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“Tom.” She hesitated before slipping her palm into his. This didn’t count as a conflict of interest, right? Of course not. This was merely a...professional courtesy. Yes, that was it. “Caroline Jennings.”
That got her a real smile—one that took him from intensely handsome to devastatingly so. Her knees weakened—weakened, for God’s sake! It only got worse when he said, “Caroline,” in a voice that was closer to reverence than respectability as his fingers closed around hers.
A rush of what felt like electricity passed from where her skin met his, so powerful that Caroline jolted. Images flashed through her mind of him pulling her in closer, his mouth covering hers, his hands covering...
“Sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back. She knew she was blushing fiercely, but she was going to blame that on the heat. “I generate a lot of static electricity.” Which was true. In the winter, when the air was dry and she was walking on carpeting.
It was at least ninety-four out today, with humidity she could swim in. She was so hot that sweat was beginning to trickle down her back.
He notched an eyebrow at her, and she got the feeling he was laughing. But definitely on the inside, because his mouth didn’t move from that cocky half grin.
Her breasts ached, and she didn’t think she could blame that on the sun. She was flushed and desperately needed to get the hell out of her skirt suit to cool down. What she wouldn’t give for a swim in a cool pool right now.
Alone. Definitely alone. Not with Agent Tom Yellow Bird. Nope.
“About the flowers,” Tom said, looking almost regretful about bringing up the subject as he leaned back against his spotless car.
Caroline recoiled. “What?” It wasn’t as if the fact that she’d received the bouquet wasn’t common knowledge—it was. Everyone in the courthouse knew, thanks to Andrea passing out roses to anyone who’d take some. Leland had taken a huge bunch home for his wife. Even Cheryl had taken a few, favoring Caroline with a rare smile. Caroline had left the remaining few blooms in her office. She didn’t want them in her house.
Had Agent Yellow Bird sent them? Was this whole conversation—the intense looks, the cocky grins—because he was trying to butter her up?
Crap, what if Lasky had been right? What if Agent Tom Yellow Bird was crooked and prostitutes were just the tip of the iceberg?
Suddenly her blood was running cold. She moved to step past him. “The flowers were lovely. But I’m not interested.”
* * *
Damn, she was tough.
“Whoa,” Tom said, holding his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “I didn’t send them.”
“I’m sure,” Caroline murmured, stepping around him and heading for her car as if he suddenly smelled.
“Caroline,” he said again, and damn if it didn’t come out with a note of tenderness. Which was ridiculous. He had no reason to feel tender toward her at all. She was his assignment, whether she liked it or not. It’d be easier if she cooperated, of course, but he’d get to the bottom of things one way or the other.
He was nothing if not patient.
She began to walk faster. “I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not interested. I hold myself to a higher standard of ethics and integrity.”
What the hell? Clearly, she thought he’d sent the flowers. The idea was so comical he almost laughed. “Wait.” He fell in step beside her. “Carlson sent me.”
“Did he?” She didn’t stop.
He dug his phone out of his pocket. If she wouldn’t believe him, maybe she’d believe Carlson. “Here.” Just as she made it to her car, he shoved his phone in front of her face. She had to stop to keep from slamming her nose into the screen. “See?”
She shot him an irritated look—which made him smile. She was tough—but he was tougher.
Begrudgingly, she read Carlson’s email out loud. “‘Tom—the new judge, Caroline Jennings, contacted me. An anonymous person sent her flowers and apparently that’s out of the ordinary for her. See what you can find out. If we’re lucky, this will open the case back up. Maggie sends her love. Carlson.’”
She frowned as she read it. This was as close as Tom had been to her and again, he was surrounded by the perfume of roses. He wanted to lean in close and press his lips against the base of her neck to see if she tasted as sweet as she smelled—but if he’d gauged Caroline Jennings right, she probably had Mace on her keys. Given the way she was holding her body, he’d bet she’d taken some self-defense classes at some point.
Good for her. He liked a woman who wasn’t afraid to defend herself.
The moment that thought popped up, Tom slammed the door on it. He didn’t like Judge Jennings, no matter how sweet she smelled or how strongly he felt that pull. This was about the case. The job was all he had.
She angled her body toward his, and a primal part of his brain crowed in satisfaction when she didn’t step back. If anything, it felt like she was challenging his space with her body. “And I’m supposed to believe that’s on the level, huh?”
God, he’d like to be challenged. She was simply magnificent—even better out of her robes. “I don’t play games, Caroline,” he said. No matter how much he might want to. “Not about something like this.”
She studied him for a moment. “That implies you play games in other situations, though.”
His lips twisted to one side and he crossed his arms, because if he didn’t, he might start smiling and that was bad for his image as a no-holds-barred lawman. “That all depends on the game, doesn’t it?”
“I put more stock in the players.”
So much for his image, because he burst out laughing at that. Caroline took a step back, her hands clenched at her sides and her back ramrod straight—which was completely at odds with the unexpectedly intense look of...longing? She looked less like a woman about to punch him and more like...
Like she was holding herself back. Like she wanted to laugh with him. Maybe do even more with him.
If he slid an arm around her waist and pulled her into his chest, would she break his nose or would she go all soft and womanly against him? How long had it been since he’d had a woman in his arms?
It absolutely did not matter—nor did it matter that he knew exactly how long it’d been. What mattered was cracking this case.
“I don’t sleep with them.”
“What?” She physically recoiled, pushing herself closer to the door.
“The prostitutes,” he explained. “I don’t sleep with them. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? What I do in my free time?”
“It’s none of my business what you do when you’re off duty,” she said in a stiff voice, shrinking even farther away from him. “It’s a free country.”
That made him grin again. “This country is bought and paid for, and you and I both know it,” he said, surprised at the bitterness that sneaked in there. “I buy them dinner,” he went on, wondering if someone like Caroline Jennings would ever really be able to understand. “They’re mostly young, mostly girls—mostly being forced to work against their will. I treat them like people, not criminals—show them there’s another way. When they’re ready, I help them get away and get clean. And until they are, I make sure they’re eating, give them enough money they don’t have to work that night.”
“That’s...” She blinked. “Really?”
“Really. I don’t sleep with them.” For some ridiculous reason, he almost let the truth slip free—he didn’t sleep with anyone. It was none of her business—but he wanted to make sure she knew he operated with all the ethical integrity she valued. “Carlson can back me up on that.”
“Who’s Maggie?”
Interesting. There was no good reason for her to be concerned about Maggie sending Tom her love, unless...
Unless Caroline was trying to figure out if he was attached. “Carlson’s wife. We grew up on the same reservation together.” He left out the part where he’d gone off to Washington, DC, and joined the FBI, leaving Maggie vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
There was a reason he didn’t sleep with prostitutes. But that wasn’t his story to tell—it was Maggie’s. He stuck to the facts.
The breeze gusted, surrounding him with her scent. He couldn’t help leaning forward and inhaling. “Roses,” he murmured, his voice unexpectedly tender again. He really needed to stop with the tenderness.
She flushed again, and although he shouldn’t, he hoped it wasn’t from the heat. “I beg your pardon?”
“You smell of roses.” Somehow, he managed to put another step between them. “Is that your normal perfume, or was that from the delivery?” There. That was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, from a law-enforcement perspective.
“From the flowers. The bouquet was huge. At least a hundred stems.”
“All roses?”
She thought about that. “Mixed. Lilies and carnations—a little bit of everything, really. But mostly roses.”
In other words, it hadn’t been cheap. He tried to visualize how big a vase with a hundred stems would be. “But you’re not taking any home with you?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want them. My clerk got rid of most of them. Leland took home a huge bunch for his wife.”
“Leland’s a good guy,” Tom replied, as if this were normal small talk when it was anything but.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she blurted out.
“My record speaks for itself.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket and held it out to her. “You don’t know what you’re up against here. This kind of corruption is insidious and nearly impossible to track, Caroline. But if there’s anything else out of the ordinary—and I mean anything—don’t hesitate to call me. Or Carlson,” he added, almost as an afterthought. He didn’t want her to call Carlson, though. He wanted her to call him. For any reason. “No detail is too small. Names, car makes—anything you remember can be helpful.”
After a long moment—so long, in fact, that he began to wonder if she was going to take the card at all—she asked, “So we’re to work together?”
He heard the question she didn’t ask. “On this case, yes.”
But if it weren’t for this case...
She took the card from him and slid it into her shirt pocket. He did his best not to stare at the motion. Damn.
She gave him that look again, the one that made him think she was holding herself back. “Fine.”
He straightened and gave her a little salute. “After this case...” He turned and headed to his car. “Have a good evening, Caroline,” he called over his shoulder.
She gasped and he almost, almost spun back on his heel and captured that little noise with a kiss.
But he didn’t. Instead, he climbed into the driver’s seat of his Camaro, gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot as fast as he could.
He needed to put a lot of distance between him and Caroline Jennings. Because, no matter how much he might be attracted to her, he wasn’t about to compromise this case for her.
And that was final.
Three (#u40d66ad4-ca20-5fc7-9e04-db7204e6e0b2)
For a while, nothing happened. There were no more mysterious flower deliveries—or, for that matter, any kind of deliveries. The remaining half dozen roses on Caroline’s desk withered and died. Andrea threw them away. People in the courthouse seemed friendlier—apparently, handing out scads of flowers made Caroline quite popular. Other than that, though, things continued on as they had before.
Before Agent Tom Yellow Bird had shown up in her courtroom.
She got up, went for a jog before the heat got oppressive, went to the courthouse and then came home. No mysterious gifts, no handsome men—mysterious or otherwise. No surprises. Everything went exactly as it was supposed to. Which was good. Great, even.
If she didn’t have Tom’s card in her pocket—and that electric memory of shaking his hand—she would have been tempted to convince herself she had imagined the whole thing. A fantasy she’d invented to alleviate boredom instead of a flesh-and-blood man. Fantasies were always safer, anyway.
But...there were times when she could almost feel his presence. She’d come out of the courthouse and pull up short, looking for his black muscle car with the silver stripe on the hood, but he was never there. And the fact that disappointed her was irritating.
She had not developed a crush on the man. No crushes. That was that.
Just because he was an officer of the law with a gun concealed under his jacket, with eyes that might be his biggest weapon—that was no reason to lust after the man. She didn’t need to see him again. It was better that way—at least, she finally had to admit to herself, it was better that way while his corruption investigation was still ongoing. The more distance between them, the less she would become infatuated.
Tom Yellow Bird was a mistake she wasn’t going to make.
It was a good theory, anyway. But he showed up in her dreams, a shadowy lover who drove her wild with his hands, his mouth, his body. She woke up tense and frustrated, and no electronic assistance could relieve the pressure. Her vibrator barely took the edge off, but it was enough.
Besides, she had other things to focus on. She finally finished unpacking her kitchen, although she still ate too much takeout. It was hard to work up the energy to cook when the temperature outside kept pushing a hundred.
Still, she tried. She came home one Friday after work three weeks after the floral delivery, juggling a couple of bags of groceries. Eggs were on sale and there was a recipe for summery quiche on Pinterest that she wanted to try. She had air-conditioning and a weekend to kick back. She was going to cook—or else. At the very least, she was going to eat ice cream.
She knew the moment she unlocked the front door that something was wrong. She couldn’t have said what it was because, when she looked around the living room, nothing seemed out of place. But there was an overwhelming sense that someone had been in her home that she didn’t dare ignore.
Heart pounding, she backed out of the house, pulling the door shut behind her. She carried the groceries right back out to the trunk of her car and then, hands shaking, she pulled her cell phone and Tom’s card out of her pocket and dialed.
He answered on the second ring. “Yes?”
“Is this Agent Yellow Bird?” He sounded gruffer on the phone—so gruff, in fact, that she couldn’t be sure it was the same man who had laughed with her in the parking lot.
“Caroline? Are you all right?”
Suddenly, she felt silly. She was sitting outside in the car. It wasn’t like the door had been jimmied open. It hadn’t even looked like anything had been moved—at least, not in the living room. “It’s probably nothing.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. What’s going on?”
She exhaled in relief. She was not a damsel in distress and she did not need a white knight to come riding to her rescue. But there was something comforting about the thought that a federal agent was ready and willing to take over if things weren’t on the up and up. “I just got home and it feels like there was someone in my house.” She winced. It didn’t sound any less silly when she said it out loud.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and she got a sinking feeling that he was going to tell her not to be such a ninny. “Where are you?”
“In my car. In the driveway,” she added. Cars could be anywhere.
“If you’re comfortable, stay there. I’m about fifteen minutes away. If you aren’t, I want you to leave and drive someplace safe. Understand?”
“Okay.” His words should have been reassuring. He was on his way over and she had a plan. But, perversely, the fact that he was taking this feeling so seriously scared her even more.
What if someone really had been in her house? It hadn’t looked like a robbery. What had they been after?
“Call me back if you need to. I’m on my way.” Before she could even respond, he hung up.
Wait, she thought, staring at the screen of her phone—how did he know where she lived?
She turned on her car—all the better to make a quick getaway—and cranked the AC. She knew she shouldn’t have bought ice cream at the store, but too late now.
She waited and watched her house. Nothing happened. No one slunk out. Not so much as a curtain twitched. It looked perfectly normal, and by the time Tom came roaring down the street, she had convinced herself she was being ridiculous. She got out of the car again and went to meet him.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she began. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Then she pulled up short. Gone was the slick custom-made suit. Instead, a pair of well-worn jeans hung low off his hips and a soft white T-shirt clung to his chest. He had his shoulder holster on, which only highlighted his pecs all the more. Her mouth went dry as his long legs powerfully closed the distance between them.
