I pass inspection?”
Vanessa checked the filter on her faucet before filling the kettle. She could have played the game, but a mounting sense of exhaustion had her going with the straight answer. “You have an aura, Agent Maguire. I could get distracted by you. That wouldn’t be good, all things considered.”
“Sounds like an interesting start.” He removed his jacket to reveal a black shirt with the sleeves rolled partway up and just enough open buttons that she could see the beginnings of dark chest hair.
Didn’t need to notice that. A sigh rose in Vanessa’s throat. He smelled good, too—clean, as if he’d just showered.
Setting the kettle on the stove, she wiped her hands. “There’s no start for us, okay? Someone shot at me tonight. I’m frazzled. You say things when you’re frazzled.”
“Like you do when you’re drunk?”
Her eyes sparkled. “I don’t get drunk. When my fingers go tingly, I switch to juice or soda. Mind in harmony with body. My aunt’s been preaching the concept since the sixties.”
The gaze Rick ran over her body made not only her fingers, but every other part of her go tingly as well. “No comment,” he said, then offered her a slow smile that turned the tingle into a snap of electricity. “For now, anyway.”
Unfortunate, was all she could think. But, brakes on, she really didn’t need this or him disrupting her life.
Tipping her lips into a smile, she asked, “Do you want to see my bedroom before or after we eat?”
“Before, and you don’t have to feed me. Coffee’ll do. You look all in.”
“You’re not feeding my ego, Maguire. But you’re right. I worked three night shifts, grabbed two hours of sleep, then had to make a court appearance. If I’d been more alert, I might have seen tonight’s shooter’s reflection in the shop window.”
“If you hadn’t bent down, you’d be on a slab in the morgue as we speak.” He began to close in. His eyes were steady on her face, and she was too fascinated by her own reaction to evade him. “Sometimes luck happens, Vanessa. Be grateful for it.”
“I am.” She cocked her head at his continued approach. “Do you have your mother’s eyes or your father’s?”
“Father’s.”
“Must be one sexy man.”
Rick’s lips curved. “Strange as that sounds, I’ll take it as a compliment. Could it be you’re warming to me?”
Her blood certainly was. “Frazzled,” she repeated as he drew to within a foot of her. “Closet’s upstairs.”
With the ghost of his smile lingering, he reached out a hand to capture her chin. His thumb stroked the smooth skin of her jaw.
Vanessa made no attempt to pull free. Which both amused and intrigued her, because with any other man she didn’t know, by now her palm would be planted on his chest. In Rick’s case, she merely raised a brow. “You realize you’re pushing the boundaries, don’t you, Maguire? Duty-wise as well as in other ways.”
“Story of my life, Detective Connor.”
His lips were an inch from hers when he spoke. Damn, she thought, as little zaps of lightning began to shoot through her system. She actually wanted him to bridge that last bit of space and kiss her. On the other hand…“Gonna drive me crazy,” she predicted and, tangling her fingers in his hair, dragged his mouth onto hers.
IT WASN’T WHAT HE EXPECTED. Not the woman, not the kiss and definitely not his reaction to it. Vanessa had temptress qualities, no doubt about it, but the heat that flared both above and below his belt, now that was bad.
He knew where it came from, though, and why. She had a curious blend of softness and strength about her. Maybe she’d channeled the fear she’d refused to show him into the kiss. Whatever the case, his brain had quite simply melted down on contact.
Forty minutes later, he could still feel her pressed against him, that exquisitely toned body touching his in all the right—or wrong—places. And he swore the taste of her would haunt him all night, maybe longer.
Angry with himself, he slammed the door of his car and took the porch steps outside his friend’s house two at a time. He walked in without knocking, but closed the door quietly. Didn’t matter. Billy had ears like a damned elephant.
“S’at you, Rick? I got coffee back here that’s strong enough to strip paint.”
The old man’s voice had a wobble to it these days. It was a worry, but with his head swimming and the taste of a beautiful woman still on his lips, that worry had pretty much worked its way to the back of Rick’s mind.
Tossing his jacket aside, he navigated the obstacle course that was the first floor hallway. He hit his head twice on protruding cabinets before squeezing through the kitchen door. “You’ve got to stop taking in every piece of broken furniture you see, Billy.”
“They’re antiques, and keep your voice down. You’ll wake the new kid.”
“What new kid?” Rick squinted into the poorly lit room. He could hear the old man but couldn’t see him past two bookshelves, a tall boy and some kind of rickety bureau.
“Found him this morning at a bus stop.” The words came from somewhere near the pantry door. “Kid didn’t get on when the bus came. Didn’t have any money. He tried to sell me a watch. I offered him a hot meal instead. Figured a good night’s sleep wouldn’t hurt, either.” A smile entered his tone. “I smell real pretty perfume out there. Would it come from that detective you saw tonight?”
His vocal cords might wobble, but nothing else about Billy Ruby had changed in the nearly twenty years Rick had known him. He took in strays—people, animals and objects. He cleaned them up, gave them a sense of worth and sent them back out into the world. He trusted easily, missed little and took it in stride if one of his tougher human challenges failed.
A Saint Bernard with a kinked tail wandered over to drool on Rick’s boot. He gave a deep bark and wove a path to the far corner.
“It’s after midnight, Rick. I don’t take that as a good sign.”
Hunched over his computer, Billy didn’t look up. At ninety-six, he was the oldest person Rick knew. He wore his store-bought teeth with pride and had more hair than most men half his age, long hair that fell halfway down his back in a thin white braid. He was part African American, part Native American, part French Creole and part Swiss. It never failed to make Rick smile when Billy threw that last thing in. A neutral country, Billy Joe Ruby was not.
Rick thought back briefly to his youth. He’d fallen in and out of trouble—mostly in—before meeting the old man. With patience, luck and a whole lot of late night talks, Billy had helped a tall, skinny, scared kid from Bakersfield finally get his head screwed on halfway straight.
At the moment, Billy was regarding a group photo, taken on what appeared to be a college campus. Rick set one hand on the back of his chair, the other on the makeshift desk and bent to study the shot. “Let me guess. You’re helping me with this case.”
“I
