Never Say Never Again

She skimmed the news story. These guys really should get themselves some new sources. Most of the time they were so far off the mark—

Her eye caught on something and she traced her finger back up to the top of the section.

“This afternoon Senior U.S. Attorney Bernard Leighton has named junior attorney D.C. Dennis Burns to head up the investigation…”

Bronte leapt up so quickly, she nearly knocked over her chair.

No…it couldn’t be. Pryka was her case. She’d been the one Robbins had come to wanting to testify against her Serbian-by-birth ex-boyfriend for myriad criminal activities, not limited to but including the smuggling of illegal explosives into the country, purportedly for a third-party terrorist organization. She’d been the one who had nervously made her case before the attorney general to get Robbins accepted into the witness protection program. She had even begun doing some fancy footwork on how best to shore up the hole left by Melissa Robbins’s death—first and foremost, by putting a call into the FBI agents who had been working the case much longer than she had, trying to finger Pryka as being behind the murder of his ex-girlfriend, if not directly, then indirectly.

Of course, she’d have never guessed in a million years that Connor McCoy would be the one ultimately under suspicion.

Still wearing her gray skirt suit and hose, she padded to the front of the town house and yanked open the door. On the step lay the last of the day’s print news offerings. She snatched the paper up and quickly turned to the section on the case. There, in black and white, the information from the other piece was confirmed. According to two sources, Burns had succeeded in taking the case from her.

“Why that no good, scheming, conniving little son-of-a-bitch,” she murmured under her breath.

The sound of a passing car caught her attention. She looked up and distantly followed its passage. For a moment, she forgot that it was after eight o’clock. The deep shadows confirmed that it, indeed, was. Policewoman-to-the-core Kelli had once warned her that she should be a little more careful when opening her front door. That her daily routines were anal and predictable and, thus, made her more of a target for crime. Bronte told her friend that the only concession she would make was she’d vary the times she picked up her much-loved newspapers by five minutes.

She shook her head then turned to go back inside.

“Wait.”

Bronte nearly jumped clear out of her hose. She swiveled at the sound of the masculine voice coming from over the stoop, then continued toward her now more urgent goal to go back inside the house.

“For God’s sake, Bronte, it’s me.”

Her heart hammering against her rib cage, she stopped herself from closing the door all the way. She craned her head through the opening. “Connor?”

The instant she said the name, she wanted to kick herself. Admitting that she recognized his voice from the darkness and with very little to go on was far too telling in her book—both to him and to herself.

“Are you alone?”

She considered telling him no, then thought better of it. He probably already knew if she was alone or not and lying would only make her look sorrier than she already was. “Yes.”

All too quickly, he stood just on the other side of the door. She had to look up to see into his face. An involuntary shiver skittered down her spine—a shiver that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man eyeing her in much the same way she was him.

“So are you going to invite me in or what?”

Bronte tightened her fingers on the door. “After the scare you just gave me, I’m more in the ‘or what’ frame of mind.”

She made out his frown in the porch light from a neighboring town house.

“Oh, all right,” she said and swung the door inward.

As soon as he was inside, she peeked back out, making sure no one had seen him come in. Though why she was so concerned, she couldn’t say. Maybe because this was Georgetown. And for some reason it mattered to her that her neighbors not think she was in cahoots with the person whose face was splattered all over the front page of the very newspaper she still clutched to her chest.

She closed the door and turned to face him. “An apology for scaring me out of my wits would be nice.”

“Sorry.”

“Gee, Connor, somehow that one just didn’t hit the mark.” Despite, or perhaps because of, the shiver that continued to skitter across her skin, she branded her wise-cracking for exactly what it was: her need to cover her thrill at seeing him again.

But that didn’t change that she was minus one lead witness, or that the man in front of her was accused of subtracting her.

She eyed him closely. “What are you doing here, Connor?”

He stood still as stone for several heartbeats. When he finally did shrug, he looked anything but casual. “Would you believe me if I said I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in for a visit?”

She found herself smiling at him. “Not a chance.”

“Okay, then. How about I say I wanted to talk to you.”

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, trying not to notice the fresh, crisp smell of his leather jacket, or the way the snug black T-shirt she could see between the flaps hugged his abdomen to perfection. “I’d buy that.”

“Good,” he said, grinning. “Then I want to talk to you.”

Bronte nearly took a step back. Boy, when he grinned, he was devastating. She’d have to remember not to make him grin.

“So…let’s talk.”

She led the way back into the kitchen, the only room downstairs that still showed significant signs that someone lived there. She plopped the paper down on top of the others, then moved to close the curtains on the back door and the window. For good measure, she switched off the television as well.

When she faced Connor once again, she found his leather jacket hanging on the back of a chair, and him standing with his arms crossed over his cotton-clad chest, his expression as dark as the one she’d seen in the picture. Only now the smart-ass description refused to spring forth. Rather words like competent, sharp and irresistibly sexy came to mind.

“What’s with the clandestine stuff?” he asked, cocking a brow.

She made a face at him. “You tell me. You’re the one hiding out in my bushes and scaring the bejesus out of me.” You’re the one suspected of murder.

He openly eyed the small stack of papers on her table. Right next to her half-eaten sorry excuse for dinner and the designing schemes she’d been considering. His expression darkened. She looked to find him staring at the picture of the nursery.

She rushed to clean up the place. “A little late for a casual drop-in visit, wouldn’t you say?”

He didn’t say.

“You could have called first. You know, given me fair warning so I could tidy up.”

“I didn’t have your number.”

No, he wouldn’t have. With Kelli away, there was no other way he could get it. Given her high-profile career, it wasn’t wise for her to list her number in the book. And any unofficial channels he might have employed were no longer accessible to him. It was normal operating procedure that a government employee be indefinitely suspended when suspected of a serious crime, especially when said crime didn’t reflect well on same government.

She slowly wiped her hands on a tea towel, thinking Connor had to possess a good memory to have remembered her address. It must have been at least two months ago when Kelli and David dropped her off at home after a quick dinner, Connor a silent presence in the back of the car as they did so. “I’m sorry to hear about your suspension.”

Oh, but that was obtuse. Why not just come out and ask if he did the evil deed, Bronte?

“You got some coffee?”

She stared at him, surprised. “Um…as a matter of fact, no. I don’t drink coffee. I have tea.”

His grimace served as his answer.