It Must Be Love

by Rachel Gibson

  "Me?"

  "Uh-huh." His gaze lowered to her mouth, then returned to the parrot. "Step up, Sam. Be a good bird." Finally Sam obeyed and hopped onto Joe's hand.

  "You behave."

  "Me? I'm not the guy rubbing my head against a pretty girl and kissing her. I am behaving. Well, I am tonight anyway." He flashed her a smile, then walked to the huge cage sitting in front of a big picture window.

  Gabrielle stood and watched him run a careful hand over Sam's feathers before he placed him in the cage. The big bad cop wasn't so big and bad after all. "Does he really think I'm a potential girlfriend?"

  "Probably. He's been shredding the newspaper and roosting on his stuffed animals again." Sam hopped on a perch, and Joe dosed the wire door. "But I've never seen him behave like he did with you. He usually gets really jealous of the women I bring home and tries to chase them out the front door."

  "I guess I lucked out," she said, now wondering how many women he brought to his house, and again, why she should care.

  "Yeah, he wants to roost with you." He turned and looked at her. "I can't say that I blame him."

  As compliments went; it wasn't great. But for some peculiar reason his words settled near her heart and made her pulse leap. "You suck at flattery, Shanahan."

  He just smiled like he knew better and motioned toward the door. "Do you need to stop anywhere on the way home? Maybe run in somewhere and get dinner?"

  She stood and followed him. "Are you hungry?"

  "No, I thought you might be."

  "No, I ate before Kevin's party."

  "Oh." He glanced at her across his shoulder. "Oh, okay."

  During the drive to Gabrielle's house, her thoughts once again turned to the type of women Joe might bring home. She wondered what they looked like, and if they looked like Nancy. She bet they did.

  Joe seemed just as distracted as Gabrielle, and neither of them spoke until she made an attempt at conversation three blocks from her house. "Kevin gives an interesting party." She was sure he'd have a lot to say about that.

  He didn't. He just kind of grunted and said, "Kevin's a fool."

  She gave up, and they rode the rest of the short way in silence. He didn't say anything as he walked her up the sidewalk or when he took the keys from her hand. The pink porch light caressed his profile and lingered in the soft curls above his ear as he bent forward and opened the door. He straightened and moved his shoulder as if it still bothered him.

  "Did you hurt yourself helping me tonight?" she asked.

  "I pulled a muscle the other day moving those shelves in your store, but I'll live."

  He straightened, and she looked at him, into his tired dark eyes, the beginning of another five O'clock, and the stress creasing his forehead. "I could give you a massage," she suggested before she gave herself time to think better of the offer.

  "Do you know how?"

  "Of course." Visions of Joe served up in nothing but a towel drifted through her head and warmed the pit of her stomach. "I'm almost a professional."

  "You mean, like you're almost a vegetarian?"

  "Are you making fun of me again?" She'd taken classes on massage and, although she wasn't a certified masseuse, she considered herself semipro.

  His quiet laughter stretched across the still night air and wrapped her up in the depth of the masculine sound. "Of course," he admitted without shame.

  At least he was honest. "I bet I could have you feeling better in twenty minutes."

  "What do you want to bet?"

  "Five bucks."

  "Five bucks? Make it ten and you're on."

  Chapter Twelve

  Joe took one look at the littletowel offered him and tossed it on the sofa. He preferred the loose-fit freedom of boxers. He liked lots of ball room to give the boys a chance to breathe, and there was no way he was going to run the risk of his goods hoisting that towel into a tepee.

  He shifted his weight to one foot and rested his hands on his hips. Hell, he shouldn't even be standing in the middle of Gabrielle's living room. He should be on his way home, to a good night's sleep. He had a briefing at eight the next morning to discuss the stolen antiques he'd seen in Kevin's guest room. He needed to be rested and to have a clear head when he prepared the affidavit he would use to obtain a search warrant. The wording had to be clear and concise and as tight as a virgin's coochie. If not, he'd run the risk of having anything seized during a search thrown out later at trial. There were other things he needed to do to-night, too. He needed to do some laundry, and he needed to call Ann Cameron and tell her he couldn't meet her for coffee tomorrow. He'd stopped by her deli that morning before work, and she'd made him breakfast. She was a real nice lady, and he needed to call and break their date.

  Instead, he stood in Gabrielle's house watching her pour oil into a shallow bowl and light candles on the mantelpiece and on different glass tables like she was preparing for a sacrifice. Instead of leaving, he tilted his head to one side and watched her ugly, shapeless dress ride up the backs of her smooth thighs, stopping just short of fantasy land.

  She turned down the lights, then flipped the switch next to the fireplace, and orange flame shot from the gas vents and licked at the fake logs. He watched her tie back her long, curly hair with a piece of ribbon, and he debated whether he should tell her that the ivory chess set in Kevin's bedroom, the one with all those little pawns with their wicked little woodies, had been stolen from a house in River Run last month.

  Ever since he'd watched her go over that balcony, he'd thought about telling her the truth. He'd thought about it on the drive to his house, while he'd talked to Walker on the telephone, and after he'd hung up. He'd thought about it as he'd stood on her porch with her key in his hand, and as he'd looked into her trusting green eyes. He'd thought about it even as he'd agreed to a massage that he knew was a bad idea.

  The captain didn't want Gabrielle informed of anything, but Joe thought she deserved to know the truth about Kevin and about the shelves crammed with many of the antiques recorded as stolen in police central file.

  Until about an hour ago, Joe would have been in complete agreement with Walker. But that had been before she'd stood guard outside the guest room door while he'd searched. Before he'd looked into her eyes and asked for her trust. Before she'd gone over that railing for him. Until an hour ago, he hadn't been sure of her innocence, nor had he really cared. It hadn't been his job to care. It still wasn't his job.

  "I'll go get my massage table and you can get comfortable."

  "I want to sit in a chair. One of those dining room chairs will be good." A hard, uncomfortable chair that wouldn't let him relax enough to forget she was his informant, not a woman he wanted to know a whole lot better.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Oh yeah." But when he'd seen her climb over that railing, clearly terrified, something had shifted within him and changed how he looked at her, what he felt deep down in his core. Watching her dangle above his head, those little white panties filling his view, his heart had lodged somewhere in his throat. As he'd looked up at her hanging above him, he'd known he would have a real hard time catching her if she fell, just as he'd known there was no way in hell he'd let her fall. And in that moment she'd become more than his informant with a killer body, she'd become someone he wanted to keep safe. Someone he wanted to protect.

  He'd felt something else, too. As he'd held her in his arms and kissed her neck, he'd felt a sharp tightness in his chest even after the danger had passed. Maybe it had been residual fear or latent stress. Yeah maybe, but whatever it was, he didn't plan to examine it too closely. Instead he chose to focus his attention on Gabrielle's progress as she dragged a wooden chair from the dining room and set it in front of the fireplace.

  Even though he believed she deserved to know about Kevin, he couldn't tell her, because she was so extremely readable. Everything she felt showed in her eyes. She couldn't lie without looking like she expected a bolt of lightning to zap her. He couldn't tell her, an
d he shouldn't stay.

  He took a step backward and debated the wisdom of letting Gabrielle rub her hands on him. The debate didn't last long. She tilted her head to the side and looked at Rim. "Take off your shirt, Joe," she said, and her voice flowed through him like that oil she was warming on a little burner. He guessed he didn't have to leave just yet. He was thirty-five and in control.

  It was a massage. Not sex. After he'd been shot, he'd had the knots kneaded from his muscles on a regular basis as part of his therapy. Of course, his therapist had been in her fifties and looked nothing like Gabrielle Breedlove.

  Yeah, he could stay. As long as he remembered that Gabrielle was his informant, that screwing around with her would screw up his job. And that just wasn't going to happen. No way in hell.

  "Aren't you going to take off your clothes?"

  "I'm leaving my pants on."

  She shook her head. "I wish you wouldn't. The oil will ruin your pants."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "I won't peek." The tone of her voice and the frown on her lips told him she thought he was absurd. Then she raised her right hand as if swearing an oath. "I promise."

  "Towel's too small."

  "Oh." She left and returned a moment later with a big beach towel. She tossed it on the arm of the sofa beside him. "How's this?"

  "Great."

  Gabrielle paid fascinated attention to Joe's hands as he drew the bottom of his silk polo from his gabardine trousers. Like a maddeningly slow striptease, he pulled the ribbed material just enough to give her a flash of flat stomach and a vertical line of dark hair before he released the shirt and it fell to his waist. She released a breath she hadn't known she was holding and lifted her gaze to his face. She stared into his brown eyes watching her watch him. He raised a hand to grab a fistful of shirt between his shoulders. Then he pulled it over his head and tossed it on the sofa next to the bath towel he'd refused to wear. His hands moved to his belt buckle, and she quickly glanced away.

  She turned her attention to the almond oil she'd poured into a shallow lotus bowl and left warming on a vaporizer. Her mouth felt impossibly dry and watery all at the same time. She turned her gaze so he wouldn't catch her staring, but not before she'd seen the fine curls covering the defined muscles of his chest, spreading down his sternum and flat stomach and disappearing beneath the waistband of his trousers. His nipples were a darker brown than in her painting of him, the hair on his chest softer and not as thick.

  She added three drops of benzoin and eucalyptus to the almond oil, then placed the bowl and defuser on a small table next to the fireplace. Joe spun the dining room chair to face the fire, straddled the seat, and sat backward. He folded his arms across the top rung and presented her with his smooth back. His tight skin stretched across hard muscle and the indent of his spine that ran between his shoulders to the small of his back. A nicotine patch was stuck to his waist and half hidden by the thick white towel hung low on his hips.

  "Don't you think it's going to get too hot sitting so close to the ike?" he asked.

  "If your skin isn't warm, your pores will be closed to the healing benefits of the benzoin and eucalyptus." She stood beside him and placed one palm across his forehead and the other at the nape of his neck. "Drop your head a little bit," she said and gently squeezed his knotted neck muscles. "Bring awareness to the tension in your head. Now take a deep cleansing breath and hold it until I tell you," she instructed as she rubbed the pad of her thumb up the top vertebras of his spine and into the fine hair at the base of his skull. She counted to five and slid her thumb back down. "Release your breath, and with it, the tension you feel in your head. Let it go."

  "Ahh… Gabrielle?"

  "Yes, Joe."

  "I don't have tension in my head."

  The relaxing essence of lavender and geranium filled her living room as she moved to stand behind him. Her hands slid to his temples, and she massaged away the tension he didn't think he had. "Joe, you're so tense you're brittle." She slowly combed her fingers up the sides of his head; his silky hair curled around her knuckles as she entwined them on top of his skull. She applied pressure with her palms and rubbed. "How does that feel?"

  He groaned.

  "That's what I thought." She spent a bit more time than usual on his skull and neck, but his hair felt so soft between her fingers that she couldn't help herself. A warm little tingle traveled up her arms and tightened her breasts, and she forced herself to move on, to relinquish the pleasure of touching his hair.

  She poured a small measure of the massage oil from the lotus bowl into her palms. "Take a deep cleansing breath and hold it." She placed her hands on the back of each shoulder and rolled and squeezed his muscles. His trapezius and deltoids were tight and knotted, and she moved her hands to the outside edge of his shoulders and down his arms to his elbows. "Feel the tension in the base of your skull. Let it go as you exhale," she instructed even though she had a real good feeling he wasn't using his breathing to relax. She kneaded her way back up. "Visualize the bad stress flowing away from you and replace it with white prana, or clean universal energy."

  "Gabrielle, you're scaring me."

  "Shhh." She didn't believe anything scared him, especially her. She dipped her fingers into the oil, then slid her palms down, then up his back, preparing and warming his muscles for a deeper massage. She molded her hands to the contours of his flesh, feeling and learning the definition and shape of him. "Is this where it hurts?" she asked as her hands moved to his right shoulder.

  "A bit lower."

  She kneaded and squeezed and rubbed a drop of black pepper oil onto his aching muscles. The heat from the fire warmed his skin, while the light of the flames chased shadows across his flesh and gleamed in his dark hair. A pleasurable flutter settled in her stomach, and her mind and spirit fought to keep her touch impersonal. She might not be a licensed masseuse, but she knew the distinct difference between a healing massage and a sensual massage.

  "Gabrielle?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry about what happened in the park last week."

  "For tackling me?"

  "No, I'm not sorry about that. I enjoyed it too much."

  "Then what are you sorry about?"

  "That you were frightened."

  "And that's the only thing you're sorry about?"

  "Well, yeah."

  She gently sank her fingertips into his flesh. She had a feeling he didn't apologize for anything very often, and she accepted it as his best effort.

  "I've got to admit, I've never been mistaken for a stalker before."

  "You probably have, just no one has told you the truth before me." She smiled and continued to stroke across his shoulder and down his arms. "You have a very menacing aura sometimes. You should work on it."

  "I'll be sure to do that."

  She slid her hands back up and pressed her thumbs in the bony ridge at the base of his skull. "I'm sorry I hurt your leg."

  One of her thumbs brushed his jaw as he glanced over his shoulder at her. His dark eyes looked up at her, firelight casting his face within a golden glow. "When?"

  "That day in the park when I got you on the ground. Afterward, you limped to the car."

  "That's an old injury. You didn't do that."

  "Oh."

  "You sound disappointed."

  "No." Her fingers fanned outward, and her hands moved to the sides of his rib cage. "Not disappointed exactly. You were so horrible to me, I just liked to think I made you suffer a little bit that day too."

  He smiled before he returned his gaze to the fire. "Oh, you did. Every time I walk into the station, I get a raft of shit about you and your hair spray. I'm likely to hear about you for years."

  "Once this case is over, everyone will forget about me." Beneath his hard muscles, his ribs tapered to his flat abdomen. "You'll probably forget, too."

  "Now, that's never going to happen," he spoke from deep within his chest. "I'll never forget you, Gabrielle Breedlove."
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  His words pleased her more than she wanted to admit. They settled beneath her breast, next to her heart, and wanned her like the glow of a tea candle. She smoothed her hands down Joe's sides to his waist, up to his armpits, then back down. "Now bring your awareness to your shoulders. Take a deep breath, and hold it." She felt him suck his stomach in, and his muscles turned hard. "You aren't holding a deep breath, are you?"

  "No."

  "You have to use your breathing if you want to relax completely."

  "Impossible."

  "Why?"

  "Just take my word for it."

  "Would a glass of wine help?"

  "I don't drink wine." He paused before he spoke again. "There's only one thing that would help."

  "What is it?"

  "A cold shower."

  "That doesn't sound relaxing."

  He laughed again, but he didn't sound amused. "Well, there is one other thing I've been sitting here thinking about."

  "What?" she asked although she knew.

  His words were low and husky when he said, "Never mind. It involves both of us naked, and that can't happen."

  Of course she knew it couldn't. They were complete opposites. He upset her universal balance. She wanted a man of enlightenment. He was as enlightened as a caveman. He thought she was crazy, and maybe she was. Less than a week ago, she'd thought he was a stalker; now he sat in her living room while she oiled his body as if he were a Chippendale dancer. Maybe she was crazy. Still she asked, "Why?"

  "You're my informant."

  Which wasn't a good reason as far as she was concerned. The informant's agreement she'd signed was a piece of paper. A piece of paper that couldn't dictate desire. Now, the fact that they were two totally different people, with totally different beliefs, should have been a very good reason for them to avoid the huge mistake of falling in bed together.

  But as she watched the glow of firelight flicker across his smooth back, their differences didn't seem to matter all that much. The movement of her hands turned fluid and soothing and sensual. Joe upset her balance so much that she forgot all about keeping her touch impersonal. She clipped her fingers into the warmed oil, and her touch grew feather light as she caressed his spine. "Bring your awareness into your solar plexus and abdomen. Take a deep breath, then let it go."