All a Man Can Ask

by Virginia Kantra

  “Whoever our gunrunner is, he’s got good cover. Or the feds would have caught him by now.”

  “And what makes you think you can succeed where they’ve failed?”

  “I have to,” Aleksy said.

  Jarek’s gaze sharpened. His voice softened. “It’s not your job. It’s not your case. You need to stay out of it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Alex—”

  But Aleksy cut him off. He appreciated his brother’s concern, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. Some things were too painful to get into, and way too personal to share. “Are you going to stop me?”

  His brother hesitated. “I can’t let my department get mixed up in your personal vendetta.”

  “I know that. That’s why I didn’t spill the details to what’s his name. Larsen. I just need you to leave me alone.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well…you could give me my gun back.”

  Jarek opened a drawer in his desk and hefted Aleksy’s snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. “You carrying the ‘chief’s special’ now?”

  “You always did.”

  Jarek peered along the blue steel barrel. “Yeah, but yours is longer than mine.”

  “Barrel envy, big brother?”

  Jarek’s teeth glinted in a smile. “Yeah. What is yours, three inches?”

  Aleksy laughed. “At least mine feels like a real gun instead of a kiddie toy.”

  Jarek raised his eyebrows, but he laid the gun flat on his desk without comment.

  Aleksy slid it into the clip at his back. Some cops liked an ankle holster off duty, but he’d never been able to stand walking with one. “Thanks.”

  “You need a place to stay?”

  Aleksy dropped his jacket over the gun to hide it. “No, I’m good. We’re only an hour or so out of Chicago. I can get home occasionally to shower and change. Besides, the fewer people who associate you with me—or me with the police—the better.”

  “As long as you understand I expect to be apprised of your activity while you’re in my jurisdiction.”

  Aleksy nodded to show he’d received the warning. “Understood.”

  “And, Alex…yell for help if you need it.”

  Aleksy grinned at his big brother. “Haven’t I always?”

  “Not always,” Jarek said. “You let Tommy Dolan whip your butt in fifth grade.”

  Aleksy shrugged. “Fine. You want to help?” He did a mental playback of Faye Harper’s wide eyes and unexpected spunk. “Fix things with the cream puff.”

  “—can only apologize and hope you’re willing to forget about the matter,” the police chief’s cool, smooth voice said over the telephone line.

  Faye’s hand tightened on the receiver. He was talking down to her. A lot of people talked down to her. Too bad for the Denkos she was getting tired of it. “Most women would have difficulty forgetting an armed intruder.”

  The police chief coughed. “Actually, unless you previously communicated your desire for him to leave the property—if the yard were fenced, for example, or if signs were posted—he wouldn’t be guilty of criminal trespass. Of course, I understand your—”

  “He had a gun,” Faye said.

  The line was still for a moment. “A gun he was legally authorized to carry.”

  She knew it was futile to argue. But still. “Your officer said only sworn law enforcement officers could carry concealed firearms.”

  “Yes,” the chief said, adding very gently, “My brother Alex is a detective with the Chicago PD.”

  The fight leaked out of Faye like air from a pricked balloon. What was the point of protesting? What was right was never as important as what was expedient. She should have learned that by now.

  But the mocking memory of her trespasser’s hard, dark eyes dared her to say, “And what was a detective from Chicago doing on my dock?”

  Another pause. “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  Jarek Denko was silent.

  Don’t get involved, Faye told herself. You don’t want to know. She tucked the receiver under her jaw and used her left hand to massage her right wrist. Without the support of the cast, it ached when she used it too long.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I won’t press charges or—or whatever it is. I don’t have time, anyway. I’m here to work.”

  “Really?” the chief asked politely. Well, now that he had what he wanted—her cooperation—she supposed he felt compelled to be polite. “What kind of work do you do, Miss Harper?”

  Once she would have told him with pride that she was a teacher. Now she stammered. “I, um…not work, exactly. I should have said I paint.”

  “Lots of pretty scenery up here,” the chief said, still politely.

  She made an agreeable noise—it seemed the fastest way to get him to leave her alone—and hoped he wouldn’t start to tell her what views she ought to paint while she was here or about his aunt/sister/cousin who used to model clay/draw her own Christmas cards/do decoupage.

  He didn’t. He thanked her again formally and got off the line.

  Faye drew a shaky breath and looked around her aunt’s living room, now serving as her temporary studio. Brushes stood in mayonnaise jars. Paint dried in plastic trays. Photographs—a bright sailboat slicing the horizon, a flock of birds above an inlet, a skyscape at midday—spilled across the table. The metallic strip board she’d hauled from her Chicago apartment propped against one wall, her most recent work held in place with small round magnets.

  I paint.

  Beautiful scenes. Bright scenes. Safe scenes.

  She bit her lip, aware of a faint dissatisfaction. Maybe they did lack a little of the energy and edge that characterized her earlier work, but they were pretty. Soothing.

  Lame, Jamal would have said, with a shake of his head and his wide, white grin…

  The tight control she’d held over her thoughts fissured, and through the gap, bitter self-accusation swept in a flood. Don’t go there, she told herself. Do not. Go there. Don’t.

  She picked up one of the trays and headed to the kitchen to rinse out the old paints in the sink. She was scrubbing burnt umber from the palette’s crevice when the doorbell rang.

  Her heart began to thump. She turned off the water. She wasn’t expecting visitors. She didn’t know anyone in town, not really, and while she had left a forwarding address at the school, no one in Chicago cared where she’d gone. Mail delivery came around three and her aunt’s cottage was too far off the beaten path to attract many salesmen.

  Drying her hands on a paper towel, she went to the door. A man’s tall outline blocked the afternoon sun. She squinted through the screen. Her misgiving swelled.

  It was him.

  Aleksy Denko.

  Chapter 2

  Aleksy was used to one of two reactions when he knocked on a woman’s door. Either she stalled him while the man of the house bolted down the fire escape. Or, sooner or later, she invited him in for sex. Some women did both.

  Faye Harper didn’t look like she would do either one.

  She hung back in the shadow of the house, her arms crossed and her body language shouting “go away.” He didn’t hold it against her. Even with Jarek’s phone call smoothing the way, he probably made her nervous.

  “It’s okay,” he said with an easy grin. He could do charming. Karen used to say it was his best interview technique, though he liked to think he had a nice line in subtly threatening, too. “I’m not selling anything.”

  Faye Harper didn’t smile as he’d hoped and half expected. But she did take a half step closer to the screen. “That’s good. Because I’m not buying. Anything.”

  This time his grin was for real. Score one for the cream puff. And she looked cute, with her short blond hair and her small pale face, scowling at him through the screen. Cute wasn’t his type, but he could understand the appeal.

  “Well, now that we know where we stand, do you mind if I come in?”

&nbs
p; She hesitated. “Will this take long?”

  Not if she gave him what he wanted.

  “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” he promised.

  She unlocked the screen—he could have told her that was useless, any punk with a razor would cut through that flimsy barrier in seconds—and stepped aside to admit him. She smelled like spring flowers and line-dried sheets. He sniffed in appreciation.

  She sniffed, too. “Can I see your ID?”

  He gave her credit for asking and showed her his driver’s license.

  She studied it gravely and then asked, “Don’t you have a badge?”

  He winced. “A star,” he said. “We call them stars. Security guards have badges.”

  The corners of her mouth dented, like she was amused, but she only said, “May I see it?”

  He handed her the leather holder that held his detective’s star with its black metallic band and raised white letters. He saw her surprise as its weight registered.

  She turned it in her hand. “Why didn’t you show this to the other officer this morning?”

  She might be nervous, but she sure wasn’t dumb.

  “I didn’t want to blow my cover,” he said. “I’m working a case.”

  And if his lieutenant heard that one, he’d bust Aleksy’s butt down to traffic patrol.

  Faye tipped her head to one side. “Then why tell me now?”

  He tried for a little sincerity. “Because I need your help.”

  “No.”

  Okay. Screw sincerity. Back to charm. “Maybe help is too strong a word,” he said, leaning forward to take his star and her hand with it. “Cooperation.”

  She withdrew her hand, leaving the leather holder behind. “You’ll have to recruit someone else. I’m not cooperating. Well, I’m not pressing charges, but that’s as much as I can do. I can’t afford to get involved. I’m here to rest and recover.”

  He looked her over. She looked good to him. “Been sick?”

  She had very fine skin. She flushed. “Not really.” But he noticed her left hand moved to cover her right wrist. Interesting.

  “I’m on vacation,” she said.

  Not cooperating. And not divulging much, either.

  “Faye—can I call you Faye?—what do you do?”

  She moved her shoulders uncomfortably. “I teach.”

  That fit. He could see her in a kindergarten classroom, surrounded by adoring five-year-olds. She wasn’t much more than a kid herself, with her wide brown eyes and her short, messy hair. Under that ridiculous skirt she wore, her narrow feet were bare. Unbelievably he got turned on looking at her feet.

  Poor timing.

  Remember Karen.

  Do the job.

  He switched his gaze back to her face. “A teacher, huh? Where do you teach?”

  “Lincoln High School.”

  Lincoln? He almost whistled. The high school was adjacent to one of the most notorious projects in Chicago. Enrollment was high, graduation rates low, teacher burnout and turnover at epidemic rates. No wonder cream puff needed rest-and-recovery.

  “What do you teach?” he asked, not just making conversation anymore.

  “Art,” she said flatly.

  They must eat her alive.

  He wouldn’t mind a nibble himself.

  But neither realization changed what he had to do.

  Aleksy kept his voice low and his eyes level, inviting her trust. Implying a bond he was pretty sure she’d resist. “Well, then, I don’t need to talk to you about doing your public duty. Teachers, cops, social workers…we’re all on the same team.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s been made painfully clear recently that I am not a team player.”

  He grinned. “Funny, my lieutenant says the same thing about me.”

  But Faye wasn’t laughing.

  “Look, I don’t want to bother you,” Aleksy said. “I just need your permission to hang around for a few days.”

  “A few days,” she repeated.

  “Yeah.” Or a couple of weeks or however long it took to nail Karen’s murderer.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got to keep an eye on some things and your place is convenient.”

  “What kind of things?”

  The hippie skirt and big lost eyes were deceptive. Under that flyaway blond hair, Faye Harper was sharp and stubborn. But when Aleksy was on a case, he was steel. He rubbed his jaw, pretending to consider. “I’m thinking the less I tell you about that, the less likely you are to be involved. You know?”

  She frowned at having her own words turned back on her. “You promise I won’t be involved?”

  Aleksy smiled, satisfied he had her. “You won’t even know I’m here,” he promised.

  He lied, Faye thought three days later as she readied her paper for painting.

  She couldn’t glance out her window or take out her trash without spotting Aleksy Denko ambling toward her woods or fishing from her dock. Even when he wasn’t there, the possibility that he might appear hurried her heartbeat and diffused her focus.

  She pulled a half sheet from the soaking tray, holding it by one corner to drain the excess water.

  It wasn’t that she was looking for him, she assured herself, giving the paper a gentle shake. Well, it wasn’t only that she was looking for him. Tall, dark and in-your-face was tough to miss.

  She placed the sheet on the drying board and smoothed it from the center to remove air pockets, taking comfort in the familiar gestures and the flat blank page. Her painting might be lacking these days, but her preparation was faultless.

  Clackety clackety clackety clackety clack.

  Faye started, nearly tearing a corner of the wet paper. What on earth—?

  The racket continued outside her windows, close to the house. Metal on metal, clackety clack. Wiping her hands on her skirt, she edged to the sliding doors and peered out.

  Aleksy Denko, stripped to the waist, paraded across her strip of lawn, trundling her aunt’s old push mower in front of him. The rusty blades made a terrible sound.

  But it wasn’t terror that dried Faye’s mouth and quickened her pulse. It was the sight of all that gleaming, hot male flesh five yards away outside her window.

  Close enough—her breath stuck in her chest—to touch.

  He passed her. The lovely long lines of his back disappeared into the damp waistband of his jeans. She could see his buttocks flex. He leaned over the mower, head bent, shoulders taut, putting his back into the job the way he would work a woman.

  He reached the end of the row and turned, revealing his sweaty, abstracted face and his deep, powerful chest with its shadow of hair. Not a boy. Not just a man. All man.

  My goodness. Teaching high school hadn’t prepared her for this.

  His complete unawareness of her was both seductive and infuriating. He was a man mowing the lawn. Her lawn. And both the normalcy and the familiarity of the act pushed all her buttons.

  It was intimate.

  Unexpected.

  Intolerable.

  Ignoring the paper drying on the table, Faye rattled open the door and stepped out on the deck. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Aleksy stopped. He looked up, his dark gaze colliding with hers. Something—desire? anticipation? dread?—fluttered in Faye’s stomach.

  He dragged his forearm over his sweaty face. “I’m mowing your grass.”

  “I can see that. I want to know why.”

  His full lips quirked in a smile. “Because it needs cutting?”

  He was right. The lawn was disgracefully overgrown. And she’d meant to get around to it. Eventually.

  “It’s not your responsibility,” she said, keeping her gaze on his face. Avoiding that hot, powerful chest.

  He leaned on the mower handle. “So what? It makes your life easier. It makes my job easier, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s good cover. I’m less conspicuous mowing your grass than lurking around your hous
e.”

  Her eyes flickered over his bare, broad shoulders, still winter pale, and his deep, muscled chest. He had a line of black hair, startling against his fair skin, that ran down his stomach and disappeared into… She jerked her focus back up.

  “Not to me,” she said crossly. “You’re bothering me.”

  “Am I?” His tone was amused. Satisfied. Dangerous.

  Her face burned. “The noise,” she clarified. “The noise bothers me.”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly sorry. “You want me to stop?”

  Leaning against the rail above him, Faye caught the mingled scents of cut grass and hot male. She had another funny tummy flutter. “Well…”

  “It’s going to look bad if I quit now.”

  Faye surveyed the partially mown yard. He was right. “Well, I guess you could finish.”

  “Good.” He grinned at her. “I hate to leave anything half-finished.”

  Her pulse pounded. That sounded like a warning. Or a dare.

  Possibility expanded in her like orange pigment spreading on wet paper. Three months ago, she might have taken up his challenge. Three months ago, she had a naive faith in herself and an inflated sense of her own ability to deal with things.

  Faye stepped back from the deck rail, instinctively hugging her right arm against her chest. She couldn’t deal with things anymore. She certainly couldn’t handle whatever this hot, half-naked man was offering.

  “I’ll let you get back to it, then,” she said, and reached behind her back to fumble with the sliding door.

  His gaze sharpened. His smile faded. “Faye—”

  “I have work to do.” She turned tail and bolted like the coward she was.

  It wasn’t just cowardice, she told herself. She needed to get that sheet taped down before it dried or her morning’s work would be wasted.

  The pretty landscapes on the wall mocked her. Flat water. Empty sky. Her work was wasted anyway.

  She pushed the thought away.

  She cut the lengths of paper tape —clackety clackety, from the corner of her eye, she could see Aleksy, pushing, sweating—and pressed them to the edges of the drying sheet to stretch it —clackety clack as he passed the cottage again—and pinned the corners with thumb-tacks.