“So now you need the cameo to help you find someone.” He tried unsuccessfully to keep the touch of sarcasm out of his voice.
She raised her eyes to his. “No, I want the cameo because it had been my mother’s. And her mother’s before that.” Her smile was warm as she added, “I don’t need a man to make me complete, Detective Munro.”
The way she said it, he believed she meant it. From where he sat, the woman appeared to be pretty complete as it was. He watched her untie the black velvet ribbon and placed the cameo against her throat. She leaned her head forward just a touch as she tied the ribbon at the nape of her neck. Finished, she tossed her long, straight blond hair back over her shoulder, then raised her chin as she looked at him. Her eyes were smiling at him. Touching him.
Which was impossible.
But he still couldn’t shake the feeling.
“How does it look?” she asked.
He wasn’t one to notice jewelry as a rule. But this looked as if it belonged exactly where it was. Resting against the hollow of her throat. Moving seductively with every breath she took. The blue of the background made her eyes seem even more vivid than they already were.
He was mesmerized. It took him a second to get his bearings.
“Fine.” He bit the word off, wanting to get back to something that he knew his way around.
Constance touched the cameo, as if to assure herself that it was really there. Welcome back, she thought. Her gratitude felt boundless.
“Are there some papers I need to sign?”
James shook his head. “This wasn’t official police business, so no, there’s nothing for you to sign.” He certainly didn’t require anything. “You can just go.”
As quickly as possible, he added silently. Maybe if she went, the edgy feeling he was experiencing would leave with her. When she didn’t rise to her feet immediately, an uneasiness undulated through him.
“I can’t go without giving you some kind of reward,” she protested.
There were folders all over his desk, hard copies that went along with the series of robberies he and Santini were investigating. They had yet to make it into the computer. He nodded toward them. “Letting me get back to my work is reward enough.”
“No, really,” Constance insisted, leaning forward. Bringing with her a whiff of something sweet and stirring. And unsettling his gut, he noted darkly.
The sooner she was gone, the sooner he could grab something to eat. “Yes, really,” he insisted.
She knew ahead of time that he wouldn’t accept money or a gift. He wasn’t that kind of man. It didn’t deter her. “There has to be something I can do. At least let me take you out to dinner.”
He remained firm, fully aware that other men in his position would have given in immediately. Having dinner with a beautiful, grateful woman, well, there were a great many worse things in life.
But one thing always seemed to lead to another, ushering in unwanted complications. Even this. It had begun as a reluctant good deed on his part and wound up turning him into the center of attention in the squad room, a position he couldn’t have hated more if he tried.
The adage about no good deed going unpunished whispered through his mind.
His eyes met hers. “No need,” he repeat with feeling.
Sensations rippled through her as she continued looking into his eyes. There was a need, a definite need, she thought.
Something in his eyes just beneath the surface spoke to her. Told her she was in the presence of one of the walking wounded. Her mother had always said she had a knack for finding lost spirits and restoring them.
Was that what had happened between her and Josh?
No, it wasn’t, she told herself. With Josh it had been different. She’d been the one in need.
But all that was behind her.
The end result was what mattered. She hadn’t made the mistake. She’d followed those unsettling instincts that had kept nagging at her, refusing to allow her to sit back and let Josh take full control of everything the way he’d kept first hinting, then suggesting, and finally insisting that he do. He’d claimed that she couldn’t love him if she didn’t trust him.
Truer words were never spoken.
Feeling somewhat guilty, she’d had Josh and her mother’s accounts checked out by an independent third party. That had brought the truth home to her. That she’s been nothing more than a walking bank account to Josh. A rather sizable bank account. Of course, it wouldn’t have remained large for very long because, as it turned out, Josh Walker had lousy business instincts.
She fingered the cameo at her throat. It already felt as if she’d worn it forever. Thoughts of Josh and the mistake she ultimately hadn’t made swiftly disappeared from her head.
Instead, she concentrated on the man who had reunited her with the cameo. One look at the determined set of his jaw told her that there was no arguing with the man. At least, not here. This was his terrain she was standing on.
Rising to her feet, Constance extended her hand toward him once again. His grip was firm. Like her father’s used to be.
The memory warmed her.
“I really don’t know how to thank you,” she repeated softly.
“Then don’t try.”
The way he said it, she knew he thought that put an end to it. She never liked being the one owing a favor. Her mother had raised her to believe that it was far better to give than to receive—and right now, she was on the receiving end. But not for long, she promised herself as she walked out of the squad room. She nodded at Detective Santini as she passed him.
“I see it’s still intact,” he commented.
She looked at him curiously. “What is?”
“Your head. Munro tends to bite people’s heads off—without meaning to,” he explained.
She turned her head side to side for his benefit. “Yes, still there.” And then she smiled at him as she left.
Santini sighed. If he didn’t have a wife and three kids… Glancing toward his partner in the distance, he shook his head. Some guys had all the luck. And didn’t even know it.
Chapter Four
Stooped beneath the weight of obvious disappointment, Santini dropped into the chair that Constance had just vacated and pinned his partner with a look of utter disbelief. “And that’s that?”
James shuffled through the files on his desk, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. He was in even less of a mood for what he knew was coming.
Santini rose, then sank down again. He gripped the armrests as if to provide emotional support for himself.
“You’re just letting a beautiful woman—a grateful beautiful woman—just walk away like that?”
James spared him exactly one glance. “Couldn’t think of anything to arrest her for.”
Santini snorted, shaking his head. “How about possession of gorgeous body with intent to make grown men humbly drop to their knees?”
A knowing half smile lifted the corners of James’s mouth as he continued his search. “Rita has you sleeping on the couch again, doesn’t she?”
Santini frowned. “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”
“No,” James said with finality, closing the last un-cooperative folder. “We’re not.” James shoved the folders into a haphazard pile. He far preferred being out in the field