LITMIR.BIZ

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The arm heaved over his face was corded and looked strong. She hadn’t realized last night just how…well, muscled he was.

      He hadn’t used the sheet she’d given him. He still had his jeans on, and she was very grateful for that. But the snap was open, and the dark golden hair on his chest tapered down, narrowing into a V until it disappeared beneath the denim. Kate took in a deep breath and ran a finger under her collar. She took a step backward from the sofa, then two. Coffee. She needed coffee. Now.

      She squared her shoulders and turned for the kitchen. Then she stared at her counter, and a sound of pure distress caught in her throat.

      There was a carton of milk sitting out. A whole half gallon. And it was the good stuff, too, not two percent, not skim, but the carton she used in recipes. Her gaze flew around the kitchen. She knew every move he had made by the time she breathed again.

      There were rye crumbs on the counter. His cell phone sat beside them. She hurried around the breakfast bar and yanked open the refrigerator door. Within another thirty seconds, she knew that both her roast beef and the horseradish sauce had been decimated.

      That didn’t particularly bother her. She cooked for others to enjoy, after all. But the waste infuriated her—a perfectly good half gallon of milk!

      “What have you done?”

      Her cry went through Raphael’s unconscious like a jet breaking the sound barrier. It boomed his heart into sudden overdrive. He rolled and groped beneath the sofa for the gun he had tucked there after removing it from his waistband last night. When he landed on his feet, he was armed. “What?”

      Astonishment—and maybe just a little fear—punched the air right out of Kate’s chest. “Put that away!”

      Raphael looked around. There was no one in the apartment but them. “What?” he asked again.

      “That…that weapon!”

      Raphael looked down at himself. Sleep tried to cling to his mind like a sticky spiderweb, making his thoughts track too slowly. “It’s been called a lot of things but—”

      “The gun! Are you crazy? What kind of person are you?”

      Raphael finally came fully awake. “Me? What the hell did you scream for?”

      “I want a new baby-sitter.” She turned her back on him smartly—he doubted if a trained cadet could pivot quite that cleanly—and went to the kitchen. She grabbed the telephone on the wall.

      “Your hair’s sticking straight up from your head.”

      Kate gave a cry and dropped the phone. She plastered both hands to her skull. Of course it was. She’d stuck her fingers into it in dismay when she’d seen the mess he’d made of her kitchen.

      She smoothed her hair frantically, then was appalled to realize that she even cared what he thought. She dropped her hands.

      One wild curl had escaped her effort, he realized. It made him itch to touch it, to see if it would wrap around his finger with a life of its own. He was losing his mind.

      “I don’t want you here,” she said.

      “Yeah. We’ve been all through that.” He snapped his jeans and tucked the gun into them at his back.

      Kate struggled for reason. “I understand that the authorities think I’m in danger, but I want them to send someone else to protect me. Clearly, this isn’t going to work.”

      Something vaguely uncomfortable gripped Raphael’s stomach. He told himself it was just the way she talked. It was really starting to get to him. Clearly… Then again, he’d rarely been vetoed by any woman, for any reason on any job.

      “Why not?” he heard himself ask.

      “You’re…you’re…” Kate crossed her arms over her chest and wished he would put a shirt on. “Chaos,” she finished.

      “I’m chaos? You screamed.”

      “You wasted a whole half gallon of milk while I slept! And you woke up and pointed a gun at me!”

      “I thought you were in danger!”

      “Why on earth would you think that?”

      “Because you were caterwauling!”

      This time he could almost predict what she would do before it happened. That sniff. The immediate hoisting of her shoulders. “I was not caterwauling.”

      “You sounded like a cat with its tail trapped in a door.”

      Color flooded her cheeks. Raphael watched the phenomenon.

      Then, finally, for the first time, he noticed the way she was dressed. She wore khaki slacks, socks and neatly laced sneakers. This was topped by a white turtleneck, albeit a sleeveless one. Except for her arms, every inch of skin from her chin on down was covered, laced, pressed, creased. She looked as though she had been up for hours already.

      Raphael glanced at his watch. It was only twenty after six.

      He scrubbed his face with his hands. He needed a shower and a shave. Of course, he had nothing with him to shave with, and she definitely didn’t seem the type to keep an extra razor on hand for unexpected male guests. Let her call Plattsmier, he thought. The department was full of by-the-book rookies who would put her milk carton away after they drank from it, and they’d both be a hell of a lot happier if one of them was assigned to her. But Raphael doubted if any of them had ticked off the commissioner just lately, or if they knew a blessed thing about Philadelphia’s organized crime netherworld.

      Nope, he thought, he was stuck with her.

      “Call in to your diner,” he said. “Tell them you won’t be in. I’m going to take a shower.”

      “No.”

      He’d already turned away from her. Now he looked back. She was holding the milk carton in front of her in both hands, as though it were a smoking gun.

      “We talked about this last night,” she said, drawing herself up again. “I have responsibilities. I intend to meet them.”

      Raphael felt his blood pressure creeping upward again and it wasn’t even yet six-thirty in the morning. Then he realized that there was always more than one way to skin a cat.

      He thought of her labeled food containers. Of her scheduling diary with the times of calls noted down. “Yeah? Counting the one to your commonwealth?”

      Kate frowned. “What are you talking about?”

      “You’re one of two prime witnesses in a murder investigation. Seems to me you have a certain responsibility to the good people of Pennsylvania, too.” Unless he badly missed his guess, this was one woman who had never missed a chance to vote. Hell, she probably wrote her comments in the margins of the ballot.

      “I fail to see—”

      “You’re bait.”

      “I’m what?”

      “Bait. You’re alive. You might have seen something. In all likelihood, someone is going to come after you in an effort to remedy that problem. When it happens, I’m going to nail his—”

      “Spare me the profanity,” she said quickly.

      “Backside to the wall.”

      “I take it self-confidence is not a problem for you.”

      “No. Not when it comes to my work.”

      That quelled her. A new flatness had come to his tone. It was unapologetic and brooked no argument. Kate felt like she was somehow losing this discussion. “What does that have to do with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?”

      “The long and short of it is that by cooperating with me, you’ll be helping to take a criminal off the streets.”

      She cocked her brows. It irritated the hell out of him.

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