Capturing Cleo

“Oh,” he said. “Then, who sent the roses?”

The temperature of her blood rose a notch. She was not about to tell Malone about her secret admirer. He’d probably find it all very amusing. Besides, secret admirers were harmless. She’d had more than her share. They all turned out to be shy, sweet men suffering from something that was no more intense than a crush, ordinary men too timid to approach her even to say hello.

“None of your business.”

“You are going to cooperate, aren’t you, Ms. Tanner?”

She didn’t like the way he said that, or the way he lifted his eyebrows and planted his eyes on her and asked the question as if it wasn’t a question at all, but a demand. No one pushed her around anymore, no one told her what to do. Not even Luther Malone.

Cleo was saved from answering when the waitress appeared again, bearing a tray laden with food. She placed a heavy white plate with four pieces of toast—three more than Cleo would eat—on the table, along with a bowl filled with small containers of butter and strawberry jam.

Malone’s plate was huge: scrambled eggs, a mound of bacon, a bowl of grits and one of those doughnuts he’d tried to entice her with. Glazed.

She shook her head and smiled as she reached for the preserves, letting loose a very small laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Malone asked defensively.

“Nothing. Just wondering if I’ll be a suspect when you keel over with hardened arteries.” She glanced at the plate. “Something which is certain to happen any day now, if that is your ‘usual.’”

“Oh,” he said, reaching for the pepper. “I thought you were laughing at the doughnut.”

“That’s just icing on the…”

“…doughnut?” he finished.

She liked the fact that he ate such a huge and fat-laden breakfast and then finished it off with the cliché of a cop’s doughnut. It made him more…human, somehow. Her smile faded. It was bad enough that she’d placed him so high on the Barney-Bruce scale and thought he was inappropriately good-looking; now she actually had to like something about him? Bad news. Very bad news.

“And to answer your question,” she said, putting on her most severe face. “No, I don’t see any reason why I should cooperate with you.”

He nodded his head as if he had already figured that out.

Cleo took a bite of her toast, glad that Malone was giving at least some of his attention to his breakfast. He did keep looking at her, though, lifting his head and staring at her hard, as if he might see something different, this time.

He lifted his head, stared at her face and pointed. “You have…” He wiggled that long finger in her direction.

“I have what?” she snapped. “Guilt written all over my face? A suspicious glint in my eye?”

He reached across the table and touched her face, there near her mouth, dragging the tip of his finger slowly and gently down. It was a shock, when he touched her—a literal, heart-jolting shock. His warm finger briefly brushed her lower lip, sending a riot of sensations she did not want or need through her body. Her heart beat too fast, her temperature rose, and she was quite sure he would be able to see the heat she felt in her cheeks.

Malone showed her his finger as it withdrew. “Strawberry jam on your face.”

When he licked the jam off his finger, she thought she would swoon.

And Cleo Tanner did not swoon! She took a napkin and rubbed it vigorously against the corner of her mouth, there where he had touched her, doing her best to wipe away any remaining jam as well as the lingering effect of that warm finger on her face and her lip.

Malone seemed unaffected, by the contact and by her reaction to it. “Do you think Tempest would commit suicide?”

“No,” she said, while he dug into his breakfast. “I already told you that.”

“I know, but…it’s the grapefruit that mucks everything up. Would he jump with a grapefruit just to screw up your life again?”

Again, like Malone knew everything about her and Jack. “Maybe,” she admitted softly. “If Jack was going to kill himself, he’d definitely go out of his way to pin it on me.”

Malone wagged an egg-laden fork in her direction. “That’s what I figured, but still…I don’t see suicide.”

He sounded almost disappointed. “Then, why the hell did you ask?”

“Gotta cover everything.”

“Then, don’t forget about Randi with an i,” Cleo said. “She’d been with Jack long enough to know what he was like, and she didn’t like me.”

“Why not?”

“Because Jack wouldn’t leave me alone, that’s why,” she said softly.

He nodded, again as if he understood.

“Now will you hurry up and eat that monster breakfast so you can get me back to my car and I can go home? I’ve had about all the cooperation I can take.”

Luther didn’t hurry, but he did quit questioning Cleo and gave his breakfast the attention it deserved, while she played with a piece of toast and sipped at her juice. Cleo Tanner hadn’t tossed her ex-husband off the First Heritage Bank building, of that he was ninety-percent sure. But she was at the middle of it, somehow.

He wished she’d eat a little more, maybe get more jam on the corner of her mouth so he could remove it for her. Wiping it off had been bad enough. What he’d really wanted to do, what he still wanted to do, was lick it off.

Stupid idea. Cleo was gorgeous, in an exotic, all-woman kind of way, but she was too stubborn for his taste. She liked to argue, to butt heads. And what a mouth! He liked his women soft and sweet and compliant.

Well, soft, sweet and compliant was great for an hour or two, he admitted grudgingly. After that, most women lost their luster. They wanted too much, they needed too much. Cleo Tanner was anything but compliant. She was also anything but sweet. As for soft…

He almost groaned aloud when Russell walked into the diner, smile on his face, not a single golden hair out of place. The kid didn’t even dress like a homicide detective. Tan pants, blue shirt, brown jacket, burgundy tie and those damn loafers. The kid looked like he’d just stepped out of GQ, right down to the brilliant grin he turned on them.

“I figured I’d find you here,” the kid said, and then he laid eyes on Cleo.

The kid was transparent, and he’d just fallen instantly, deeply and annoyingly in love. Well, in lust, anyway. Luther had a feeling that happened a lot to Cleo. She sucked unsuspecting men in like a swirling, dangerous, inescapable black hole. If he wasn’t careful, he could be next.

“What do you want?” Luther asked.

“We’re supposed to be partners, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean we’re joined at the hip,” Luther grumbled. God, the kid was so damn…enthusiastic.

“My mistake. I thought we were working on the Tempest case today. I didn’t know you had a…” He laid adoring eyes on Cleo again. “A breakfast date.” Russell actually blushed.

“Michael Russell, this is Cleo Tanner.”

The kid’s smile faded quickly. He knew the name well. “Oh.” Still, he offered his hand, and Cleo took it. “A pleasure, ma’am.”

“I wish I could say the same,” she said, with a frosty smile that Russell apparently found endearing. He sat beside her, and she scooted toward the window to give him room.

“Cleo Tanner,” Russell said, nodding his head knowingly.