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He tasted like coffee.
He needed a shave.
And he had absolutely no business putting his tongue anywhere near her lips.
Faye registered all this in the brief, confused moments when Aleksy’s hard arm squeezed her shoulders and his mouth crushed hers. Wild heat bloomed in her chest and in her face. Indignation, she told herself. Had to be.
And then Aleksy released her and turned his careless, all-guys-together grin on Richard Freer.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” he said. “I’m Alex.”
“Dick Freer.”
They shook in a ritual less complicated but no less appraising than the high fives and hand signals of Lincoln High’s homeboys.
“Are you in town long?” Richard asked.
“As long as Faye will have me,” Aleksy said. And don’t you forget it, she thought, her lips still tingling from his kiss. “You?”
“I’m lucky enough to live here.” Richard straightened proudly against the plate-glass entrance. “This is my shop.”
“Guess you don’t get to travel a lot, then.”
Richard pulled in his jaw, creating an important-looking double chin. “Oh, I get around. Trade shows. Gun shows.”
Aleksy nodded. “Ever get down to Chicago?”
“Not often. Most of my business is selling shotguns and rifles to local sportsmen. And self-defense, of course.”
“What kind of self-defense are we talking about?”
“Whatever makes a man feel free and his family safe. Are you interested in guns, Alex?”
Faye wriggled out from under Aleksy’s arm. He was too close. This was too weird. And she wasn’t crazy about Dick Freer’s aggressive salesmanship, either.
Aleksy let her slide from under his elbow and then caught her fingers in his. “I could be,” he said.
Richard’s smile broadened. “Are you a gun owner?”
“Well, no. Not yet.”
Faye frowned. He was lying. Why was he lying? “We really need to go now.” Aleksy gave her a sharp look. She bit her lip. “Dear.”
He shrugged. “Okay, babe. Nice talking with you,” he said to Richard Freer.
“Come back and see me,” the dealer invited.
“Count on it,” Aleksy said.
Faye breathed a sigh of relief as they started down the sidewalk toward the tiny municipal parking lot. She caught a glimpse of their reflections in the window of the Silver Thimble—short, blond and flustered, barely keeping pace with tall, dark and annoyed—and was amazed that she’d stood up to him. But everything was all right now. In another minute she’d be in her car and going home. Alone.
“Do you mind telling me what the hell you were running away from back there?”
Indignation rendered her almost speechless. Almost. “Excuse me?”
“I wanted to talk with that guy.”
She dug in her canvas bag for her keys. “Why?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Exactly.” Her keys jangled in the bottom of the bag. “I don’t want to know. I can’t afford to get mixed up in whatever it is you’re doing.” Her hand closed on her keys but Aleksy was in her way, leaning against her door, arms folded indolently over his chest in this sort of macho slouch. Her pulse speeded up.
“I don’t want you kissing me, either,” she said.
“Fine.”
She searched his eyes. “I mean it.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not my type.”
She raised her chin. “Really.”
“Yeah.” He grinned crookedly. “So you can relax.”
“I am relaxed. Or I will be, as soon as you leave.”
He jerked his head toward the broken line of cars. “I’m parked here.”
She looked. He drove a TransAm: low-slung, high-geared, dark and dangerous looking. Unsafe at any speed, she thought, and shivered.
“Then you won’t need a ride,” she said.
He uncrossed his arms. “Careful, cream puff. You might hurt my feelings.”
“I’m not worried. I’m not your type, remember?”
“No, but you are tasty.”
Three months ago she would have known how to answer him. She was still searching for a response when he pushed off from her car and strolled over to his.
“See you at home,” he called. The TransAm started with a testosterone-spewing roar.
Faye yanked on her car door. “Not if I see you first,” she muttered.
Which wasn’t at all the kind of I’m-in-charge-class comeback she was looking for, but she was out of practice.
Faye stepped back and surveyed her morning’s effort. She had hoped maybe this time she had something special: a moody blend of light and dark, a study in atmosphere. Her photos spread sharp and bright across the table. Her open sketchbook captured the creamy hull and coral sky reflected in the shifting surface of the lake at dawn. But when she looked at her painting, she saw only a flattened boat on overworked water. Murky. Muddy. Muddled.
Crud.
It wouldn’t even make good sofa art.
Let your work express your feelings, she used to lecture her students. The gnawing dissatisfaction of the past few months developed new teeth. Maybe her feelings were the problem. Maybe instead of letting herself be stalled by her painting and stumped by Detective You-Don’t-Want-to-Know Denko and just generally frustrated, she should pick up the phone and check on Jamal.
Faye winced and rubbed her wrist. She’d been holding a brush too long.
Or maybe she’d simply had it with this particular piece of work.
She needed…inspiration. She stretched once to get the kinks out, slapped shut her sketchbook and shoved it into her bag. She would take a walk down by the lake and clear her head.
“You know, for an artist, you don’t seem to spend a lot of time painting,” Aleksy said.
Below him on the bank, knee deep in the green brush, Faye Harper froze like Bambi’s mother about to get shot. Her head turned slowly.
And then she spotted him, propped against a tree trunk with his fishing pole and field pack. Her wide brown eyes narrowed in annoyance. “For a detective, you don’t seem to spend a lot of time investigating.”
Ouch. Bambi’s mom was packing heat.
Despite his frustration, Aleksy grinned. “I hit a snag.”
She picked her way over roots and rocks toward him. “Fish not biting?”
“I didn’t expect them to. No self-respecting striper’s going to feed in the middle of the day.”
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“Surveillance,” he said briefly.
“What are you looking for?”
He shook his head. “You don’t—”
“—want to know,” she finished for him. “Thank you. Is it safe for me to sit down next to you?”
His grin broadened. “Be my guest.”
Her skirt billowed and collapsed around her. She wore sandals on her narrow feet and a scoop-necked T-shirt that revealed the slight upper slope of her chest. Her face was pink and moist and she smelled like heat and spring flowers.
Tasty, he thought.
But not on the menu. He wasn’t on vacation, whatever his lieutenant said. And a cream puff art teacher with baby-fine skin didn’t fit into his plans or his future.
“Did you want something?” he asked.
“Yes. No.” She rested her arms on her knees and her neckline gaped, revealing the white line of her bra. Oh, man. He had definitely been sleeping in his car too long, if a glimpse of ladies’ underwear made him hard.
“I hit a snag, too,” she said.
“What kind of snag?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
Probably not. He didn’t know squat about painting. But her automatic dismissal rankled.
“Try me,” he said, surprising them both.
He didn’t do intimacy. No way was he discussing art with a woman he wasn’t even trying to talk into bed.
“I’m not—I seem to be putting in a lot of effort without a lot of result,” Faye said.
Well, hey, okay. “I can relate there.”
She turned her head and looked at him. “Have you found…whatever it is you’re looking for yet?”
“Nope.”
“But you’re going to keep looking,” she guessed.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
Because he owed it to Karen. He owed it to himself.
“That’s my job,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you have help? I don’t know, but—a partner or something?”
His former partner was dead. Murdered. His current partner, Kenny Stivak, thought he ought to let the big boys handle the case. And Aleksy’s boss told him if he didn’t back off, he’d be busted down to directing Sunday traffic in the St. Wenceslaus parking lot.
“I don’t need help,” he said.
She sniffed. “That’s what my students say. Usually the ones who are most in danger of quitting. Or failing.”
“Well, I’m not going to quit and I can’t afford to fail, so you can save the lecture. Teacher.”
She flushed. She really had the damnedest skin, as fine and delicate as one of the teacups in his mother’s china cabinet. “I haven’t actually decided whether I’ll return to teaching next year.”
Now there was a surprise. “At Lincoln?”
She took a deep breath. “At all.”
Against his will, he felt the drag of interest. It wasn’t just that she was cute and he was bored. Faye Harper had…something, he decided. Smarts, maybe. Or guts.
Which made her comment about leaving teaching puzzling.
“How come?” he asked, figuring she’d say something about teacher burnout or the lousy pay or the school board cutting arts funding again.
