working together with a rough kid like him.”
She narrowed her gaze, apparently unimpressed with the theory. “I’ll tell you why you should believe me. Because my wallet, which is inside the bag, has my driver’s license and credit cards in it. If you would stop being so cynical and suspicious for five seconds, I can show them to you.”
Okay, he should have thought of that. Maybe two years away from the job had softened him more than he wanted to admit. Still, he wasn’t about to let down his guard long enough for her to prove him any more of a fool.
He tossed the purse at her. “Fine. Show me.”
Her look would have scorched through metal. She scooped up the purse and pawed through it, then pulled out a brocade wallet, which she unsnapped with sharp, jerky movements and thrust at him.
Sure enough, there was a Texas driver’s license with a pretty decent picture of her—a few years younger and with slightly longer hair, but it was definitely her.
Julie Osterman, the name read under her picture. He gazed at it for a full ten seconds before the name registered. He had seen it on an office door at the Foundation, next to his cousin Susan’s. And he must have seen her there, as well, which explained why she looked slightly familiar.
“You work for the Fortune Foundation, don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m a counselor,” she tilted her head and looked more closely at him. “And you’re Ross Fortune, aren’t you?”
He should have recognized her. Any good cop—and private investigator—ought to be more tuned in to that sort of thing than the average citizen and be able to remember names and faces.
“I don’t give a crap who you are,” the wriggling teenager in his grip spat out. “Let go of me, man.”
He was still holding onto the punk, he realized. Ross eased his grip a little but was reluctant to release him completely.
“Mr. Fortune, you can let go anytime now,” Julie Osterman said. “It all happened exactly as he said. He was helping me find my purse, not stealing anything. Thank you so much for your help, Marcus! I’m so relieved you found it. You can go now.”
Ross pulled his hand away, surrendering to the inevitable, and Marcus straightened his ratty T-shirt like it was two hundred dollars’ worth of cashmere.
“Dude’s a psycho,” he said to no one in particular but with a fierce glare for Ross. “I tried to tell you, man. You should have listened. Stupid cop-pig.”
“Marcus,” Julie said. Though the word was calm enough, even Ross recognized the steel behind it.
Marcus didn’t apologize, but he didn’t offer more insults, either. “I got to fly. See you, Ms. O.”
“Bye, Marcus.”
He ambled away, exuding affronted attitude with every step.
When he was out of earshot, Julie Osterman turned back to him, her mouth set in those tight lines again. He was so busy wondering if she ever unbent enough to genuinely smile that he nearly missed her words.
“I hope you haven’t just undone in five minutes here what has taken me weeks to build with Marcus.”
It took him a few more seconds longer than it should have to realize she was wasn’t just annoyed, she was fuming.
“What did I do?” he asked in genuine bewilderment.
“Marcus is one of my clients at the Foundation,” she said. “He comes from, well, not an easy situation. The adults in his life have consistently betrayed him. He’s never had anyone to count on. I’ve been trying to help him learn to trust me, to count on me, by demonstrating that I trust him in return.”
“By throwing your purse out there as bait?”
“Marcus has a history of petty theft.”
“Just the kind of kid I would send after my purse, then.”
She fisted her hands on her hips and the movement made all her curves deliciously visible beneath her gauzy white shirt. “I wanted him to understand that when I look at him, I see beyond the mistakes he’s made in the past to the bright future we’re both trying to create for him.”
It sounded like a bunch of hooey to him but he decided it might be wise to keep that particular opinion to himself right now, considering she looked like she wanted to skin him, inch by painful inch.
“Instead,” she went on in that irritated voice, “you have probably just reinforced to a wounded child that all adults are suspicious and cynical, quick to judge and painfully slow to admit when they’re wrong.”
“Hey, wait a second here. I had no way of knowing you were trying for some mumbo-jumbo psychobabble experiment. All I saw was a punk lifting a purse. I couldn’t just stand there and let him take it.”
“Admit it,” she snapped. “You jumped to conclusions because he looks a little rough around the edges.”
Her hair was light brown, shot through with blond highlights that gleamed in the last few minutes of twilight. With those brilliant blue eyes, high cheekbones and eminently kissable mouth, she was just about the prettiest woman he had seen in a long, long time. The kind of woman a man never got tired of looking at.
Too bad such a nice package had to be covering up one of those save-the-world types who always set his teeth on edge.
“I was a cop for twelve years, ma’am,” he retorted. “When I see a kid taking a purse that obviously doesn’t belong to him, yeah, I tend to jump to conclusions. That doesn’t mean they’re usually wrong conclusions.”
“But sometimes they are,” she doggedly insisted.
“In this case, I made a mistake. See, I’m man enough to admit it. I made a mistake,” he repeated. “It happens to the best of us, even ex-cops. But I’m willing to bet, if you asked anybody else in the whole damn art fair, they would have reached the same conclusion.”
“You don’t know that.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re right. I completely overreacted. The next time I see somebody stealing your purse, I’ll be sure to just watch him walk on by.”
The angry set of her features eased a little and after a moment, she sighed. “I hope I can convince Marcus you were just being an ex-cop.”
Despite his own annoyance, he could see she genuinely cared about the boy. He supposed he could see things from her point of view. He had a particular soft spot for anybody who tried to help kids in need, even if they did tend to become zealots about it.
“I can try talking to the kid if that would help,” he finally offered, though he wasn’t quite sure what compelled him to make the suggestion. Maybe something to do with how her eyes softened when she talked about the punk.
“I appreciate that, but I don’t think—”
A woman’s frantic scream suddenly ripped through the evening, cutting off whatever Julie Osterman had intended to say.
Julie’s
