by Mary Behre
“And?”
“And what were you thinking? Normal people don’t carry oregano in their purse.”
“Sure they do.”
He shook his head.
“Oh come on, see the world past the monochrome. The colors are really beautiful.”
He leveled a glare at her but she was sure the corners of his lips twitched as if she amused him.
She shrugged. “Normal people carry around spices if they’ve just been to the health food store. April only eats organic. I stopped by the store and picked up some oregano and lavender for her. End of story.”
The cop cocked his head to one side as if studying her. His stoic expression revealed nothing. Not doubt, not disbelief, not even suspicion. She would have described it as bored, except for his bird-of-prey gaze that locked with hers.
“I told you, I know lavender when I see it. I didn’t find any lavender.” He delivered the statements tonelessly. Still maintaining that hawklike eye contact, he added, “I thought you went to a party.”
“I did go to a party. Jeez, you are so suspicious.” Jules waved away his mistrust, then his previous statement registered. “Wait, you didn’t find the lavender?”
“No.” He glanced toward his open bedroom door as if to reassure himself. “The only baggie was the one in there.” He pointed to the purse he’d flung onto his faded faux-leather couch.
“I can’t believe I’ve lost something else! What is wrong with me, lately?” Jules raked her teeth across her lower lip. When was the last time she’d seen the herb? “I had it outside your apartment. I’m sure of it. I remember pushing it out of my way as I searched for my keys last night. I know I didn’t take it out of the purse. Are you certain you didn’t see it?”
“Maybe it slipped under the bed,” he answered, scratching his stubbled cheek. “I can look—”
Jules didn’t wait for him to complete his sentence; she hurried to the bedroom. Dropping to her hands and knees, she crawled partway under the cherrywood sleigh bed, skimming her fingers across the floor. She shouldn’t be so upset over missing a three-dollar bag of herbs, but she was getting tired of losing things. It would be nice if she could find something . . . for once.
“April really needs this to help her relax,” she called out to him as she shimmied beneath the wooden frame.
The cop made a sound that was cross between a grunt and a snort. “You don’t seriously believe in that New Age hocus pocus?”
“It’s not hocus pocus,” she replied, then shoved herself farther under the bed.
She opened her mouth then closed it again at what she found beneath his bed. The man had the cleanest floor she’d ever seen. There was nothing under there, not even a stray dust bunny in want of a new home.
Wow, Seth the Cop’s a neat freak.
She started to scoot back out when she spotted the shiny edge of the baggie poking out of a narrow space between the bed leg and the wall. Relief swept through her, and she grabbed it and scooted out.
“All ready to cure whatever ails with your magic lavender?” he asked, a chuckle in his voice.
“Don’t believe me,” she said, rising to her knees before him. She held up the bag of fragrant tiny purple dried flowers triumphantly. “But aromatherapy works, even on stodgy old guys like you.”
“I’m not that much older than you,” he answered, the corners of his mouth curling slightly.
“So says you,” she teased, still smiling.
He nodded. His eyes lowered and an indefinable look crossed his face. Jules felt her own smile fade at his inscrutable expression, then she followed his visual path.
The top button of her polo had popped free, revealing the lacy edge of her pale pink bra.
No, he’s definitely not a dirty old man. Dirty young man, maybe.
She tugged her shirt back in place and quickly re-buttoned it, certain her cheeks glowed in matching color to her underwear.
He stared down at her with his hands on his hips, his chocolate-colored eyes nearly black, and his hungry expression sent her pulse racing. Then images zinged into her mind.
Like an erotic movie, she saw herself tugging down his pajama bottoms and taking him into her mouth. She practically felt his hands on her head, his fingers curling into her hair as he guided her back and forth over his shaft a few times until she delivered the long, wet strokes he craved. Her heart hammered as she listened to him groan and encourage her. It was so real, the silken steel of his erection, the heady scent of sandalwood and male musk, the way his hands caressed her hair and face as he murmured encouragement.
The only thing missing was taste. This had to be his fantasy, because if it had been hers, she would have imagined tasting him. Plus, in her short marriage to Billy, she’d been too self-conscious to try to please him orally. And Fantasy Seth was definitely pleased.
As quickly as thoughts winged into her mind, they were zapped out as if someone slammed a door closed on them. Or as if Seth crushed his desire by sheer will.
Too stunned to move, she wondered at what had just happened. She’d read the thoughts of another person. Oh dear God! This couldn’t be happening. First seeing his aura, now reading his fantasies? She’d thought last night had been an aberration. What if it hadn’t?
The last thing she wanted to do was start experiencing the thoughts of the living. Seeing ghosts was bad enough. But if she started hearing living people’s thoughts, she’d never have a moment’s peace.
He extended a hand toward her and she gasped.
She didn’t want him to touch her. Not until she figured out how to block his fantasies from invading her thoughts. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed his little one-sided sex show.
She had.
A little too much.
Falling backward onto her butt to evade his touch, she banged her shoulder against the bedframe behind her.
“Are you all right?” Seth pulled his hand back with a frown, then asked in an exasperated tone, “Can I have my bedroom back now?”
“Of course.” For the second time in twelve hours, she’d forced her way into his bedroom. And she’d thought last time had been embarrassing. Jules pushed to her feet, avoiding eye contact.
She hurried through his apartment. Clutching the knob of the front door, she tugged but it didn’t give. A tanned, muscular arm reached around her and flipped the lock. Before she could escape, he tapped her on the shoulder.
Jules rotated on her heel, relieved none of his stray thoughts had filtered into her consciousness. Still, he stood so close the scent of sandalwood filled her senses and sparked memories of the vision she’d just had.
He frowned at her and held out her purse. She tried to accept it, but he didn’t release it. The purse acted as a conduit and again she connected to him. Unlike last time, there were no images, just an electric current of awareness evident in his darkening eyes.
It was sinful, frightening, and strangely intoxicating.
He lowered his head.
Instinctively, she lifted her chin, keeping her gaze locked with his. Her breath caught in her chest. His lips kicked up in a small grin.
His cell phone rang.
The shrill tone severed the link they shared. Sanity returned as the cop retrieved the phone from his pocket and scowled at the caller ID. He opened the front door.
With one hand on her back, he pushed her through it.
“Wait, my pur—”
He tossed her the clutch, which she caught against her chest with both hands, then he gave her his back as he answered his phone. “Detective English.”
The door closed unceremoniously in Jules’s face. For some reason she couldn’t name, disappointment settled in a lump in the middle of her chest, immediately followed by an overwhelming sense of relief. She’d almost kissed a near stranger—a cop at that—for the second time since three this morning. And to top it off, she was either losing her mind or she’d just discovered some new facets to the Scott family curse. She could read thoughts. Maybe not every
one’s, but definitely his.
I’d rather be insane.
“You’ve got your purse. Good. Lock up please.” Jules glanced up to see April, arms full, waddle into the hallway. “I can’t believe you own a Prada.”
“Yes, well, I needed to get something out of the divorce,” Jules said, taking a stack of forms out of April’s arms. “Go on downstairs, I’ll lock up.”
That’s when Jules remembered which two items were missing from her handbag, her cell phone and her keys.
Perfect! Hopefully they’re together, at least.
Tucking the purse under her free arm, she hurried down the steps and caught up with April just as she stepped out into the morning sunshine.
“April, can I borrow your cell on the way to work? I need to call myself.”
CHAPTER 3
“WHAT’S SO URGENT you couldn’t wait for me to come into the station?” Seth said into the cell phone after closing the door on his neighbor. He crossed his tiny carpeted living room and headed toward his bedroom.
“They knocked over another jewelry store last night,” Devon Jones replied in a dry tone.
Seth propped his cell between his ear and his shoulder and grabbed his note pad and a pen. “Okay, you got my attention. Go.”
His partner gave him a quick rundown. “Owners just arrived and discovered the store had been broken into. Beat cops are questioning them now. I’m en route to the scene.”
“Give me the address, kid. I’ll meet you there.”
Jones remained silent.
That might have been Seth’s fault. He still hadn’t adjusted to the idea of another partner, his third in the past five years. He was sick of teaching guys the ropes only to have them promoted before him. At least this one didn’t lap at his heels the way the previous two had. Well, until they were promoted, moved to the homicide division, and believed they were too good to associate with him.
Breaking in a new detective was not something he wanted to do. Lately, it seemed the rookies were getting younger, or maybe just cockier. Usually, he didn’t care if he annoyed Jones by calling him a kid. Today was different; he needed his partner’s cooperation.
“Detective Jones.” Seth made an effort to sound civil. “May I please have the address?”
“McGivern’s on the corner of Sixty-eighth and Pacific, in a strip mall with some florist shop.”
“The jewelry store across from April’s Flowers?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Seth didn’t wait for Jones to respond, he simply ended the call. He needed a quick shower. No, what he needed was to get his head on straight. Jules had been right. Mistaking oregano for pot had been a rookie mistake.
Heading into the bathroom, he turned on the shower and stripped. Steam quickly filled his tiny bathroom, fogging up his mirror.
He climbed beneath the water and tried to convince himself his error in judgment had been an anomaly. On the force he’d only ever made one other mistake.
That one error nearly cost him everything. Since then, he’d spent the past five years determined to never miss a single detail on a case, often working twenty-hour shifts. He’d missed blind dates, his own surprise party, and last spring, he almost missed his daughter Theresa’s high school graduation.
But he owed it to her and to himself to earn back the reputation her mother and her mother’s lover had nearly ruined. So he worked.
Under the spray, Seth tried to focus on the Diamond Gang case.
Why did the damn press have to come up with such an idiotic name in the first place?
Diamond Gang . . . sounds like they should be covered in sparkling jewels.
Jules.
Her sexy body flashed in his mind, her wide green eyes and her slender body supple in all the right places. The vibrant red hair she wore down around her shoulders suited her far better than the black wig. And this morning she still smelled like strawberries. It had taken everything in his power not to press his nose against her hair when she’d stood beside his bed. Okay, so he wanted to do a lot more than smell her hair. When she’d been on her knees a myriad of other things he’d like to do with her sparked in his mind.
Why did she have to be his neighbor?
There’s no way he could start a casual fling with someone in his own building. Only one way that would end: badly. His daughter had been right when she’d pointed out, after his last relationship crashed and burned, he sucked at commitment. Every single woman he’d liked and had dated, hated him now.
That decided it. He couldn’t like Jules. He refused to be attracted to her. If he was, he’d do something stupid, like break his own rules and pursue her until she was naked and writhing in his bed. Then it would happen.
After a week or two of steamy, sweaty, heart-pounding, soul-numbing sex, he’d grow bored and she’d grow attached. Just like every other woman he’d met in the past four years. And then he’d need to avoid not just her, but Ernie and April as well. And he liked them.
Then again, they were going on vacation, and when they returned, they wouldn’t live in his building anymore.
No. He couldn’t do it.
Jules was no one to him, absolutely no one. Too bad his body seemed to disagree.
He flipped the knob to cold and shivered, washing beneath the frigid water. By the time he’d shaved, all thoughts of his troublesome neighbor had been replaced by his case.
Dressing quickly, he focused on what he knew about the Diamond Gang. No one else on the force wanted to touch the cases that had been passed from one detective to another over the past two years. The burglaries were considered trivial and unsolvable to everyone but Seth and the four jewelers who had been put out of business.
The little mom-and-pop shops had struggled to survive against the influx of national chains before the robberies. After them, they couldn’t stay afloat. The shop owners needed to know who had destroyed their livelihoods. They needed closure and Seth needed to give it to them.
“Solve these,” Captain Peterson had said last week, as he handed Seth the stack. “And I’ll see to it you’re given the opportunity to take the sergeant’s exam.”
Yeah, he’d solve them all right. Seth’s career had taken enough hits over the years. Nothing was going to stand in the way of his promotion now. He had no intention of remaining a beat cop forever.
Except, he wasn’t a beat cop. Technically, he was Detective English. Ha, detective in name only, thanks to his second partner and Seth’s dead ex-wife. He pushed away the familiar fury and focused his attention on current events.
It had taken two years, but the Diamond Gang had finally slipped up.
With the remaining businesses doing their best to tighten security, the owners at Holcomb’s Jewelers had grown creative. It worked. Two weeks ago, while robbing Holcomb’s, the thieves missed one of the recently installed cameras hidden inside the body of a cheap lamp shaped like a stained glass lighthouse.
While the camera hadn’t been capable of recording sound, the video came out crystal. Thanks to it, Seth had his first solid set of clues. The thieves were coordinated, ski-mask-clad, and fast. They seemed to know exactly which cases to hit. But the biggest discovery from Holcomb’s video came as a surprise. One of the gang members was a woman.
Just before leaving the store, she’d bent over a display case in the center of the room. She’d seemed enamored with a piece of custom jewelry. A rare red diamond. While lusting after the ring, her shirt rode up. The camera captured an image of the tattoo on her lower back: a light green snake coiled around three red roses.
When Mr. Holcomb itemized the list of stolen items, the red diamond ring was included. The ring was on loan from a local philanthropist who’d planned to use it as the centerpiece in a fund-raiser for the Tidewater Children’s Network next month.
And yesterday, Seth had received a voice mail from a woman named Aimee-Lynn who claimed to have knowledge of the case. While she didn’t admit
to being a member of the gang, she did request to meet with him today to discuss what she knew. She’d even claimed to have proof she wanted to share in exchange for “help for a friend.”
His gut quivered at the memory of returning her call. She’d whispered on the phone as if she feared being discovered. After setting an appointment to meet with him at four this afternoon, she’d hung up. Unless his instincts failed him, Aimee-Lynn was the female recorded on the Holcomb’s tape.
That burglary, like all the others, focused primarily on loose gems. This time, they weren’t just any gems in the store. While before the stolen gems had been a mix of semiprecious stones and diamonds, at Holcomb’s robbery they were all diamonds. At a carat each, they were high quality and easy to fence, with the exception of the red diamond. The value of that gem alone boosted the Holcomb heist to nearly a half-million dollars.
And now McGivern’s had been robbed. Seth only hoped this time the gang left fingerprints or something more substantial to go on than broken glass. He’d love to walk in there with a little leverage when he met with Aimee-Lynn this afternoon.
• • •
AFTER CALLING HERSELF and receiving only voice mail, Jules winced. She had no choice. She’d have to come clean.
“Um, April. I, uh, have some bad news.”
“What’s wrong?” April asked as she pulled into the parking spot at the back of April’s Flowers and cut the engine.
“Well, it seems I’ve lost my keys to the apartment and, the uh . . .” Jules bit her lip. “Shop.”
“Juliana, are you sure?” April’s eyes widened. “Wait, the shop key’s missing too?”
“I’m so sorry.” Jules hurriedly exited from the car and raced to the driver’s side to help April climb out. “I’ll pay to have the locks replaced if I can’t find the key.”
April gave her a wan smile. “That’s not necessary. I’ll figure something out. I’ll call Ernie. He’ll know what to do about changing the locks.”
A horn beeped. Jules glanced toward the loading dock to see the delivery van waiting for them. She turned back to April. “Why don’t you head inside and I’ll get the delivery sorted out.”
