Serving up Trouble

“Okay, then.”

He was going to hang up now. And though she couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t ready to let go, to stop hearing him. She’d like to be able to attribute it to lingering shock or fear, but she knew better.

Nothing about his voice reminded her of shock or fear. Instead it invoked visions of things she’d never shared with anyone but had always fantasized about; lying in bed on a Sunday morning sharing the funny section of the paper, late-night forays into the freezer for a tub of ice cream that they’d feed to each other with one spoon, or better yet just eat off their bodies, phone calls during the day just to hear each other… “Are you the investigating officer then?” she asked. Subtle, Ang.

“No, that would be Detective Owens. He’ll be questioning you.”

But Sam had called her himself. Maybe he was dreaming of the comics and ice cream, too. Maybe he yearned and ached and burned for things he couldn’t quite put into words but knew he wanted.

With her.

“Owens asked me to call,” he clarified.

Which pretty much dispelled both the fantasy and any lingering hope that somehow this strange, inexplicable attraction was two-sided.

“Some times,” he continued, “in traumatic events like this, a familiar voice helps.”

Was that what all this emotion crowding her chest was about? Because he was familiar? Because he’d been her hero in a terrible incident?

That was pathetic.

Even more so because he clearly felt none of what she’d allowed herself to feel. “I see,” she said, grateful that at least he couldn’t see her. “Well…thank you.”

“No problem.”

Wait. She wanted to tell him how much his actions yesterday had meant. How much she’d learned about herself since. How—

Click.

Dial tone.

With a little sigh, Angie had to laugh. She set the phone down and decided to stick with reality. Her reality.

Which at the moment, she thought, glancing at her clock, meant work.

But later, she promised the new easel standing in her living room, later she’d paint. Just because she could.

Sam spent the morning chasing dead ends, trying to crack the identity-theft ring that had already spent over a million dollars in stolen credit in the past calendar year alone.

Back in his office, he collapsed in frustration at his desk before a commotion outside the door caught his attention. He tried to ignore it, but wasn’t lucky enough for that.

A shadow crossed his desk. “Well, if it isn’t our local hero.”

Sam glanced up at his partner, who until a second ago had also been his best friend, and scowled. Most people went running from that fierce, foreboding glare, or at least walked quickly away.

Not Luke Sorrintino. He was dark-haired, darker-skinned and full-blooded Italian, and he didn’t scare easily. While he was only medium build to Sam’s tall, broader one, he was probably the toughest man Sam knew, and he rarely smiled.

But he was smiling now, broadly.

“What do you want?” Sam asked, already wary.

“Two things. First…” He tossed down the morning paper.

Front page, dead center. Sam on his knees on the floor of the bank, with a beautiful, disheveled woman in his arms, staring up at him with huge, grateful eyes.

Angie.

God, she looked so small, so defenseless. So absolutely, heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. Her sweater hung off one shoulder, revealing soft skin, which according to the color photo, had already started to bruise from her captor’s cruel grip.

Sam’s jaw went tight. A headache kicked in. She’d gotten hurt after all.

“You seem pretty…involved,” Luke noted.

Sam’s eyes honed in on his face in the picture. Sure enough, he wasn’t just holding her, he was holding her, cradling her against his chest, one hand spread over her exposed throat. His expression was intense to say the least, and zeroed in one-hundred percent on Angie’s upturned face.

It looked startlingly intimate, and if he didn’t know that he’d been concerned only with making sure she hadn’t been cut by the punk’s knife, that she was looking at him like that only because she could hardly see…damn. Take away the bank setting, take away the fact that there was a bleeding criminal on the floor behind them, and they could have been…lovers.

“Interesting,” Luke said.

Sam eyed his friend. The two of them had been through a lot together. High school. The academy. Being rookies. They’d been through family and wives unable, or unwilling, to handle the demands of their jobs.

Death and mayhem. They’d seen or done it all.

Were still seeing and doing it all.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Luke actually kept grinning, which really made Sam pause. “There’s a delivery for you.”

“Yeah? So bring it in.”

“Delivery woman insists on giving it to you herself.”

Delivery woman?

With a long, warning look to Luke, Sam rose to his feet and came to the door of his office. He wasn’t pleased to see a small crowd of cops who plainly had nothing better to do than stand around and smile stupidly.

In the center of the group was a huge bouquet of wildflowers sprouting three feet wide out of a basket. He couldn’t see the face of the person behind it, only that she was wearing sandals, with bright pink polished toenails and a dainty little gold toe-ring.

Then from behind the basket peeked a smiling face.

Angie.

Around him there were hushed whispers and more than a few teeters and muffled laughter.

Sam ignored them to stare at her in disbelief. Flowers. Lord, she’d brought flowers to the toughest, meanest cop in the precinct.

He’d never live it down.

“I’ve brought a thank-you for yesterday,” she said in a sweet, musical voice that somehow had him stepping from his office doorway toward her.