straight.” Syd lifted her chin. “Seven rapes and not a single word of warning in any of the papers. It was a story that needed to be written—desperately. I figured I’d write it—and I’ll write the exclusive behind-the-scenes story about tracking and catching the rapist, too.”
He shook his head, obviously in disgust, and Syd’s temper flared. “You know, if I were a man,” she snapped, “you’d be impressed by my assertive behavior.”
“So did you actually see this guy, or did you just make that part up?” he asked.
Syd refused to let him see how completely annoyed he made her feel. She forced her voice to sound even, controlled. “He nearly knocked me over coming down the stairs. But like I told the police, the light’s bad in the hallways. I didn’t get a real clear look at him.”
“Is there a chance it was good enough for you to look at a lineup of my men and eliminate them as potential suspects?” he demanded.
Lucy sighed. “Lucky, I don’t—”
“I want Bobby Taylor and Wes Skelly on my team.”
“Bobby’s fine. He’s Native American,” she told Syd. “Long dark hair, about eight feet tall and seven feet wide—definitely not our man. But Wes…”
“Wes shouldn’t be a suspect,” Lucky argued.
“Police investigations don’t work that way,” Lucy argued in response. “Yes, he shouldn’t be a suspect. But Chief Zale wants every individual on your team to be completely, obviously not the man we’re looking for.”
“This is a man who’s put his life on the line for me—for your husband—more times than you want to know. If Sydney could look at Skelly and—”
“I really don’t remember much about the man’s face,” Syd interrupted. “He came flying down the stairs, nearly wiped me out, stopped a few steps down. I’m not even sure he turned all the way around. He apologized, and was gone.”
Lucky leaned forward. “He spoke to you?”
God, he was good-looking. Syd forced away the little flutter she felt in her stomach every time he gazed at her. She really was pathetic. She didn’t like this man. In fact, she was well on her way to disliking him intensely, and yet simply looking into his eyes was enough to make her knees grow weak.
Obviously, it had been way too long since she’d last had sex. Not that her situation was likely to change any time in the near future.
“What did he say?” Lucky asked. “His exact words?”
Syd shrugged, hating to tell him what the man had said, but knowing he wouldn’t let up until she did.
Just do it. She took a deep breath. “He said, ‘Sorry, bud.’”
“Sorry…bud?”
Syd felt her face flush. “Like I said. The light was bad in there. He must’ve thought I was, you know, a man.”
Lucky O’Donlon didn’t say anything aloud, but as he sat back in his seat, the expression on his face spoke volumes. His gaze traveled over her, taking in her unfeminine clothes, her lack of makeup. An understandable mistake for any man to make, he telegraphed with his eyes.
He finally looked over at Lucy. “The fact remains that I can’t possibly work with a reporter following me around.”
“Neither can I,” she countered.
“I’ve worked for years as an investigative reporter,” Syd told them both. “Hasn’t it occurred to either one of you that I might actually be able to help?”
CHAPTER THREE
THIS SHOULDN’T BE TOO HARD.
Lucky was a people person—charming, charismatic, likeable. He knew that about himself. It was one of his strengths.
He could go damn near anywhere and be best friends with damn near anyone within a matter of hours.
And that was what he had to do right here, right now with Sydney Jameson. He had to become her best friend and thus win the power to manipulate her neatly to the sidelines. Come on, Syd, help out your old pal Lucky by staying out of the way.
His soon-to-be-old-pal Syd sat in stony silence beside him in his pickup truck, arms folded tightly across her chest, as he drove her back to her car which was parked in the police-station lot.
Step one. Get a friendly conversation going. Find some common ground. Family. Most people could relate to family.
“So my kid sister’s getting married in a few weeks.” Lucky shot Syd a friendly smile as well, but he would’ve gotten a bigger change of expression from the Lincoln head at Mount Rushmore. “It’s kind of hard to believe. You know, it feels like she just turned twelve. But she’s twenty-two, and in most states that’s old enough for her to do what she wants.”
“In every state it’s old enough,” Syd said. What do you know? She was actually listening. At least partly.
“Yeah,” Lucky said. “I know. That was a joke.”
“Oh,” she said and looked back out the window.
O-kay.
Lucky kept on talking, filling the cab of the truck with friendly noise. “I went into San Diego to see her, intending to tell her no way. I was planning at least to talk her into waiting a year, and you know what she tells me? I bet you can’t guess in a million years.”
“Oh, I bet I can’t either,” Syd said. Her words had a faintly hostile ring, but at least she was talking to him.
“She said, we can’t wait a year.” Lucky laughed. “And I’m thinking murder, right? I’m thinking where’s my gun, I’m going to at the very least scare the hell out of this guy for getting my kid sister pregnant, and then Ellen tells me that if they wait a year, this guy Greg’s sperm will expire.”
He had Syd’s full attention now.
“Apparently, Greg had leukemia as a teenager, years and years ago. And before he started the treatment that would save him but pretty much sterilize him, he made a few deposits in a sperm bank. The technology’s much better now and frozen sperm has a longer, um, shelf life, so to speak, but Ellen’s chances of having a baby with the sperm that Greg banked back when he was fifteen is already dropping.”
Lucky glanced at Syd, and she looked away. Come on, he silently implored her. Play nice. Be friends. I’m a nice guy.
“Ellen really loves this guy,” he continued, “and you should see the way he looks at her. He’s too old for her by about seventeen years, but it’s so damn obvious that he loves her. So how could I do anything but wish them luck and happiness?”
Syd actually graced him with a glance. “How are your parents taking this?”
Lucky shook his head, glad at the perfect opportunity to segue into poor-little-orphaned-me. This always won him
