stopped to have a drink and went to the mall. I know that because he shifted his language from we to she and I. That change shows a distancing. This problem continued when he got to his friend’s condo. He was hoping to…” Paige paused. “Well, let’s just say, hope is all he did.”
“Holy—” Detective Alvarado flicked a slightly amused look over her shoulder at McCall before turning back to Paige. “How the heck can you tell when someone doesn’t score?”
“The author mentioned that when he and his friend arrived at her condo, he turned on the lights,” Paige replied.
“So?” Tia asked. “It must have been dark out.”
“And turning on the lights would be taken for granted. So, mentioning the activity indicates it meant something.” Despite her best intention not to, Paige looked at McCall. She felt a streak of satisfaction to see Sergeant Lothario’s jaw locked tight and his eyes smoldering. “A reference to turning on the lights is prevalent in statements where a person wanted sex, but didn’t get it.”
“Why is that?” a man from a security consulting firm asked.
“No one knows for sure.” Paige held up a hand to ward off the inevitable protests. “That’s a long way from a scientific explanation. So is a cop’s following some hunch that winds up solving a crime. You can’t explain it. It just is.”
“Hey, Teach, can I get my assignment back before you read it?” a man’s voice spiked with humor asked.
“No can do.” Smiling, Paige opened her briefcase, slid the assignments inside, pleased she was already gaining converts to the investigative technique she deeply believed in. “Like I said, I told you a lot about myself. It’s only fair I learn a few things about each of you.”
Paige had excused the workshop attendees for lunch and had the classroom to herself. Or so she thought until she glanced up and saw Nate McCall moving down the aisle toward her with what she sensed was a deceptive calm. Seeing him for the first time on his feet, he was taller, leaner than she’d first guessed.
“Aren’t you going to lunch, Sergeant McCall?” she asked as she shut her briefcase. His cocky grin was just a memory; his face had taken on a closed look, and she decided he did the dead-eyed cop stare as well as anyone she’d ever seen.
“Kidd and Henderson will wait on me. I need to talk to you.”
Not you and I need to talk, or we need to talk, she automatically thought. Verbally, McCall was putting plenty of distance between them.
“About?”
“You know damn well what about. I want to know why you started snarling the instant you laid eyes on me. And then on your way out of the room why you made sure to drop your pen behind my chair so you’d have time to peg my handwriting.” He paused, giving her a pointed look that would make a civilian squirm in their shoes. “Jump in if I get any of this wrong.”
He might be a jerk but he wasn’t stupid, Paige thought, and felt her stomach tighten when he took a step forward.
“That way you could make sure you pulled my paper out of the stack so you could analyze it,” he continued. “Why single me out?”
Faced with cold, hard facts, Paige conceded it hadn’t been the smartest thing to let her personal baggage color her professional behavior toward one of her workshop attendees. Then again, Detective Studpuppy had asked for it.
“You leered at my legs.”
He raised a dark brow. “That’s it? My giving your legs an appreciative look made you decide payback was in order?”
“You leered.” She lifted her chin. “You reminded me of someone I don’t like. As a matter of fact, he’s a total weasel.”
Annoyance narrowed his eyes. “Are you always this quick to make assumptions about someone you’ve never before laid eyes on?”
Yes, she thought. Especially when the person was a man with the type of charmer’s grin that put a sizzle in her blood. She’d been pulled in once by a blinding grin that prevented her from seeing the truth. Never again.
She ran a hand across her briefcase while acknowledging how bitter, vindictive and totally lame she sounded. “Look, I had a rotten morning even before I got lost twice on my way here. That little encounter with you went all over me.”
“So you pulled out my paper on the off chance you could hammer me? What if I’d spent all day yesterday volunteering at an old folks’ home or something?”
It was her turn to arch a brow. “Then I doubt you’d have mentioned turning on the lights.”
“Lights,” he repeated with derision. “Your area of expertise might have merit, Carmichael, but I’m not buying your explanation that you know someone’s got sex on their mind just because they walk into a dark room and flip on a light switch.”
She smiled at the temper smoldering in his eyes. “Was I wrong about what happened between you and your companion?”
“We argued. The way you came up with that makes sense. And it isn’t a huge mental step to figure the odds are low of two people in the midst of a fight winding up in bed.”
“You think it was a good guess on my part?”
“Exactly.”
Paige eased out a breath, reminding herself it had also taken her time to buy into the merits of statement analysis. “You’re entitled to your opinion, Sergeant. Maybe as we get deeper into the subject matter it will change.”
He started to say something just as his cell phone chimed. Shoving back one flap of his suit coat, he pulled the unit off his belt and answered.
Watching him, Paige saw the way his eyes went flat and cool as he listened to the caller. No one had to tell her she’d just witnessed McCall slide into his cop’s skin. She’d done it often enough herself when she carried a badge.
After a minute passed, he said, “I’m on my way. Make sure the uniform keeps the scene secured. Until the lab guys get there, he doesn’t allow anyone in that freezer, including himself.”
He hung up, clipped the phone back on his belt. “I’ve got a homicide to work. Don’t expect me back today.”
Paige blinked. “You’re enrolled in my workshop and on call to work cases?”
“Have to. My partner’s on maternity leave. With three of us from Homicide taking your workshop, things are spread thin.”
“Hopefully you’ll rejoin us tomorrow.”
He paused and looked at her. Paige had the sense he was sizing her up with the same intensity he would if she were a suspect in the murder case he’d just been assigned.
“If I do make it back, how about giving me a break?”
She hoped he would be back. For reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt an intense challenge to make a believer of Nate McCall. “I’ll consider it, Sergeant.”
Hours later, Paige rose from behind the
