first door upstairs,” Norma said. “I think I’ll get him a few aspirin and some water. That might help him tomorrow morning. Did he fall?”

      Jake pretended he didn’t hear. Brian was leaning on him heavily. He tripped up the first step. Jake shifted his arm, lifting Brian’s feet in the air, and moved quickly. Brian grinned at him when they hit the landing.

      “Did I fall?” he said, laughing, but the sound was pathetic, bitter, and directed against himself. “Hell, yeah, I fell. Into your fist, right?”

      “Brian, give yourself a fucking break,” Jake muttered.

      Jake dropped Brian on the king-sized bed and did as he’d said, getting his shoes off. He was about to walk out when Brian said, “So…you know Norma.”

      “I saw her on a flight, Brian.”

      “I bet she’d rather sleep with you, too.”

      “Quit being such a royal pain,” Jake told him. “You’re one lucky bastard. You had a great wife, and now…seems this girl loves you. Don’t mess this one up. You’ve got another chance. Don’t be an idiot.”

      He started out.

      “So what’s it been like for you, Jake?” Brian called to him.

      He turned back. Brian was smiling ruefully. “The D.A.’s assistant. She was a real beauty. That lasted, what, three months? I hear there was a Hooters’ waitress—girl who was pure body. Ten dates, maybe? You’re still pining after Nan, too, aren’t you?”

      “Brian, sleep it off. Five years is a long time.”

      He went down the stairs as Norma was coming up them. “Thanks for bringing him home.”

      “Sure.”

      “Something like this went down last year, too. His wife’s birthday…that’s really all he ever says. I knew, soon after we met, of course, that she had died in a tragic accident. He must have really loved her. Anyway, thanks. A man who’s dealt with something like that needs help now and then. Hey, would you like coffee or something before heading out?”

      “Thank you, no.”

      “Well, thanks again. This was really good of you.”

      “No problem.”

      “Hey, I do remember you from a flight, you know. You’re a cop, right?”

      “Yeah, that’s right.”

      “So you knew his wife.”

      “Yes, I did. I was her partner.”

      Jake didn’t say anything more, just continued down the stairs and let himself out. When he returned to his houseboat, he discovered that Nick and Sharon had left him a covered dish of shrimp and pasta.

      Good. He was hungry. The long weekend had allowed him a day off, but moving the boat had given him plenty to do. He ate, realizing he was starved.

      He fell into bed, exhausted, but knew damned well it would be a while before he slept. Nancy’s birthday. She would have been thirty. Hell.

      It was usually good to sleep on a houseboat. The light rocking of the waves. Ocean air. Both usually eased his tensions.

      Not tonight.

      He tossed around for a while, thinking that maybe he shouldn’t have opted to spend the night alone. And he thought about Brian’s words.

      The D.A.’s assistant.

      The waitress.

      Yeah, there had been women in his life. But still, he would go so far…and back away. Hell, yes. He’d been in love with Nancy. Then. And now…

      Now she was a ghost in his life. A phantom. A memory, a scent. Sometimes, he would swear he could still hear her laughter.

      He compared every woman he met to her. And he’d never found anyone even remotely like her.

      Around two, he fell asleep. He awoke later in a sweat, having slid into the nightmare again. He’d been in the water. The clear ocean water. It had been a beautiful day. Light shone through. Then clouds covered it. The water grew murky. It was canal water, and he was in it, trying to backpedal, knowing what he was going to see. And he’d heard her voice….

      He got out of bed, made his way to the kitchen took a beer from the refrigerator, then went out to stand on deck. He needed to feel the ocean breeze in the night. He all but inhaled the beer, and he knew he was no more over any of this than Brian was.

      She would be lost, so feminine, so beautiful, quasi-tragic, talking to him about her personal life….

      Then so tough. She was capable in any situation, and she was as good as any guy on the force.

      She was his partner. She couldn’t keep things from him. If she knew anything, suspected anything…

      She hadn’t. At least, she had insisted that she hadn’t. But maybe she had been in a position to find out.

      What the hell had she been doing? He’d never known. And he should have. He’d been her partner, for Christ’s sake! She’d died in a car, remnants of alcohol and narcotics in her bloodstream. Accidental death, that had been the ruling. She’d lost control of her car. There had been no evidence of foul play. Even so, during the inquest, all the dirt had come out. Her troubled marriage. Her close friendship—more than friendship?—with Jake.

      She was gone.

      The victim of a terrible accident. He hadn’t believed it. Not then. Not now.

      And he’d never met anyone like her.

      Something suddenly stirred in his mind.

      A brief flash, an odd and fleeting sensation. Then he knew…. Earlier, he’d felt a strange sense of déjà vu. A sense of…

      Memory.

      Earlier that day. Maybe it had been because on some subconscious level he’d known it was Nancy’s birthday. But he had come across someone who reminded him of Nancy. Strange, too, because Nan had been tall, five-ten, dark, willowy. He hadn’t seen anyone like that.

      It hadn’t been that the girl looked like Nancy, he realized. It had been something in her manner, her self-confidence, her assurance. She’d had Nancy’s ability to stand her ground, undaunted, speak her mind…not back down, fight it out and still, somehow, leave a trace of magnetism behind.

      Nick’s niece. The redhead he’d bumped into that morning. Not small, but at best she was about five-six. He’d seen her before…but not often. Years ago she’d been around the place more, but she’d looked different back then, not much more than a kid. Gangly as a palm tree, a pile of flyaway hair, enormous green eyes, always running somewhere. Time had gone by; he hadn’t hung around Nick’s all that much lately. Not in almost five years, though he had applied for the new slip at the marina, the one he’d just moved into, almost a year ago now.

      She’d changed. She wasn’t gangly anymore. She was curved in all the right places, and her flyaway hair was more like a sexual beacon now. Attractive, yes. But what he remembered was her voice. Her indignation. Cool, aloof, even in anger, those eyes able to sizzle into someone with total condemnation.

      She was in the academy, Nick had told him.

      So the kid was going to be on the force. Great.

      With something about her that was so much like Nancy…

      Shit. It felt as if he’d suddenly been wrapped in ice.

      He hoped to hell she wasn’t too much like Nancy. A woman with too many ethics, too much determination—and not enough sense to be afraid.

      He didn’t even know her. Her life

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