The Big Heat. JENNIFER LABRECQUE

her arms over her chest. Nice to know she wasn’t his type. He might have some bone-melting physical effect on her but he wasn’t her type, either. Case in point, she’d told him to go away and he was still here. She wasn’t feeling particularly tactful. “I don’t need your help, so quit bugging me.”

      “I’m bugging you—” uh-huh, he didn’t like that word any better than he liked shoo “—because our secretary has taken you up as the cause of the day. Marlene damn near considers you Joan of Arc. Your sister showing up today and then leaving you high and dry was just icing on the cake. Marlene has taken it into her head that I need to give you a ride home to atone for our sin of being part of Meeks’s campaign. If I let you walk out of that door and allow the media to swamp you, if I don’t deliver you safely to your door, my life isn’t going to be worth living.”

      She’d lived on her own for the past twelve years. Aside from having been taken into custody today and subsequently released, she was the only one that made the decision on whether she walked out of a door or not. “If you let me walk out the door…? You’re seriously confused on several issues.”