the adventure begin, Brian thought.
Like a mechanic with an ear for the machines he worked with, Brian liked hearing the sound of a well-tuned engine. He had a feeling that was what he had here. Kendra would just have to get over the initial period of adjustment. But it would be worth it.
“Well, unless there’s anything else,” Brian said, a note of finality in his voice, “you’re dismissed.” And then, as the two rose to their feet, he added with a smile, “Make me proud.”
“Yes, sir,” Kendra replied, forcing a smile she didn’t feel to her lips.
“Do my best, sir.” Matt fired off the casual promise as he turned to leave. He caught the dark look that his new partner shot him.
The woman was very attractive, but she didn’t know it. He’d never had a female partner before. This was going to be interesting. Very interesting.
Kendra strode out of the inner, then outer office ahead of him, putting distance between them quickly. She didn’t bother to pretend to want to talk—because she didn’t. She was busy dealing with this latest curve that Fate had tossed her.
Matt merely stretched his legs and shortened that distance to nothing in a matter of a few steps.
He caught up to her way before the elevator, but she kept on walking, not acknowledging his presence. It was as if she’d been encapsulated in a world all her own.
If only, she thought.
“So what do I call you?” Abilene asked as he reached over her head and pressed the Up button on the wall before she could.
Forced to acknowledge him, she had a feeling her best bet was to put him in his place right from the very beginning. If she was wrong about him, there would be time enough to soften her approach.
Kendra looked up at him—she was going to need to get higher heels, she decided, then almost instantly rescinded that thought. A little distance between them might be a good thing. Being too close to him might blunt the edge she would need. There was no getting away from the fact that he was bone-meltingly good-looking and close proximity might cause her to forget.
“Good at my job,” she answered.
Matt considered her reply for a second and then nodded. “Okay, but that’s a little long. How about I just call you ‘Good’?”
The elevator arrived and she turned her back on him as she entered, silently cursing Joe for having left her to undertake a life revolving around fly-fishing.
Chapter 2
When Abilene got off behind her, Kendra turned around to look at her new—and hopefully very temporary—partner. Why was he following her?
“Shouldn’t you be going up to your floor to get your things?” she asked him.
Just for a moment, he’d allowed himself to watch her walk, appreciatively taking in the way her hips swayed ever so slightly. Her question pulled him back to reality. He nodded toward the squad room just behind her. “I thought I’d see where my desk is first.”
“And what?” she asked. “If it doesn’t meet with your standards, you’ll stay where you are?”
Abilene grinned, amused. “Is that a hopeful note in your voice I hear?” He studied her for a moment, looking beyond her high cheekbones and her fascinating eyes. “You don’t do change very well, do you?”
The last thing she wanted to put up with was being analyzed. Kendra’s eyes blazed as she tossed her head. “What I do or don’t do is none of your business,” she informed him.
The way he saw it, that wasn’t quite true. “Some of it will be. And I want to see where my desk is so I don’t have to wander around aimlessly when I come down with an armload of my stuff.” He looked at her with eyes that seemed earnest. “Does that meet with your approval?”
Rather than answer him, she merely sighed and beckoned him to follow her through the door. Crossing the floor, she stopped at what seemed to be the center of the room.
“This is yours,” she told him, gesturing toward the cleared expanse of desk that butted up against hers.
A greater contrast between the two areas would have been difficult to find. One desk was the picture of virgin territory without so much as a scrap of paper on it, while the other desk bore silent testimony to a very cluttered style. There was a computer off to one side, its keyboard stretched out before it rather than neatly tucked out of sight. The rest of the desk was buried beneath files and a snowstorm of scattered, interweaving papers. Not so much as a square inch of desktop was visible.
Matt made no verbal comment, but the way his mouth curved seemed to say it all. At least, she read a great deal into it.
Kendra took umbrage at what she perceived as criticism from her new, God-help-her, partner. Periodically, she went through everything on her desk and cleared spaces, trying her best to organize the raft of papers into some sort of a system, but inevitably, the stacks would bleed into one another again, merging and creating a chaotic pile.
“I’ve got a system,” she retorted defensively in response to the amusement in Abilene’s liquid-green eyes.
“I’m sure you do.” To the untrained ear, Abilene’s mild tone sounded completely agreeable. Why, then, did it make her want to scratch his eyes out or at least challenge him to a weapons proficiency contest on the gun range?
Absently, Matt opened the center drawer of his new desk, then checked, one by one, a few of the other drawers. Like the surface of the desk, they were all pristinely clean.
He shut the last drawer. “Your old partner did a thorough job cleaning things out. He didn’t leave anything behind.”
“Not even any hope,” Kendra murmured under her breath. The amused sound coming from her new partner told her that her voice hadn’t been quite as low as she’d thought.
Great, Pretty Boy has hearing like a bat.
Stepping back, Abilene pushed his chair into his desk. “I’ll go get my stuff now.”
“I can hardly wait,” Kendra deadpanned, pasting a pained smile on her lips.
Matt paused for a moment, his eyes slowly sliding down the length of this sharp-tongued woman. Thanks to his chaotic upbringing, he was basically nomadic in his lifestyle and his relationships. It gave him the ability to take whatever came down the road because, good or bad, he knew it was only temporary and would eventually change.
“You know,” he told her, “I’m really not such a bad guy to work with. Not as good as some, but better than most. You might want to put the pitchfork down, Good, and reserve judgment for a while.”
The fact that Abilene wasn’t heaping endless laurels on himself surprised her. Someone like him, who exuded sensuality with his every movement, ordinarily had the inside track on vanity, possessing an ego that made passage through narrow doorways an ongoing challenge.
She supposed she could be wrong about Abilene, but she didn’t care to debate
