Guardian in Disguise. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ a sandwich helped her to remain silent and wait for an explanation, but when it didn’t come, her suspicions about him rose to the fore again. “Is there a reason,” she asked when she finally swallowed, “that you don’t want to discuss it?”

      He looked at her. “That’s a helluva loaded question. Sort of like, When did you stop beating your wife?”

      She couldn’t help laughing. “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I just wondered.” Although truthfully, maybe she had meant it that way. This guy kept making her bristle with suspicion, no matter how ordinary he appeared. Instinct told her that meant he wasn’t ordinary and she’d better take care.

      He shrugged, chewing a bite of sandwich before answering. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he said finally. “The law fascinates me, obviously. That’s why I became a cop, in part. But the longer I was a cop, the more I wanted to understand just what I was enforcing, and the more I realized I didn’t want to be a cop forever. Studying law seemed like the way to go. Lots of opportunities. If I wanted, I could become a prosecutor, maybe. Work in a private practice. Get into politics. Teach.”

      “So now you’re teaching. Do you like it?”

      “It’s early days yet. So far it’s fun.”

      “I bet the girls are all over you,” she said. She couldn’t help it.

      “You mean my students?” He lifted a brow. “Well, they do seem to cluster around a bit.”

      She snorted. “You’re a new guy in a quiet town. Interesting. Attractive. I bet it’s more like flies to a honey pot.”

      He unleashed a laugh. “Not yet, Liza. Not yet.”

      “It’ll get there.”

      “Are you warning me to protect my chastity?”

      She snickered. “Not exactly. I just remember being that age and how some interesting, attractive professor could rev me up. They’ll swarm eventually.”

      “What revs you up now?”

      The question caught her sideways, and she almost blurted the truth: you. Thank goodness for that small hesitation between brain and mouth.

      “Curiosity?” he suggested smoothly. “Like wanting to know everything about someone new?”

      “Not everything!”

      He smiled. “Okay. How about the Cliff’s Notes version. I was born in Michigan, after college I joined the … department, took some time to get my law degree, and otherwise I’ve been yawning a lot.”

      She wondered if that hesitation before department meant anything. She sat up a little straighter, but decided not to probe that. She didn’t want to warn him he might have slipped because that usually turned people into clams. “No wife, no kids, no significant other?”

      “Nope. Being on the streets only appeals to women until they have to live with it. It’s stressful and I saw a lot of spouses leave because of it.”

      She nodded. “I saw that in my job, too. Bad hours. But your job had a lot of danger, as well.”

      “Some. But you can’t blame a person for not wanting to wonder if someone they love is going to come home. Not everyone has a problem with it, but it takes a toll. I figured I’d wait until I changed careers.”

      “And here you are, with a brand-new career.”

      “That was the point.” He returned to eating his sandwich.

      She bit her lip, then said, “You went to Stetson College of Law, right?”

      “Right.”

      “Then how come you didn’t mention it when I said I’d been working for a paper in Florida?”

      He turned slowly to look at her, and something in his gaze seemed to harden slightly, just a little, but enough to almost make her shiver. “It never occurred to me. Is it all that important that I was there for three years? I’ve lived other places, too.”

      She didn’t know how to answer him. While most people would automatically have said, “I lived there for a while,” when she mentioned Florida, that didn’t mean everyone would.

      She looked down at her sandwich. This guy was a cop. He was probably used to asking questions, not offering information.

      So maybe this was an innocent difference in their way of making connections. She was a reporter who had spent a lot of years learning to create rapport. His job was different, and maybe had taught him different things.

      Or maybe it was something else. Trying to explain it away wasn’t making her feel any easier.

      “I just thought it was curious, that’s all,” she said firmly, and bit into her sandwich to forestall any other questions. She had asked too many. How many times had she been told that she asked too many questions? More than she could count.

      After a moment he spoke again. “I just didn’t think about it, Liza. Everyone who looked at my CV knows I went to Stetson.”

      “True,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food.

      He put his sandwich down on the bag it had come in and rolled over on his hip, so he faced her directly. It was an open posture, almost welcoming. “I’m driving you nuts,” he said. “I don’t talk enough about myself.”

      Bingo, she thought.

      “I’m not used to it,” he said when she didn’t reply. “I’ve never been terribly outgoing, most of my social life revolved around people I worked with, and I’m just not good at casual talk except the joking kind.”

      “Well, I can understand that, I guess. And I’ve been told often enough that I ask too many questions.”

      He gave her a crooked smile. “My sense of humor would probably appall most civilians.”

      At that she nodded and laughed. “I know the kind you mean. We shared it in the press room. We didn’t dare tell those jokes to outsiders.”

      “Exactly.”

      “But that’s how you deal with the ugliness,” she said presently. “With bad jokes about things that most people wouldn’t find funny at all.”

      “Yeah. And there’s a lot of ugliness.”

      She shook herself, realizing that she was in danger of leading them to discuss that stuff. A lot of which she had tried to forget. “Sorry. Let’s move on, as they say.”

      For now, anyway. His momentary hesitation might mean nothing. And his explanations seemed valid. He was just a closemouthed man. He wasn’t the first she’d ever met.

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