Two years ago, before the rift over her job that kept her from the Webber Monday family nights for eighteen months, he wouldn’t have asked. “I will,” she said lightly. “Love to Mom.”
The door closed behind him, and Eve went back to the cartons of fruit waiting for her, wielding the knife precisely, as if lemons sliced in quarter-inch increments would settle her nerves. But as she worked, the memory of the shuttered look in Chad’s dark hazel eyes skittered across her skin to settle deep in her belly. While every owner and manager paid lip service to “appropriate relationships” and “professional work environments,” the sexually charged atmosphere of bars and nightclubs was a breeding ground for quick, explosive, short-lived relationships based on chemistry—the kind of chemistry she’d felt in one ten-minute interview. With the bar finally launched to a promising whirlwind of buzz and a whole lot of chemistry with her newest bartender candidate, for the first time in a very long time she could look forward to mixing a little pleasure with business.
What her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Everyone kept secrets, even a pastor’s daughter.
*
Mistake number one: the “yes, ma’am” that came right after he opened the door and made eye contact with Eve Webber. The connection hit him like a blow to the sternum, dropping him twelve years into the past to boot camp, where ma’am and sir became spinal reflexes. While a bartender in need of a job might use ma’am out of respect, his tone would have been gentler, less authoritative.
Mistake number two: getting scratch on the way onto the street. Ideal employees didn’t drive like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a girl in the school parking lot. But the adrenaline contracted the muscles in his calf, and the next thing he knew the rear tires were spinning. Once again, instinct took over and he automatically corrected for the swerve. In an effort to slow his pulse he exhaled slow and deep, relaxed his grip on the wheel, and, most important, lifted the gas pedal from the Jeep’s floor.
For Detective Matt Dorchester, one of the most treacherous parts of undercover work for the Lancaster Police Department was discovering exactly how deeply military and paramilitary organizations were carved into his bones. Twenty minutes into his newest role and he’d already made two dangerous mistakes, two more than he’d made in either of his previous, months-long undercover assignments.
Most men know how to steer out of a skid. It’s not a dead giveaway that you’ve spent years behind the wheel of a Crown Vic with the Interceptor package. Most important, you’re not clinging to your honor with your fingertips.
The sun hung low in the sky, the mid-afternoon heat index just over a hundred degrees. The humidity-saturated air lay thick and damp against his skin as he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit all the way from Eye Candy to the Eastern Precinct. Storefronts and chrome bumpers reflected the sun’s glare as heat and shimmer, much like the thick layers of Eve Webber’s black hair fell in her face as she talked, glinting against her jaw, her cheekbone. Intellectually he knew it would be cool to the touch, but that didn’t stop his hand from tingling with the desire to slide through the strands.
Get a grip, Dorchester. That wasn’t a job interview, let alone a date. You’re a cop. She’s an informant in danger.
At the stoplight before the turn into the Eastern Precinct he flexed his hand to short-circuit the sensation in his fingers, felt the scabs covering his knuckles tug at the healing skin. He’d stop tonight, get another bottle of ibuprofen for his brother, and pick up a tube of antibacterial ointment while he was at it. Battered knuckles wouldn’t go over well in a bar like Eye Candy. Once inside the building, he sidestepped Officer Connor McCormick bringing in a handcuffed, viciously swearing man.
“Busy night?” Matt asked, taking in his arrest’s prison-honed muscles and ink. Conn was a couple of inches taller than Matt and built like a tank. Conn had started working undercover in the last few months, mostly buy-and-busts. Matt knew him as a solid cop, usually first on a scene, and like Matt, he lived and breathed the job.
“Never a dull moment,” Conn said, grinning.
“What’d he do?” Matt asked, nodding at Conn’s detainee.
“Breaking and entering, assault, resisting arrest,” Conn said. “For starters. Pattern matches a string of similar incidents.”
“You got nothing, motherfucker,” the guy snarled.
“What I’ve got is DNA from when you spit on me,” Conn said, almost cheerful as the guy tried to wrench free. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re handcuffed and in the middle of the Block,” he asked, using the name on the street for the Eastern. More usefully, he tightened his grip on the pressure point in the guy’s elbow. “This dance is just getting started.”
The guy snarled out a string of profanities describing his night with Conn’s mother.