protection from the rain. But he showed no inclination to even rise from his chair. He was leaving it to her.
She took a few more steps, until the counter blocked her way, and tried for a better smile. “Hello, Daniel. I was wondering if we could talk.”
Her words echoed off the high ceiling, followed immediately by the swivel of eight or ten heads to look at him. His silence was going to be even more booming and echoey, the kind they could get lost in and never find their way out of, and the hell of it was, he was entitled.
“We could always talk. Our problem was communicating.”
Funny. The words were in what she considered his usual tone of voice: even, cool, rational, calm. Growing up the way she did, she’d always loved even, cool, rational and calm. It had soothed her every time he’d said something as benign as, Do you want seafood or Thai for dinner?
But there was an edge to his voice that she’d heard so seldom she rarely remembered it, a sharp edge that passed for angry in his cool, calm world. It made her gut tighten. She lived with guilt all the time, and she hated it. Almost as much as she hated coming here.
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, especially nothing she wanted to say in front of his coworkers. She didn’t turn and slink out, though. Unless he’d changed tremendously in the past few years, he wouldn’t shut her out. He was too courteous to leave any conversation hanging like that and too curious to leave this one hanging. No matter what he felt, there was one question he would have to ask: Why the hell are you here?
Yeah, this was a curse-inducing moment if he’d ever had one.
Water was pooling around her shoes, and the air-conditioning gave her chills where her dress was damp from blowing rain. She’d left an umbrella next to the door, but it hadn’t proven much help when the wind brought the rain in sideways. She thought longingly of returning to the room she’d rented, taking a warm bath, having a bottle or two of wine and coming up with a new plan, because apparently this one wasn’t working.
Then, with a heavy sigh, Daniel stood and walked toward the counter. His feet were bare, she realized, cute with his dark gray suit, white dress shirt and black tie. He looked more approachable barefooted...though that was just fantasy. Sometimes he was an easy man for mushiness and sentimentality. Other times, he was logic and pragmatism personified.
He stopped with ten feet still between them. “What?”
She caught a whiff of the cologne he’d worn since he was sixteen, when he’d filched a bottle from his dad’s bathroom. She never remembered the name, but she knew the bottle. She’d bought it often enough for him in their time together.
“Archer and Jeffrey send their love.”
His only response was a twitch in his jaw. He must have already figured out she’d located him with his fathers’ help. It wasn’t as if he and she still had any friends in common. With another man, she might have pleaded for him to not be angry with Archer and Jeffrey, but Daniel’s relationship with them was such that he would never blame them for giving him up to her.
No, he would save his blame for her.
“There’s a diner across the street from the courthouse. Could we go there for a cup of coffee?”
He glanced over his shoulder, but she couldn’t tell what he was looking at: his desk, the clock on the wall back there or the big dark-haired detective whose desk was nearest his. Asking for permission to go or an excuse not to?
After a moment, he said an ungracious, “All right,” and started to come around the counter. Halfway he turned back, went to his desk, pulled a pair of running shoes with socks stuffed inside from a drawer and tugged them both on. Running shoes with a suit. She would definitely have to tell Jeffrey about that.
Finally he met her in the lobby, shrugging into his raincoat, while she picked up her umbrella. She waited until she was outside, beneath that little overhang, to shake the water away and then open it. Without speaking, she offered to share it with him. Without speaking, he moved far enough away to make his answer clear.
She supposed the space between the police station and the courthouse qualified as a town square. A gazebo stood in pride of place, a grassy area around it, and a parking lot on the east side. She’d never heard of Cedar Creek until Archer had told her the name, and she hadn’t seen nearly enough, but it seemed a sweet town, with an old, well-preserved downtown, lots of stone and brick, a lovely mix of commercial and residential spreading about a mile along First Street.
Natasha couldn’t think of anything she wanted to say that he might want to hear, so she grabbed the anxious, antsy Tasha in her brain around the throat and kept her quiet. Soon enough, she would have to talk, and she wouldn’t get a sympathetic reception, and it was going to be hard enough without Tasha running her mouth.
Her legs were wet when they reached Judge Judie’s Diner. The woman who owned the hotel down the street had referred her there for lunch, and the coffee had been unusually good.
She and Daniel reached for the door at the same time. He backed off before their hands touched. She’d forgotten he liked doing little courtesies like that. She pulled the door open, closed her umbrella and set it in a galvanized bucket for that purpose just inside.
“Sit wherever you like, hon.” The waitress gave Daniel a warmer smile. “Good afternoon, Detective Harper.”
She chose the last booth along the wall and started to slide onto the back bench. Daniel shucked his coat, draped it over a chair at the next table and shooed her to the opposite side, so he faced the waitress, though she doubted that was his sole intent. These days she was more comfortable sitting where she could see the door and who came through it. According to popular legend, so were most police officers.
The flirty waitress came. Natasha ordered coffee. Daniel asked for pop and a piece of pecan pie. When the woman was back behind the counter, he folded his hands together in his lap and said, “Well?”
Something sad settled in her stomach. She’d thought he might give her a break. Five years had passed. He’d moved on, moved up. He’d had other relationships. He’d probably even fallen in love again. She’d thought, for old times’ sake, he might bury the hatchet, and not in her.
“How are you?” she asked hopefully.
Irritation flared in his dark eyes. “You want chitchat? I’m fine. I like Cedar Creek. I like my job. I like it so much that I suggested my fathers consider moving here when they retire. How are you? Why are you here? Just making rounds of the people-I’ve-screwed-over club? Are you going in order? Kyle, Eric, then me? Did I miss anyone?”
Heat warmed her face. The fact that it was well deserved didn’t make it any less embarrassing. And he did miss one. It was Kyle, Eric, Daniel and Zach. Opera had its Four Tenors, her mother teased, while Natasha had her Four Fiancés. Her older sister referred to Daniel as Runaway Bride, Third Edition.
The waitress returned, giving them curious looks as she set down drinks and a dish of pie that looked incredible. “Can I get you anything else, Daniel?”
He turned his attention to the waitress, and a sort of smile twitched into place. “No, thank you, Taryn.” The smile disappeared as soon as she walked away. He took a bite of pie and washed it down before scowling at Natasha. “Look, I have a body found in a burned-out car, an attempted murder where the victim’s still touch-and-go and a woman
