Hidden Fire, Kobo (18 page)

He cleared his throat. "What do you
see?" He lowered his voice to a whisper, too, trying to keep any emotion
out of it.

She twirled the champagne flute by its
stem, her eyes still downcast. Good. He didn't want to read her face.

"I don't mean to hurt you," she
said. "I keep seeing my life with David." She lifted her eyes, wide,
blue and brimming with tears. "Please. I don't mean I expect you to be
David. I haven't adjusted to how different my life would be with you. David and
I were in business together. We made all our decisions together." She gave
a quiet snort. "Not always happily, or easily, but we were a business team
as well as husband and wife. We were always together and it worked for us."

Could he tell her he might be out of a
job soon? But as much as he loved being with Sarah, he couldn't see himself as
a shopkeeper. He couldn't find any words and she went on.

"I think I could get used to you
being on call so much. And this new overtime rule—that might make things
easier. But you can't—or won't—talk about your work. It's like there's the part
of your life I'm allowed to share and this other part—a too big part—that's off
limits. You build a huge brick wall and you go behind it and won't let me in."

Pain stabbed behind his sternum. He
clawed his fingers through his hair. "I-I guess it's ingrained." He
finished his champagne, tempted to start on his bottle of Jameson. "I had
a semblance of a relationship once. It was over years before I met you."

"I never thought I was the first
woman in your life. I have no problem with your past."

"Well, maybe you do. Heather—that
was her name—was …" Shit, what had he ever seen in Heather? "She was …
superficial, to say the least."

"You told me a little about her
once," Sarah said. "Liked parties?"

"That she did. She couldn't—wouldn't
understand how my job could be more important than her social life."

"Randy, I don't think that—"

He held his hand up, stopping her. "I
know. You've always understood what the job means. But I guess I was
conditioned to leave it at the station. She never wanted to talk about it, never
wanted it part of the
us
we never even had." He crossed to the
couch and sat beside her. "I made the stupid mistake of generalizing her
pettiness to all women. You included. I-I'm sorry. It's a habit, but one I'd be
willing to try damn hard to break if that's what's keeping us apart."

"We're not exactly apart. Not apart
apart, anyway. But I'm confused and now there's the shop thing. I'm glad you're
a cop, but then I get into that taking care of me thing. I guess that goes back
to David, too. We were partners and it might not be logical, but I feel like
you want to be in control."

"I'm a guy, Sarah. It's hard-wired
into our DNA that we protect our women."

She smiled for the first time. "Caveman,
eh?"

He gave a half-grin in return. "I
can't help the way I'm made. It's not that I don't think you can take care of
yourself. I know you can. But I want to be there for you." He took her
hands.

"I'd like to be there for you, too.
Like the other night, but not only when things get that bad."

He felt like someone had unlocked a jail
cell. "Can we work on it?"

"I think I'd like to try."

He leaned forward to kiss her. Even
before their lips touched, a thrill vibrated through him. It actually took
several seconds to register it was the phone in his pocket. He didn't abandon
his journey to her lips as he fished out the offending device.

"Damn it to hell," he said,
pulling away, checking the display.

No overtime. Take the fucking weekend.
So why was the chief calling him at nine
o'clock on a Sunday night? He gave Sarah one quick kiss. "Sorry. It's the chief."

The look of abject apology on Randy's
face made up for her frustrated anger that had spiked when his cell rang. She'd
been as guilty as he had when it came to not sharing her thoughts and feelings.

"It's okay," Sarah said. "I
never said I wanted you to give up your job. I'll consider it part of the 'let's
try' thing. You take the call and then you tell me how you feel."

"I can tell you that right now. Like
I'm either on duty or off, but it can't be both ways."

"Unless it's important. Which it
must be, because otherwise why would the chief call you when you're not
supposed to be working?"

He got up and stomped to the kitchen. "Detweiler."

Another murder? She tried to listen to
Randy's end of the conversation, but he wasn't saying anything. Until she heard
him say, "Yes, sir, tomorrow morning."

He returned and flopped onto the couch,
his long legs crossed at the ankle, stretched under the coffee table. His
hunched shoulders belied the relaxed pose.

"Okay," she said, massaging his
neck. "Tell me what he said that upset you."

"He didn't say anything."

She dug her nails into him.

He jerked away. "Ouch."

"Let's try again. I'm Sarah, not Heather.
What did he say that upset you?"

"He wouldn't say—wait, before you do
that Vulcan neck pinch thing again. He said for me to report to his office at
six tomorrow morning. He wanted to catch me so I wouldn't go straight to the
Sheriff's Office."

"So it wasn't another body?"

"No. I think I'm being called on the
carpet. He had that tone he uses when he's being perfectly calm and rational
but you know his teeth are aiming for your ass."

"What did you do?"

"Damned if I know. He said there
were claims of impropriety and he wanted to give me a chance to tell my side."

"You?" Sarah couldn't imagine
anyone less capable of improper behavior, although Randy had told her he'd
stepped across some professional boundaries when she'd been kidnapped and he
was trying to find her. But the reason Chris had been able to grab her was
because Randy had been following the rules and not his instincts about Chris in
the first place.

"Yeah, me. It happens. Some citizen
doesn't like the way you're handling an investigation, they'll file a
complaint. Or they call on the phone and you're not quick enough with your
answers, or you don't sound sincere enough, or maybe it's because it was
Tuesday."

"You think that's all it is? Who
could it be?" She paused. "That's probably outside of what I'm
allowed to know."

"Maybe. But the chief didn't give me
anything. Just, 'In my office. Oh six hundred. Sharp'."

His imitation of the chief's
authoritative voice was enough to make her cringe. "Not good?"

Randy shook his head. "Not good. If
it was the usual groundless complaint, he'd have either said so, or told me to
drop by after shift."

While she didn't like that Randy might be
in trouble, she felt a warm connection that he'd taken a step toward trying to
share.

"Can I help with anything?" she
asked. "I have to be in tomorrow to wait for the insurance adjuster. I
need to pull all my inventory files, show what's missing. Plus, I've got to
update all the files to show what's still in stock."

"Did you get copies of the pictures
Connor took?"

She nodded. "And he sent them
straight to the insurance company. I feel a lot better now that things are
cleaned up."

"If you can pull me a list of all
the customers who were in your shop for the last week, that will be a starting
point."

"I'll try, but if they didn't buy
anything, I can't promise I'll remember. I'll ask Jennifer."

"I should talk to her, too."

Sarah felt a twinge of unease. "You
can't think she had anything to do with it."

"No, but she might be able to fill
in a piece of information you forgot."

"Okay. Maybe you should take me home
now. I told you it would have been easier to drop me off there so I could have
my car here."

His expression shifted to his
here we
go again
look.

"I know, I know," she said and
she spouted off his usual grumble before he had a chance. "If you'd keep
some of your things here, yada yada yada." She tried, ineffectively, she knew,
to match his no-nonsense cop tone. "I'm not moving in with you."

"I never asked you to. But if you
had a change of clothes and basic essentials, we could have a little more
spontaneity. Or at least less driving in the wee hours."

"Well, I need more than a clean
shirt and underwear. And even if I had some of my clothes here, I'd be home and
need something that was here, or here and need something from home." She
smiled. "Like my pills."

He gave her an evil grin. "Which
happen to be in your purse."

"You—"

"I put them in there this morning."

She was torn between laughing and smacking
him upside the head. "Don't tell me you put clean underwear in there, too."

"Didn't need to. You left some here
before I went to San Francisco. And a t-shirt. Socks. All washed and folded."

She remembered that night and tried to
glower, but failed. "I'll still have to get up at the crack of dawn if you're
going to be at work at six."

"But it'll be worth it, I promise.
Come on. You're not going to be open for business tomorrow. Jeans are fine."
He tweaked her nose and she slapped his hand away.

"Give me a better reason."

"I'm upset about tomorrow? I need
you to keep me from freaking out?"

"Like you ever freak out." But
she remembered his nightmare the other night. And her own and how they rarely
bothered her if Randy slept beside her. "Worth it, you said? Prove it,
mister."

* * * * *

Despite the early hour, Randy arrived
well-rested fifteen minutes early for his command appearance in Chief Laughlin's
office. Last night's talk with Sarah had lifted an unconscious burden he'd been
carrying. And after their talk—he smiled at the memory.

He paced the empty outer office. The chief's
secretary didn't come in until eight, but there was a light on in the inner
office. After five minutes, he tapped on the chief's door.

"Come in, Detweiler."

Long ago, he'd wondered how the chief
knew it was him until he realized he was the tallest man on the force by
several inches and his silhouette behind the frosted glass pane was
distinctive. Still, it unnerved him. Drawing a lungful of air, he shoved back
the hair hanging in his forehead, turned the knob and stepped inside. He took
the three strides to the chief's desk and stood at attention.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Sit down. You'll give me a stiff
neck."

The man's tone was friendly, but
definitely that of a superior officer. Randy sat. Hands on his thighs, he
waited.

"You have trouble with the concept
of no overtime?" the chief asked.

Is that all this was about? "No, sir.
I took the weekend off."

"Neville says he saw you at a crime
scene late Saturday night. Said you undermined his authority in front of a
citizen."

The chief's dead-serious gaze quashed
Randy's expletive-prefaced retort. He took a moment, calmed himself. "Sir,
I was with the victim of that crime when she was notified of an act of
vandalism at her shop. I provided transportation to the scene and because I
was—or should have been—on call, I coordinated the investigation and
interviewed the victim. However, at that time Officer Neville was in no way
involved."

"Go on. I want the whole story."

Randy knew the chief would have read the
reports. Why was he grilling him?

"Given that we were already
together, I took her statement at the station rather than wait until Monday. I
had no intention of logging the hours, as I am fully aware of the new policy,
but since there were no other ranking officers on duty, I made the decision to
get the work done while everything was fresh in everyone's minds."

As he replayed the events, the chief's
original statement registered. Neville had nothing to do with the break-in
call. Why was his nose out of joint?

"Continue," the chief said.

"There's not a lot more to say. I
got a call from Dispatch later that night that lights had been reported on in
the shop and that Neville was responding. I arrived later and since there was a
legitimate reason for the lights, I told Neville I'd take responsibility and he
could get back to his regular patrol duties."

"Okay." Laughlin cleaned his
reading glasses, then set them on his desk. "Now, can the formal report
language and tell me what happened."

"Is there a problem? I already said
I wasn't going to clock the hours. What did you want me to do? Wait in the
truck after I dropped the victim off at the scene? Sit at home and ignore the
report that Sarah's car was parked behind her shop at midnight? That she might
have been in danger? It was personal, sir and I was there as a private citizen."