the handle of the screen door a firm tug, let the door squeak open a noisy inch or two before releasing it to snap shut again.
Come on. An unlocked door?
It made him feel grim. And determined.
This cozy little world was practically begging for a healthy dose of what he had in abundance.
Cynicism.
He backed off the steps and stood regarding the house.
“She’s in the back. Sarah’s left that rhubarb a bit too long.”
Sullivan started. See? It had gotten to him. His guard had been down just enough not to notice that his every move was being monitored by the next-door-neighbor. She was a wizened gnome, ensconced in a deep Adirondack chair.
From under a tuft of cotton-ball hair, her bright black marble eyes regarded him with amused curiosity rather than the deep suspicion a stranger should be regarded with.
“You’re the new policeman,” she said.
So, he wasn’t a stranger. There was no anonymity in a small town. Not even on your day off, in jeans and a T-shirt.
He nodded, still a little taken aback by how trust was automatically instilled in him just because he was the new cop on the block.
In Detroit, nine times out of ten, the exact opposite had been true, at least in the hard neighborhoods where he had plied his trade.
“Nice thing you did. With that dog.”
Was there one single person on the face of the earth who didn’t know? Sullivan was beginning to hate the expression gone viral more than any other.
She wouldn’t think it was so nice if she knew how often since then he just wished he’d let the damn thing go down the river, raging with spring runoff, instead of jumping in after it.
He thought of it wriggling against him as he lay on the shore of the river afterward, gasping for breath. The puppy, soaked, another layer of freezing on top of his own freezing, had curled up on his exposed skin, right on top of his heart, whimpering and licking him.
Sullivan knew he didn’t really wish that he hadn’t gone in after it. He just wished that he wished it. And that a person with the cell phone had not recorded his leap into the swollen Kettle River and then posted it on the internet where it seemed the whole world had seen it.
“How is the dog?” she asked.
“Still at the vet,” he answered, “but he’s going to be fine.”
“Has anyone claimed him yet”?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m sure there will be a long lineup of people who want to adopt him if his owner doesn’t show up.”
“Oh, yeah,” he agreed.
Because of the video, the Kettle Bend Police Department was fielding a dozen calls a day about that dog.
Sullivan followed the narrow concrete path where it curved around the side of the house and then led him down a passageway between houses. Then the path opened into a long, narrow backyard.
There was no word for it.
Except perhaps enchanting.
For a moment he stood, breathing it all in: waxy leaves; mature trees; curving flower beds whose dark mounding loam met the crisp edge of freshly cut grass.
There was a sense of having entered a grotto, deeply private.
Sacred.
Sullivan snorted at himself, but a little uneasily this time.
He saw her then.
Crouched beside a fence lined with rows of vigorously growing, elephant-eared plants.
She was totally engrossed in what she was doing, yanking at the thin red stalks of the huge-leafed plants.
It must be the rhubarb her neighbor had mentioned.
She already had a stack of it beside her. Her face was hidden in the shade of a broad-brimmed hat, the light catching her mouth, where her tongue was caught between her teeth in concentration.
She was wearing a shapeless flowered tank top and white shorts, smudged with dirt, but the long line of strong legs, already beginning to tan, took his breath away.
As he watched, she tugged vigorously on one of the plants. When the stalk parted with the ground, she nearly catapulted over backward. When she righted herself, she went very still, as if she knew, suddenly, she was not alone.
Without getting up, she pivoted slowly on the heels of her feet and looked at him, her head tilted quizzically, possibly aggrieved that he had caught her in a wrestling match with the plant.
Sarah McDougall, if this was her, was certainly not middle-aged. Or frizzy-haired. She was wearing no makeup at all. The feeling of his breath being taken away was complete.
Corkscrew auburn curls escaped from under the brim of her hat and framed an elfin face. A light scattering of freckles danced across a daintily snubbed nose. Her cheekbones and her chin mirrored that image of delicacy.
But it was her eyes that threatened to undo him. He was good at this: at reading eyes. It was harder than people thought. A liar could look you straight in the face without blinking. A murderer could have eyes that looked as soft as suede, as gentle as a fawn’s.
But eleven years working one of the toughest homicide squads in the world had honed Sullivan’s skills to a point that his sister called him, not without a hint of admiration, scary in his ability to detect what was real about a person.
This woman’s eyes were huge and hazel, and stunningly, slayingly gorgeous.
She was, obviously, the all-American girl. Wholesome. Sweet. Probably ridiculously naive.
Case in point: she left her door unlocked and wanted to make him a hero!
But instead of that fueling his annoyance at her, instead of remembering his fury that she had called his boss, Sullivan felt a surge of foolish protectiveness.
“You should lock your front door when you work back here,” he told her gruffly. Part of him wanted to leave it at that, to turn his back and walk away from her. Because obviously what a girl like that needed to be protected from most was a guy like him.
Who had seen so much darkness it felt as if it had taken up residence inside of him. Darkness that could snuff out the radiance that surrounded her like a halo.
Still, if he left without giving her an opportunity to see that in him, she might pester him, or his boss, endlessly.
So he forced himself to cross the yard until he stood above her, until his shadow passed over the wideness of those eyes.
He rarely shook hands. Keep the barriers up. Establish authority. Don’t
