She was already reaching for a large foam cup. “You haven’t been in the last few days.”
“Assignment,” he said simply.
She glanced up at him again as she filled the cup. “You been sleeping in your car again? You look like hell.”
“I haven’t been getting much sleep,” he admitted. “Regardless of where I spend my nights.”
“You need a good woman, sugar. A reason to go home at night.” She set the coffeepot back on the element and winked at him. “And lots of steamy hot sex that wears you out so good you can’t help but sleep.”
“Is that an invitation?”
Darlene threw back her head and laughed. “Sugar, you wouldn’t know what to do with me if I said yes.”
“How will we ever know, if you don’t give me a chance?”
She snapped a lid onto the cup and slid it across the counter to him as the bell tinkled over the door again and another customer entered.
“Because despite your broad shoulders and tough-cop scowl,” she told him, “you’ve got a heart softer than the yolks of sunny-side up eggs, and I eat guys like you for breakfast.”
He frowned at that. “You must be confusing me with someone else.”
“Actually, I was thinkin’ it was an appropriate—if somewhat bizarre—analogy,” another female voice piped in from behind him.
Scott turned to see Aster Cooney, proprietor of the local salon and spa, slide onto a stool at the counter. Her hair, pink and purple today, was sticking out in tufts around her face, her eyelids were covered in glittery lime-green shadow and her lips were painted orange. In a denim miniskirt that hugged her round hips and a lime green T-shirt, she should have looked ridiculous. But somehow she managed to appear almost stylish, if a little flamboyant.
“Good morning, Aster,” he said, inwardly cursing himself for lingering to flirt with Darlene.
Not that he didn’t like Aster. On the contrary, she was one of his favorite people in the world—open and honest and incredibly gutsy. And he usually enjoyed her company, but he felt at a distinct disadvantage now, knowing that she and Darlene would gang up on him over some issue or another.
“You’re gettin’an early start today,” Aster said. Then she turned to Darlene. “Decaf vanilla latte and a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, please.”
“I’ve been out of the office for the last three,” he told her, as Darlene turned away to take care of the new order. “Lots of paperwork to catch up on.”
“You look tense,” she said, not unsympathetically. “I could squeeze you in for a massage around three, if you want.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“I was just telling Scott how he needs a woman’s hands on him,” Darlene told Aster, then grinned. “Only I wasn’t talking about a back massage.”
Aster nodded her agreement. “That might be just what he needs—but only if it’s the right woman.”
Today, the topic of their interest was his personal life—or rather his lack of one. He admittedly hadn’t dated much since breaking up with his long-time girlfriend a couple years earlier, but that was his own choice. And he had no intention of sticking around for their diagnosis of his dating problems because he was perfectly content with his life.
“Thanks for the insights, ladies,” he said, tossing a couple of bills onto the counter. “But I’m already behind schedule and really need to run.”
“You should do that,” Aster surprised him by agreeing. “Because the way she kept glancin’ at her watch, I doubt she’ll wait much longer.”
“She—who?” Darlene asked the question before he could.
“The gorgeous dark-haired woman who’s standin’ outside the door of his office buildin’.”
Scott frowned. “She isn’t waiting for me.”
Aster shrugged. “Even if she isn’t, she just might be the one you’ve been waitin’ for.”
“Aster,” he said warningly.
“Go on. You can tell me later that I was wrong—” she grinned “—or not.”
Scott left the diner certain that Aster was wrong.
He knew he didn’t have any appointments this morning because he’d asked his secretary to clear his schedule for the entire week, not sure how long he’d be tied up with the insurance investigation. His only pressing concern now, and the reason for his early arrival at the office, was dealing with the paperwork and e-mails and telephone messages that would have piled up during his absence. But maybe one of the other investigators—
The thought fizzled abruptly when he rounded the corner of the building and saw her standing there. And in the back of his mind came the assurance that Aster wasn’t wrong about one thing: the woman was gorgeous.
His police training kicked in to make a more detailed assessment: Hispanic, five feet four inches tall, a hundred and twenty pounds, approximately twenty-five to thirty years of age. Long, dark hair tied into a braid that fell to the middle of her back, darker eyes, wide full lips, and dressed in hospital scrubs with white running shoes on her feet. It was an impartial and professional appraisal, but what came next was a purely involuntary and completely male evaluation: sensual, seductive, sexy.
She was petite, and he usually liked his women taller—long and leggy. But she had curves that would make any man’s mouth water and lips that promised a taste of paradise. Though the punch of arousal that hit low in his belly was unexpected, it wasn’t unwelcome. It was always good to know that he was alive and well, that his body wasn’t dead even if his heart had long ago been buried beneath the unforgivable weight of grief and guilt.
“Scott Logan?” she asked, when he stepped closer.
“Yes.”
His hesitant response was immediately rewarded with a warm smile, and he felt a quick rush of heat through his veins.
She really wasn’t his type. But there was something about her that called to him on a primal level—or maybe it was just that Darlene and Aster’s teasing remarks in the diner had reminded him that it had been a very long time since he’d been with a woman.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t get here before I had to leave for work,” the woman said.
Her voice was as soft and seductive as her smile, and he almost didn’t hear the words he was so caught up in the enjoyment of the sounds rolling off of her tongue. Then he realized she was waiting for him to say something, and he forced his brain to wrestle control away from his suddenly overactive hormones to respond to her statement.
“Do we have an appointment?” he asked, starting to question his earlier conviction that they did not. Maybe Caroline had booked it after he’d called yesterday afternoon to tell her that he’d be in the office this morning.
“No,” she admitted. “But I was hoping you could squeeze me in, anyway.”
He glanced at his watch, as if he were considering the request. But the truth was, he was intrigued enough by the woman to want to listen to whatever she had to say. Especially if she continued to speak in that smoothly melodic tone that made him think of steamy nights and steamier sex.
Whoa. He immediately reined in the shockingly un-professional thought, surprised—and a little ashamed—at the purely visceral reaction he was having to this woman. It was Darlene’s fault, he rationalized again. He wouldn’t be having such inappropriate ideas if she hadn’t started him thinking about how long it had been since he’d had a woman in his bed.
“Why