which compelled her to move forward. Always forward for him—just in case.
* * *
Newly seated, Bryce rose again to get a better look at the woman taking long, measured steps as she crossed the squad room. Just the faintest of hip movement marked every step she took.
He had trouble drawing his eyes away.
His first thought was that she was a hell of what his grandfather would have referred to as “a looker.” His second was that she was one of the city’s residents coming in to file a complaint involving goods stolen during the execution of some sort of a robbery.
But then he took a second look at the box in her hands, a far smaller one than Phelps had used to carry out his possessions, but still a box. That caused Bryce to reassess his initial take.
As he watched the leggy blonde walk in his direction, Bryce was vaguely aware that he wasn’t the only one assessing the woman. Small wonder. The statuesque blonde had a no-nonsense gait that captured a man’s attention from the very first moment she entered his line of sight. Slender, she was wearing a straight, light gray skirt that stopped a few inches above her knee, making her look as if she was all leg.
And what legs! he caught himself thinking. They were the kind of legs that walked right into a man’s dreams and had him fantasizing all sorts of things he had no business fantasizing about—especially if it turned out that there was some sort of a working relationship that had to happen.
Snapping out of his momentary reverie, Bryce crossed over to the newcomer as he summoned his most inviting smile.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
The low voice he heard in response sounded as if it had been wrapped in honey and dipped in warm whiskey before being poured over a glass of ice.
“With what?”
The woman’s response caught him off guard. Bryce heard himself say the first two things that came into his head. “With the box you’re holding. With finding whoever you’re looking for. Anything,” he concluded, leaving the offer open-ended.
“The box isn’t heavy,” she replied, tightening her hold on the box with its meager contents—just a few basic manuals she’d found useful during the execution of her job. “And I’m not looking for a ‘who,’ I’m looking for a desk.”
The grin was instantaneous, widening his mouth to reveal two rows of snowstorm-white teeth. “Fortunately the one next to mine just happens to be empty,” Bryce 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
