Stevens’s life wasn’t like her life, she silently insisted. She had a life, she had a family. A family that meant the world to her and who were always there for her anytime she needed them, or just wanted to kick back. Just because she wasn’t spending her nights with a lover didn’t make her anything like the dead woman.
She blew out a breath as she pulled into her apartment complex, a modest collection of garden apartments with carport parking and bright white daisies planted all along their borders.
“Great, so now you’re arguing with yourself. Maybe you should go back to Brian and have him assign that temporary partner to you,” she said out loud in disgust.
Taylor pulled into her carport and turned the engine off. For a second she sat there, listening to crickets calling to each other. In the distance was not-so-faint music coming from the pool area. Someone was having another party.
Someone was always having another party this time of year. She felt no desire to go.
Maybe you should go, anyway. Might do you good.
She shook her head. Andrew Cavanaugh saw to her social life. The former chief of police and family patriarch held enough gatherings at his place to take care of any spare time she had.
Tonight she was just tired. Tired and disappointed in herself for allowing that cocky intruder to get away. Tomorrow would be better, she silently vowed getting out of her vehicle. All she needed was a good night’s sleep and then she’d be back on track.
The good night’s sleep she’d planned on had eluded her.
Oh, she’d slept all right, but rather than a restful, dreamless event, her night was packed full of dreams. One dream flowering instantly into another, all involving the sexy intruder.
The dreams played out so vividly that she’d had trouble separating reality from fiction. In several versions, the intruder got the drop on her rather than she on him. In the last dream, things inexplicably heated up. Her clothes disappeared just as she realized that he wasn’t wearing any either.
That was when she bolted upright, waking up.
It was 7:00 a.m. and her pulse was racing. Her breathing was so shallow she thought for a moment she was going to hyperventilate. The downside was that she felt far more tired than when she’d first fallen asleep.
Exhausted, her breathing finally under control, she dropped, face forward on the comforter for a moment longer.
Who the hell was that man and how did he fit into Eileen’s life? Taylor wondered for the hundredth time.
She knew she wasn’t going to have any peace until she answered those questions, especially the first one. Sitting up again, Taylor sighed and dragged her hand through her tousled, long blond hair. First thing this morning, she would see about getting together with the sketch artist, before the intruder’s features faded from her memory.
She should be so lucky.
Throwing off the covers, Taylor marched into the bathroom. She rushed through her shower and was drying off in less than ten minutes. Dressed, she ran her fingers through her hair as she aimed the hair dryer at several sections, impatient to be on her way. She was determined to find out the man’s name and bring him in before the day was out.
Breakfast was a banana she peeled and ate between leaving her front door and reaching her vehicle in the carport.
She was on her way to the precinct less than half an hour after she’d woken up.
Tracking down the mysterious intruder turned out to be a lot easier than she ever imagined.
Arriving at the precinct, Taylor went straight up to her squad room. Her intention was to drop off her purse at her desk and then go in search of the sketch artist.
She stopped dead ten feet short of her goal.
The intruder was there, sitting in the chair beside her desk, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Taylor’s first instinct was to draw her weapon, but she banked it down even though training a gun on him would have been immensely satisfying. The man obviously wasn’t a criminal. A criminal didn’t just waltz into a squad room and make himself at home. Although, approaching the scene from another angle as she played her own devil’s advocate, that could actually be the perfect cover.
Either way, the stranger obviously had a hell of a lot of nerve.
Taking a deep breath, Taylor crossed the rest of the way through the room to her desk.
As if sensing her presence, the stranger turned his head and looked right into her eyes a moment before she reached him.
“You,” she spat out, making the single word sound like an angry accusation.
An accusation that apparently left him unruffled. The stranger merely smiled that maddening smile she’d previewed last night.
“Me,” he affirmed.
Instead of throwing her purse into the bottom drawer, she dropped it in. But she satisfied her need to blow off steam by kicking the drawer shut.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, barely keeping her voice down. “And how did you get out of those handcuffs?”
“Handcuffing your dates these days?”
Focused only on the stranger, Taylor almost jumped. The question came from her brother, Frank, another homicide detective. Frank had chosen that moment to come up behind her. Fresh off solving a serial-killer case and riding the crest of triumphant satisfaction, her younger brother grinned at her.
“You know the department frowns on taking their equipment for personal use.” He moved so that he stood next to the annoying stranger.
Taylor struggled to keep from telling her brother to butt out. “This isn’t a date, this is a suspect,” she bit off.
“A suspect?” the intruder echoed, still smiling that annoyingly sexy smile that seemed to undulate right under her skin, shooting straight to her core and warming it. “For what?” he asked innocently.
As if he didn’t know. “For the murder of Eileen Stevens,” she snapped.
“A suspect?” her brother repeated in disbelief, then looked, stunned, at the seated man. “Laredo?”
Taylor’s eyebrows narrowed over eyes the color of the midmorning sky. “Who the hell is Laredo?” she demanded.
“I am,” the stranger told her affably. The next moment, he half rose in his seat and extended his hand to her. “J. C. Laredo,” he introduced himself. “I came in to see if we might be able to have a successful exchange of information. I would have asked last night,” he went on, “but you looked a little too hot and perturbed to listen to reason.”
“Taylor hardly ever listens to reason,” Frank told the man as if he was sharing some sort of a family confidence.
“Taylor also has excellent hearing and is standing right here,” she pointed out
