Secret Desire

“I can see that.”

He had a way of looking at her intently, of focusing on her as if she were the only other living creature on the planet. Suddenly, he smiled, and her heart flipped over like a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

“You didn’t get any rest, but…well, since we’re out here, do you feel like having a decent meal with me?”

Stunned at the unexpected invitation, she gazed up at him, judging his intent.

His smile widened. “I’m harmless. Besides, everybody in town knows me, so I can’t possibly abduct you and get away with it. What do you say?”

An infectious grin, his sparkling white teeth against his dark brown skin, gave her a warm feeling, and the twinkling mischievous challenge in his beautiful gray eyes provoked in her an oddball sense of devilment, a wickedness she hadn’t felt in over ten years.

In a reckless moment, she said, “Harmless? Luke Hickson, you’re about as harmless as a hungry lion among a herd of antelope.”

With his jacket open and his hands in his pants pockets emphasizing his six-foot, four-inch height and his imposing maleness, he gave his left shoulder a quick shrug. “I expect I’ve been likened to less admirable things, but when a charming woman tells me to my face that she thinks I’m dangerous, there’s no telling what will pop into my head.” He grinned again. “You willing to risk it?”

Primed for the game, she looked him up and down. “Oh, I don’t know. What kind of ideas get into your head?”

His eyes flashed fire, daring her. “You might be surprised.”

If he thought she’d back off, he was in for a surprise. “Good. I love surprises.”

His left eyebrow shot up. “And challenges, too, no doubt.”

She pulled on the long strand of hair that hung beside her right ear. “Oh, I thrive on those.”

“Ever pushed your luck too far?” he asked, his voice low and dark.

She couldn’t remember when she had last enjoyed flirting with a man, giving him back as good as she got. And a sharp-looking brother, at that. She pulled a curtain of innocence over her face and smiled. “Maybe. I don’t think so, though I’ve been told I have got an angel on my shoulder. So who knows? Where’s this place that serves a good meal?”

When he stepped closer and touched her elbow with a single finger, she looked around and then glanced up at him. He wasn’t smiling, and she knew she’d given herself away.

“If you’re checking to see who’s around in case you want to play, we’re alone in front of your store, four feet from a streetlight.”

The thought of playing with him, as he put it, sent a riot of sensation through her body, but she steeled herself against his intoxicating virility. “I don’t make a spectacle of myself, Captain. I just like to—”

“Tease?” His grin lacked its previous playfulness. “I like to tease, too, but I know when to draw the line. You’d better watch it. Your kind of funny stuff can get out of hand. Oh, yes. Let’s cut the formality, Kate. We’re way past that now. There’s a nice restaurant about six blocks away. I’ll drive us.”

“Sure you want to have a meal with this child?”

A frown marred his otherwise perfect features. “Child? What do you mean, child?”

She lifted her nose just enough to let him sense a mild reprimand. “I don’t suppose you make a habit of lecturing to adults.”

She couldn’t manage more than a wide-eyed stare as he ran his hand over his hair, gave her a sheepish grin and finally shrugged his left shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go.”

His hand on her arm was not impersonal as it had been when he took her and Randy to the police station. His grasp now bore an intimacy, a possessiveness, and it had a tenderness that made her want to feel his hands skimming her arm. Sensing danger, she told herself to remember to ask him about his wife and children, and to stay out of his company.

Luke had a premonition that dismissing her from his mind and his feelings wouldn’t be as easy as he’d thought, that handling his reaction to her would prove as tough a test as any he could remember. Her dignity, charm and impish ways fascinated him, and something in her eyes seemed to hide the wisdom of the ages and to promise him anything he would ever want.

He watched her read the menu, and wondered what was taking her so long. There wasn’t that much to read.

Very soon, it became clear that she hadn’t been reading. She didn’t take her gaze from the menu, which hid half of her face. “Luke, why aren’t you having dinner with your wife and children?”

That set him back a bit, but the question told him much about her. He closed his eyes briefly. “Kate, I’m a widower, and have been for six years. My wife and I weren’t fortunate enough to have children.”

She folded the menu, laid it on the table beside her plate and looked at him. “I’m sorry. Did you want children?”

Getting into that would drag him down as sure as his name was Luke Stuart Hickson. “Yes, I did. More than anything. What happened to your husband?”

So he didn’t like talking about it. Well, that was a kind of pain she could understand. She told him of Nathan’s death, and why she’d resettled in Portsmouth. “I was teaching here when I met Nathan. So it was Portsmouth or Charleston, where I grew up, and I didn’t think I could raise Randy and make a living for us in South Carolina. I want him to have every opportunity.”

He tapped the two middle fingers of his left hand on the table. “If he doesn’t get strong discipline, the opportunities you provide him with won’t mean one thing.”

She knew she had her hands full undoing the damage caused by Nathan’s pampering. He’d mistaken that for love, but she had recognized it as a substitute for the guidance their child needed.

“I know I’ve got my hands full with Randy, and I’m trying. But he threatens to call his paternal grandparents and tell them he’s being abused, the way he tattled to his father whenever I made him stay in his room. He’s smart beyond his years, Luke. I haven’t told them where we are yet, and with his attitude and a few other problems, I’m not sure I want to.”

He seemed to meditate for a few minutes before he said, “Enroll him in our Police Athletic League. Most of those boys aren’t with their fathers, so we give them the discipline they need.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to turn Randy loose with a group of underprivileged boys. Medicine that cured one ailment could cause another that killed. “We’ll see. I—”

“Some of those boys are from homes just like Randy’s, and all of them have learned to respect their mothers, so don’t be huffy about it. It may be just the help you need.”

One more indication that this man should not be taken for granted. And he said what he thought. “I may give it a try,” she said, mostly to change the subject.

“The sooner, the better.”

The waiter arrived to take their orders, and she breathed a long breath of relief. “I’ll have the leek soup and roast beef,” she said to the waiter, then glanced at Luke. “What are you wrinkling your nose for?”

He spread out his hands in a gesture of innocence. “With all this good food—stuffed crabs, crab cakes, Cajun-fried catfish, rolled veal in wine sauce with wild mushrooms, if you want to get fancy—why would anybody ask for roast beef and mashed potatoes?”

Why, indeed? If he thought she’d tell him that she hadn’t read the entire menu because he disconcerted her, he could think again. She caught the waiter’s sardonic expression.

“If you’d like to change…Captain Hickson eats here regularly. He may suggest something.”

She looked from one to the other and controlled her tongue. “I ordered roast beef because I like it. I’d also like a glass of Châteauneuf du Pape. You do carry French wines, don’t you?”

She’d known Luke Hickson exactly ten hours, but she would have bet her life that if she looked at him she’d see a grin on his face. He didn’t disappoint her.

“Yes, ma’am,” the waiter replied. Then he took Luke’s order of broiled mushrooms and crown roast of pork and moved away as quickly as possible.

“Aren’t you having wine?” she asked Luke.

His grin turned into a full laugh—and what a laugh. If she had any sense, she’d get out of there. The man was like a time-release drug.

He sobered up and answered her question. “I’m driving, so I don’t drink. I’m a cop, remember? By the way, do you drive?”

She told him she had a Ford Taurus, but that she drove because she had to and not because she enjoyed it. They finished the meal, and he leaned back and watched her. She folded her hands in her lap, unfolded them, smoothed her hair, and then pushed aside the clump that hung over her right ear. Finally, discombobulated beyond measure, she told herself to relax and went on the attack. “Luke, would you please stop staring at me? You’re making me uncomfortable.”