The P.I. Contest. C.J. Carmichael

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СКАЧАТЬ Was there a woman in his life?

      He struck her as the sort of man who would have lots of women hanging around. Or was that just an unfair stereotype of an attractive, unmarried pilot? Or her own sour grapes after Conner’s betrayal?

      He caught her eye. “It was quite a surprise to find you at Rebecca Trotter’s.”

      She couldn’t help smiling. That had been a sweet moment, all right. “I plan to keep surprising you. Maybe you should just quit now.”

      His laugh was low and sensual. “I don’t think so. Technically I got to Rebecca Trotter first.”

      “About that. Rebecca said you called her last night. But according to the rules, our investigation wasn’t supposed to start until this morning.”

      “I didn’t think arranging an interview counted as ‘investigating.’ Last night I did a little searching through some phone directories. When I saw the Trotters’ number, I figured it couldn’t hurt to call.”

      She didn’t recall even hearing Hannah’s birth mother’s name. Perhaps it had been mentioned when she’d been zoning out. That would teach her to daydream during important meetings.

      “I suppose that’s fair enough.”

      He frowned. “I hope you mean that. I intend this to be an honest competition.”

      He sounded sincere and Kate appreciated that.

      “Believe me,” he continued, “I didn’t even think that I was breaking the rules of our competition when I called Rebecca last night. I was trying to be organized.”

      “If I’d have thought of it, I probably would have called her, too,” Kate conceded. “Still, it gave you the advantage.”

      “You think? You’re the one who left Rebecca your number, not me. If she remembers something else, I’m not likely to hear about it, am I?”

      “No.”

      He smiled. “At least you’re honest.”

      “It wouldn’t be much of a competition if we shared information with one another. I feel it’s only fair to tell you—I really want this job. I kind of burned my bridges with the NYPD.”

      With hindsight, the letter of resignation she’d written could have been drafted with a bit more tact. Not that she planned to ever go back. But she’d shut that door a bit more forcefully than was really necessary.

      “Why? Was it the stress?”

      “Partly it was the hours. Partly my impatience with the bureaucracy.”

      “But there’s more to the story,” he guessed.

      He was easy to talk to. Too easy. She wondered if he was just passing the time, or if he was really interested. Know the enemy…Was that his strategy, too?

      Still, she had no reason to be secretive. “I just ended a long-term relationship. And I’m ready for a change in my life. I want to try new things. Go new places.”

      “Meet new people?” he suggested. “Maybe have a rebound affair?”

      She caught a subtle lift to his voice, and narrowed her eyes at him. Was it possible Jay was flirting with her? She glanced at him again. The man was easy to talk to, but not easy to read.

      “I’m not interested in any sort of affair. Rebound or otherwise.”

      “Maybe it’s too soon. Since your breakup, I mean.”

      Yes, it was soon, but Kate couldn’t imagine changing her mind for a long time. “What about you? Are you in a relationship?”

      He shrugged. “There’s no one serious. I tend to avoid that sort of thing.”

      “So the stereotype of the single, male pilot fits after all. A girl in every city…is that how it works?”

      “Hardly every city. I don’t have that much energy.”

      She refused to smile. “It’s going to be difficult to keep the women in line now that you’re stuck in one place. What’s with that, anyway? Why the switch from pilot to P.I.?”

      “Like you, I have plenty of reasons. But the main one is my nephew, Eric. I need to be home in the morning to get him off to school. And I want to be home every evening to cook dinner and make sure he does his schoolwork. It may sound mundane to you, but I’m his only family now.”

      It didn’t sound mundane at all. It sounded like what she had wanted—and still did. “You can’t be a caregiver for your nephew and a pilot at the same time?”

      “As a single parent it would be difficult. I was a long-haul, international pilot. I could have requested shorter routes, but even those require you to be away from home for three- or four-day stretches.”

      “Will you miss flying?”

      His eyes darkened. “No question.”

      Yet, he’d given it up for his nephew. She admired that. “Did you ever run into trouble during a flight? Something serious, that you didn’t think you’d survive?”

      He blinked, then gazed out at the passing city. “The vast majority of flights are pretty routine. And thank God for that. No one in their right mind would get into a commercial airliner otherwise.”

      She looked at him closely. “You just sidestepped my question.”

      “You think?” He smiled disarmingly. “What about you? Did you ever run into big trouble in your job at the Twentieth Precinct? Something you didn’t think you’d survive?”

      “A couple of times, yes. But it’s the cases that break your heart that are more difficult to handle.”

      Jay’s expression grew serious. “Yeah. It’s hard to see someone suffer. Even when they’ve done it to themselves.”

      “What always gets me is how fast it happens. One minute everything is good. The next—catastrophe.”

      “Maybe one night, when this is all over, we’ll get together and exchange war stories,” he said.

      “Maybe.”

      She felt relieved that the taxi was pulling up in front of the office. Jay was more complicated than she’d initially thought, more intelligent and more sensitive, too. And he had skills she hadn’t expected.

      Consider how easily he’d extracted that information about the lake resort from Rebecca.

      And how quickly he’d extracted information about her, as well.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      IT WAS GOING TO BE interesting sharing an office with Kate, Jay thought. She’d already claimed the big desk by the window, which was fair enough, since she needed the computer. Still, sitting at the smaller desk by the door meant that she could see his computer screen every time she got up to get a coffee.

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