To Love a Cop (4 page)

The part that had him most uneasy was that all four families hit had last names beginning with the letters
E
and
F
. What’s more, the attacks had taken place in alphabetical order. Which meant the assailant/s could spell, too.

He’d scoured police reports and community newspapers in search of any hint that there’d been earlier instances of vandalism. Maybe more minor. Otherwise, damn it, why start with Eckstein? Why not Abrams? There had to be a reason.

He picked up the burger and began eating. His thoughts reverted immediately to Laura and Jake Vennetti, as they’d tended to do since he left their house earlier. He had a bad feeling he’d called up email in a deliberate attempt to distract himself.

What he’d been evading was the knowledge that he’d been instantly and powerfully attracted to Matt Vennetti’s widow. The rational part of him knew he had nothing to be ashamed of; Matt had killed himself over five years ago. Given her looks, he had to wonder why she hadn’t remarried.

Frowning, Ethan took a long swallow of beer. No, she wasn’t a beauty, not exactly—he doubted guys trailed her around with their tongues hanging out, although given half a chance he might do just that. Shoulder-length hair was somewhere in that dark blond, light brown range that meant she’d definitely been blonde as a kid, and probably still would be if she spent any time out in the sun come summer. Sun-streaked or not, her hair was thick, straight and shiny. His fingers had itched to discover the texture. A few freckles dusted her nose and cheeks, giving her that girl-next-door look, belied by blue eyes darkened by pain and anger and fear. He wondered if they’d once been brighter.

She was taller than her son when she’d swept him behind her, which meant she was at least five foot eight or nine, no more than an inch or two shorter than Matt had been. Given that Jake was only eleven, it looked as though he’d gained his tall genes from his mother.

She had some serious curves, too, the kind men loved and women fought with never-ending diets. When she turned her back on him, he’d been riveted by a firm, generous ass and tiny waist. Face-to-face...

He grunted unhappily and took another swig of beer, his hamburger in his other hand.

Face-to-face...well, it wasn’t her
face
he wanted to look at. Her breasts wouldn’t tickle his palms, they’d fill his hands.

And it wasn’t happening. His mouth twisted as he remembered the scathing way she said,
I shouldn’t have let
you
in
. Yeah, safe to say he wasn’t her dream man.

Clearly, he didn’t need to do battle with his qualms about lusting after a—well, not a friend’s—a fellow officer’s widow. She’d made clear she would prefer he not come knocking on her door again. Which was fine; he’d been married to a woman who came to abhor his job. Once around was enough for him.

For the boy’s sake, though, he hoped Laura changed her mind, or at least thought about what he’d said. Ethan couldn’t see Jake as likely to go on a shooting rampage, but if he didn’t untangle his feelings, who knew what would happen? Hormones hadn’t hit yet. Ethan hadn’t liked the dark look on his face in that single moment before he raced for his bedroom.

She
might not want a gun in the house, and Ethan could even sympathize. But Jake wanted, real bad, to get his hands on one, and where there was a will, there was a way.

Right now, Ethan doubted even Jake knew what he wanted to do with that gun once he had it.
Why would he admire that
, she’d asked,
given what happened because his father carried a gun?

Who said admiration was what Jake felt? He’d been abandoned by his father in the most devastating way possible, shunned by his father’s family. Self-loathing struck Ethan as a likelier possibility. And teenage suicide was all too common.

Ethan finished his hamburger and started in on the French fries, hardly tasting them. He was frustrated by his inability to get through to Laura, yet painfully aware he had no moral high ground here.

When he’d expressed anger at Matt’s buddies on the job, she’d been polite enough not to say,
So where were
you
?
Ethan had almost opened his mouth to defend himself anyway, to say,
We weren’t really friends. Damn it, he
had
friends.
But the truth is, at the funeral Ethan had looked at Matt’s widow and small, bewildered son, and resolved to check up on them, be sure they were all right. Half the officers there had probably thought the same thing. He’d also vaguely assumed Matt Vennetti’s closer friends would step in to help her out, but that was no excuse.

She’d have been right to paint him with the same brush.

Pushing his empty plate away, Ethan pictured her face. Not when she blazed with anger, but when she had looked at him with such vulnerability and bewilderment. The expression wasn’t so different from the one he’d seen on her boy’s face when he said with such despair, “Mom is going to be so mad.”

Ethan sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face, then reached for his wallet when he saw the waitress bearing down on his table with his tab, a flirtatious smile on her face and a swing to her hips. Okay, he hadn’t misread the tone of voice.
She
had plenty of curves, and he felt...nothing.

He was pleasant as he signed his credit card slip, then slid out of the booth and walked from the restaurant, noting faces, aware of people in the parking lot, passing vehicles.

Behind the wheel of his Yukon, he inserted the key but, still brooding, didn’t immediately turn it.

He hoped Laura would think twice and call him—but if she didn’t, he’d call her. Just to make sure she and Jake were okay. To let her know he’d meant it. And then he’d let a couple of weeks go by and call again.

This time, he wouldn’t forget. She might not like it, but she needed someone, and he had a feeling there wasn’t anyone else.

And damned if he was going to worry about the subterranean reasons behind the determination he felt to look out for this woman and boy.

* * *

“
I
’LL PROBABLY GET
DETENTION,
” Jake grumbled.

Laura poured pancake batter onto the griddle. “You probably will.” She refrained from adding,
And you deserve to.

After she woke him up, he’d dragged himself into the kitchen this morning wearing pajama bottoms that hung low on his hips and carrying a T-shirt he pulled over his head as she watched. His chest and rib cage were ridiculously pale and skinny. Anyone looking at him would think she was starving him.

“Get the juice out of the fridge, will you?” she asked.

His bare feet were silent on the vinyl floor. Not until she turned her head did she see he had the orange juice carton tipped up and was drinking right out of it.

“Jacob Vennetti!” With her free hand, she grabbed a dish towel and snapped it at him.

He dodged it effortlessly. His grin made her heart hurt. He couldn’t smile like that if he was really troubled, could he?

She flipped pancakes. “Grab the margarine and syrup, too.”

He complied. He was enthusiastic about meals.

And guns.

How could that be?

She plopped a plate holding the first stack in front of him before turning back to make more.

Behind her, he whined, “If I have to stay home this weekend, what am I supposed to
do
?”

“I’m sure I can think of something.” They’d been talking about scraping the several coats of peeling paint off the back deck and repainting. This was day three of dry weather, and they ought to take advantage of it, she reflected. April was a rainy month in Portland. As were...well, most months. Even in July, you took a chance planning something like an outdoor wedding around here.

Unfortunately, she was working today, as she did one or two Saturdays a month, and didn’t have time to find what he’d need to start and give him instructions.

He stuffed his mouth full as she set down a platter with more pancakes in the middle of the table and pulled out a chair herself.

“I wish I was playing Little League,” he grumbled.

“In February, you didn’t want to sign up.”

He shrugged discontentedly. She’d supported his decision, mostly because neither of them liked his coach last year and he’d have been on the same team this year. Maybe that was part of his problem, she thought, buttering her pancakes and adding a dollop of maple syrup. Maybe he had too much time on his hands. A couple of his better friends
were
playing baseball, which ate up a lot of their spare time.

“There are summer camps,” she pointed out. “Baseball and basketball.”

“I could do both,” he said hopefully.

Laura barely hesitated. She’d worry about the money later. Camps weren’t cheap, and she knew he’d need new basketball shoes
and
new cleats for baseball. All those calories he was packing in were being used for growing. “I don’t know why not,” she said. “See what Ron and Justin plan to do.”

He bent his head and didn’t say anything. Laura’s eyes narrowed. He hadn’t mentioned Ron recently. And...when had either boy last called? She ached to ask if something was wrong, but wanted to preserve this morning’s tentative peace.

“How come you won’t tell me what Detective Winter said about me?” he burst out.

She swallowed a bite. Pancakes would go straight to her butt and she shouldn’t be eating them at all, but it was really hard to cook stuff like this and
not
eat it.

“You’re ignoring me,” he declared indignantly.

She met his eyes. “I’m refusing to repeat myself, that’s all. But since you insist, one more time—I doubt he said anything to me that he didn’t to you.”

He looked sulky. “You talked to him for ages.”

She didn’t even want to think about her conversation with Detective Ethan Winter. Not when it included them holding hands. Not when she had imagined what it would feel like to have his arms around her. To lean against him, lay her head on his very broad shoulder. Feel his lips—

No, she hadn’t imagined that until later, after Jake was in bed and she was alone.
That
fleeting fantasy had been especially vivid. It had horrified her to the point where she’d resolved not to think about him at all. If she ever got involved with a man again, he wouldn’t be in law enforcement. He wouldn’t carry a gun as casually as she did her purse.

Ethan Winter was off-limits, even assuming he’d been interested and not just...kind. Concerned about Jake. If his gaze had drifted from her face to her breasts, it was probably because he wasn’t being straight with her and didn’t want to meet her eyes.

Only, she didn’t quite believe that, either.

“He said I could call him if I ever need him,” her son said.

Jolted from her silent lecture to herself, she gaped at Jake. “He asked you to call?”

His face was set in stubborn lines. “He said I could if I want.”

“Why did he think you’d want to?”

He shrugged.

“Are there things you’d say to him that you don’t want to say to me?” She was proud of how calm she sounded.

“Maybe,” he muttered. He stole a peek at her. “’Cuz he’s a guy.”

“So is Uncle Brian. And you like some of your friend’s dads.”

“Yeah, but they’re not—you know.”

Cops.
They weren’t cops. They didn’t carry guns. Not a one of them even
owned
a gun. She hoped. She knew her sister’s husband didn’t.

“You know we can talk about your dad whenever you want.”

He sneered. There was no other word for it. “You hate it when I ask about his job!”

“It’s not that.” Yes, it was. No, it wasn’t, not entirely anyway. “Your father didn’t like to talk about what he did,” she said, although that wasn’t quite right, either. He did like to brag, but he’d never talk about things going wrong, and she always knew when he was especially closed off that he’d seen something awful. He’d go out to a bar instead, to hang with his cop friends. Sometimes every night for days on end, stumbling home drunk, until she’d been forced to confront how peripheral her role in his life was.

Some of that, he couldn’t help, she knew, given his upbringing. He’d been...old-fashioned, believing women were to be protected. He hadn’t been crazy about her continuing to work, although thank God she had an employment history, given that suicide invalidated his life insurance policy. Had he given
that
a moment’s thought before checking out on his responsibilities? she asked herself for the thousandth time, and knew the answer: no. Or if he had, worry about his wife and child’s future hadn’t weighed heavily enough against the shame he was facing. Guilt, too; she knew he’d felt it, but was petty enough to believe in the end what he couldn’t face was the loss of everything that in his eyes made him a man.

Jake jumped up, his chair scraping back. “See? You won’t talk about it! You never do.”

He raced out of the kitchen. The slam of his bedroom door was becoming all-too familiar.

Appetite gone, she stared down at her half-eaten pancakes.

Dear God
, she thought,
he’s right.
There was so much she didn’t want to say about Matt, it stifled her every time Jake asked questions. She’d told herself she was protecting him—but maybe it was herself she needed to protect.

Weary and discouraged, she stood and began to clear the table, scraping sticky lumps of pancake into the trash under the sink. Jake, she couldn’t help noticing, had cleared
his
plate before he stormed out.

The dishwasher loaded, she leaned against the edge of the counter. She had to try to talk to him...but how was she supposed to know what to say, and what she shouldn’t say? Sometimes she thought having a daughter would have been way easier—but maybe she was wrong. It wasn’t as though she understood herself very well lately, either.

Her gaze strayed to the wooden organizer at one end of the counter that held things like phone books, notepads, pens, paper clips and stamps. She’d dropped the card Ethan Winter had given her in one of the small drawers, telling herself she’d never want it but not quite willing to throw it away. She hated the pull it exerted on her.