gotten rid of the roses. She’d gotten rid of James.
But she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that her life had taken a very weird, very unsettling turn.
* * *
GEORGE HEARD THE hurried rhythm of a woman’s high heels tapping across KCPD headquarters’ marble floors behind him.
“Hold the elevator, please.”
Even if he hadn’t recognized the voice, he would have pushed the button to hold the doors open. It was the polite thing to do. But he did recognize Elise Brown’s articulate, slightly breathless tone, and his blood suffused with an instant warmth.
“Thanks.” Elise tilted her head and smiled as she darted into the car and moved to the railing behind him.
He knew it was wrong to identify his assistant by the warm contralto pitch of her voice. And he shouldn’t be familiar with the faint whiff of tropical fruits that emanated from the soft waves of her chin-length hair as she breezed past him. His gaze dipped down to the navy blue heels she wore without hose, a choice made in deference to the forecasted triple-digit temperatures, no doubt. While a part of him admired the sensible concession to the summer heat wave, George’s chest constricted and he resolutely averted his eyes.
He wasn’t admiring her sensibility. He was imprinting the curve of her smooth, tanned calves beneath a hemline that brushed the top of her knees to memory, coming up with another completely inappropriate, equally unmistakable way to identify Elise Brown.
Yeah, his life would be a heck of a lot easier if he wasn’t so observant of little details like that—especially where his executive assistant was concerned.
Pushing the button for the eighth floor, George tempered the quickened pace of his breathing and made sure his commander-in-chief expression was in place before he turned to greet her. “Good morning, Elise.”
He might have hit fifty, but he wasn’t dead. He was single and he was a man. Couldn’t blame a guy for noticing an attractive woman. Still, it wasn’t quite protocol to charge up with this rush of energy just because she’d smiled at him, just because he got to spend a few moments alone on the elevator with her clean, fresh scent. He felt more awake, more alert, than he had a few seconds ago. And he hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee yet.
She tucked her sunglasses into the modest neckline of her sleeveless dress and brushed a swath of nut-brown hair off her cheek. “Good morning, sir.”
Way to kill the buzz. It was one thing for the men and women he outranked at KCPD to refer to him with the respectful title. It was something else again for the woman he worked with every day of his life to call him sir. Hearing that from Elise, no matter how well intended, always made him feel like one of her father’s friends or a Dutch uncle. It was easy to squash any perky urge to smile now.
The doors drifted together and the elevator made a slight bounce before starting its ascent. “It’s George, remember?”
“I’m sorry. Good morning, George.”
“No need to apologize. I’ll just keep reminding you until you get it right,” he teased.
Only, she didn’t seem to get the joke. Her blue gaze darted up to his before she suddenly needed something from her flowered purse and focused her attention there. “Of course.”
While he was careful about crossing the line into anything that could be construed as sexual harassment, there was no harm in being friends. Yet Elise seemed to shoot down every overture of appreciation or concern that could take them to being more than polite acquaintances who shared the same connected office space.
Even yesterday afternoon, when the delivery of those flowers had clearly upset her, she hadn’t opened up one bit. Maybe a small stab of unprofessional jealousy had made him linger in her office longer than he’d intended. She’d lit up at first, once she found out the bouquet was meant for her, and he’d been curious enough to find out what kind of man she was dating who could turn her serious, practical head like that.
But even when Elise’s smile had changed to a frown, and her troubled thoughts had been written on her face, she hadn’t been interested in sharing a thing. She hadn’t even wanted him to dust off his rusty investigative skills and make a few quick inquiries to find where the bouquet had come from for her.
The elevator continued its familiar climb, but there was little familiar about Elise’s oddly distracted behavior this morning. She pulled a ring of keys and fobs from her bag and clutched them in her fist, staring at them. Tugging back the front of his suit jacket, George propped his hands at his waist. “Is everything all right?”
“What?” Her eyes locked on to his, telling him one thing before she stuffed the keys back into her purse and told him something else. “Oh. I couldn’t find the spare key I leave on my front porch after I walked the dog this morning.” She patted her purse. “I like to use it so I don’t have to carry all these and be weighed down. Don’t worry. We got in through the keypad by the garage door. That’s why I’m running a little late today.”
Uh-uh. She wasn’t dismissing the confusion he’d read in her gaze. Not this time. “Are you worried someone stole the key?”
The corners of her mouth tightened as she fixed the smile on her lips. “I probably locked it inside the house the last time I used it and forgot. I didn’t have much time to look.”
George valued Elise as his assistant. His office had been a chaotic mess after the previous assistant retired. Elise had come in, quickly grasping the old information management and communication systems and updating them in ways that made his job easier, and made the entire deputy commissioner’s office a model of professional efficiency that other administrative departments were now copying.
But he’d been friends with each of his partners over the years. He’d gotten to know officers and staff alike. He knew the names of their children; whether they were football, baseball or basketball fans, or if they were even into sports at all. He knew what their favorite places to eat were and what issues they might be struggling with on the job or off the clock.
Elise went to great lengths to keep her personal life out of the office. He knew the names of her parents from her personnel file, but had never met them. And other than noting she wore no wedding ring and kept no pictures except one of a small black poodle on her desk, he couldn’t confirm whether or not she was in a relationship with anyone.
As stormy as his marriage to Courtney had been, he’d always kept a memento of her on his desk or in his wallet. And now that they were divorced, he had family pictures from his nephew Nick’s wedding on the shelves in his office, as well as a group photo from his twenty-fifth reunion at the University of Central Missouri on his desk.
But Elise? No pictures. No personal touches. Just the dog in her lap in one five-by-seven photo, and an invisible wall that said Keep Out.
George butted in, anyway. “Something’s upset you again. Something more than a misplaced key.” He shifted his stance, feeling the elevator slow its ascent. “What is it?”
For a few endless seconds, she tilted her cornflower-blue eyes up to his, giving him a glimpse of the turbulent emotions darkening their depths. Feeling an instinctive urge to respond to that unspoken plea for help, George stepped closer and reached for her.
But the elevator
