that he’d heard that, she sat up and brushed at the weeds that clung to her slacks, avoiding his gaze. “I’m scared of snakes,” she admitted reluctantly.
He stared a moment, then hooted a laugh. “Hell, if there was a snake within a mile of you, you would’ve scared it away with all that flapping around you were doing.”
“Oh, right,” she snapped irritably. “I forget. You’re an Indian. You probably would’ve killed it with your tomahawk and made a headband or something out of its skin.”
She knew immediately by the stiffening of his shoulders that she’d said the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry,” she said with real regret. “I didn’t mean that.”
He pushed to his feet. “We better get out of these wet clothes.”
“Gabe, really. It was a stupid thing to say. I was just mad because I fell in the lake, and I took it out on you.”
“Forget it.” He offered her a hand. “Come on. Let’s go to my place and get cleaned up. I’ve got a washer and dryer.”
Though she’d have preferred a long soak in her own tub, the thought of the thirty-odd-minute drive back to town in muddy clothes made her reconsider. “All right,” she agreed and allowed him to pull her to her feet. “But I’m getting that piece of fabric off the post before I go anywhere.”
“I’ll get it.”
She knew she should insist upon retrieving it herself, to prove to him she wasn’t a coward. But the thought of going anywhere near that pier kept her lips sealed tight.
She watched him drop down on his stomach at the end of the pier and reach into the water. “Can you tell what it is?” she called as he pulled his arm out.
He stood and lifted the scrap of fabric for her to see. “Orange canvas from a life preserver. Judging by its rotted state, I’d say it’s been here for years.”
Her shoulders sagged in disappointment.
Another dead end.
Gabe seldom brought women to his house—and it wasn’t because he was ashamed of the place. The cedar-framed cabin might be rustic in design, but it had every modern convenience the tract homes in town offered, plus a few. It was owned by an elderly politician from Austin, who had used the place to entertain constituents and fellow legislators. Now that his failing health had bound him to a wheelchair, he no longer had need for the place and had leased it to Gabe. Since the deal they’d cut had included fishing rights to the lake on the property and hunting rights on the three thousand acres surrounding it, the cabin suited Gabe just fine.
But as he pulled out a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt for Andi to wear while her clothes were washed, he found himself wondering what she thought of his home. He snorted a breath, remembering her remark about his Indian heritage. Hell, she was probably relieved to discover that he didn’t live in a teepee!
He gave his head a woeful shake. Ordinarily comments about his heritage didn’t bother him, but for some reason Andi’s had stung. Maybe it was because he wanted and needed her approval so badly. He had a strong feeling that she was one of the reasons he hadn’t made detective yet, and he’d hoped that by working with her on this case he could win her endorsement.
Or maybe it was because he had a serious case of the hots for her.
He choked a laugh. Yeah, like he had a snowball’s chance in hell of scoring with Detective Andrea Matthews. Though he’d prefer to blame department policy on her refusal to go out with him, Andi lived by her own set of rules. From day one, she’d made it clear to every single guy on the force—fellow sufferers with Gabe, who’d like nothing better than to get in the detective’s pants—that she didn’t date co-workers.
But Gabe wasn’t a man to give up easily.
She had become a challenge to him…and an attractive one at that. Triweekly workouts at the gym kept her body firm and toned. And she had the most gorgeous mane of curly brown hair she insisted on hiding by twisting it into a bun on top of her head or pulling it back into a ponytail. He’d imagined himself freeing that wild mass of hair, knotting his fingers in it and kissing her senseless, until she was putty in his hands.
He shoved a knee against the dresser drawer, closing it. Not a bad fantasy for a man to savor while out fishing alone or waiting for sleep to take him at night, he told himself.
But if fantasizing about her distracted him from his fishing or kept him awake too long, all he had to do was remind himself of her faults. She had a tendency to speak her mind, which bugged the hell out of him. And her tomboy reputation around the station certainly couldn’t be considered an asset. Not to a man who preferred his women soft, feminine and willing.
But lately he’d begun to suspect that beneath that tomboyish facade lay a sensual woman. It would simply take the right man to peel off the layers to reveal her.
And he figured he was just the man for the job.
So far he was batting zero, but patience was one of his strongest virtues—although the lady was definitely putting a strain on it. She stiff-armed anyone who tried to get too close. The only two people on the force who could claim any type of relationship with her were her partner Leo, an overweight, grouchy old man with thinning hair, who happened to be married, and Deirdre, a female officer with whom Gabe had shared a brief and regrettable fling.
Which was Deirdre’s fault, he thought, silently absolving himself of any guilt over the end of his relationship with her. She was the one who had turned what he’d hoped would be a sexually satisfying relationship into a nightmare, thanks to her possessiveness. And if she didn’t ease up on the harassing phone calls and quit tailing him around town, he was going to add stalker to that list.
“Gabe?”
Startled by the sound of Andi’s voice, he snapped his head around and found her peeking through a narrow crack in the bathroom door. That mass of wild, curly hair he enjoyed fantasizing about was tamed now by water and hung well past her shoulders in wet, dark tendrils. He could see just enough of the rest of her body to know that she was wearing nothing but a towel, evidenced by the swell of flesh above the terry fabric that bound her chest and the length of bare thigh visible below it. The sight was enough to make his mouth water and his groin ache.
“Did you find me something to wear?” she asked hesitantly.
He considered a moment the proximity of his bed, imagining the two of them rolling around on it, then gave himself a shake and lifted a hand, indicating the sweatpants and T-shirt he held. “Best I could do.” He tossed the clothes onto the bed and turned for the door. “When you’re dressed, come on down to the den. I’ll fire up my computer and we can run a check on the database for missing persons.”
As he jogged down the stairs, he blew out a long, slow breath, telling himself he had to possess the willpower of a monk for being able to walk away from all that bare flesh. But he had his reasons. The one conclusion he’d drawn after two months of working closely with Andi was that she preferred to be appreciated for her mind rather than her body. Personally, Gabe didn’t understand why a man couldn’t do both…or at least pretend to, when the ultimate reward was her body.
By the time Andi made it to the den, he had a phone tucked between shoulder and ear and had signed on to his e-mail
