She left him.
So he’d thrown himself even deeper into his job. But it was never quite the same out there without her to come home to. He hadn’t realized how much he depended on her to be there, until she was gone.
There was still the satisfaction of putting a criminal behind bars, but without Dana to celebrate with him, it didn’t mean as much. Her admiration for his devotion to his job had been lost somewhere along the way, and with it had gone a lot of his reason for wanting to do a good job.
Slowly, gingerly, he got out of bed and made his way into the kitchen. Dana had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and was drinking coffee from his favorite mug, the one with the chipped rim. He lowered himself carefully into a chair.
“I thought you couldn’t find my mug,” he remarked, faintly accusing. “It disappeared when you moved out.” He was a little surprised that she’d kept it.
Dana’s face burned and her fingers tensed around the rough surface of the pottery mug. “I couldn’t. It was in the bottom of a box.”
“That was my favorite mug.”
“It’s not your mug, it’s my mug. I made it.”
“I know,” he said, smiling. “It never sat evenly. I spilled my coffee at least once a week because it wobbled.”
Dana couldn’t look at him, and she couldn’t unwrap her fingers from the mug. She had made it for him. It was the only thing she made during that whole ceramics class that hadn’t cracked in the kiln. He’d always claimed it was his favorite. Why, she had no idea.
With a supreme effort, she managed to speak. “If you want it, you can take it with you when you leave.”
Cody shook his head and clenched his jaw against the throbbing ache in his shoulder. He hadn’t missed her emphasis on the word leave. “Got any aspirin?”
She nodded without looking at him and stood up. As she got the tablets and a glass of water and a mug of coffee for him, he looked around the kitchen, wondering what Fontenot had done to her apartment while she was out of town.
“Sit down, Dana,” he said as he took the coffee from her unsteady fingers. “We need to talk.”
“There is absolutely nothing to say,” she said, but she sat down and picked up the chipped mug and wrapped her fingers around it again.
Cody watched as she realized what she’d done and put it down abruptly. It wobbled slowly and noisily on the table until he stopped it with his fingers.
It was funny how the oddest things took on meaning between two people. He loved the mug because she’d made it. He let it go. It wobbled again until he stopped it. If it had been perfect, it wouldn’t be nearly as precious.
“I tried to call you Tuesday,” he said, letting his fingers trace the whorls on the mug’s surface. Why had she kept it? he wondered. It hadn’t meant anything to her.
“I know. I picked up my messages.”
“Why did you come back last night? Your answering machine said you’d be gone until today.”
“I couldn’t take Big Daddy and his good old boys talking at me like I was a simpering southern belle.”
Cody looked up. “Big Daddy?”
Dana shrugged and her mouth turned up. She reached out and took the mug. “The ultraimportant client I met with in Baton Rouge. You know the type. He owns a chain of hardware stores there. He wants to expand to New Orleans and I was drawing up the contracts. He was insulting, so I walked out.”
Cody laughed. “You walked out? Dana Maxwell walked out on a meeting with clients? I do believe hell has frozen over again. Call Don Henley and tell him to do another album.”
Dana banged the mug down on the table. His easy, intimate humor invaded places inside her she didn’t want exposed. The two of them, sitting together drinking coffee, reminded her of lazy Sunday mornings and kisses flavored with café au lait, of her trying to study, while he….
“I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and have an idle, ordinary conversation with you. We’re not old friends sharing a cup of coffee and memories. I want you out of here,” she groused, lifting her head.
The laughter faded from his eyes and their blue brightness dulled to a gunmetal gray. “Dana, there’s something you need to know. Did you find anything out of place when you got back? Anything unusual?”
She heard a strange note in his voice. The frown on his face intensified her apprehension. Cody was worried about something, and that wasn’t like him. She shook her head. “Nothing except an ex-husband breaking in and bleeding all over everything.”
Cody reached his right hand awkwardly into his left jeans pocket and pulled something out. The movement obviously caused him pain, and she ached to see him hurt. She blinked fiercely, reminding herself his pain was no longer her concern.
But she had trouble dragging her gaze away from his bare chest with its faint dusting of honey-brown hair, and his broad shoulders, still streaked with dried blood.
He held up a small golden disk.
“What’s that? Is that mine?” She reached out and took it from his fingers. It was one of the gold coin earrings he’d given her on their first anniversary. They had cost way too much, but she loved them. She’d worn them almost every day until their divorce. Since then they’d lain in her jewelry box under her bed.
She stared at it. “What are you doing with my earring?”
He covered her hand with his, wrapping her fingers around the disk. “Chère, look at me.”
Reluctantly she raised her head. Something was very wrong. A frisson of fear slithered up her spine.
“This earring was on the seat of my car two mornings ago. I almost didn’t see it.”
She tugged against his grip, but he wouldn’t let go. The post of the earring dug into her palm. “Stop it, Cody. It’s obviously not my earring, then, because mine is in my jewelry box. You’re just trying to scare me.”
“It is yours. Go check.”
“I’m not going to check. If it’s mine then you got it out of my jewelry box this morning. Why are you doing this to me?”
Cody shook his head, his eyes dark and cloudy. She didn’t want to look into them, didn’t want to see the pain and the fear deep in those eyes that had so often sparked with laughter, but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.
“Fontenot is out of prison.”
She froze. “F-Fontenot?”
He nodded grimly.
“The man who shot you,” she said. “How—how can he be out?”
“Good behavior, and good lawyers.”
Dana closed her eyes. “He put a bullet in your head. He almost killed
