Love By Association. Tara Taylor Quinn

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СКАЧАТЬ be like most of the women who made their attraction to him obvious—after him for his money as much as anything else—didn’t put a damper on his fervency.

      So he asked her to dinner. She accepted. And as he went on with his day, he had a smile on his face.

      * * *

      IN JEANS, a button-down shirt and over-the-ankle hiking boots, Chantel spent a couple of hours at the precinct Saturday afternoon. She checked in with Captain Reagan. Filled Wayne in on lunch. And told him that she’d be having dinner with Colin Fairbanks again that evening.

      “Didn’t take you long to find an ‘in,’” Wayne said, studying her.

      Chin up, Chantel withstood his visual interrogation without as much as a held breath. “I’m good at my job,” she told him. Married to it, was more like it.

      “You are good at your job,” Wayne said, pulling out an empty chair at the table where she sat with a department-issue laptop in front of her. “Maybe too good.”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “You put the job above everything else.”

      “Lots of guys do.” And she was one of the guys. They had one another’s backs.

      He looked away. “And many of those who do also spend some of their off time in strip clubs.”

      “You think I should go to strip clubs?”

      “I think you’re a healthy, three-dimensional human being who is living a two-dimensional life. Eventually, that’s going to catch up with you. I just don’t want it to be now.”

      She wanted to continue to pretend ignorance. Recognizing it as a weak ploy, she said, “You’re thinking that I might fall for Colin Fairbanks?”

      “The thought has crossed my mind.”

      “Because he’s rich?”

      “Because you’re out of your element.” He was being a good friend, telling her what he thought she needed to hear, not what she wanted to hear. She took offense, anyway.

      “You don’t think I’m up to running with the rich folks?” She was keeping her emotions in check. It was what she was trained to do. You had to when you were on the job.

      “I’m more concerned with the part you’re playing,” Wayne said. “You’re hot as hell, Chantel. You play it down here—like now, your hair pulled back tight, no makeup, loose clothes and those hiking shoe things you seem to wear night and day, even at the company picnic in the middle of summer...”

      He broke off, as though realizing what he was revealing—the fact that he’d not only noticed how she was dressed last summer at the picnic, and all the time, but that he remembered in such detail.

      Still smarting from his insinuation that she wasn’t up to this assignment, Chantel let him swim in his own stew.

      Leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, he seemed about to tell her something confidential. In a lowered voice, he said, “When I saw you the other day, in character...”

      He’d just turned up the heat on his pot. Chantel smiled.

      “Sounds to me like you’re the one with issues here, Wayne,” she told him. Because, after all, friends said what the other needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear. “Maybe you should be the one visiting a strip club.”

      The statement was mean. She knew the second it hit its mark and felt bad. She and Wayne were such close friends because, when they’d been trainees together many years before, his wife, Maria, had caught him out in a bar with a stripper and Chantel had stepped in and helped saved his marriage.

      “You get prickly when you’re feeling defensive.”

      “That’s right. You had no business implying that I can’t do my job.”

      “It’s not your job I’m worried about,” he said, still leaning close. He rubbed his hands together. “I don’t think there’s doubt in anyone’s mind that you’re the best man for the job. That’s not what I’m talking about. And I think you know that.”

      Okay, yeah, she’d known. But...

      “You work so hard to be an equal here, Chantel, that you go overboard. You seem to forget that you’re a woman. Like it’s a bad thing, so you pretend that part of you doesn’t exist.”

      “I’m not a woman at work. I’m a cop.”

      “And when you’re not at work?”

      She thought about work. Or ate chocolate ice cream. Or went to the gym to keep in shape for work.

      “I hang out with Meri and Max,” she said. Wayne knew them both. He’d been instrumental in saving Meri from her fiend of an ex-husband. He also knew that Max had once been married to Chantel’s best friend, Jill. And that Jill had died on the job, saving another cop. “The baby’s over a year old now, and Caleb’s four. I watch them at least once a week so Max and Meri have time to enjoy each other.”

      Because she’d never seen a love like the one they shared.

      Wayne was still watching her, his glance more focused than she liked. He was a great detective.

      Partially because, when he looked, he could see things most people missed. Uncomfortable with that eye turned on her, she shored up her defenses again.

      An instinctive maneuver, not a conscious choice.

      “I’m a woman, Wayne. I love children and nurture them. I have friends. I go to the beach...”

      “Have you been out on even one date since you’ve been here?”

      Chantel thought back. Had it really been over a year since she’d moved from Las Sendas up to Santa Raquel?

      “I’ve been busy finding a place to live, setting it up, spending time with Max and Meri, staying in shape, getting up to speed on the High Risk team. It’s not like I’ve had a lot of spare time.”

      “You’re thirty-two years old. If you’re going to have a family, you should start thinking about doing so...”

      “You and Maria don’t have kids.”

      His head dropped enough that she couldn’t see his expression. “We’re trying,” he said, leaving her to wonder if they were having problems conceiving.

      “You’re human, Chantel,” Wayne said, lifting that gaze up to pierce her again. “Young and healthy. It stands to reason that at some point...”

      “Hold it right there.” Her voice hard as rocks, it was her turn to stare down. “Before you say something we’ll both regret...”

      But why shouldn’t he express his concerns? She wanted to be one of the guys, and guys talked about sex all the time.

      If she weren’t the cop in question, if they were talking about someone else, she might even share his concerns.

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