A Marriage-Minded Man?

by Linda Turner

  He didn’t like to think he was one of those men who couldn’t admit he’d made a mistake, but he damn sure wasn’t taking a witness along to record the event for posterity. So when he dropped by Heavenly Scents on the way home, he was alone.

  Keep it simple, he told himself. Get it over with and get out. But the second he stepped through the front door of the café, he knew that wasn’t going to be possible. It was the middle of the supper rush and the place was packed. The only available table, in fact, was wedged back in a corner. Reluctantly he took it and sat back to wait.

  Molly was running the grill while Rosa and Jennifer waited tables, and Sam didn’t doubt for a second that they saw him the minute he walked through the door. Molly got this tight, persimmon set to her mouth, and Rosa shot him dirty looks whenever the opportunity presented itself. Jennifer, on the other hand, ignored him completely. At first Sam was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Considering how crowded the place was, it was entirely possible that she just hadn’t seen him. But she was too good a waitress to leave a customer alone for long, and as he watched, she deliberately avoided the corner where he sat. Humor suddenly glinting in his eyes, he sat back to wait, wondering how long it would take for her to acknowledge him.

  Exactly ten minutes later she put in an appearance at his table. “If you’re here to harass me again, Detective, I’d appreciate if you’d do it at another time,” she said stiffly. “I’ve got people waiting and could use the table.”

  Far from being insulted, he only grinned. “The name’s Sam. And if this is the way you treat all your customers, it’s a wonder you have any at all. What’s today’s special?”

  Stunned, she nearly dropped her order pad. “You’re going to eat?”

  “I thought I might. You got a problem with that?”

  “No, of course not.” Color stinging her cheeks, she handed him a menu. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.”

  “Just give me the special and iced tea.”

  “I haven’t told you what it is yet.”

  “Is it liver?”

  “No!”

  “Then I’ll eat it,” he said, and handed the menu back to her.

  She took it absently, her brows knit in a puzzled frown, and it didn’t take a psychic to know she was trying to figure out what the hell he was doing there. He was wondering the same thing. When he’d walked through the front door, his only thought had been to get the deed done and leave. But Tanner was right, damn his hide. She was hard to ignore. She walked away to turn his order in, then refill iced-tea glasses at several tables, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

  It had to be the way she moved, he decided broodingly. She just seemed to glide from table to table with unhurried grace, even when she was laden down with trays of food. And then there was the way she treated her customers. She greeted a lot of them by name and asked about their jobs and families as though she really cared, chatting with them as if she had all the time in the world. With just a word, a touch, a smile, she made everyone she spoke to feel special.

  Except him. He might as well not have been there for all the attention she paid his corner. She even had Rosa bring his food to him when it was ready, along with the check, thereby avoiding any further need to speak to him.

  From the sassy swing of her hips as she walked past his table without sparing him a glance, she obviously thought she’d outmaneuvered him. She’d thought wrong, however. He was a patient man, who’d learned as a rookie cop how to wait. If she wanted to play games until she closed up for the night, he was more than happy to accommodate her. Picking up his fork, he dug into the special, which turned out to be chicken and dumplings, one of his favorites. And all the time, he watched every move the lady made.

  What was he still doing there? Irritated, Jennifer kept her eyes firmly averted from the corner table and wondered when the dratted man was going to leave. He’d cleaned his plate, then lingered over a slice of Molly’s famous banana-cream pie like a man who’d died and gone to heaven. The supper rush had come and gone, and just when she thought he was finally finished, he’d signaled Rosa for a cup of coffee. He’d been nursing it ever since. That was fifteen minutes ago, and whatever he had left in the bottom of his cup had to be stone cold. Yet there he sat, his long legs stretched out in front of him as if he didn’t have a care in the world, watching her with those wicked blue eyes of his. It was enough to make a sane woman pull out her hair!

  And he wasn’t going to get away with it! she decided abruptly. This was her café, her territory, and he’d rattled her long enough. It was time she took control of the situation and booted him out the door. Grabbing the coffeepot, she made a beeline for his table.

  Without asking him if he wanted more coffee, she filled his cup to the brim, then set the pot on the table with a thump. “All right, Detective,” she said curtly. “You’ve had your fun and games. Playtime’s over. I’m closing up in twenty minutes. If you don’t want to be locked in here for the night, I suggest you pay your bill and head for home.”

  With maddening calm, he lifted an inquiring brow. “Are you throwing me out?”

  “In a heartbeat.” Whipping out her hand, she said, “That’ll be $8.54, please—not counting tip of course.”

  “Of course,” he said dryly. Digging his wallet out of his back pocket, he pulled out a ten and dropped it into her hand. “Keep the change.”

  “I’m sure your waitress will appreciate it,” she said just as dryly.

  She would have pulled her hand back then, but before she could so much as move, his fingers closed like a sprung trap around her wrist.

  “Not so fast, Ms. Hart,” he murmured. “I have something for you.”

  She could have pulled free. Somewhere deep inside, a quiet voice whispered that his grip was gentle and hardly unbreakable, but she couldn’t hear anything but the unexpected thundering of her own heart. Transfixed, she stared down at the fingers encircling her wrist and was swamped with the oddest feelings. She hardly knew the man, but his touch felt so familiar. So...right. As if he’d touched her this way a thousand times before.

  Suddenly afraid, she jerked her eyes up to his and found him frowning at the hold he had on her wrist, too. When his eyes lifted to hers, they were dark and turbulent with an emotion that seemed to steal the air right out of her lungs. Her heart stumbled. What was going on here? Torn between the urge to run and the need to stand her ground with this man, she tugged against his hold. Without a word he released her.

  In the blink of an eye, his expression was shuttered, and suddenly she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. It mortified her to admit it, but she had no experience with men. None. She hadn’t been lying when she told him there was no man in her life—there never had been. The boys in Sandy Bluff had all been scared off by the idea that she knew what they were going to try before they did, and they’d avoided her like the plague. So while other girls had learned the flirting game in high school and how to read the signs of male interest, she never had. And nothing had changed since. Prince Charming himself could have shown up on her doorstep, and she never would have known it unless he came right out and told her.

  Not that she thought Sam was her prince, charming or otherwise, she hastily assured herself. Horrified at the direction of her thoughts, she felt color spill into her cheeks and was helpless to stop it. Did he know what she was thinking? Had he guessed that she was mooning over him after nothing more than a touch?

  Feeling like a gauche teenager suffering from her first crush, it was all she could do not to run. Instead, she forced herself to stand her ground and look him in the eye. “I can’t imagine anything you could possibly have for me, Detective,” she said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  When she would have turned and walked away, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the plastic bag that held her grandmother’s jewelry. “The story about your grandmother appears to c
heck out,” he said stiffly, “so you can have these back.”

  “I think my ears are playing tricks on me,” she said, stunned. “Would you repeat that?”

  A smile, a faint one, curled the edges of his mouth. “So you want your pound of flesh, do you? I guess you’re entitled. You were telling the truth. Maybe I should have believed you at the time, but Mrs. Elliot has a lot of connections in this town, and there’s a lot of pressure on the department to solve the case. I couldn’t take any chances.” His gaze still steady on hers, he pushed the bag across the table. “If you’re going to keep them in your apartment, you need to get a safe. They’re too valuable to leave lying around on a dresser.”

  Surprised, a tremulous smile whispering over her mouth, she reached for the bag and clutched it close. She knew he was right. She did need a safe. But locked away out of sight in some vault, the jewelry wouldn’t mean nearly as much to her as it did when it was on her dresser within easy reach.

  That, however, was something a practical man like Sam Kelly would never understand. “I’ll think about it,” she conceded softly. “Thank you for returning them so quickly.”

  Unable to stop his eyes from drifting to her mouth, Sam felt something hot and swift kick him in the gut. She had the most amazing smile—soft and vulnerable and sexy enough to tempt the devil himself. And the crazy thing was, she didn’t seem to know it. If she’d been the type of woman he wanted to believe she was, the type who would ruthlessly plot with some lowlife to rob an old lady blind, she would have used any advantage to get to him. But she flirted so unconsciously she didn’t even seem aware of what she could do to a man—to him, dammit!—with just a smile.

  Annoyed with himself for letting her get to him, furious with her for being totally unaware of it, he pushed abruptly to his feet. “I was just doing my job,” he said gruffly, and headed for the door. He could feel her eyes on him, but he’d be damned if he’d look back. He didn’t dare.

  Deliberately he tried to put her out of his mind, but he could still feel the softness of her skin under his fingertips when he walked into the Lone Star Social Club a few minutes later. The old Victorian home, right on the river in the middle of downtown, had once been a place where cowboys met decent women when they came in from the cattle drives. Long after such social clubs had gone out of fashion and the house was converted into eight elegant apartments, the name still stuck.

  His apartment was on the second floor at the back, away from the noise of the street, and he made a habit of never taking work home with him if he could help it. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to do that today, though, and it was all because of Jennifer Hart’s touchable skin. It was enough to drive a man to drink.

  Wondering if he had any beer in the refrigerator, he started up the central staircase, which looked like something straight out of Gone with the Wind, and was halfway up when a door opened below and familiar voice called happily, “Sam! There you are! I’ve been looking for you all over the place. What are they doing to you over at the police station? Working you to death? It seems like I never see you anymore.”

  He didn’t have to force an affectionate smile as he turned to face his landlady. A small spry lady who could have been anywhere from her late sixties to early eighties, Alice Truelove was a sweetheart who managed the Lone Star Social Club as if all the tenants were members of her family. She fussed over them, shared their joy when they were happy and worried about them when their lives got a little bumpy. He couldn’t have been any fonder of her if she’d been his own mother, but if she had one trait that sometimes set his teeth on edge, it was her love of matchmaking. She firmly believed that no one could find true happiness without a spouse to share it with, and she’d been trying to find him a wife ever since his divorce became final six months ago.

  “I had the weekend off, but somebody said you’d gone out of town.”

  “Oh, yes!” She beamed, her blue eyes sparkling as he turned and headed back down the stairs toward her. “I had the most marvelous time! You should have been there.”

  Already guessing where this was heading, he quickly moved to cut her off. “That’s great, Alice. I’m glad you had a good time. So why have you been looking for me? If it’s a police matter, you should have called me at the station.”

  “Oh, no, dear! Nothing like that,” she assured him easily. “I was just talking to Melanie the other day. You know Melanie, don’t you? My niece? Well, she’s got a good friend whose daughter is thinking about going into law enforcement, and I told her she should talk to you. She’s a really sweet girl—and gorgeous, from what Melanie says—and I thought you might want to call her.”

  “Then ask her out, fall in love with her and marry her,” he finished with a teasing grin. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. I tried that once and it didn’t work. That was enough for me.”

  “Oh, pooh!” she scoffed. “You’re a young good-looking man, and there’s no way you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone. Not living in this house.”

  “Don’t start, Alice,” he groaned. “You know I don’t believe in all that malarkey about the house having some kind of matchmaking magic.”

  “But it’s true! Anyone who lives here will meet the love of their life within a year. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.”

  “Then what happened to me and Patricia? We lived here three years and ended up divorced. Where was the magic then?”

  “But you were married before you ever moved in, so it didn’t apply to that relationship,” she said logically. “Anyone with eyes could see that you two had nothing in common but the bed you shared. Patricia was spoiled and self-centered and—”

  “Too young,” he finished for her. “If she’d been older, we might have had a chance.”

  “That girl was a holy terror then, and she’ll still be when she’s fifty-three. You’re well rid of her. Next time things will be different.”

  “There isn’t going to be a next time,” he said, scowling at her persistence. “Trust me on this, Alice. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “That’s what everyone says after a divorce.” She reached out to pat him consolingly on the arm. “But you’ll forget all that heartache just as soon as you meet someone new.” Flashing her dimples at him, she teased, “I’ll dance at your next wedding, so don’t forget to invite me.”

  In her own way, the old gal was as stubborn as a mule. Amused in spite of himself, Sam laughed and hugged her. “I wouldn’t dream of getting married without you. If I even think about getting hitched again, you’ll be the first person I’ll call.”

  With the return of her grandmother’s jewelry, Jennifer assumed the police no longer considered her a suspect. But the next day when she left right before the lunch rush to take a hot meal to Mrs. Winston around the corner, the first thing she saw as she stepped outside was Sam Kelly’s unmarked car across the street. Startled, she felt her heart skip a beat, and she was chagrined to admit it wasn’t with fear. For hours after he’d left last night, she hadn’t been able to think of anything but the heat that had flared in his eyes when he’d grabbed her wrist. She could still feel the warmth of it in her blood, which was crazy. The man didn’t even like her. So what was he doing there?

  He was gone by the time she returned, but he was back the next evening, parked in the same spot during the supper rush. By the third day, when she found herself watching for him, she knew she had to do something. The second she saw him pull up across the street, she reached for the phone and called her lawyer.

  “I know it’s frustrating,” Brenda told her, “but there’s not a lot I can do but call his captain and complain. Not that it’ll do any good,” she warned. “He’ll just claim that Detective Kelly is in the middle of an ongoing investigation and has the right to observe any and all suspects. That includes you.”

  “But how can I still be a suspect? There’s no evidence linking me to the man who robbed that old lady,” she argued. “Can’t we accuse Detective Kelly of harass
ment or something?”

  “I’m afraid not. Not unless he does something a lot more serious than occasionally dropping by to watch you from across the street. I know that’s not what you want to hear, but you might as well know where you stand—the man’s just pushing your buttons and there’s not a heck of a lot you can do about it. Sorry.”

  Glaring at the nondescript, unmarked beige police car through the café’s large plate-glass window, Jennifer was half-tempted to storm out there and tell him and his partner exactly what she thought of them. But just then, a spark of mischief flared in her and she turned back to the grill to quickly assemble two sandwiches. In record time she had them wrapped and bagged. Once she had two large paper cups filled with soda and secured in a carrier, she motioned Rosa over to the counter.

  “Take this out to Detective Kelly and his partner,” she said, unable to stop grinning. “They’re parked across the street in the beige sedan. Make sure Kelly gets the turkey and Dr. Pepper.”

  Still resentful of the way the detective had treated Jennifer, Rosa grudgingly agreed. “All right, if you insist. But I don’t know why you’re being nice to him after the way he treated you. Where’s the bill?”

  “There isn’t one—this is a freebie. They can give you a tip if they want to, but don’t let them give you any money for the food, okay? And don’t forget who gets what. That’s very important.”

  “I got it,” the girl assured her. “Kelly gets the turkey and DP, and it’s on the house.”

  Tempted to follow her to the front door and watch her all the way across the street, Jennifer had to make herself stand behind the counter and observe from a distance as Rosa waited until the traffic was clear to approach the two detectives. Both men sat up straighter as she drew near and, from their frowns, seemed to deny that they’d ordered anything. But Rosa had had the foresight to approach Bennigan on the passenger side, and he wasn’t nearly as argumentative as Kelly. Once he learned that the food was on the house, he was all smiles, despite the frowning objections of his partner. Taking the food through the open car window, he dug a tip out of his wallet for Rosa, and within seconds she was hurrying back across the street with a big grin on her face and a five-dollar bill clutched in her fist.