You Only Love Once

His attempts at speech continued, nudging up her impatience level. Finally, she said, “Look, I didn’t expect this anymore than you did, David…um, McCoy.” Stick to last names. Maybe that would afford her the distance she so desperately needed right now.

His crack at imitating a wide-mouth bass out of water stopped and he seemed to relax. “Actually, Hatfield,” he said, stressing her last name. “That’s not entirely true. Last night you knew you were going to be reporting to work at this station and that you would be assigned a new partner. That’s a helluva lot more than I was privy to.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling of the car. Okay, she’d give him that. Still… “Come on, David, we met at a cop bar. Surely you had to know there was some connection.”

“All right. Sure. Maybe. But as someone’s daughter. Or sister. Or…”

She raised a brow, daring him to say “cop groupie.”

He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t expect you to be a blasted police officer.”

She stared out the windshield as a couple of uniforms walked by, openly curious about the couple in the squad car a few feet away. “Don’t you think we should get going?”

“Huh?” He followed her line of vision. His long-suffering sigh told her he’d somewhat snapped out of his momentary trance.

“Look, David, when I came in this morning, this was the last thing I expected.” She hated that she noticed his eyes were an even more vibrant blue in the light of day. “I say we do this. Go on about our business for now and pretend last night never happened.”

He blinked as if the effort took every ounce of his concentration. “Are you crazy?” he said, startling her with his intensity. “I have the best friggin’ sex of my life and you tell me to forget about it? Act like it never happened?”

Heat spread quickly through Kelli’s veins, making her remember just how incredible last night had been for her, too. But last night was last night. And, oh boy, did the guy who sang “What a Difference a Day Makes” ever know what he was talking about.

David started the cruiser and began to back out. “Ain’t a chance in hell I’m going to forget about last night, Kelli.” He looked at her. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you forget either.”

THEY ARRIVED on the scene to find the street glutted with blue-and-whites. David spotted the scene commander and within moments he and Kelli were next to him. A brisk December breeze brought her scent to him. Damn, but she smelled good. Like ripe peaches picked fresh from the tree.

He grimaced. Yeah, she was a peach all right. A peach with a gun.

“Glad you could join us, McCoy,” Sutherland said dryly.

An officer David recognized as being at the bar the night before chuckled as he elbowed his partner.

“Look, loverboy has himself a new partner.”

“Can it, Jennings,” David told him. His gaze rested on Kelli’s face to find bright spots of red high on her cheeks. But whether her flush was a result of the cold, or the obvious gossiping going on, he couldn’t tell. Her shoulder-length toffee-colored hair was caught back in a neat French braid, her skin nearly flawless where the gray morning light caught it.

She looked at him. He immediately looked back at the commander. “Why don’t you bring me…us up to speed on what’s going on?”

Sutherland did, covering much the same ground O’Leary had at the station. Except his details were more specific. The perp was on the third floor. Door was open, but there wasn’t a clean shot. He pointed to where the perpetrator’s estranged wife stood shivering next to a nearby patrol car, then to a fire escape on the side of the building. Across the way on the roof of a neighboring building a couple of sharpshooters were setting up shop.

“The perp demands to talk to his wife before he’ll give up the three-year-old girl.”

“The perp is the child’s father?”

“He ceased being a father the minute he took his own child hostage, McCoy.”

David stepped backward until the fire escape was in sight, ignoring the red-and-white flashes of light against the brick building.

“What is it?” Kelli asked, coming to stand next to him.

He looked at her again. Damn, but just looking at her did all sorts of funny things to his stomach. “Just that the guy couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this, that’s all. You’ve got the tired third shifters exhausted and pumped up on caffeine, their trigger fingers itchy as hell. Then there are the first shift guys barely awake and pissed as hell that their coffee-and-donut run was interrupted.” He grimaced. “Really bad timing.”

Her gaze swept him from forehead to mouth. Was she remembering last night as vividly as he was? Was she thinking about how great it had felt to be joined together, far, far away from this mess? She looked quickly away and this time he was sure the color of her cheeks wasn’t due to the cold. “Any ideas on how to end it?” she asked.

He mulled over her words. “Yeah. I think what I just said makes a lot of sense.”

“What, let SWAT take him out?”

“No. The donuts part. If the father’s just coming off third shift he probably hasn’t had breakfast yet. A guy can get awful hungry after putting in a full one.”

“Are you saying we should feed the perp?” she asked, a suspicious shadow darkening her green eyes.

“The father, Hatfield. The guy is the kid’s father.” He grinned. “And yeah, I think we should try feeding him.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

He scanned the street. At the corner was a small donut shop. He thrust five dollars at her. “Here. Get a half dozen and a couple of coffees.”

Kelli frowned. “But—”

“Do it, Hatfield.”

Her eyes flashed, but she started toward the shop—though not without looking back a couple of times first.

The instant she was out of sight, David grabbed a bullet-proof vest from the back of a riot wagon, then strode toward the fire escape. He pulled down the ladder even as he shrugged into the vest. He pulled his weight up on the first rung, then methodically climbed until he reached the third floor landing. Ducking off to the side, he peeked in through the window. The father was sitting on a couch out of view of the front door and of the sharpshooters across the street, grasping his little girl in one hand, a twelve-gauge shotgun in his other. The little girl looked unharmed. More than that, the toddler didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that things were out of control as she giggled and toyed with the buttons down the front of her father’s work shirt.

David ducked back out of sight and took a deep breath. He figured out the scenario in his mind. The father had just knocked off work at a nearby factory, had stopped by to see his daughter, his soon-to-be ex refused to allow him to, and he’d taken matters into his own hands.

Any way you cut it, what had begun as a harmless domestic squabble had spiraled out of control until you had the situation he now faced.

“I’ve got a clean shot,” a sharpshooter’s voice crackled over the radio fastened to David’s gun belt.

“Be at the ready,” scene commander Sutherland’s voice responded.

Shaking his head, David reached over and tested the old wood-frame window. Unlocked. Hoping the bit of luck would stay with him, he pushed the window up before the guy inside, and the commander outside, had time to react.

“Whoa, there, cowboy,” David said, swinging his feet over the sill and sitting with his hands up. “My name’s McCoy and I’m here to make sure no one gets hurt.” He grinned. “Especially me.”

OFFICERS, uniformed and otherwise swarmed the small, neat apartment, talking into radios, issuing orders and generally making a mess out of things. In the middle of the chaos, Kelli finished reading the perp his Miranda rights, then cuffed him. Distractedly, her gaze trailed over to where David stood near the door holding the little girl. She clung to him like a young chimp. He leaned in and whispered something into her ear, then chucked her under her dimpled chin. She twirled her blond, sleep-tousled hair around her chubby index finger, then giggled shyly. Somehow, David had not only skillfully managed to keep the girl from seeing her father being arrested, he had made her laugh. Kelli couldn’t help noticing how…right he looked holding the little cherub.

Testing the cuffs, she forced the unwanted thought aside and concentrated instead on her total lack of amusement only moments before. David’s sending her off on some two-bit, phony errand so that he could play maverick hero set her blood to simmering.

“This way,” she said, grasping the perp’s elbow, then angling him toward the door.

He hesitated. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted my face to be one of the first she saw this morning, that’s all,” he told her. “It’s her birthday, you know. All I wanted was five minutes to give her a hug and her present. I would never have hurt my little girl.”

Kelli took in his aggrieved expression. “I hope not. But that’s for a judge to decide, isn’t it?”

David handed the child off to another female officer who would likely take the toddler to her mother and Kelli passed the handcuffed perp off to the first officer on the scene.

“That was a stupid stunt you pulled, David,” Kelli muttered as they walked out of the apartment together.