Defender

“Now you sound like a policeman,” she accused.

His eyes narrowed. “And you’d know that how?”

“There’s this nice policeman who works for Chief Grier,” she said. “I have lunch in Barbara’s Cafe every Friday with Blake Kemp’s assistant. The policeman is usually having lunch there, too, with a couple of his friends. They sit next to us and we talk.” She laughed. “He’s really funny. I like him.”

He felt an unreasonable surge of jealousy. He fought it down and even managed a convincing smile. “Your age?”

“Oh, no, he’s closer to your age. At least, to what I think is your age,” she added, because Paul had never told her how old he was.

“Is he new here?”

She nodded. She leaned toward him. “There’s some gossip about him,” she said in a stealthy, mischievous tone.

“Is there? What is it?” he asked.

“You remember Kilraven, who was supposed to be working for the chief, but was really an undercover Fed?”

“I remember. He married Winnie Sinclair.”

She nodded. “Well, our policeman is apparently an undercover Fed, too, working on some mob-related criminal activity.”

Paul’s heart jumped. He had an inkling of what that might be, but he didn’t dare tell Isabel. He still had contacts inside—well, actually, on both sides of that issue—and he didn’t want to have to admit to them. He was still raw from the past, despite the years of distance.

“Know what it is?” he asked.

“No,” she returned. “He isn’t telling anybody about that. I heard all about it from Mr. Kemp’s paralegal, who’s friends with the chief’s secretary, Carlie Farwalker.”

He let out a breath. “Isabel, is there anybody you don’t know?”

“Well, Jacobsville is a very small town. And Comanche Wells, where we live, is even smaller. I’ve lived here all my life. I know everybody. Is it like that, where you come from?” she asked, curious. “I mean, did you come from a small town?”

He burst out laughing. “I came from Jersey,” he said. “Nothing small about New Jersey, kid.”

“But don’t you have neighborhoods there, where people live for a long time together?”

He thought back to his childhood, to the place he grew up. “I suppose we did. My grandmother had lived in the same house since she was married. She knew everybody in the neighborhood, and I mean everybody.”

“So it was like here?”

“Only if everybody here was Greek or Italian,” he said with a grin. “On my mother’s side, mostly Italian. My grandmother and her father were the only Greek blood in the family.”

“I guess you speak Italian, too,” she said softly.

“Italian, Greek and an odd little dialect of Farsi.”

“Farsi?” She frowned. “Our police chief speaks that. So does Wolf Patterson’s wife, Sara. In fact, he speaks it, too. They had some extraordinary arguments in Farsi before they married.” She grinned. “I heard about it from Bonnie, who works in the pharmacy in Jacobsville.”

“I’ll have to watch my back, so people don’t tell you girls anything about me,” he chided with twinkling brown eyes. But he wasn’t mentioning his time in Afghanistan in Special Forces.

“Nobody knows anything about you, Paul. You’re a mystery,” she said with a sigh.

The way she said his name made something inside him wake up. He didn’t want that.

“I don’t talk about my past. Ever,” he said absently.

“Oh? Were you, like, a hit man for the mob?” she teased with twinkling blue eyes.

His face tautened to steel. His eyes blazed for an instant, and he seemed made of stone.

“I was kidding!” she said at once, shocked at the reaction she’d provoked. “I’m sorry, really I am…!”

He forced the anguish out of his face. It wasn’t her fault. It was nothing to do with her. She’d simply made a joke, hitting a tender spot without even knowing it.

“No sweat,” he said, and forced a smile. “Hey, I’m Italian. We get too many mob jokes,” he added.

“Sorry,” she said again, her voice softening. “It was a dumb remark.”

“It’s okay.” He reached out and tweaked a long, curly strand of red-gold hair. It was the first time he’d really touched her. “I guess you get Irish jokes all the time, huh?”

“Irish?”

“You’re redheaded, kid,” he teased.

His hand in her hair was provoking some very unusual stirrings in her untried body, and she was trying to pretend she felt nothing. She wasn’t successful. Paul, with his greater experience, could see everything she felt. It flattered him, that she could find him attractive.

“Oh. Redheaded. Irish. I get it.” She laughed nervously. “No, it isn’t Irish. My father’s people were from Wales.”

“Wales!” He laughed. “I never knew a single person from Wales.”

“Me, neither,” she confessed. “I did try to learn a word or two of the language, but I think I sprained my tongue, so I never tried again.”

“Sprained your tongue.” He smiled and let his attention drift down her softly rounded face, over her lightly freckled straight nose, to the pretty bow-shaped mouth under it. His gaze lingered there for a long time. So long, in fact, that he heard her breathing change.

His eyes narrowed. His chest rose and fell quickly. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way; years, in fact, and he felt the stirring of his body with fascination and regret. But she was off-limits. Period. He didn’t dare touch her. Her father would string him up.

He let go of her hair with a grin. “Better get some sleep, kid. I’ve got an early appointment.”

“Okay.” She jumped up from the bed, and then hesitated beside it, frowning. “Paul, you’re sure about the cameras? That there aren’t any around here?” She looked around worriedly.

“I swept the whole house myself twice,” he assured her. “No cameras. No bugs. Nothing.”

“All right, then.” She hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble with my father. We’re just friends, but if he saw us together like this… I mean, he might get ideas.”

“No cameras, no bugs,” he repeated gently. “On my honor.”

She smiled at him. “Okay.”

“Go to bed.”