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All A Man Can Do
Virginia Kantra


Words to live by for Jarek Denko, a man looking to forget his past and find his future in Eden. He had a department to run, a daughter to raise and an investigation to solve. A relationship with any woman would be a distraction, but one with reporter Tess DeLucca - the sister of one of his prime suspects - could be his undoing. Getting up close and personal with Eden's new chief of police was part of her job.So was remaining dispassionate, objective and in control - three things that might be possible if she trusted cops. And if she weren't so damn attracted to this one.








“Virginia Kantra whips up a perfect blend of sexy romance and spine-tingling mystery. Now that I’ve read this book, I want to move to Eden. Better yet, I want Jarek Denko!”

—New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner




Just out of her age range and way out of her league.


“You’re not married now, but you were once. Maybe more than once. You’re straight. You don’t smoke, you drink beer, you vote Democrat and think Republican. How am I doing?” Tess challenged the new police chief, her instincts on alert.

“Pretty good…Sherlock.”

Maybe Jarek had a sense of humor after all. Maybe she had a shot at a story. Maybe there was a real, live, warm human being buried inside the Ice Cop.

Tess smiled engagingly. “Your turn.”

“A good detective doesn’t theorize ahead of his facts.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’d have to spend more time with you before I developed any theories.” And then Jarek gave her a long, slow smile.


Dear Reader,

Once again, Silhouette Intimate Moments starts its month off with a bang, thanks to Beverly Barton’s The Princess’s Bodyguard, another in this author’s enormously popular miniseries THE PROTECTORS. A princess used to royal suitors has to “settle” for an in-name-only marriage to her commoner bodyguard. Or maybe she isn’t settling at all? Look for more Protectors in On Her Guard, Beverly Barton’s Single Title, coming next month.

ROMANCING THE CROWN continues with Sarah’s Knight by Mary McBride. An arrogant palace doctor finds he needs help himself when his little boy stops speaking. To the rescue: a beautiful nanny sent to work with the child—but who winds up falling for the good doctor himself. And in Candace Irvin’s Crossing the Line, an army pilot crash-lands, and she and her surviving passenger—a handsome captain—deal simultaneously with their attraction to each other and the ongoing crash investigation. Virginia Kantra begins her TROUBLE IN EDEN miniseries with All a Man Can Do, in which a police chief finds himself drawn to the reporter who is the sister of a prime murder suspect. In The Cop Next Door by Jenna Mills, a woman back in town to unlock the secrets of her past runs smack into the stubborn town sheriff. And Melissa James makes her debut with Her Galahad, in which a woman who thought her first husband was dead finds herself on the run from her abusive second husband. And who should come to her rescue but Husband Number One—not so dead after all!

Enjoy, and be sure to come back next month for more of the excitement and passion, right here in Intimate Moments.






Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor




All a Man Can Do

Virginia Kantra










VIRGINIA KANTRA


credits her enthusiasm for strong heroes and courageous heroines to a childhood spent devouring fairy tales. A three-time Romance Writers of America RITA


Award finalist, she has won numerous writing awards, including the Golden Heart, Maggie Award, Holt Medallion and Romantic Times W.I.S.H. Hero Award.

Virginia is married to her college sweetheart, a musician disguised as the owner of a coffeehouse. They live in Raleigh, North Carolina, with three teenagers, two cats, a dog and various blue-tailed lizards that live under the siding of their home. Her favorite thing to make for dinner? Reservations.

She loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at VirginiaKantra@aol.com or c/o Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.


To Damaris Rowland, who thought a series would be a really good idea.

Special thanks to Lt. Joseph T. FitzSimmons for his patience with my questions, to Nora Armstrong for introducing me to her brother in the Chicago PD, to Pamela Baustian and Judith Stanton for the usual reasons and to Michael, who has always done all a man can do. I couldn’t have written this book without you.




Contents


Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17




Chapter 1


The only thing worse than dying on the job was living long enough to retire.

Jarek Denko steered his aging police cruiser with one hand along Eden’s main drag. He eyed the empty steps of St. Raphael’s Catholic Church, checked out the sidewalk action in front of the Rose Farms Café.

Unless the senior citizens were carrying concealed, the street was quiet.

Jarek had never wanted to spend his retirement on a bar stool at the Joint, nursing a beer and his memories while all around him the active cops talked the job and women. But he sure hadn’t figured on giving up the street to become police chief in some backwater town.

His town, now, he reminded himself. It was a good town. And a great place to raise kids. His kid. Maybe the community of Eden could provide whatever was missing from his little girl’s life.

His jaw tightened. Yeah, like a father. It sure as hell couldn’t bring her mother back for her.

He thought with gratitude of his own parents. At least they were trying to support his decision to make a fresh start in a new place. His father muttered about coming up for the fishing. His mother insisted Allie stay with them until Jarek was settled in his new job.

And his brother, who had followed Jarek onto the force and into the most prestigious detective division in Chicago, was laughing his damn fool head off.

“You actually think you’ll be happy working in Pleasantville?” Aleksy had demanded.

“Eden,” Jarek corrected mildly. “And I can handle it.”

He had been a homicide detective for fourteen years. There was nothing he hadn’t seen, and damn little he couldn’t handle.

Now he cruised past Eden’s only movie theater, where a second-run action flick shared the screen with an afternoon cartoon, and turned right, toward the lake. The Town of Eden Police Department stood on a patch of winter-browned grass at the corner of North Lake and Highland. Except for the sign out front and the squad cars parked out back, the department looked exactly like the post office or the library. Trees and two flags softened the squat brick outline and shaded the severe concrete steps.

Jarek pulled into his reserved spot by the rear entrance and keyed himself into the building. The hallway was quiet. The whole building was quiet, even for a Tuesday morning. Just another day in paradise, Jarek thought wryly.

But as he walked to his office, he heard a heavy, genial voice carry from the receiving area.

“Well, well. We haven’t seen much of you around here lately. What can I do for you, sweetheart?”

“You can get me in to see Chief Denko,” a woman’s voice replied crisply. “And don’t call me sweetheart.”

Jarek sheered off from his office, his attention caught by her tone and the sound of his name. God knew, he could use a diversion from reading files.

Lieutenant Bud Sweet was in the lobby. With his broad red face and thick white hair, he looked like St. Nick’s suspicious cousin. His gut strained over his gun belt. Not for the first time this week, Jarek wondered if he would have to requisition new uniforms for his out-of-shape department or order them all into training.

There was a woman with Sweet, dark haired, young and exotic looking in a red sweater and a fitted black blazer. Nothing wrong with her shape at all.

“Lieutenant,” Jarek said quietly. With only a week as their boss, he was careful to give his department veterans their due.

Sweet nodded acknowledgment. “Someone here to see you, Chief.”

The woman turned, revealing a wide, red, full-lipped mouth and Sicilian gold eyes. The blazer hung open. Well. Wow. Hello. From this angle, the sweater looked even better.

She offered her hand, her golden eyes amused and aware. “Teresa DeLucca. But you can call me Tess.”

He shook her hand briefly—hers was warm and firm, with deep red nails to match the sweater—and then thrust his own deep in his pockets. Look, don’t touch, veteran Joe Arbuzzi used to tell him when he was still a wet-behind-the-ears detective at a crime scene.

“What can we do for you, Miss DeLucca?”

“I want to buy you breakfast,” she said.

Breakfast? Like, what two people ate the morning after the night before?

Holy St. Mike. He was a seasoned veteran of the streets. A casualty of divorce court. He knew better than to drool over Miss Call-Me-Tess DeLucca like he was off duty and she was a doughnut.

It was the sweater, he told himself. He’d always been a sucker for…red.

“She’s a reporter,” Sweet said.

A reporter. Jarek’s mental barriers rattled down like the grill over a jewelry store window. He had a cop’s natural aversion for the press. Even when they wore red.

“What do you want?” he asked again.

Sweet grinned. “Well, her brother’s not in lock-up, and the bars don’t close for another thirteen hours, so she can’t be here to bail her mama out. She must want you.”

Jarek frowned. Surely Sweet was joking? He had to be joking.

But Teresa DeLucca’s smile flattened. “Only for breakfast,” she said.

Jarek shook his head. “Sorry. I’ve eaten.”

“Coffee, then? The stuff here’s terrible.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Come here often, Miss DeLucca?”

“Tess,” she corrected. “And, no, not lately. Although I had my first ride in a police cruiser when I was fourteen.”

Okay, he was interested. He gestured toward the hallway behind him. “I can offer you coffee in my office.”

Her manicured nails toyed with the shoulder strap of her purse. Did he make her nervous? Or was it police stations? I had my first ride in a police cruiser when I was fourteen.

“What about the café?” she countered. “I’m buying.”

She was a puzzle, with her confident eyes and uncertain mouth. Jarek had never been able to resist a puzzle. It was one of the things that made him so good at his job.

He shrugged. “Fine. You want to come back for your car?”

Her smile relaxed some. She had a tiny overlap in her front teeth that was very attractive. “I’ll drive, thanks.”

“You’ll follow me?”

Those golden eyes danced. “To the ends of the earth,” she said solemnly.

He resisted the urge to smile back. Until he knew what she wanted, he couldn’t afford to get chummy.

“All right,” he said.

Bud Sweet pursed his round, red mouth. “Leaving kind of soon, aren’t you, Chief?”

Jarek nodded. “I’ll be back in thirty. Page me if you need me.”

“We’ll manage,” Sweet said.

Their eyes clashed briefly. Sweet’s fell first.

“Great,” Jarek said, careful not to push his point. “Thanks.”

Tess DeLucca followed him out of the building, her high-heeled boots making a bold sound on the concrete walk. “I get the impression your second in command doesn’t like you much.”

Well, there was a scoop, Jarek thought.

“Really,” he said noncommittally.

She unlocked her car door and then tossed back her dark hair to look at him. “Did you know he was in line for the chief of police position? Until the search committee decided you were the best man for the job.”

“I’d heard something like that,” Jarek admitted. It made the lieutenant’s antagonism easier to bear. Sweet considered Jarek an interloper. An outsider.

Jarek shrugged mentally. Hell, Sweet was right.

“I’d watch my back if I were you,” Tess DeLucca said. “Your lieutenant knows how to hold a grudge.”

Jarek frowned, but her face expressed nothing but intelligent interest and a sort of wry commiseration. He muffled another inconvenient spark of attraction. He appreciated her concern, if that’s what it was. He admired her frankness. But there was no way he was discussing the deficiencies and jealousies of the officers under his command with a civilian. A reporter, for crying out loud.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he murmured, and ushered her into her car.



Tess watched the new chief of police hand his plastic-sleeved menu back to their waitress.

“Grapefruit,” he ordered. “And coffee.”

“No doughnuts?” Tess drawled.

Denko’s eyes narrowed. His face was dark, full of lines and shadows. His eyes should have been dark, too. But they were unexpectedly pale, clear and cool as the lake in March. Tess resisted the urge to rub her arms briskly.

“You want doughnuts?” he asked.

“No. I’ll have the pancakes,” she told the waitress. She turned back to Denko. “I just thought you might.”

He nodded to the waitress—Noreen, her plastic name tag read—and said, “Thanks. That’ll be all, then. So.” He laced his fingers together; rested them on his paper place mat. All of his gestures were exact and deliberate, Tess noticed. “Do you always draw conclusions about people you’ve just met?”

She shrugged. “I get impressions. It helps, in my line of work.”

“And I strike you as a man who likes doughnuts.” His voice was bland. His shoulders were broad. And his stomach, beneath his starched shirt front, wasn’t anywhere near the edge of the table. Whatever the new chief’s reasons for leaving Chicago, he obviously hadn’t spent the past ten years eating doughnuts behind a desk.

She felt caught out by her stereotyping and struggled to make a recovery. “Maybe not,” she said. “You impress me as a man in control of himself and his waistline. You’re—what?—thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?”

“Forty.”

Just out of her age range and way out of her league. She looked at his hands, clasped on the table in front of him. His fingers were long and blunt-tipped, the nails neatly trimmed but otherwise neglected. “You’re not married now, but you were once. Maybe more than once. You’re straight. You don’t smoke, you drink beer, you vote Democrat and think Republican. How am I doing?”

He waited while their waitress, a straw-haired blonde in wilted polyester, filled his cup. “Pretty good…Sherlock.”

Maybe he had a sense of humor after all. Maybe she had a shot at a story. She had been so afraid, back at the station, that Sweet’s snotty comment or her own impulsive confession had ruined everything. But maybe there was a real, live, warm human being buried inside the Man of Ice.

She smiled engagingly. “Your turn.”

He took a sip of coffee. Black. “A good detective doesn’t theorize ahead of his facts.”

She sat up straighter on the vinyl bench. “What does that mean?”

“It means I’d have to spend more time with you before I developed any theories.”

She was deflated. Provoked. “That’s an interesting pickup line,” she said coolly.

“Just making conversation until our order gets here. Tell me about your ride in a police car when you were fourteen.”

The Man of Ice was back. “That was a long time ago.”

“But you remember. Were you scared?”

“I’m not scared of anything.” But she had been. Oh, she had been.

“So tell me about it.”

“It wasn’t anything. Kid stuff. Shoplifting.” It had been her brother’s birthday, she remembered. Mark had had his eleven-year-old heart set on a football, and she’d had her heart set on getting it—on getting anything—for him. Both of them had been disappointed. End of story.

“And you’ve been on the straight and narrow ever since,” Denko said dryly.

She raised her chin at his challenge. “Pretty nearly.” No point in pouring out the particulars. She was big on telling the truth. But not about her own past.

The waitress arrived with their food. She started to set the grapefruit in front of Tess when Denko stopped her.

“Other way around,” he said. “You’ve got us mixed up.”

Noreen wasn’t the only one who’d turned things around, Tess thought morosely. She stared at her plate. A mound of butter slid from the stack of pancakes to plop against the lonely orange wedge. For crying out loud, she was the reporter. She was used to getting people to talk, to confide in her. She was good at it.

But Jarek Denko was better.

She picked up her knife. “So, what brings a big, bad detective from Chicago to our little town?”

“How do you know I’m from Chicago?”

That was a cop’s trick, answering a question with another question. Reporters used it, too.

“I asked the mayor,” Tess said. “Were you fired?”

He didn’t get mad. “No.”

She poked a wedge of pancake. “You can’t have moved here for the excitement.”

He almost smiled. “No.”

“Then, why did you move here?”

“Personal reasons,” he said briefly.

Tess sniffed. “Oh, that’s illuminating. What kind of personal reasons? Breakdown? Breakup?”

A brief gleam lit those remote gray eyes. “What do you want, Miss DeLucca? My medical history or a blood test?”

Oh, boy. He wasn’t—he couldn’t be flirting with her. Could he? She swallowed a lump of pancake. “If you want to share.”

“No.”

“Trouble on the job?” she prodded sympathetically.

He eased back in the booth, his gaze steady, his voice calm. “Why don’t you ask the mayor?”

“I did. She said you were a regular Boy Scout.”

His smile appeared, a thin sliver in the ice. “That would be my brother. I was an altar boy.”

“You’re Catholic?” Ha. Her mother would love that. Not that Dizzy DeLucca was a saint herself, but she wanted one for her daughter.

The new police chief nodded.

“So, you have a brother. Any sisters?” Tess persisted.

“One of each.”

He was answering. This was good. At least, it was an improvement. “And what do they do now?”

“She’s a librarian. He’s Chicago PD.” Jarek took another sip of coffee and set his cup precisely in the center of the saucer. “How about you?”

“One brother.”

“Yeah? Older or younger?”

“Younger. Listen, do you—”

“He live with you?”

“I live alone.” She moistened her lips and flashed him her best smile. She was not letting him take control of this interview again. “Fishing, Chief Denko? I didn’t think you brought me here to hear about my personal life.”

He didn’t laugh. “I didn’t bring you here. What do you want, Miss DeLucca? A favor? A lead?”

“An interview. For the Eden Town Gazette.”

“Why didn’t you ask me back at the station house?”

“Because I was afraid you’d say no.”

He nodded again, not saying anything.

Tess picked at the chipped edge of one nail. “Well?” she asked finally.

“No,” he said.

She scowled. “Why not?”

“I’m not news.”

“You know that’s not true. People are always interested in their public officials. Even in Chicago, you’d get a column. Up here, you get the front page and my undivided attention. You’re the biggest news to hit town since Simon Ford.”

Denko looked blank. So he didn’t know everything. Tess found that reassuring.

“Simon Ford,” she repeated. “The inventor? He bought Angel Island.”

“You mean, he bought a house there.”

“No, he bought the island. The point is, you’re our lead story. Well, unless my editor decides to run with the new traffic light out at the high school or the Lutheran ladies’ zucchini cook-off. But I think we’ve got a good chance.”

A corner of his nicely shaped mouth quirked up. “I’m flattered. But, no.”

“What do you have to lose?”

“My privacy?” he suggested dryly.

She arched her eyebrows. “What do you have to hide?”

“Not a thing.”

“Well, then…” She let her voice trail off expectantly.

He eyed her with a combination of amusement and annoyance. “You’re persistent.”

“In my job, you have to be.”

“In my job, too. And I’m not convinced letting it all hang out in the Eden Town Gossip—”

“Gazette,” she snapped, and then scowled. He was just yanking her chain.

“Gazette,” he corrected smoothly. “Anyway, I don’t like the idea that anybody in town with fifty cents can read all about my life in the paper.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of spin?”

“I don’t need spin.”

“Sure you do.” She leaned forward earnestly and just missed smearing her sweater in syrup. Very smooth, DeLucca. “You’re a stranger here. People aren’t going to feel comfortable talking to you. A piece in the paper is like an introduction. It gets your name and face out there, makes people feel like they know you, shows them you’re a regular guy. They’re more likely talk to you then.”

“All the people here need to know is that I’m qualified to do my job.”

“And are you?”

He didn’t rise to her bait. “Your search committee thought so.”

She waited. “That’s it?”

“Unless you want to talk to me. Like you said, I’m a stranger here. I could use someone to fill me in on who’s who in this town.” He sent some subtle masculine signal that brought Noreen scurrying over.

It figured the new chief would be good in restaurants, Tess thought glumly. Probably he could find parking spaces and kill spiders, too. That didn’t mean she had to roll over for him.

“If it’s gossip you’re after, you can get that down the street at the barbershop. If it’s stories about suspicious behavior, you can get those from Bud Sweet.”

He shrugged and reached for his wallet. “It always helps to have a civilian perspective. And you’re a reporter. An observer. That could make you useful.”

“Gee, how nice,” she drawled. “If I’d ever wanted to be a police snitch, that would make me feel all warm inside.”

He didn’t laugh.

Fine. She didn’t need the approval of some cool-eyed, tight-lipped cop. She didn’t want this attraction to him, either.

She twitched the check from Noreen’s hand. “I told you, breakfast is on me.” She counted out the money. Too bad Gazette reporters didn’t merit expense accounts. After the waitress left, she asked, “So, is that the deal? I be your source, you be my story?”

Denko slipped his wallet back into his pocket. A difficult maneuver in the tight confines of the booth, but he managed it gracefully.

“No deal,” he said. “I’m interested in developing ties to the community. But my private life stays private.”

Tess felt an instant’s sympathy. She sure didn’t want anyone digging around in her private graveyard.

Her eyes narrowed as she regarded the new police chief. What skeletons was Jarek Denko hiding?




Chapter 2


The Plaza Apartments’ one elevator was out-of-order again. Tess shifted the bag of groceries in her arms to open the fire door, propping it with her hip so her mother could walk through.

“I wish you’d let me take you out for dinner instead,” Tess said.

Isadora DeLucca smiled shakily. “Oh, cooking’s no trouble.”

No trouble for who? Tess wanted to ask, but years of protecting her mother’s feelings made her bite her tongue. If her mother needed to cook her a high-fat lunch to make up for all the years when Tess had opened cans to feed herself and her brother, well… Whatever her mother needed was fine with Tess.

The hallway smelled like cabbage and mold. No one who could afford to live anywhere else paid rent at the Plaza. The paint peeled, the radiators sweated and the toilets over-flowed. But the aging building provided a first shot at freedom for the very young, a last stab at independence for the very old.

Even on a reporter’s salary, Tess could afford better now. Mark thought she was crazy for not buying into one of the snazzy new condos going up by the lake or even moving to a newer, nicer apartment. But Tess told herself this apartment was fine. Mark was back. Her mother was on the wagon. Her life was fine. And if anything happened to make it not fine again, at least she wouldn’t be forced out of her home.

Tess had lived at the Plaza ten years, longer than any other resident except ninety-four-year-old Mrs. McMurty on the second floor. Against the advice of her doctors and the pleas of her son, Mrs. McMurty swore she would leave the Plaza only to go to her grave.

On her bad days, Tess imagined she’d escape the same way. Feetfirst and alone, having died of old age.

She unlocked her door.

“I don’t know why you don’t get yourself a cat,” Isadora said as the door opened on Tess’s apartment. “You used to love animals.”

She still loved animals. But sometime during her twenties, Tess had decided she didn’t have the energy left to tackle the care of a house plant, let alone a pet.

“I don’t have time for a cat,” she muttered, cramming the groceries onto the narrow ledge that passed for a counter.

“You should make time.” Isadora puttered around the galley kitchen. She waved a spatula at her daughter. “Love is all you need, you know!”

“Mom.” Tess started unloading bags. What on earth was she going to do with an entire bunch of celery? She didn’t need celery in her life. She didn’t need love, either. Love meant dealing with someone else she was bound either to support or disappoint, and she really, really didn’t want that.

She dumped the celery on an empty refrigerator shelf and turned back to her mother. “That was a catchy song. But it’s not a very practical philosophy.”

“Little Teresa.” Isadora smiled in fond disappointment at her only daughter. “Always so practical.”

Like she had a choice? Tess had been eight or nine when she figured out that somebody in the DeLucca family had to get the laundry done and the kids to school and dinner on the table. But she didn’t want to remind her mother of that. Isadora had been doing so well lately.

The phone shrilled. Her mother stood in the way, poking into a cabinet. Tess sprinted down the hall to pick up in the living room.

“Tess DeLucca,” she said breathlessly. Oh, great. She sounded like a phone sex girl.

“This is Butler in News Affairs.”

News Affairs. The Chicago Police Department. She had been after them to return her calls for two days.

“Officer Butler.” She forced warmth into her voice. “I really appreciate you taking the time to—”

“Sergeant.”

“What?”

“It’s Sergeant Butler, ma’am.”

“Oh. Excuse me. Sergeant.” Deliberately, Tess relaxed her grip on the receiver. “Anyway, my newspaper is doing a profile on former detective Jarek Denko, and I was hoping your department could give me some background information.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What kind of information?” her caller asked cautiously.

“Well, anything. Everything. Maybe we could start with his employment history, and then—”

“Personnel can give you his rank and dates of employment.”

She was hoping for an exposé, not a résumé. Denko was hiding something. Had to be. And it was up to Tess to strip the luster from the police chief’s shiny gold star. “I have those, thanks. I was hoping for something more substantial? Commendations, complaints…”

“Let me see.”

Another pause, while Tess’s mother drifted into the living room. “Don’t you have any garlic powder?”

Tess covered the mouthpiece of the receiver. “You didn’t tell me you needed garlic powder.”

“Well, no, dear, I just assumed you had some.”

“I don’t cook, Mom. Why would I have garlic powder?”

“You still there?” Sergeant Butler asked.

Tess turned her back on the kitchen and grabbed for a pad and pen. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay. Well, Detective Denko received an Award of Valor as a patrol officer.”

She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Thanks. Yes, I found that on your Web site. And that was fifteen years ago. Can’t you give me something a little more current?”

Like, Chief Check-Out-Those-Biceps Denko beat his ex-wife. Or was on the take. Something, anything, to make the man less of a saint, and this story more than a board member’s bio in a corporate newsletter.

“You want current, talk to Denko,” Butler said. “I don’t have anything for you. You understand.”

Oh, she understood all right. She understood no cop in Chicago was going to rat on one of their own to a reporter from Eden.

She could let it go.

Or she could go digging for the truth and deliver more dirt than a home and garden feature on Big Boy Tomatoes.



No neon sign hung over the door of the Joint on Belmont Street, only a black-and-white ad for Old Style: Bottles And Cans. The bar’s patrons—cops and police groupies—didn’t need more. Either you knew what waited beyond the heavy wood door, or you didn’t belong.

Jarek belonged. One week away didn’t change that.

Responding to a tip, a middle of the night phone call, he’d left his king-size bed and tidy three-bedroom house to drive an hour and twenty minutes south to Chicago. When he opened the bar door, the warmth and the smells, the smoke and the noise, swirled to greet him. He breathed them all in, let them wrap him like a favorite old sweater.

The place was full. The four-to-midnight shift had ended two hours ago. Four-to-fours, they called it, because most cops didn’t roll home until four in the morning. His ex-wife had hated that part of the job. Had hated most parts of his job, actually.

Jarek scanned the room. His brother Aleksy—Alex—was sitting in a booth by the pay phone with a beer in front of him and three off-duty detectives beside him. Catching Jarek’s eye, he raised his beer in silent salute before tipping the neck of the bottle toward the bar.

Jarek looked where his brother pointed. And there, perched on a bar stool like any badge bunny, sat Teresa DeLucca in black leather pants and a midriff-skimming top that raised the temperature in the crowded, narrow bar another twenty degrees. She was talking with his former partner, Steve Nowicki, a good detective with the biggest mouth in Area 3. And Stevie, who looked like he couldn’t believe his luck, was pouring out his heart and practically drooling down her cleavage.

Hell. Jarek ordered a beer and considered his options.

Aleksy slid out from the booth and sauntered over, still in his street suit. His dark hair was ruffled and his eyes were wicked.

“It took her fifteen minutes to zero in on Nowicki,” his brother informed him, “and he’s been bending her ear for over an hour. Who the hell is she?”

Jarek accepted his beer with a word of thanks to Pat behind the bar. “Teresa DeLucca. She’s a reporter for the local paper.”

Aleksy raised his eyebrows. “No kidding. You actually have news in Mayberry?”

A reluctant smile tugged Jarek’s mouth. “Brother, in Eden, I am the news.”

“So, her interest in you is purely professional?”

Jarek took a careful sip of his beer, pushing away an inconvenient memory of Tess’s soft lower lip and candid eyes. He had a department to run and a daughter to raise. A relationship with any woman would be a distraction. A preoccupation with some puzzle of a reporter would be a disaster.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And your interest in her? You get to put her in handcuffs yet?”

Jarek narrowed his eyes in warning.

Aleksy backed off, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Just asking, big brother. Something got you out of bed in the middle of the night.”

“You did,” Jarek reminded him. “You called me.”

“Yeah, and as soon as you heard this babe was here asking questions, you hotfooted it down. I told you I could handle things for you. In fact,” Aleksy waggled his eyebrows, “I’d be more than happy to handle her.”

Jarek’s burst of male territorial instinct surprised him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself marking trees and pawing at the ground. “Holster it, hotshot,” he ordered briefly. “She’s too old for you.”

“Are you kidding? She can’t be a day over twenty-five.”

“Thirty.” He’d run her driver’s license. “And you date nineteen-year-olds.”

Aleksy shrugged. “Only when they ask me nicely.”

Jarek smiled faintly, his attention still fixed on Nowicki and Tess at the other end of the bar.

Aleksy’s dark eyes danced with mischief. “Anyway, isn’t she a little old for you, too? I thought you were totally involved with a nine-year-old these days.”

“Ten,” Jarek corrected him absently. “Allie’s ten. And I’m not getting involved with the woman.”

“Really? What are you going to do with her? Arrest her?”

Jarek’s jaw set. “Like you said, she’s over twenty-one. She has a right to drink in a public bar.”

“She’s still invading your space, bro.”

“My turf,” Jarek said, setting down his beer. “My rules.”

Quietly he moved along the bar. Under the drifts of conversation, the bursts of laughter, his former partner’s voice carried plainly.

“—was always the calm, collected one,” Nowicki was saying, leaning forward earnestly to look down Tess’s top. “Like a computer, you know, storing up all these names, pictures, little connecting things you’d think wouldn’t matter to anybody and then—click, click, click!—the picture comes up and he’s put it all together, who, why, how, the whole puzzle.” Nowicki took a long pull on his bottle. “Working with somebody like that makes it a pleasure just to show up in the morning.”

“You must miss him,” Tess observed.

“Hell, yeah, we all miss him. He was a terrific guy. A great detective. We miss him a lot.”

“You can stop the commercial, Nowicki,” Jarek said. “I don’t think Miss DeLucca’s buying.”

His partner turned, genuine pleasure lighting his broad face. “Ice Man! We were just talking about you.”

“I guessed,” Jarek said. He looked past Nowicki to Tess on her bar stool, her casual posture a pose, her eyes a challenge. His libido flared. Annoyed with himself, he spoke coolly. “Hello, Tess.”

Nowicki’s head went back and forth. “You two know each other?”

“We’ve met,” Tess murmured. “How’s it going, Ice Man?”

She didn’t miss a trick, Jarek thought, torn between admiration and annoyance.

He spoke without moving his gaze from hers. “Would you give us a minute, Steve?”

Nowicki laughed, four beers past discretion. “Don’t be a spoilsport, Jare. We were getting somewhere here.”

“Someone was getting something,” Jarek said. He jerked his head slightly, an unmistakable signal to his partner to get lost.

Nowicki sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m gone.”

Jarek stepped back to let him pass and then slid onto his abandoned stool. “This is a hell of a place to be at two o’clock in the morning,” he said quietly.

Tess arched her eyebrows. “You’re here.”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“No,” Tess agreed. “That was the problem.”

“It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

“It’s my story. And you’re still holding out on me.”

“So what?”

“So, it’s a challenge.” She flipped her dark hair over her shoulders and shot him a look that dried his mouth. “I’ve never been able to resist a challenge.”

He sipped his beer, which bought him some time and lubricated his tongue enough so he could talk again. He didn’t need any more challenges. He had all he could handle sleeping tucked up in his old bedroom under the eaves of his parents’ house. A ten-year-old challenge with his eyes and her mother’s scowl.

Teresa DeLucca was playing with fire. He had to find a way to prove to her that she could get burnt. “You’re wasting your time, Tess.”

“No, I’m not. Your partner’s not like you. He answers my questions.”

“Honey, at two o’clock in the morning, the bearded lady could walk into this bar and Nowicki would answer her questions. Most cops are easy when they’re coming off shift. Of course, it didn’t hurt any that you’re wearing those pants.”

She stiffened defensively. “So, they worked. I got what I wanted.”

“You were lucky. You could have gotten something you didn’t want.”

“Like what?”

Jarek drew a short, sharp breath. He could do this, he told himself. He would prove to both of them that he was scorch proof.

“Like this,” he said, and leaned forward, and covered her mouth with his.



He surprised her, and Tess prided herself that very few men could do that anymore.

His mouth on hers was warm and sure. She recoiled slightly—from shock and the faint taste of beer—and then let herself be persuaded, let her mouth be taken, by his. He was disarmingly direct. Devastatingly thorough. Competent, she thought almost resentfully, before her brain shut down. He angled his head and used his tongue, and she shivered and melted and sagged on her bar stool, seduced by the nearness of his firm, warm chest and that hot, bold mouth moving on hers.

Oh, boy.

He raised his head. Maybe he had surprised himself, too, because his eyes, that she remembered as gray and cool as midwinter ice, were dark and hot.

She blinked.

He eased back. “Didn’t your mother ever warn you not to come on to strange men in bars?”

Indignation warred with…oh God, was that disappointment?

She cleared her throat. “Obviously you’ve never met my mother.” She picked up her drink, pleased when the ice cubes did not rattle. She was still shaking inside from his kiss. It was just her bad luck Chief Law-and-Order Denko could kiss as well as he did everything else. “Anyway, you kissed me.”

He shrugged, not denying it. “That may have been a miscalculation.”

“Gee, thanks,” she drawled. “Worried it will ruin your reputation?”

His teeth glinted in a brief smile. “No. Kissing you will do wonders for my reputation.”

She refused to be charmed. “Thank you. I think.”

And then he spoiled it by adding, “Besides, now every guy in the place knows you’re off-limits.”

Tess set down her drink and glared at him. “Is that why you did it? Because you thought you were making a point?”

“I did make a point. It’s not safe for a woman looking the way you do to walk into a cop bar and imagine the only thing she’s going to leave with is information. But that’s not why I kissed you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, very nastily because her body was still humming and her feelings were all mixed up. “So, why?”

“I must have wanted to.” His eyes were dark and direct. “I think I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I met you.”

Her heart thumped in excitement. She straightened defensively on her bar stool. “And being a police officer, you figure you can take what you want, no questions asked?”

He frowned. “No. Don’t theorize ahead of your facts, Tess.”

The fact was, she didn’t trust cops.

The fact was, she was attracted to this one.

And she didn’t like that one bit.

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me you’re an honest cop?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Jarek said evenly.

No, he wasn’t. The only thing he had admitted to was wanting to kiss her.

She nodded toward a booth by the door, where his former partner had joined a table of other off-duty detectives. “They seem to think you walk on water.”

He shrugged. “I did my job.”

“More than that, I heard. Ice Man? Cool under pressure. You took a gun away from some psycho commuter on the train—”

He looked uncomfortable. “That was years ago. When I was a patrolman. Detectives don’t get written up for stuff like that.”

“But didn’t you face more dangerous situations as a detective?”

He regarded her silently for a moment. “You’re the oldest in your family?”

She was confused. He confused her. She wasn’t used to men remembering what she said. “Yes. How did you—”

“As the oldest, there are things that are expected of you, right?”

Tess squirmed on her wooden perch. She didn’t like thinking about her adolescence, the years she struggled to keep Mark fed and out of trouble, the mornings she woke for school already dog-tired and sick-to-her-stomach worried and overwhelmed. She certainly never talked about them. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, you don’t make a big deal out of meeting your responsibilities. You just do your job.” He met her gaze directly. “Same thing if you’re a detective. I did my job.”

Tess fought the seductive tug of understanding. He was a cop, she reminded herself. They had nothing in common. “Very macho,” she said dryly.

His mouth curved. “Damn straight.”

She caught herself smiling back and thought, Uh-oh. She didn’t need these little sparks of connection. She couldn’t afford this tingle of attraction. She didn’t like the way Jarek kept turning this interview around. She was the reporter, wasn’t she? Dispassionate. Objective. In control of the conversation and herself.

Sure she was.

“What made you decide you didn’t want to be a detective anymore?” she asked.

“Circumstances.”

“Would your decision have anything to do with your wife’s death a year ago?”

He set down his beer. “Who told you that?”

She’d caught him off balance, Tess thought, cheered. Good. It made up, a little, for his uncomfortable perception, his unexpected understanding, his devastating kiss.

I think I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I met you.

She pushed the thought away. “Nowicki,” she said.

“Nowicki has a big mouth. And you should check your facts.”

“She didn’t die?”

“She wasn’t my wife. Linda and I divorced eight years ago.”

Well. Tess wasn’t sure if she was relieved the new police chief wasn’t still grieving or disappointed that she had lost her story hook. “So, your loss wasn’t a factor in accepting the job in Eden?”

Jarek stopped looking impassive and started to look annoyed. Score one for the Girl Reporter.

“Why don’t you just write that I liked the idea of making a fresh start?”

“I understand that part,” Tess said. “What I don’t get is why you’d choose some little resort town on the edge of nowhere.”

“The Wisconsin border.”

“Same thing.”

His guarded smile reappeared. “Not a fan of small town living, are you?”

“It’s all right. If you don’t mind wearing the same label you got stuck with in the second grade for the rest of your life.”

“Then why not get out?”

“Oh.” Nobody asked her that. She’d given up even asking herself. Everyone knew, or thought they did, how things were with the DeLuccas. “Well, my father split on us. Maybe I didn’t want to follow his example. Besides, my brother needed me.”

“Both your parents are gone?”

“No. Well, my mother—” She stopped.

“Your mother?” Jarek prompted gently.

Her mother was a drunk.

“She needed me, too,” Tess said. Sure, Isadora DeLucca was sober now. But what would she do if Tess left her?

Tess picked up her drink again. “Anyway, here I am, thirty years old and living two miles from home, defending truth, justice and the American way for twenty-two thousand a year.” She laughed self-consciously. “Now you’ll tell me I have a Super Girl complex and I’ll have to slug you.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Right. You’ll just think it.”

He gave her one of his straight, cool looks. “You have no idea what I think of you.”

Her heart slammed into her ribs. She had a slow-motion moment when the smoky, raucous bar swirled and faded and refocused with Jarek as its center, his calm eyes and his firm mouth and his blunt-tipped hands turning the bottle.

She felt the heat crawl in her cheeks, and then a new voice rattled between them like ice cubes dropped into a glass.

“Are you going to introduce me to this seriously hot-looking babe, or do I need to find an excuse to drive to Mayberry?”

Tess blinked.

A man stood at Jarek’s shoulder. She recognized one of the detectives from the booth by the door, the young one with the ruffled hair and creased jacket.

Jarek looked resigned. “Tess, this idiot with the suit and no manners is my brother Aleksy.”

The Boy Scout. She recovered enough to offer her hand. “Tess DeLucca.”

“Alex. It’s a pleasure.” His smile was wide, his handshake firm, and his eyes assessing.

She let him hold her hand two beats too long, aware of the look that passed between him and his brother.

“You don’t mind if I join you?” he asked.

Jarek stood. “Actually, we were just leaving.”

“There’s gratitude,” Aleksy complained. “You owe me.”

Jarek tossed two quarters on the cloudy surface of the bar. “That’s for the phone call. We’ll settle the rest later.”

“Wait a minute.” Do not overreact, Tess told herself. “He called to tell you I was here?”

Jarek hesitated.

“Take the fifth, bro,” Aleksy advised him.

Tess stiffened with sudden certainty. Of course he called. Her stomach sank. Cops stuck together. Why else would Jarek show up at two in the morning at a cop-and-groupie bar on Belmont? Because he’d been drawn by some magical, electrical connection between them? What a joke.

But not nearly as big a laugh as the fact that somewhere at the back of her pathetic, needy little mind, Tess had accepted that he must have done exactly that.

Because he drew her.

“What did he tell you?” she demanded.

“Aleksy mentioned there was a woman here asking questions,” Jarek admitted quietly. “From the description, I thought it might be you.”

“And you drove down here to shut me up.”

“Actually, he drove down to shut Nowicki up,” Aleksy said.

She waited for Jarek to deny it. He didn’t.

She straightened her spine. “Excuse me. I’m going home.”

“Let me take you,” Jarek offered. “We can argue in the car.”

She wouldn’t go home with him if he were the sexiest man alive and she hadn’t had sex in a billion years. Which was a good thing, because at least one of those was true.

“I have my own car,” she said.

His gaze went to her drink. “Are you okay to drive?”

“It’s soda water,” she said through her teeth.

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll follow you, then.”

Aleksy raised an eyebrow. “You’re not spending the night at Mom and Pop’s?”

“Why?” Jarek asked.

“To see Allie.”

“What’s the point? She’ll be busy getting ready for school in the morning. She won’t have time for me.”

“Who is Allie?” Tess wanted to know.

“His daughter,” Aleksy said.

Tess sucked in a breath. “You have a daughter? Who lives with your parents?”

Jarek’s eyes narrowed at her tone.

“Just since Linda died,” Aleksy explained. “That’s why he took the job in Pleasantville.”

Jarek shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay. I think we’re done here.”

“I guess we are,” Tess said.

He had a daughter.

And he hadn’t shared even that much of himself with her. Not over breakfast, when they’d talked about their families, not tonight when she had asked him directly about his reasons for moving to Eden.

Maybe he didn’t think the daughter was important.

Maybe he didn’t think the interview was important.

Maybe—and this was depressingly likely—Tess wasn’t all that important, either.

She slid off her bar stool. Well, the hell with him. It wasn’t like they had a personal relationship. She didn’t even want a personal relationship. Not with any man. Certainly not with Officer Frosty here, with his hot kisses and his cool silence and his family secrets. Tess had more than enough family and plenty of secrets of her own.

She tugged her sweater down over her suddenly cold midriff. Jarek Denko was only another story. Twenty column inches and maybe a picture above the fold. And she wasn’t about to let his tall, dark and silent routine stop her from doing the one thing she did well.

“Nice talking to you,” Aleksy said cheerfully.

“I’ll bet,” said Tess.

She stalked out of the bar.




Chapter 3


He could have handled that better, Jarek acknowledged as he drove north.

He watched the baleful gleam of Tess’s red taillights five car lengths ahead. She’d indulged in one short burst of speed and temper as they merged with a couple of trucks making an early morning run on Highway 12. But she settled down quickly enough. He had no trouble following her car. He wished he could follow her thought processes as easily.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. On the job, he was known for his ability to take all the facts of a case into account. But he’d sure miscalculated with Tess. He’d underestimated her determination to make him a news item. He’d misjudged the timing and the amount of the personal information he’d needed to give her to keep control of her story.

And he definitely hadn’t reckoned on his own reaction to their kiss.

He practically broke a sweat just thinking about it. About her. She was hot. And unexpectedly sweet. When he kissed her, his body went hard and his mind went blank. For a minute there, kissing her, he’d felt hot, too. Hotter and more dangerous than a stolen pistol, and about as likely to go off. Heady stuff for a disciplined cop and responsible family man.

He unrolled his window to let the cool, damp night stream in over his arm. Living like a monk for the past eight years had obviously made him susceptible to pushy reporters in black leather pants. And the potent contradiction posed by Tess’s curl-up-and-die looks and little-girl-lost mouth would tempt a saint.

But his loss of control wasn’t her fault. Her voice echoed accusingly in memory, her flip tone not quite hiding the insult to her feelings. Anyway, you kissed me.

She was right, Jarek acknowledged fairly. His frustrated body was his problem. Her hurt feelings were his responsibility.

And if Tess, in a typical female snit, decided to smear him in the paper and stake him out for the local gossips to feed on, then the resulting loss of public goodwill would be his headache.

Jarek frowned as he watched Tess’s tin can compact zip toward the off ramp. He signaled his intentions to the empty lane behind him and then followed her down the exit to Eden. He was determined to keep his private life private. His failed marriage and his unhappy daughter were off-limits as topics for the press. But ticking off the reporter assigned to introduce him to the town was bad public relations.

Maybe he should agree to that interview Tess wanted. He could steer the talk away from his hopes for his family and onto his plans for the town.

He would have to be nice to her, he decided. If he wanted her cooperation. It was practically his duty.

His mind drifted to all the ways he’d like to be nice to Teresa DeLucca. His body buzzed with anticipation.

He did his best to ignore it.



Tess’s fingernails beat a nervous, angry tattoo against the steering wheel. Every time she looked up, she saw Denko’s car in her rear view mirror, a dark blue, unmarked Crown Victoria. Nothing new, nothing flashy, nothing to signal whatever midlife crisis had triggered his move to Eden.

His driving was like the rest of him: patient, dogged, steady. She told herself these were not qualities that appealed to her. He probably made love the same way. She pulled a face at her windshield. Nothing kinky or exciting for Chief By-The-Book Denko.

She passed the brightly lit Gas-N-Go and turned under an arch of trees onto a dark residential street. Of course, Denko would still get where he was going that way. She bet he made sure his partners did, too.

The barred moonlight ran over the hood of her car. She shivered a little, with temper and lust.

The Plaza parking lot was quiet, all the seniors’ cars tucked in safely for the night. Tess found an empty space and cut her engine. In the silence, she heard the rumble of Jarek’s engine as he pulled in behind her. His door slammed.

She took a deep breath and got out of her car. “You want my license and registration, Officer?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.” He strolled toward her. “I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee, though.”

The moon had ducked behind the trees. The glare from the building’s security lights could hardly be called romantic. That was okay. She didn’t want romance. Particularly not with a tight-lipped cop who came equipped with a school-age daughter.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.”

His eyes narrowed. “What kind of trouble are we talking about here?”

Tess cursed her big mouth. One of these days she was going to learn to think before she spoke. Yeah, and then she’d probably never talk at all.

“I just think we should keep things on a professional footing,” she said weakly.

Denko nodded, his gaze still fixed on hers. “I wasn’t suggesting anything else.”

Disappointment and a lack of sleep made her incautious. “Sure you weren’t. I bet you invite yourself up to women’s apartments at three in the morning all the time.”

Maybe his lean cheeks reddened slightly. Under the sodium security lights, it was hard to tell.

“You wanted an opportunity to talk,” he said.

“So I’ll call the station and make an appointment.”

“You might not catch me in. I’m in and out a lot.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Fighting our big crime wave?”

The creases deepened around his mouth, but he didn’t smile. “More learning my way around. Trying to get a feel for things. You could help.”

His intensity pulled at her. He wasn’t a big man—lean and only average height—but she still felt threatened.

She shook her head. “Not in my job description, Chief.”

“Then…as a friend?”

“I’m not feeling very friendly at the moment.”

He took a step closer, close enough that she could smell the wickedness that clung to his hair and clothes, the tang of beer and cigarettes from the bar, the scent of his skin. “Maybe we should work on that,” he murmured.

Possibility quivered through her. Don’t be dumb, DeLucca. You don’t want this. You can’t want this.

“Sorry,” she said. “It wouldn’t work. You held out on me.”

He watched her closely. “Would it help if I apologized?”

“I don’t think so. You’re not exactly my type.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“Well…” She could think of a million reasons. Couldn’t she? She moistened her lips. “For one thing, you’re a cop.”

“I won’t apologize for that.” He sounded more amused than upset.

She stiffened with annoyance. “And you have a kid. I don’t do men with kids.”

“Why not?”

Because she needed to keep him at a distance, she told him the truth. Part of it, anyway. “I raised one family already. I’m not interested in taking on another.”

He stepped back. “Got it. We’ll keep it professional, then.”

Obviously he wasn’t crushed by her rejection. Tess tasted flat disappointment. “I think we’d better.”

But she didn’t object when he walked with her across the parking lot to the Plaza’s cheerless entrance. At three in the morning, she wasn’t up to arguing either about her building’s negligent security or Jarek Denko’s outdated notions of male courtesy. The anticipation she’d felt earlier that evening driving down to Chicago in pursuit of a story had evaporated. She fumbled for her keys, feeling flat and tired.

She was completely taken aback when Jarek stooped and brushed her cheek with his lips. Pleasure fizzed along her veins.

“Professional courtesy,” he explained blandly. “Sleep well.”

Oh, right. Tess staggered up the four flights to her empty apartment, her hormones churning and her brain in turmoil. She’d be lucky if she closed her eyes at all tonight.

She prowled into the kitchen, fueling her nervous energy with some stale chips from the bottom of the bag. She ate standing at the counter, listening to the hum of her refrigerator and the persistent gurgle of her leaky toilet. She licked her finger and pressed it to the seam to catch the last salty potato crumbs.

It was only the late hour that made her notice the silence, that made her feel so alone.



Jarek’s car swooped onto the lake bridge north of Eden and over a sea of mist. His eyeballs were gritty. A headache had been building at the base of his skull since the radio call that jarred him awake almost half an hour ago.

As a rookie detective, Jarek had learned to go for days without much sleep. His new schedule gave him hours alone on a brand-new, super firm, double-wide mattress. But for the past three nights, he hadn’t slept so well. Maybe it was the new job.

Or maybe it was the woman. Tess DeLucca.

Should he have called her?

She’d been crisp and professional yesterday when she phoned the station to set up this morning’s interview. Jarek lifted a hand from the steering wheel to rub the back of his neck. She was going to be really ticked if he blew her off. But right now her feelings were not his top priority.

Besides, she was probably still sleeping, he thought, and then had to push away an inconvenient image of her dark hair and ivory skin against the white sheets of his bed.

He had enough trouble already.

The early-morning sun barely cleared the pines. Jarek followed the hidden shoreline past the gated driveway of the grand old Algonquin Hotel, heading toward the Bide-A-Wee vacation cottages, relying on the police scanner and his own imperfect knowledge of the town. He missed Chicago’s numbered grid.

Bud Sweet should have called him, damn it.

But even without coordinates, Jarek found the scene of the crime without any trouble at all.

His mouth compressed as he took in the stretch of road. From the look of things, he was about the only person in town Sweet hadn’t called. If some enterprising burglar decided to hold up Main Street this morning, the downtown merchants were out of luck. Vehicles spilled along the asphalt under the pines. Yellow tape meandered in a haphazard rectangle around a white Honda Civic with Illinois plates. Red and white lights rotated and flashed from three patrol cars, two EMS vans, and—Holy St. Mike, was that a hook-and-ladder truck?

Jarek pulled his radio car in thirty yards behind the mess and parked on the shoulder. As he got out of the car, he saw a woman pressed against the yellow tape, bright and exotic looking against a background of dark uniforms.

His body reacted with quick enthusiasm.

Tess.

Jarek groaned mentally. With the exception of Bud Sweet, he couldn’t think of anyone he’d like less to find at a crime scene.

He approached the huddle of cars, automatically putting his hands in his pockets. Look, don’t touch. The pine needles edging the road muffled his footsteps.

“Tess,” he said quietly.

She started. Turned. Something in his chest tightened at the early-morning pallor of her face, the unexpectedly serious set of her mouth.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

Her eyes, that had been wide and welcoming, narrowed. She hitched her purse strap on her shoulder. “Getting a story.”

He felt a muscle jump in his jaw. He didn’t want her here. She would be upset. And he couldn’t be distracted.

He looked past her to the white car, its doors gaping open. No body that he could see, but there were enough uniforms crowding around to block his view of the interior. “I don’t have time to talk to you now.”

Tess shrugged. “Okay. I’ll wait. You can give me a statement later.”

That wasn’t what he wanted, either. In his book, the public’s right to know took a poor second to the victim’s right to justice. But he couldn’t spare time to argue.

He nodded once. “Suit yourself. But you need to step back from the tape. We have to worry about contaminating the crime scene.”

She looked at him, and then at the chaos surrounding them, and then at him again. She raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah, I can see how that would be a worry,” she dead-panned.

He resisted the urge to grin. There was nothing funny about a screwed-up investigation.

Behind Tess, Patrol Officer Stan Lewis—who should have gone off duty an hour ago—quit arguing with the paramedics around the ambulance to run over and consult with the mob around the car. Jarek shook his head. He didn’t care how hard up his officers were for excitement. A crime scene was not a Lions Club picnic.

“Excuse me,” he murmured to Tess, and ducked under the police tape.

Bud Sweet stood guard by the white car, flanked by all four members of the day shift and rookie patrolman Tim Clark. When the lieutenant saw Jarek, his face crumpled like a disappointed Santa Claus’s.

Jarek let his gaze travel slowly along the lineup to the flashing police cars and the hook-and-ladder truck still half blocking the road.

“Somebody want to tell me where the fire is?” he asked mildly.

Sweet drew himself up. “No fire. We have a roadside assault. Clark here caught the call on an abandoned auto. Only when he came to investigate—”

Jarek held up one hand to silence him. “Just a minute. How’s the victim?”

“Stabilized,” Sweet said.

“She’s still here?” Jarek couldn’t keep the anger from his voice.

“I was going to question her.”

Jarek pivoted and strode quickly to the nearest EMS van. A tiny uniformed technician moved to intercept him, her dark eyes snapping.

“We need to get her to the hospital,” she said. “Now.”

Jarek nodded. “Do it.”

As the tech climbed into the ambulance, he swung in after her and crouched down next to the victim.

Young. Blond. Pretty. Or she had been, before the attack. She was swaddled in blankets, an IV running into her arm.

Jarek put his head down close to hers. “Honey, can you hear me?”

She opened dull blue eyes. Whimpered.

The tech reached around him to moor the cot.

Jarek tried again. “Honey, do you know who did this to you?”

“Police,” she whispered.

His heart nearly broke for her. She was really young. Maybe eighteen? “Yeah, I’m with the police,” he said gently. “You’re safe now. Did you see who hurt you?”

“We’ve got to go,” the tech interrupted.

Jarek’s jaw set. He started to crawl out of the ambulance.

“Lights,” the girl on the stretcher volunteered suddenly.

Jarek leaned back in the open door. “What, honey?”

“The car that stopped me.” She licked cracked lips. Blue eyes met his and then slid away. “Red lights. Like police.”

Jarek felt as if he’d just been thumped in the stomach with his own nightstick.

Red lights. Hell.

He stood like a block while the female tech slammed the doors and the van drove away, its turret lights flashing. On Jarek’s home turf, in Chicago, the police were identified by blue flashers. Ambulances and fire trucks operated with red. But in Eden and for most of Illinois, all official emergency vehicles were identified by red flashing lights. Only volunteer firefighters used blue.

And the victim in his most recent case had just identified her assailant’s car as showing red lights. Police lights.

Jarek swore again, silently, viciously. And then he turned and stalked back to the officers clustered around the white car.

Tess still waited too close to the yellow tape, her usually animated face soft and serious.

Her absorption in the scene hit him like another slam in the gut. He had a red light assault on his hands and a reporter underfoot. What a godawful mess.

Routine, he reminded himself. Do the job.

He looked down the row of police faces. “Anybody get pictures before the body was moved?”

“This isn’t a homicide,” Sweet objected. “The girl’s alive.”

Jarek lifted one eyebrow. “And are we sure she’s going to stay that way?”

Sweet’s red face got redder.

Jarek dismissed him. “Lewis, take photos now. I want someone to go with the ambulance. Is Baker on?” Laura Baker was the department’s only female officer.

A patrolman shifted in the line. “She’s out today.”

Sweet tugged on his gun belt. “This isn’t Chicago. We don’t have the manpower to waste on an ambulance run.”

Jarek held on to his temper. “I don’t see a shortage of manpower here. I want an officer with the victim at the hospital.”

She needed police protection. Jarek frowned. Unless she needed protection from the police.

He did a rapid mental review of his department. Who could he trust? Who the hell did he know, really?

“Call Larsen in,” he ordered. “Tell him to make sure that they do a rape kit in the E.R. And I want all nonessential personnel cleared off this scene. Have you called the state police yet for crime lab support?”

Sweet scowled. “We work with the county.”

“Not on a possible homicide,” Jarek pronounced. “Call. Johnson and White, I want you to move all vehicles out of here. See my car? I don’t want anything parked closer than that. And recordon the crime scene, divert traffic to—what’s the nearest parallel road?”

“Green’s just west of here,” Clark volunteered.

Jarek turned back to the rookie patrolman. “Right. Green it is. You found the victim?”

“Yes, sir. I—” The young officer swallowed hard. “She didn’t want to talk. I tried to get a description of her assailant, but… Anyway, I finally just wrapped her in a blanket and left her alone.”

A compassionate action that had effectively wiped any trace of the son of the bitch who attacked her from her skin. Hell.

“All right,” Jarek said. “Did she give you her name?”

“No, sir.”

“How about her purse? Do we have an ID?”

“Her wallet’s missing. I ran the plates,” Bud Sweet said. “Car’s registered to a Mr. and Mrs. Richard Logan of Evanston. So the car could be stolen.”

“Or she could be their daughter,” Jarek said grimly. “Find out. And find out what she was doing up here.”

“She was a student at Bloomington,” Tess said from behind him, her voice flat. “Taking a break from exams.”

His gut tightened like a fist. He turned. Tess had moved to this side of the crime tape, but he couldn’t object to her presence now. He wanted to protect her from the ugliness of the scene. He needed to protect his department from the force of her determination, from those wide golden eyes that saw too much. But this wasn’t Chicago, where he could canvass half-a-dozen surrounding buildings for witnesses. If Tess knew something, he had to talk to her.

“You know the victim?”

Tess’s slightly crooked teeth caught her lower lip. “Her name is Logan? Carolyn Logan?”

“I don’t have a first name. Can you describe her?”

“Oh…” Tess frowned in concentration. “Medium height, nineteen years old. Blond, shoulder-length hair. Her eyes were blue. Or maybe gray?” She shook her head. “Light, anyway.”

Okay, so her being a reporter wasn’t a total loss, Jarek thought. It was a good description. And, for good or bad, it fit the battered girl in the ambulance.

“How do you know her?”

“I don’t know her,” Tess corrected him. “I met her last night.”

“Tell me.”

She fidgeted with her purse strap again. “My story for yours?”

His jaw set. He didn’t make deals. But he knew how to get what he wanted from an interview. “It could work that way.”

She snorted. “Oh, now, that’s something I can stop the presses for.”

She wasn’t as tough as she made herself out to be. He waited.

“Oh, all right,” she said crossly. “What do you want from me?”

Too much. He shoved the thought away.

“I want you to wait for me over there,” he said quietly, “while I finish talking with the investigating team. And then I’d like it if you’d go with me to the station house so I can take your statement.”

“You can’t take it here?”

He could, of course. But he wanted her away from the crime scene. A vicious sexual assault might be news in sleepy Eden. But to a town that depended on tourism, it could also be a public relations disaster. And to the new police chief, the attack at the beginning of his watch was a personal and professional spit-in-the-eye.

Especially if his own department was implicated.

He met her gaze steadily. “No point in being uncomfortable. You want to give the station house coffee a shot?”

The memory of her words trembled between them. Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.

Tess hugged her arms across her waist. Lifted her chin. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a drink instead.”

“It’s a little early for that.”

“Why don’t we see how long this takes? I’ll just get my butt back on the other side of your police tape until you’re ready for me.”

Jarek watched as she walked away and bent back under the yellow crime scene tape. Her butt. Yes.

Sweet coughed. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a hot one, Chief.”

Jarek stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“Hot lead,” the lieutenant said. “If DeLucca really knows anything worthwhile, that is.”

Sweet was a jackass. Tess was a complication. And Jarek had never felt more like an outsider in his life.

“We won’t know that until I take her statement,” he said calmly, and turned back to the scene of the crime.




Chapter 4


Tess slid into the dark booth at the back of the Blue Moon and pushed a coffee mug toward Jarek Denko. Her own stomach cramped with hunger and nerves. She should never have skipped breakfast.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said.

The creases deepened on either side of his hard mouth. “Over coffee?”

“In bars.”

Denko looked around at the empty tables. Sunlight slanted through the shutters, gleaming on the bottles, dimming the neon beer signs along the walls. “I didn’t know this place even opened at ten.”

“Depends on who you know,” Tess said smugly.

He blew on his coffee before sipping it. Cautious, she thought.

“And you know everybody,” he said.

“Pretty much.”

“Convenient,” he remarked.

She shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind everybody thinking that they know you.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

Tess wondered if the gloomy booth was dark enough to hide her wince. She flashed him a smile, in case it wasn’t. “It’s a problem for anyone growing up in a small town.”

“Don’t tell me that,” he complained mildly. “I just moved here.”

“I think you’ll be okay. You look pretty grown-up to me.”

Grown-up. Yes. Hard and assured and competent. Tess had enjoyed watching him take command away from Bud Sweet, admired his immediate concern for poor Carolyn Logan.

Jarek set down his mug. “Honey, I’m past the age of worrying what other people think of me. But I’m planning on raising my daughter in this town.”

Tess toyed with objecting to the “honey” and then gave it up. Three days ago, she’d swapped saliva with this man in front of his brother and a bar full of cops. She supposed that kiss created a bond, of sorts.

“Is she coming to stay with you soon? Your daughter?”

“For the weekend. Next weekend.” He glanced at the bare table in front of her. “Aren’t you getting anything?”

Okay, not much of a bond, she thought wryly. He still wouldn’t discuss his family with her. “Tim’s bringing me orange juice.”

On cue, the bar owner appeared, a well-built, closely shaven man in his forties.

He offered her a tall, cold glass and a smile. “Here you go, Tess. You get home all right last night?”

Tess thought of Carolyn Logan and shivered. “I… Yes, I did.”

“Just wanted to be sure. It was pretty late when you left.” He turned to Jarek. “How’s the coffee?”

“Fine. Thanks. You Tim Brown? The owner?”

Tim looked surprised. “That’s right.”

“Jarek Denko.”

“The new police chief,” Tess contributed.

“Yeah, I heard,” Tim said. He stuck out his hand. The two men shook.

“Well…” Tim hesitated. “Can I get you folks anything else?”

“We’re good, thanks,” Jarek said.

Tim went back to the register. Tess waited for Jarek to say, “Nice guy,” which is what everybody always said when they met Tim. When he didn’t, she said it for him.

“Tim’s a nice guy.”

Jarek took another sip of coffee. “He grow up here, too?”

“No. He moved here from Chicago. He did something for the city. Sanitation? Firefighter? But he married a local girl. A cheerleader, even.” Jarek raised his brows slightly. Tess explained. “Heather Brown went to school with my brother.”

“Wouldn’t that make her a little young for him?”

Tess thought so. But she said, “Not really. Tim had the looks to attract her and the money to keep her. The bar does very well during the season.”

“And the rest of the year?”

“It pulls in enough locals to stay open. The after-shift crowd from the paper mill, mostly. There’s not much to do in Eden on a Friday or Saturday night. Except the Algonquin lounge, and most people can’t afford to drink there. I can’t, anyway.”

“Is that what you were doing here last night? Drinking?”

Tess suppressed a flash of annoyance. “No. I was meeting someone.” When Jarek didn’t react, didn’t say anything at all, she sighed. “My brother. I was meeting my brother. He’s a bartender here.”

“What’s his name?”

“Mark.” Tess scowled. Jarek had actually taken out a little notebook and was writing stuff down. “But he doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Was he here?”

“Yes. He was working.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Well, yes. I told you, I came here to meet him.” Because Mark, irresponsible, unreliable and infuriating as he was, could always make her feel better. And since her abortive kiss with Denko on Wednesday night, Tess had been feeling pretty lousy.

None of which she was confiding to Jarek Denko.

“Was that before or after you saw Carolyn Logan?” he asked.

“Before. We were talking, and then I went to the ladies’, and when I got back, she was sitting at the bar.”

Denko scratched something down. “What time would that have been?”

Tess did her best not to be intimidated by the damn notebook. Reporters used notebooks, too. It wasn’t as if anything she said was going to be used against her. “Ten? Around then, anyway.”

“Was she with anyone? Friends? A boyfriend?”

Tess shook her head. “She was alone. She had plans to come up with her roommate, but they fell through. She told me she didn’t want to waste a guaranteed reservation, so she decided to make the trip alone.”

“A reservation? You know where?”

Tess frowned. “The Bide-A-Wee, I think. In the lodge.”

Jarek made another note. “Anybody hit on her while you two were talking?”

“I…” Tess stared into her orange juice, trying to recreate the scene in her mind. At the cash register, Tim Brown hunched over a calculator and a legal pad, reconciling the previous night’s take. “Not really. She left a couple of times to dance. We both did. But mostly we just talked.”

“We? You and Carolyn?”

No point in muddying the waters, Tess thought. “Yes.”

“And your brother?”

Tess felt sick. Stupid. She had nothing to worry about. The years when she had to protect Mark were over. He was a grown man, a former marine who had returned from overseas with a chip on his shoulder, a tattoo on his arm and training in weapons and self-defense. None of which she needed to share with Denko. “I told you. He was tending bar.”

“Right. He drive you home?”

“No. He lives at the other end of the marina. He’s got an apartment over one of the boathouses.”

“But you stuck around, maybe? Till he got off work.”

“No.” She wished to God that she had. “I left early. Around midnight.”

“And was the victim, Carolyn, still there at ‘around midnight’?”

“Yes.”

“Still alone. Sitting at the bar?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know what time she left.”

Tess picked at her paper napkin. “No.”

“You okay?” Denko asked gruffly.

She straightened defensively against the vinyl seat back. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Maybe because an hour ago you saw somebody you knew, somebody you’d talked with, hauled off in an ambulance?”

She was getting used to his perception. She wasn’t quite as prepared for the way it made her feel: naked and warm.

But then he spoiled it all by adding, “Or could be there’s something you’d like to tell me you haven’t gotten around to yet.”

“You have a nasty, suspicious mind, did you know that?”

His smile glimmered like a break in the ice. “Goes with the job.”

“I’m not sure I like your job.”

“Are you going to tell me about your ride in the police car when you were fourteen?”

Ouch. “No. Are you going to tell me why you cleared all your officers from the scene and called in the state crime scene investigation team?”

Something gleamed in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or annoyance. “Noticed that, did you?”

“Yes. Is it relevant?”

“Relevant to what?”

She pulled out her own notebook. Let him see how he liked being the one questioned for a change. “To my story about the attack.”

“Police blotter stuff,” he said dismissively. “Not much of a story.”

She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Maybe not in Chicago. But if tourists are getting raped by the side of the road in Eden, it is definitely a story.”

She thought he tensed, but his voice remained calm as he corrected her. “One woman was attacked. That hardly constitutes a crime pattern, even in Eden. You shouldn’t sensationalize.”

She glared. “I don’t call it sensationalism to warn the community.”

“That’s very public-spirited of you.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “If the public interest is your actual objective.”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you really interested in getting a warning out there, or do you just want to get a headline with your name under it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I’m a real glory hound, writing for the Eden Gazette.”

“Big stories get picked up by bigger papers,” he observed.

Her heart hammered. “And do you think this could be a big story?”

His lips firmed. “I think you might make it into one. If it suited your purpose.”

She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “Look, I’m not acting from sinister motives here. I just don’t like secrets. I especially don’t like the police keeping secrets.” Boy, there was an understatement. She pushed away a sixteen-year-old memory. “And I don’t appreciate you standing in the way of a story.”

“Understood. I don’t like secrets, either.” His eyes, cool and steady as rain, met hers. “And I won’t tolerate anyone standing in the way of an investigation.”



Mark DeLucca had a face like an archangel on a cathedral wall and an assassin’s flat, black gaze. It was a look likely to appeal to a lot of women, Jarek figured. Daring ones. Dumb ones. It remained to be seen if the victim, young Carolyn Logan, fit into either category.

“Your sister mentioned that Miss Logan spent a lot of time at the bar last night,” Jarek said.

Mark continued to brush paint on the bottom of a skiff with sure, even strokes. Around the graying wooden dock, sunlight sparkled on dark water. The wind swayed the pines and tattered the white clouds high overhead. The whole scene was straight out of one of Pop’s fishing magazines or a glossy Great Lakes travel brochure.

DeLucca looked almost as at home in this environment—a fallen angel in Eden—as Jarek felt out of place.

The younger man dipped his brush in a can of blue paint. “She was there.”

His response didn’t make it clear whether he meant his sister or Carolyn Logan. But at least he was talking.

Yeah, and if he said something incriminating and Tess found out about it, she’d likely murder them both.

Jarek shook his head. He had enough troubles with this case without worrying about Tess’s reaction to him questioning her brother.

“Did you serve Miss Logan?” he asked.

Mark’s mouth twisted with bitter humor. “I don’t violate the underage drinking laws, if that’s what you’re asking. I carded her.”

“And?”

“I gave her a Coke. She was nineteen.”

A baby, thought Jarek, and imagined his daughter, his Allie, reaching nineteen. Damn it, Eden was supposed to be a safe place to raise children.

“Notice anything else?”

“It was an Illinois license, and she lied about her weight.” Mark DeLucca shrugged. “Nothing unusual about either one.”

“What about her conversation with your sister?”

“What about it?”

“Do you remember what they talked about?” Did you talk with Carolyn Logan? Flirt with her? Rape her?

“Why don’t you ask Tess?”

“I’m asking you.”

Mark DeLucca’s eyes glittered with black amusement. “Well, now you can ask her. Because she just got out of her car, and she’s coming over.”

Jarek turned. Tess’s car was parked in the shadow of the boathouse, and Tess herself was striding down the dock.

His headache returned with a vengeance. But despite his pounding head, he admired the picture she made, flying toward them with all the elegance and wicked intent of one of those black-necked geese defending its young. She wore jeans, and boots that were more suited to Michigan Avenue than a dock in the lake district, and an expression between hope and fury.

He caught himself stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets and smiled in wry recognition. Look, don’t touch.

She stopped beside them, her breath quick through parted lips, her golden eyes bright and narrow with suspicion. “Mark.”

Her brother straightened, wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Tess.” His dry tone was a parody of hers.

Not a lot of love lost there, Jarek thought. But then she reached out and touched his jacket sleeve, and his hand covered hers in quick reassurance before they both turned to face Jarek. Now he saw the family resemblance he had missed before: the dark, straight hair and the dark, arched brows and the go-to-hell tilt of the jaw. Only Tess’s mouth was full and soft, and Mark’s eyes were black and cold.

“You didn’t waste any time getting over here,” Tess said to Jarek.

He met her gaze and her accusation calmly. “Neither did you.”

“Do you two know each other?” Mark asked.

“We’ve met,” said Jarek.

Tess’s mouth flattened. “He pulled me out of a cop and groupie bar on Wednesday night.”

Mark went as still as a coiled snake.

“Just keeping her out of trouble,” Jarek said evenly.

“That’s usually her job,” Mark said.

Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Is that what she does? Keeps you out of trouble?”

Mark slanted a sharp grin at his sister. “When we were growing up, yeah. Not so much since I got back to town.”

“You were away?” Jarek asked, deceptively polite.

“Six years.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“Prison?” Jarek asked.

The grin broadened. “Marines. So I figure I’m big enough to watch out for myself now.” DeLucca looked at Jarek, and the amusement left his face. “And for her.”

He was being warned off, Jarek thought. Fair enough. If his sister looked like Tess DeLucca, he’d bristle, too. But, Nora, bless her, had never been the black leather pants type.

Tess elbowed her brother in the ribs. “Stop it,” she said. “So, what did you tell him?”

“Same as you, I bet. I met the girl last night. I didn’t know her personally. I’m sorry some son of a bitch hurt her, and I don’t know who did it.”

Jarek persisted. “You can’t remember who else she spoke with?”

“A bunch of rich kids came over from the Algonquin. I thought she was with them at first.” His shoulder jerked. “Frankly I was more concerned with what my customers were drinking than who they were groping on the dance floor.”

“And was Miss Logan groping anyone?”

Mark DeLucca’s dark brows drew together in thought. “No,” he answered at last, slowly. “No, she wasn’t. She shot down Carl Taylor.”

Who the hell was Carl Taylor?

“Taylor’s Gas-N-Go,” Tess offered before he could ask. “Married, two kids.”

It was the kind of background information that Jarek desperately needed and sorely missed. And, because of Tess’s undisguised partiality for her brother, the kind of lead he couldn’t depend on.

“Thanks. So, she left alone…what time, Mr. DeLucca?”

“Late. Twelve-thirty?”

“That fits what I told you,” Tess said.

Jarek threw her an annoyed look. She smiled back, both challenge and apology bright in those wide gold eyes. Why had he thought life would be simpler in Eden?

Do the job, he told himself. “You were responsible for closing up?” he asked Mark.

“Not last night, no. I clocked out around one.”

“Also alone,” Jarek said.

The gleam again. “If I’d been in the mood for company, I could have had some.”

Okay, that was probably true. The DeLuccas were a good-looking family. “So, you weren’t in the mood. Did you drive?”

“Are you kidding? I live five minutes away.”

“But you do have a car.”

“Sure. Right over there by the boathouse.”

Jarek followed his nod. Parked beside Tess’s tiny compact was a black Jeep Cherokee with dings in the side and mud on the tire guards. Very macho.

“Mind if I take a look?”

Tess cocked her chin. “Do you have a search warrant?”

Jarek understood family loyalty. Hell, he admired it, and the stubborn angle of her jaw, but he wasn’t going to let either one get in his way.

“Do I need one?” he asked Mark.

“If I say yes, will you go away and never come back?” Mark met Jarek’s eyes and smiled slightly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He gestured toward the Jeep. “Be my guest.”

Jarek waited for Mark to pull out his keys and slouch ahead along the dock. Tess fell in beside them. The wind flattened her shirt against that amazing chest and plucked at her hair. Jarek caught a whiff of her shampoo, musky and incongruous against a background of diesel, woods and rising water.




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