LITMIR.BIZ

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hand and he made a pretty scary package.

      Each time she looked at him tonight—damaged and disfigured—sadness had trickled through her, as if she had just watched someone take a beautiful painting by an Italian master and rip a seam through the middle.

      Yes, that probably made her shallow. She couldn’t help herself.

      He did smell good, though. When he shifted again, through the sordid scents of the police car, she caught the subtle notes of some kind of outdoorsy scent—sandalwood and cedar and perhaps bergamot, with a little whiskey chaser thrown in.

      “I’m sorry you were arrested, but it’s your own fault.”

      He scoffed in the darkness. “My fault. How do you figure that, Ms. Beaumont?”

      “We are handcuffed together,” she pointed out. “I think you could probably call me Genevieve.”

      “Genevieve.” He mocked the way she had pronounced her own name, as her Parisian friends had for the past two years—Jahn-vi-ev, instead of the way her family and everyone she knew here had always said it, Jen-a-vive—and she felt ridiculously pretentious.

      “You didn’t have to come riding to my rescue like some kind of cowboy stud trying to waste his Friday-night paycheck. I was handling things.”

      He snorted. “Last I checked, Genevieve, that bitch looked like she was ready to take out your eyeball with her claws. Trust me. You would have missed it.”

      Like he missed being able to see out of two eyes? She wanted to ask but didn’t dare.

      “You wouldn’t be here if you had just minded your own business.”

      “It’s a bad habit of mine. I don’t like to watch little cream puffs get splattered.”

      It annoyed her that he, like everybody else she knew, thought so little of her.

      “I’m not a cream puff.”

      “Oh, sorry. I suppose it would be éclair.”

      He said the word with the same exaggerated French accent he had used on her name, and she frowned, though she was aware of a completely inappropriate bubble of laughter in her throat. It must be the lingering effect of those stupid mojitos.

      “I believe the word you’re looking for is profiterole. An éclair is oval and the filling is piped in while a profiterole, or cream puff, is round and the pastry is cut in half then some is scraped away before the rest is filled with whipped cream.”

      It was one of those inane, obscure details she couldn’t help spouting when she was nervous.

      He snorted. “Wow. You are quite a font of information, Genevieve. This evening is turning into all kinds of interesting.”

      She couldn’t see his features well through the snow-dimmed streetlights but she was quite certain he was laughing at her. She hated it when people laughed at her—one of the biggest reasons she hated being here in Hope’s Crossing.

      Before she could respond, the vehicle stopped and she saw the solid, somehow intimidating shape of the police station outside the ice-etched window.

      A moment later, the door on her side of the vehicle opened and Pete Redmond loomed over her. “You two having fun back here?”

      Dylan didn’t answer, making her wonder if he had been having fun.

      “What do you think?” Genevieve tried for her frostiest tone. Pete had tried to ask her out once when she was home for the summer, before her engagement to Sawyer.

      “I think you’re in a pickle, Ms. Beaumont,” he answered.

      Oh, she could think of a few stronger words than that.

      “I think we all need to suit up for the you-know-what to hit the fan after Mayor Beaumont gets that phone call,” the female police officer with the split ends and the improper lipstick shade said as she helped pull Genevieve out of the backseat and Dylan, by default, after her.

      Her stomach cramped again, just picturing her father’s stern disapproval. What if he decided her latest screw-up was too much? What if he decided not to give her the chance to sell Pearl’s house as her escape out of town?

      She might be stuck here forever, having to look for excitement at a dive like The Speckled Lizard.

      A sudden burst of wind gusted through, flailing snow at them, rattling the bare branches of a tree in front of the station. Gen shivered.

      “Let’s get you two inside,” the female officer said. “This is shaping up to be a nasty one. We’re going to be dealing with slide-offs all night.”

      Despite the nerves crawling through her, the warmth of the building seemed almost welcoming.

      She had never been inside a police station. Somehow she expected it to be...grittier. Instead, it looked just like any other boring office. Cubicles, fluorescent lighting, computer monitors. It could be a bland, dreary insurance office somewhere.

      She was aware of a small, ridiculous pang of disappointment that her walk on the wild side had led her to this. On the other hand, she was still shackled to the scruffy, sexy-smelling, damaged Dylan Caine.

      The officers led them not to some cold interrogation room with a single lightbulb and a straight-backed chair but to what looked like a standard break room, with a microwave, refrigerator, coffee maker.

      Yet another illusion shattered.

      “Have a seat,” Pete said.

      “Can you take these off now?” Dylan raised their joined arms.

      The female officer seemed to find the whole situation highly amusing, for reasons Gen didn’t quite understand.

      “I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “We wouldn’t want the two of you starting any more fights. Maybe we should leave it on a few more minutes, until we give Chief McKnight time to assess the situation.”

      Genevieve drew in a breath. The McKnights. She couldn’t escape them anywhere in this cursed town.

      “What about our phone calls?” Dylan said. “I need to call my attorney, who also happens to be my brother Andrew. I’m sure Ms. Beaumont wants to call her father.”

      “You don’t speak for me,” she said quickly. “I don’t need to call my father.”

      “But you’re going to need an attorney.”

      She was exhausted suddenly after the ordeal of the evening and the cut on her cheek burned. Her brain felt scrambled, but she said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’ll use yours. Andrew Caine is my attorney, too.”

      Her father would find out about this, of course. She couldn’t hide it. For all she knew, somebody had already told him his only daughter had been scrapping in a bar like some kind of Roller Derby queen. But she couldn’t endure more of his disappointment tonight, the heavy, inescapable weight of her own failure.

      “Seriously?” Officer Olivarez—now, there was a mouthful—looked skeptical. “You’re sure you don’t want to call Daddy to bail you out?”

      “Positive.” She looked at the two officers and at Dylan. “I think we can all agree, the last thing any of us needs tonight is for my father to come down here. Am I right?”

      “I doubt anything you do will stop that,” Dylan drawled.

      He was right. Someone at the Lizard had probably already dropped a dime on her. Wasn’t that the appropriate lingo? William was probably already on his way over but she wasn’t going to be the one to call him.

      “Andrew Caine is my attorney. End of story,” she declared. “Now will you please take these things off?”

      After a pause, the female officer pulled out a key to the handcuffs and freed them. Instead of elation, Genevieve fought down an odd disappointment as she rubbed the

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