Two Sides to Every Story (Love Spectrum Romance) (3 page)

Chapter 3

Angela picked up the phone at the counter, hating that she was in the building. “I want to file a complaint,” she said to the blonde woman who was staring out at her through the bulletproof glass with a bored expression on her face.

As the woman’s face suddenly became animated, Angela dropped the phone from her ear, remembered what she was supposed to do, and picked it up again.

“Someone will be with you in a moment,” the woman finally said.

Angela looked around, leveling her gaze on the white bench across the room. She paced around the perimeter, waiting for someone to come through the door. Her eyes landed on two display cases.

She didn’t want to see anything proclaiming the good work the police had done, but she paused in front of a display case and began perusing the contents. A pamphlet on Alzheimer’s was the last thing she expected to find in a police station. She lifted it from the bin and began reading. Finding herself reading the same line over and over, she began to wonder if at twenty-eight she wasn’t showing signs of Alzheimer’s herself.

When she looked again toward the bulletproof glass and saw several officers inside talking together, she became annoyed. They were deliberately making her wait. Maybe she’d complain about the entire department.

Now she knew why they kept the public so far away from the cops. She was feeling pretty darn hostile just sitting there waiting for someone to come and take her report.

At last the door opened and someone came toward her. She looked down at her watch. Forty-five minutes had passed. She frowned at the man approaching her and looked again at her watch for emphasis.

“I’m sorry it took so long, Ms. Reed. I understand that you want to file a complaint against one of our officers. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Then would you come with me?”

Angela had a moment of panic. She’d seen her share of police shows; she knew what she was doing could cause problems for Officer Rafe Remeris.

She stiffened her spine. She didn’t care, she asserted to herself as she began to follow the officer across the room to another closed door. She didn’t care that the man had beautiful green eyes or deep dimples when he smiled. She didn’t care that he had a sense of humor. And most of all, she didn’t care that his touch sent a zillion volts of electricity cascading through her. If for nothing more than that reason alone, she wanted him out of her hair.

He was a cop and she had moved into the Pilsen neighborhood to destroy cops. She couldn’t begin to think of even one of them as a funny, strikingly handsome man with marble green eyes and fingers that ignited her soul. Angela shuddered and took the seat she’d been offered.

“What did Officer Remeris do?”

“He stopped me for speeding.”

“You’re angry that he gave you a ticket?”

“He didn’t give me a ticket; he gave me a warning.”

“And you’re here to file a complaint against him?”

Angela frowned at the man behind his desk. “I’m here to complain about the manner in which he treated me. He called me stupid and he threw my license back at me. He didn’t hand it to me. He threw it into the car. I don’t know about you but I find that disrespectful.”

“I agree, and I’m sorry that you had to be treated in that manner. But I’m wondering if you may have misunderstood what happened. Officer Remeris is a good officer, very respectful. It seems highly unlikely that he would do the things that you said. Do you want to reconsider filing this?”

“Please don’t patronize me. Am I to understand that you also think I’m stupid?” She lowered her eyes and allowed her gaze to rest on his name plate. “What was your name again?” she asked pointedly.

The officer cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, here’s the form. Just write what you want to say in the comment area, sign it and I’ll put it through.”

He pushed the form across the desk toward Angela. When she tilted her head slightly, he lifted the paper and held it out.

Angela wrote on the form, pushing the face of Officer Remeris from her mind. Nothing would happen to him, she assured herself. Nothing ever happened to the Chicago cops. She just wanted him to leave her alone. She signed her name, thinking that should at least take care of that. No more heat from unwanted sources.

* * *

Raphael couldn’t believe it. The woman had actually carried through with her threat. He’d known from the moment he looked at her in the courtroom that she was a danger to him. Now she was trying to ruin his career. He’d given her a pass when she didn’t deserve one.

“Did you throw the woman’s license back into her car instead of handing it to her?”

“Yes, sir.” Raphael squirmed.

“Did you call her stupid?”

“Not exactly.”

The commander glowered. “Look, the department is taking enough of a beating as it is. The mayor doesn’t want any undue attention on us, got it? Now what did you say exactly?”

“I’ve stopped her before for speeding. She was even in the class I conducted at traffic school a couple of weeks ago. So I told her it had to be either her fault or mine if she hadn’t learned that she wasn’t allowed to speed.”

“Did you call the woman stupid?”

“No.”

“What did you call her?”

“I called her slow,” Raphael admitted.

“Is there something personal going on with you and that woman? I’ve got eyes, she’s beautiful. What? She makes you hard and you think this is the way to go after her, by harassing her? Do your screwing around on your own time. That squad car is not your own little personal pickupmobile.”

Raphael was getting angry. He was being reprimanded for things he hadn’t done. “Look, sir,” he tried again. “I didn’t harass the woman. I gave her a break.”

“And you’re telling me you weren’t thinking with your di—” The commander stopped short, glanced over at Wendy, the new recruit, and glared at Rafe.

“You should have given her another damn ticket, not a warning. She was doing fifty-nine in a thirty-mile zone. She deserved a damn ticket. Get some stones. You want to get laid, go get laid! But don’t use the department as your pimp. Now get the hell out of my office.”

Raphael walked out of the office averting his eyes as he walked away, wondering how much ribbing he was going to have to take for what had just happened. There was no such thing as a secret reaming in the department. Before the end of the day the story would have circulated across the city and into the suburban departments. He hated to think what he would be accused of when it made the rounds.

He took the steps two at a time, wishing he’d at least handed the woman her license. But he’d seen the fear in her eyes, had seen her holding her breath and he’d shared her fear. There was some phenomenon at work when they touched. And he had no more of a desire to repeat it than she did. He’d thrown her license in the car thinking he’d relieved her mind and his. Now look what it had gotten him—written up.

* * *

For the next six weeks Raphael was engaged in his own private war. He was pissed and being pissed he’d chosen to ignore his commander’s orders to leave Angela Reed the hell alone.

At least twice a week he would spot her car illegally parked and would ticket it. And at least twice a week she would go into the station and file a complaint against him. The entire thing came to a head when one Thursday she blew a stop sign and he followed her onto private property to give her a ticket.

The thing was, he wasn’t allowed to enter private property unless the police department had a deal with the owner. In this particular case they didn’t. It was also too bad for him that Angela Reed knew this also.

“You can’t give me a ticket,” she said, a smirk on her face.

“Why not?” he asked.

“This is private property.”

“We give tickets all the time on private property.”

“Yeah, but you have to have consent, and the owner won’t give it, so you have to leave.”

Raphael went inside, talked with the owner and came back out to hear the woman laughing at him. “I’ll give you the ticket when you leave.”

“I’m not leaving,” she declared. And they’d begun their wait. Actually, he’d been the one waiting as she got out of her car, marched down the street, and did some shopping. Then he’d sat there watching as she pulled out a disposable camera and began taking pictures of him. He knew where that was going. Another complaint.

Raphael had wanted badly to leave his spot and go buy his own camera, but if he did she’d leave. He was aware that he was behaving like a fool. Besides, he’d already lost that battle. She was going about her business while he in the meantime had made himself a prisoner in his squad car to watch her car that she wasn’t even in.

He had no idea how long he would have stayed watching her car if a call hadn’t finally forced him from his position. He’d never gotten a chance to write her a ticket that day. But still she’d filed a complaint.

He’d noticed that a pattern was beginning to emerge. When he worked Tuesday or Thursday, she was much more hostile on those encounters. And always he noticed on those days there was a pass from the prison sitting in her car. He was getting some of the fallout from her visits to the prison. That much had become obvious to him.

After awhile Raphael had invested a small fortune in disposable cameras and flashed his own proof to counteract hers. It hadn’t worked. He’d still been ordered to back off, and that time the commander had been livid.

“Leave that damn woman alone,” the commander had screamed, his face red as anger filled him. “IAD is already on your ass over this. What are you bucking for, a suspension or what? Have you suddenly gone loco? This is an order: Leave the woman alone!”

“So what am I supposed to do, let her break the law?”

“Yes,” the commander screamed.

“Can I have that in writing?” Raphael countered. When he saw he’d crossed the line, he quickly changed his tactic.

“Look, sir, do you think I picked up her car and put it into those no parking spots? They’re always empty because people know they’ll get tickets if they park there. She seems to be drawn to these spots. If you don’t want me to ticket her, maybe you should take down the signs, or say no parking except for Angela Reed.”

Raphael watched while the commander sighed and rubbed his face roughly with his hands. He was pissed. That much was obvious.

“The woman hates you. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You sure she’s not some woman you nailed?”

Something bristled inside of Raphael. He didn’t like talking about the woman in this manner, regardless of what she was doing to screw him over.

“I haven’t touched her.”

“See to it that you don’t. She wants your badge. You make a mistake and forget that for a moment and she’ll have it. Don’t let those big brown eyes of hers fool you. The woman’s cold as ice.”

That had been Raphael’s reaction to her in the beginning but he now knew better. There was something about the woman that produced a heat in him that he was afraid would consume him. The slightest touch of her fingers on his skin and he burned.

He’d admit to himself that he looked for her car when he was on patrol. She intrigued him and he wanted to know why. He wanted to know if she knew why her touch had ignited a fire in him that he’d never known existed, a fire that was dangerous and that he didn’t want. At least he was still telling himself he didn’t want it.

For over a week Raphael ignored Angela’s car illegally parked in the neighborhood. He was following orders. He wasn’t the only cop on the street; let someone else have a few of her complaints for a change.

He did as he’d been ordered, until the day came when he couldn’t ignore her. He was sitting at a red light when a car pulled up on his right side, took a quick look in his car and ran the light, right with him sitting there. The driver on the left of him looked over at him as if to say, “Well, aren’t you going after her?”

He almost didn’t. He really didn’t want to, not today, not when he’d just been thinking of her. Still, he had to do his duty, or more than likely the person sitting there witnessing it all would report him.

Raphael turned on the lights and siren and went after her, wishing she’d waited the three seconds it had taken for the light to turn green. Now he had to give her another ticket.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked angrily as he stalked up to her car.

“Oh, it’s you. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to my shadow.”

“Are you getting pleasure out of busting my balls?”

She smiled at him. “If you’re asking if I’m enjoying this…” She stopped and stared. “Are you recording me?”

“No.”

“Then yes, I’m enjoying it. How does it feel to be the person on the receiving end of harassment?”

“Look, lady, I haven’t harassed anyone.”

“You’re a cop.”

“And that makes me a bad person?”

“Yes.”

Raphael rolled his eyes. There was no reasoning with the woman. He glanced at her passenger seat and her gaze snagged his as he brought his eyes back to her. She knew what he was doing. Today there was no pass.

“Why me?” he asked.

“Why not you?” she answered.

“You’re going to lose your license if you keep this up.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“If you lose it, how are you going to be a nuisance to me?”

He saw her blink. This time he wrote out the ticket. “I’m just trying to do my job.” He held the paper out to her and waited. He saw fear enter her eyes and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to take the paper. Her fingers gripped the end and he held on tighter. Her eyes found his and for a long moment they stared at each other.

Both of their hands moved on the paper until there was only an infinitesimal amount of space between them and still they stared. Then they touched and the electrical charge traveled from the tips of his fingers throughout his body and Raphael didn’t let go. His mouth opened but no words came out. An electric current filled the air, circling around them, shooting through them, binding them in a strange awareness.

He wondered how long he would have stayed there like that if his radio hadn’t crackled and interrupted the spell. The ticket was in her hand and she was looking at him strangely.