LITMIR.BIZ

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told her, pivoting on the ball of his foot and doing a 180 so that he was once again facing the direction he had come from.

      “Fortunately,” Scottie echoed, her emotionless tone giving no indication she thought it was anything of the kind.

      Since he had pointed to the newly vacated desk, Scottie walked toward it. Bryce was right behind her. He took the opportunity to drink in every nuance of her body from that vantage point before hurrying to catch up so that he could at least be at her side when she set her things down.

      Which he was.

      “I guess you’re taking Detective Phelps’s place,” Bryce said as she put the small box on the desk.

      Ordinarily, Bryce didn’t have to search for an icebreaker or an opening line. In his experience, women, even those who were as easy on the eyes as this one was, didn’t need much encouragement when it came to making conversation. They were usually all too eager to do three-quarters of the talking, if not more.

      But this one was different. She didn’t seem inclined to talk, which in itself was unusual. Unlike a couple of his brothers, Bryce had never fancied himself to be the strong, silent type. Besides, he’d found that the more someone talked, the more they wound up revealing about themselves. He had never been one who cared for surprises.

      He liked knowing things right from the start, liked having things all laid out in front of him, nice and visible.

      The blonde at Phelps’s desk obviously didn’t subscribe to that philosophy. At least, it didn’t seem that way.

      “Apparently,” the leggy blonde said as she almost bonelessly slid into Phelps’s chair.

      Having gotten involved in observing what was nothing short of poetry in motion, Bryce blinked then narrowed his eyes slightly as he looked at the newcomer.

      “Excuse me?”

      Scottie recreated the last two bits of dialogue. “You said it looked like I was taking Phelps’s place. I said ‘apparently.’ There,” she announced in a tone that was nothing short of dismissive. “I think that we’re all caught up.”

      Bryce pulled over his own chair, positioning it so that it was inches away from facing hers, and then straddled it. He crossed his arms over the top of the creased black padding as he looked at her. His sharp green eyes all but bored right into her, giving the impression that he could glimpse everything clear down to the bone, every thought, every fear, everything.

      “All caught up?” Bryce echoed with just the slightest bit of mockery in his voice. “No, I don’t think so. Not by a long shot.” And then his easygoing manner returned as he asked, “Don’t you want to know my name?”

      Soft, expressive blue eyes rose to look into his. “Bryce Cavanaugh,” she replied.

      Bryce’s amused grin widened. So she’d done her homework. But why? Was this woman his new partner? And how did everyone but him know that he was getting a new partner?

      “Okay, so you know my name,” Bryce conceded. “Don’t you want to know anything else?”

      The same slightly disinterested tone she’d used before now accompanied the single word that emerged next from her lips.

      “No.”

      Undaunted, Bryce informed her, “Well, I want to know some things.” When his seatmate raised her eyes to his again, giving him the impression that she was waiting for his question, he asked it. “Just who the hell are you?”

      “Detective Alexandra Scott.” She stopped short of telling him that most people wound up calling her Scottie. He’d find his way to that soon enough—and if he didn’t, that was okay, too. Her priority had always been solving cases, not nicknames.

      “Where did you come from?” Bryce questioned, his eyes once again washing over her. Who was this woman and had she been around all this time without him seeing her? He really needed to get out more. “It’s too early for Christmas, so I know it wasn’t a sled with eight tiny reindeer that brought you here. Besides,” he continued as if he was really being serious, “I don’t think I was that good a boy this year to merit someone like you under my Christmas tree.”

      Scottie blew out a breath. If she didn’t give him an answer and set him straight, this one looked as if he could go on talking nonsense like this indefinitely. There’d been a number of Cavanaughs in Homicide Division, as well, so she was well acquainted with the way they behaved.

      She supposed this was what came of having a huge family to fall back on. People like that could afford to wisecrack and act as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

      It was different for her. All there was in her world were cares. Big cares. She’d never had anyone to fall back on. Her father had died before she was eight and her mother, it had soon became apparent, hadn’t been able to keep it together for more than a few days at a time. She wound up mothering her mother as well as Ethan, who was a product of one of her mother’s one-night stands.

      Things had never gone smoothly, but they had gone well enough for a while. But then, in a bid for “uniqueness,” Ethan had begun to act out, hanging around with this one small group until he’d gotten in trouble and gotten caught.

      It was easy to see that the path he was on had only one final destination. Temporarily putting her own life on hold, she’d sued to become her brother’s guardian, citing that her alcoholic, pill-popping mother was unfit. Shortly after she had, her mother had overdosed and died. That had been over seven years ago.

      Scottie had refused to let herself cry. She’d just pushed on, holding down two part-time jobs, going to school online and trying to make a home for herself and Ethan. For a while, things were going all right. Ethan behaved and she wound up joining the Aurora police force.

      And then Ethan had fallen back on his old ways. She’d tracked him down, dragged him back and, over the course of one very long weekend during which she’d locked herself up with Ethan, she’d managed to eventually get through to him.

      He’d been out of trouble, holding down a job for close to five years.

      Until now. She needed to find him before it was too late.

      “I just transferred from the Homicide Division,” she heard herself telling the inquisitive detective. She knew she needed to answer just enough of his questions to not arouse any undue suspicions as to her real motives for the transfer.

      “By choice?” he asked.

      Why was he asking her that? Did he think she had an ulterior motive for getting into his department? “Yes.”

      Bryce’s expression was completely unreadable. “Whose?”

      She looked at him quizzically for a moment before saying, “Mine.”

      Bryce nodded. “I can’t say I blame you. It can get to you, looking at dead bodies all the time. Even one can be too many for some people.”

      “Thank you for your understanding,” Scottie said crisply, hoping that was the end of it.

      It wasn’t.

      Bryce made no effort to vacate his chair or move it back where it belonged. “The seat’s still warm.”

      Scottie blinked, totally lost. “What?”

      “From my last partner. He just now literally got up and walked out the door a couple minutes ago.” Bryce nodded toward the doorway. “I think you even might have passed each other. Anyway,” Bryce said, shifting to another topic, “I’m surprised they found a substitute so soon.”

      “I’m not a substitute, I’m a transfer,” Scottie corrected. When she’d put in for the transfer, no one had said anything about a position being vacated. But given the current string of break-ins, she’d just assumed that the department would be open to getting extra help.

      Bryce misread her defensive tone. “I didn’t mean to make that

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