needs to contribute.”
She’d paused, shaking her head in disgust. “Even Ed Koch and David Dinkins were better than this,” she’d said, her tone maligning the previous New York mayors. “Anyway, before I leave, why don’t you go to Sullivan’s room and think over my proposition? Let me know if you want to—” Pushing aside her pique over New York City politics, she’d grinned, enjoying the catbird seat. “Accept my challenge.”
She hadn’t looked the least bit fazed by her remarkable win, and Truman guessed it was largely because she was the mother of three cops. Nothing ruffled her. “I’ll be anxious to see who makes it to the finish line first. You boys with your brides, or my poor tortoises in the Galapagos.”
“Tortoises,” Truman whispered now.
“What else?” murmured Sullivan.
Preserving natural animal habitats in the Galapagos Islands had long been their mother’s obsession, so the brothers had been weaned on stories about the mysterious volcanic islands in the Pacific. Just off the coast of Ecuador, the islands were close to a mainland that was magical in its own right, with a history of Inca warriors, Amazon explorers and Spanish conquistadors. Nature had been left to thrive on its own in that lost part of the world, and the islands that had inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the 1830s were now home to wildlife that existed nowhere else on earth.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Truman said to his brothers now, feeling a twinge of guilt. “I’ve got nothing against sea turtles.”
Sully chuckled. “Me, neither.” He let a beat pass, then added with irony, “It’s the marine iguanas that get on my nerves.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” joked Rex. “Penguins can be such a pain.” He sighed, adding, “What’s happening in the islands is pretty nasty. Ma’s right. They’re still trying to clean up the last oil spill. A couple days ago, some ship, I think it was called the—”
“Eliza,” supplied Sullivan.
“The Eliza,” repeated Rex. “Right. It ran aground near a nesting area for sea lion pups.”
“Ma’s serious,” Truman reminded. “Are we doing this or not?”
Rex stared. “We can’t find soul mates in three months.”
“She said wives, not soul mates,” argued Truman.
“To me, a wife would be a soul mate,” returned Rex.
“Oh, please,” muttered Truman. As the only Steele who’d ever given true love a whirl, he knew better.
“Ma said we have to be in love,” Sully put in.
“For five million dollars,” Truman said, calculating a third of the pie, “I think I could lie.”
Sully tried to look shocked. “To your own mother?”
“As if I don’t have enough on my plate…” Truman raked a hand through light brown hair, the longest strands of which traced a strong jaw.
Rex raised an eyebrow. “Why? What happened?”
“Coombs is trying to put me on a two-week drive-along with a reporter from the New York News.” Coombs was Truman’s boss at Manhattan South precinct.
“Smart move. You’re the best-looking cop in the NYPD,” said Sully without rancor. “You’ve got a strong arrest record, and you’re chasing the limelight, little brother.”
Truman tamped down his anger. It was tourist season, which meant the mayor, the News, and the NYPD were seeking ways to curb the mob hysteria that inevitably came with summer heat waves, and to assure people that New York City was the perfect place to bring kids on vacation.
Truman wasn’t interested in the public relations article. He was determined to solve the city’s latest, high-profile case, which had been dubbed the Glass Slipper case by the New York News. The case had been assigned to him, but if he wound up doing a drive-along with a reporter, he wouldn’t have time to work it. He had too many other more important cases on his desk. The Glass Slipper was special, though, since it involved film celebrities and rock stars. Cracking it would garner Truman enough attention to get him his full detective’s shield. He loved his work, hated bogus cases, and was tired of moving up the rung so much more slowly than his brothers.
“And now I’m supposed to find a wife?” he muttered.
“Speaking of women and your patrol car,” said Rex, fishing in his pocket for a piece of paper. “Some girl left this under your windshield wiper. I brought it in. Maybe you can marry her.”
Truman glanced down at a note written in lipstick. Officer Steele, I saw your car. Nice meeting you yesterday. I’d really like to get together for dinner. Call me. Candy.
Truman had enjoyed meeting her, too. Unfortunately, he’d been arresting her for being drunk and disorderly. Carefully pocketing the note in case his search for a bride came to that, he leaned in the doorway, glancing away from Sully’s room and the model planes and boats Sully had spent hours building as a kid, into Rex’s room, which was full of books, and then to his own, which was decorated with sports trophies and school pennants.
“Candy’s cute, huh?” asked Rex, referring to the note.
“Drunk and disorderly,” corrected Truman.
“But there will be others,” Sully said dryly, making Truman smile. Truman never beat his older brothers at anything, but Sully was right. Truman attracted the most women. He enjoyed their company, too. He just didn’t want to set up housekeeping. Until now. How would his mother know whether or not he really loved his bride? She wouldn’t, he decided, a new goal forming in his mind. In addition to cracking the Glass Slipper case, he’d be the first Steele to marry—though not for love, of course.
“As soon as my latest case broke,” Rex was saying, “I was going to take vacation. I’ve racked up four weeks leave time.”
Sully raised his eyebrows. “Where?”
Rex offered a typical Rex response. “Wherever the wind takes me.”
“It better be some place with women,” Truman warned. “Seeing as we’ve only got three months to get married.”
Three months. Or they’d lose fifteen million dollars. “Can you guys believe this?” Sully said rhetorically. The way he saw it, they might as well hand the money over to the turtles right now. His last serious, long-term relationship had lacked passion he couldn’t live without, and when he’d found passion, the relationship hadn’t included a meeting of the minds.
Absently, Sully reached for a shelf, lifting one of the models he’d made as a kid—a ship inside a bottle. Rarely given to whimsical behavior—that was Rex’s domain—Sully imagined himself writing a letter detailing what he wanted in a bride, putting it in the bottle and tossing it into the Hudson River. All his life, he’d done the tried and true…the dinner dates, boxes of candy, bouquets of flowers, and he was still single. For years, he’d wanted the kind of relationship his parents shared. Why not send a message in a bottle…?
“It’s us or the turtles,” Truman prompted.
“Well,
