Blazing Star. Suzanne Ellison

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СКАЧАТЬ dragged out the dinner conversation as long as she could, urging Karen to have seconds of the chocolate cheesecake she’d made that afternoon. The girl had just finished the last crumb, insisting that she’d had enough, when the door to the kitchen swung open and Brick burst into the house.

      “Where’s that meat loaf, Aunt Anna?” he called out cheerfully as he pulled off his jacket. “I’ve had one hell of a rotten day and I’m starving.”

      Brick strode into the dining room, then spotted Karen. His smile vanished. As Karen rose to her feet with dignity, nobody in the room could fail to feel the electric charge that zapped between them. But to Anna’s dismay, it wasn’t a charge of passion or hope or pleasure. Karen’s face radiated uncertainty and distrust. Brick’s eyes darkened with rage.

      For a long, tense moment they stared at each other. Nobody spoke. Not even Tisha could come up with a joke to break the tension.

      Then Karen said stiffly, “You missed a fine dinner, Lieutenant, but I believe your aunt saved some for you.”

      Bitterly he answered, “Did you instruct her on the proper procedure for labeling and marking the provisions, Captain Keppler? Did you provide her with the proper forms to account for culinary consumption by late-night nibblers? Did you dictate a memo regarding how many ounces each boarder should be served?”

      That was when Anna knew that her dear nephew was in terrible trouble. In all the years Brick had lived with her, she had never heard him be rude to a guest.

      And this one was his boss!

      Karen ignored his needling tone—ignored him, in fact, altogether—and said to Anna, “Thank you so much for the wonderful dinner. If you’ll excuse me now, I have some work to do in my room.”

      She gave the rest of them a quick good-night, then turned and marched up the stairs. Her steps were firm and she held her head high, but Anna wasn’t fooled.

      She was a woman and she knew a woman’s heart. And she knew that her young boarder would shed some private tears tonight.

      * * *

      DESPITE HER EXHAUSTING first day at work, Karen had a hard time going to sleep. It hadn’t been easy holding her own with Brick Bauer, let alone weeping silently into her pillow so he couldn’t hear her as he settled into bed next door. It was after two when she finally dozed off, and long after six when she woke from a frightening dream in which Bauer was towering over her with a steak knife, threatening to kill her if she didn’t surrender her job.

      Trying to ignore the nightmare, Karen quickly tugged off her nightgown, slipped into a robe and headed for the shower. To her dismay, the door to the bathroom was locked. She could hear Bauer singing “On Wisconsin” in the shower.

      She was surprised that he knew how to sing, let alone that he had the heart for it. Apparently he felt better this morning. After all, last night he’d let off a little steam. So far he’d addressed her with stiff courtesy at the station house, regardless of his poorly concealed irritation, but apparently it was too much to ask him to keep his gloves off in his own home.

      Karen couldn’t really blame him. She’d been tough yesterday, tougher than she would have been if she’d taken over a job supervising women. But women would have accepted her authority once she proved she knew what she was doing. That wouldn’t be enough for the men.

      Worse yet, Paul Schmidt had left the place in a bureaucratic shambles. Oh, Karen imagined things had lumped along all right as long as there was some good ol’ boy to say, “Oh, sure, I remember that night five years ago. Don’t you remember that break-in, Steve? The kid had brown hair...”

      It wasn’t good enough for a complex county system, and it wasn’t good enough for Karen. She’d spent most of the first day figuring out what had passed for record keeping and dictating memos to reestablish a professional code of conduct and an efficient game plan for day-to-day organization. Today she was going to do what she would have done the first day if things hadn’t been in such a mess. She was going to get acquainted with Tyler from a cop’s-eye view. And that meant she had to go cruise the town with the help of her right-hand man.

      Assuming he ever got out of the shower.

      After ten minutes, she banged on the door. “Lieutenant! Would you hurry up in there?”

      There was no reply. She banged again, several times, but nothing happened. Finally she gave up, until she heard the buzz of an electric razor.

      When Bauer opened the door at last and glared at her, Karen was struck at once by the realization that he was wearing nothing but a towel, casually knotted around his waist. His massive chest and biceps looked even more daunting naked than they did clothed. His legs were well muscled and hairy and compellingly male.

      “Is there some emergency that won’t wait?” he grumped, not bothering to say good-morning. One of the gouges on his face had started bleeding again, but he’d done nothing to stanch the flow. “Is there some reason I can’t get dressed in peace?”

      Karen felt a bit guilty for disturbing him, but she had her own agenda for the day. Besides, it was obvious that Brick was going to hate her no matter what she did. Why bend over backward to make him happy?

      “I have to get ready for work, Lieutenant,” she explained briskly. “I can’t twiddle my thumbs while you sing in the shower for fifteen minutes. Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

      “As a matter of fact, Captain, I did.” His blue eyes glittered with rage. “But since the house didn’t seem to be burning down, I couldn’t think of a good reason why I should cut short my shower just so you could assert your feminist authority in my bathroom.”

      “It’s our bathroom, Lieutenant, and I assure you, my motives were quite mundane. I can’t even braid my hair until I wash it this morning, let alone get dressed until I shower. I have to be at work before the day shift arrives and—”

      “And I don’t?”

      “Well, of course you do. I made it clear yesterday that punctuali—”

      “But you’re the captain. That makes your shower more important than mine?”

      “I didn’t say that, Bauer.”

      “I don’t recall what you had to say on the subject of showers, Captain. Aren’t they listed in Keppler’s revised police manual? I don’t recall receiving a memo instructing me on how many gallons of water I might use at exactly what temperature for precisely how many minutes. Silly me, I thought I’d just keep showering my old-fashioned way. But that wouldn’t work, would it? That would be one small portion of my life that you couldn’t regulate!”

      Karen was so stung by the depth of his anger that she didn’t know what to say. Maybe she had come on a little strong at the station house, but...it had been necessary. Hadn’t it?

      Unable to meet his furious glare, her gaze dropped, inadvertently focusing once more on the towel wrapped around his waist. Determined not to think about what lay beneath it, she concentrated on what she saw—that broad, virile chest, still sprinkled with drops of water from the shower. She was at war with this man. Why the hell did he have to have a physique that was so damned impressive? Thank God he was too angry to smile at her! She still remembered that radiant smile she’d only seen once—tempting, playful, unbearably appealing.

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