looked deep into her eyes to study the weeping red irritation of her allergic reaction to the lenses, not because he was entranced by any sudden beauty discovered there.
The UMKC extension class in assertiveness training that she’d taken the past semester had recommended emphasizing her strengths to build confidence when facing a new or difficult situation. Apparently, twenty-twenty vision would never be one of hers. So new glasses it was.
She pulled the brush through the long hair and tamed the bundle into a ponytail. The golden highlights the hairdresser had added were barely noticeable. “Maybe I should go red like Aunt Lou,” Brooke speculated, trying to envision how adding an auburn wash to her blond-brown-blah color might somehow help the long curls cooperate with the humidity that was already making the morning air sticky. She should probably take some of the money she was using to make over the small stone church that was now her half-finished home and make herself over. “I wonder what miracles cost these days.”
Brooke twisted her hair up and reached for the clip that would anchor it to the back of her head. So much for the boost of confidence the new suit and glasses were supposed to give her as she started work at the Fourth Precinct today. Not that she wasn’t excited about the transfer to newly promoted Major Mitch Taylor’s office. She was going to be administrative assistant to the man now in charge of every watch and department in the Fourth Precinct offices. She loved the challenges of her career, thrived on making her professional world run efficiently. Working with computers and data, an attention to facts and details—those were definitely strengths of hers where her confidence could truly shine.
Her appearance wasn’t the real issue this morning.
The new job wasn’t what was making her heart race and her mouth dry.
Even Major Taylor’s tough and gruff reputation as a demanding boss didn’t really worry her.
It was Atticus Kincaid. He’d be there.
Brilliant detective. Tall. Black-haired. Capable of turning her into a stuttering idiot with a direct look or teasing remark. Two weeks of working side by side with him, poring through his late father’s files—searching for a lead on John Kincaid’s murder and finding nothing useful—had taught her that embarrassing lesson. His broad shoulders and crisp style did wonders for a suit and tie—and frustrated her hormones to no end.
Not one of her smartest moves—developing a crush on a man who looked on her as a kid sister or his father’s frumpy secretary. There was a date that was never gonna happen.
Though she and Atticus wouldn’t be working in the same office, they’d be working in the same building, possibly on the same floor. No doubt she’d bump into him in the break room, or have to sit across from him at a meeting table.
How was she supposed to be competent and professional around him without getting her crowded thoughts and well-meaning words twisted up inside her throat? Chances were her new coworkers would think she was dimwitted or indifferent or just plain stuck-up before she could help them understand how thrilled and honored she was to be there and be a part of their law-enforcement team.
And the most embarrassing part of it was that Atticus would be patient and polite no matter how badly she and her shy genes fumbled around.
He was as good a son to her former boss, John Kincaid, as all the Kincaid boys had been. And, like the rest of his family, he’d been sweet enough to check on her a couple of times at John’s funeral three months ago—even though she’d repaid him with bruised knuckles and mud on his uniform. She had always been so grateful for the Kincaids’ kindness to her.
For John Kincaid’s sake, she’d bury her misguided attraction and slug her way through her social awkwardness and make a success of herself at the Fourth Precinct.
For John.
Brooke gripped the edge of the sink and held on as a wave of sadness washed over her. Oh, how she missed John and the familiarity of working in his warm, strong presence day in and day out. The grief wasn’t with her all the time now, but when she thought about the good friend she had lost—the mentor who had taken her under his wing and shown her what a father was like—the loss caused by his senseless murder made her heartsick all over again.
Yet, almost as quickly as the sadness had hit her, Brooke’s frustration with the stalled investigation spurred her out of her funk. She finished pinning up her hair and tucking in her blouse. As the closest thing to an inside man familiar with the comings and goings of John’s office, she’d promised the Kincaid family to do whatever she could to help find his killer. Homicide’s investigation might have stalled; her research with Atticus might have stalled. But no way was she giving up. Standing in front of the mirror and bemoaning her deficiencies instead of expecting success did John Kincaid’s memory a disservice.
Her former boss had seen right through her shy exterior and demanded important things from her. He’d pushed her to use every brain cell, to take chances, to be confident in all she could do. He’d recommended that assertiveness class to her in the first place, said he wanted her to see the same talented woman he saw every day, and to believe in herself. He’d set his expectations for Brooke high, and she’d risen to his challenge.
Now she’d have to do the same for herself. Becoming that self-confident, successful woman John Kincaid believed in would be the best testimonial to the man she could offer.
Any crush she might have on one of his sons—any guilt she might feel at not being able to help him—was irrelevant. She owed this to John.
So, Brooke adjusted the pretty new glasses on her unremarkable face, smoothed her palms down the front of her light-gray gabardine skirt, and silently declared herself ready for the new day ahead. She grabbed her jacket from its garment bag and headed out of the bathroom.
BROOKE HADN’T TAKEN three steps before her good intentions hit their first roadblock.
“Louise! Get down from there.” Brooke spotted the artificially strawberry-blond hair nearly two stories above her. She dropped her jacket and ran across the planks of the temporary floor to grab the base of a ladder that soared up to the peak of the nineteenth-century limestone church she and her aunts now called home. “Aunt Lou? We talked about this.”
“I’m doing a little patch work on the ceiling.”
“On a thirty-foot ladder?”
“How else am I supposed to reach it?” Smart ass. Louise Hansford—a ringer for the younger brother who’d been Brooke’s father if the old pictures in her scrapbooks were accurate—pulled a caulking gun from the hammer loop of her denim overalls and squeezed something into a vent where workers were installing a central cooling and heating system. “After all that rain this spring and the leaks we had, I’m not taking any chances on more water damage. We’ve put too much time and money into the bedrooms and bath downstairs to let problems in the unfinished areas ruin the work we’ve already done.”
“We’re paying Mr. McCarthy and his crew good money to do that type of work for us. Now come down.” Brooke shifted to the other side of the ladder, hissing through clenched teeth as Louise climbed up to a higher rung to inspect another vent. When nothing fell and no one crashed, Brooke allowed herself a normal breath. “It hasn’t rained for two weeks. And unless you count the humidity, there’s no moisture in the forecast, either.”
“My old bones say different.”
“Don’t…” Old bones, my foot. Brooke got
