You Only Love Once

“Didn’t have your radio on during the drive in, did you, kid? Everyone’s downtown. Some guy’s holding his little girl hostage until he can talk to his estranged wife. The whole city and county forces are down there now, not to mention every branch of the news media.”

David felt the familiar, all-powerful burst of adrenaline kicking in. A hostage situation. Now that was a meaty way to start a day. He sprinted for the door, shrugging into his coat as he went.

“McCoy!”

David winced at Kowalsky’s shout. He’d recognize that low, eardrum-popping sound anywhere. The guys around the station joked that you could hear his voice in the next county if you listened hard enough.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he said, turning to face him, though he maintained his momentum.

“Going somewhere?” Kow asked, eyeing his shirt and raising a brow.

David either had to go through the door or stop. Given the warning written all over his superior’s face, he opted for stop. “Yes, sir, I thought I’d head downtown to see if I could be of assistance.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Sir?” Methodically, he patted his badge, his firearm, his cuffs. All there.

“Your new partner, McCoy. I’m talking about your new partner.”

David winced for the second time. That’s all he needed. A new guy to play getting-to-know-you with during the ride downtown. He quickly rebounded. “Sorry, sir. I’d assumed that since I was late, he would already be on the scene.”

Contrary to his name, Kowalsky was a six foot five African-American with the manner of a drill sergeant and a monstrous grin he used only to his advantage. That he grinned now made David mutter a mild oath.

“What was that, McCoy?”

“Nothing, sir. My new partner… Where can I find him?”

Kow’s grin widened. “Right here, McCoy.”

He turned to find the hall empty. The grin left his face. “Hatfield!”

The bottom of David’s stomach dropped out. Hatfield. His mind quickly calculated the odds that he would meet two Hatfields in less than twenty-four hours. They were very small. So small as to be minuscule. So tiny as to be impossible…

Naw. He had Hatfield on the brain, that’s all.

He made the mistake of looking at Kow’s suspicious grin, noting the telling absence of his new partner—as if he or she didn’t want to be seen—and felt the sudden, irresistible urge to run. Especially when the sweetly sexy, innocently insatiable, utterly feminine Kelli Hatfield popped out from around the corner, her face mirroring the shock he felt.

Forget his stomach. The floor had just dropped out from beneath his feet.

It couldn’t…wouldn’t…there was no way in hell that this…that she…was his new partner. Hell, last night he judged her competence to be somewhere between squirting perfume on little blue-haired ladies with platinum credit cards and helping panicky brides try on their wedding dresses. The reality that she was actually a cop was enough to send any man reeling.

Kelli appeared to regain her bearings before he did. “Officer McCoy,” she said, clearing her throat. Apparently remembering their company, she moved her coat from her right to her left arm, then thrust her hand—her soft, slender, delicate hand—toward him.

David took it, tempted to use it to pull her into the nearest room so they could have a little talk. Now. Kow be damned.

Speaking of Kow, he glanced to find him staring at them guardedly. “You two know each other?”

David nearly choked on the words, “yep, in the most sinful sense.”

“Yes, sir,” Kelli answered instead. “We met last night at The Pour House. First night back in town, as luck would have it.”

“Good.” Kow nodded. “Now isn’t there some place you guys need to be?”

He had to be dreaming. That was it. This was all some sort of sick, twisted nightmare brought on by what happened to his ex-partner and his anxiety of who his new partner would be. At any moment he would—

“McCoy!” Kow barked. “Get with the program, man.”

David winced. If this was a dream, what the hell was Kowalsky doing here?

Kelli gave him a pointed look. “We’re on our way, sir,” she said.

Completely dumbfounded, David watched her walk by him. Catching a whiff of her subtle scent didn’t help matters any. His gaze zipped around the station lobby, but he didn’t find any chuckling officers hiding behind any doors or around the corner. O’Leary wasn’t even watching them. And Kow’s expression darkened further with each second that passed.

This is for real. It wasn’t some really bad practical joke being played on him by fellow, prankster officers. Kelli Hatfield truly was his new partner.

Yeah, and he was the king of Siam.

Picking up his jaw off the gritty tile, David hurried after Kelli’s trim little bottom. The door closed after them and he stopped again. After a few steps, she turned toward him, shrugging into her coat. “Are you coming, McCoy?”

“There’s no way…I mean, I don’t believe… Come on, Kelli, you can’t be a police officer,” he blurted.

She planted her fists on her hips, her expression altogether thunderous. “Which one’s ours?”

“Huh?”

“The car, Officer. Which is our vehicle?”

David pointed left to the cruiser in the lot and watched her head for it. She reached the driver’s side. The impact of what her actions meant provided the impetus he needed to finally move. He was next to her in no time flat. “I’ll drive.”

Rolling her eyes toward the sky, she took her hand off the handle, then rounded the car and got in the passenger’s side.

David stood still for a long moment, concentrating on little more than his breathing. This couldn’t be happening. Any second now he expected to wake up from this dream—nightmare—and find his mind was playing some sort of sick joke on him after last night’s recklessness. He bent over and looked through the window. Kelli was fastening her seat belt. He snapped upright again. Nope. She was still there.

Damn.

KELLI SAT flagpole straight, staring at the dash like a dazed crash victim waiting for the airbag to deflate. Her friend Bronte’s words of warning from the night before echoed in her mind. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so….”

Somehow she didn’t think this was what Bronte had in mind. Though her friend would probably argue it was exactly what she deserved—right after she laughed herself into hysteria.

Kelli closed her eyes tightly. Only to her. This could happen only to her. Her first night back home in D.C., the one and only night out of her entire life that she had thrown caution to the wind, and she wound up spending it with her new partner, screwing up both her personal and her professional life.

She scrubbed her damp palms against the scratchy material of her police issue slacks and whispered a long line of curses that would have done her police chief father proud. Well, it would have done him proud if, indeed, she’d ended up being the son he’d wanted instead of his only daughter. But she hadn’t, and it was a fact he never let her forget. Not when she’d played little league baseball. Not when she’d enrolled in the academy at twenty. Not when she’d graduated and was denied a spot with the D.C. Metropolitan Police. It hadn’t helped any when she learned that her father made sure her status was knocked down to third tier standby, essentially barring her from a job on the force. Apparently he had thought she would lose interest in her pursuit while in the academy. He’d always been so overprotective. As he’d told her, no little girl of his was going to get her butt shot off so long as he had any power within the department. And as Regional Assistant Chief for the East, he had more than enough to waylay her…at least in D.C. In New York, however, his power was nil.

The driver’s door finally opened and Kelli nearly launched from her seat. David slid behind the wheel. She pointedly avoided his gaze and suspected he did the same beside her.

He’s just as much a victim in this as I am, she reminded herself. But for some reason his undisguised disbelief when they were introduced irritated her. Shock, she expected. Disbelief? Suddenly agitated, she shifted. She told herself to give him the benefit of the doubt. That there was a good chance he wasn’t like eighty percent of the other males she’d worked with who thought her completely incapable of her job as a police officer. Okay, maybe not a good chance. But there was a chance. And after last night, she, um, owed him at least that much consideration.

He moved. She forced herself to look at him. His mouth was moving, but no words made it past his impossibly wicked lips. She swallowed, reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to notice what a great mouth he had…or remember all the naughty places that mouth had been mere hours earlier.