Bachelor Cop

She sat poised, waiting for him to say something, but for the life of Whit he couldn’t gather his thoughts. They’d gone woolly the moment she’d wandered in. She wore something peach colored, the skirt of which had slid a delectable inch or two up her leg, making Whit’s position center stage even more uncomfortable.

Concentrate on the kids, he told himself and forced his gaze back to his young listeners. Brody sat in the front row, anticipation written all over his face. Somehow that gave Whit focus, and he stumbled into a speech.

Jill watched Whit Tanner from her vantage point at the back of the room. If she thought he seemed a little nervous initially, he didn’t now as he spoke to the children in that low, rumbly voice of his. She leaned closer to catch its resonance, let it vibrate through her.

She’d never considered herself a sucker for a man in uniform before, but today had just made a liar out of her. Her gaze trailed down from the stiff, starched steel blue of his collar, across his shiny badge and crisp folds of his shirt to the straight-as-an-arrow stripe down the darker blue of his pant legs, then back up again.

Oh, yes…she had sucker written all over her.

And so did the admiring women next to her. She’d heard more than one feminine sigh from Brody’s teachers.

The man gave new meaning to the phrase, Kansas City’s finest.

Jill hadn’t been enthused about Brody inviting him to school for show-and-tell, but she’d given in to her son in the end. Now, she wasn’t so sure she should have. Whit Tanner made her feel all too much like a womana—a woman missing any semblance of good sense.

He turned the last of his talk into a question-andanswer time for the children. And Jill was sure every hand went up, each boy and girl wanting a part of him. Brody’s small hand was lost in the group, but still Whit gave him his chance at a query.

“Can you go get an ice cream with me and my mom after school?” he asked Whit.

Whit glanced to the back of the room just in time to see Brody’s embarrassed mother hide her face in her hands. When she drew her hands down to peer up at him over the tips of her fingers he gave her a small smile.

“He hasta go catch the bad guys—don’t you know anything?” the kid beside Brody said with a nudge to Brody’s rib cage.

“Yeah,” a few of the others said in a chorus.

Whit moved to save the situation. “In between catching bad guys I’ve been known to eat an ice cream or two,” he answered.

“Yeah!” Brody’s chest puffed up. “And lemonade, too.”

By now Jill had recovered her aplomb and was able to laugh at what the class had deteriorated into. The teachers were smiling, as well, but quickly moved to restore order and thank Officer Tanner for his time and his talk.

Jill wanted to thank him, too. And apologize for her son’s exuberant behavior. It seemed she was doing a lot of that lately.

She caught up with him outside the class. He looked every bit as if he’d been waiting for her, as he lounged against the wall in the hallway, one shoulder propped against it, arms and legs crossed casually.

“I didn’t think you’d be here today,” he said quietly.

She walked closer and stopped in front of him. “I promised Brody I’d come for his show-and-tell.”

“And take him for ice cream afterward…?”

She ducked her head, embarrassed again. “About that ice cream…I’m sure you have other things to do.”

Whit gazed at her. Why the hell didn’t he get out of here now? He’d done the show-and-tell thing as asked. It hadn’t killed him after all. He might have a few taunts to live down back at the station, but he could do that.

Why add trouble?

He wasn’t sure why, but it had to do with this woman. Perhaps if he hung around a bit, unraveled the mystery of the hold she had on him, he could put his thoughts of her behind him and get on with his life.

Jill tried to read his expression. He seemed to be warring with something deep inside. It made her curious. In fact, the man made her entirely too curious in entirely too many ways.

He levered away from the wall. “As it so happens, I don’t have anything to do,” he said. “And I happen to like ice cream.”

They were the last words they were able to share for a while as the class dismissed, and its small army of preschoolers swamped Officer Tanner. They each wanted to shake his hand, some wanted to touch his gun, and the big, macho cop, Jill quickly realized, Was out of his element.

His dark-eyed gaze sought hers over the tops of the kids’ heads, a plea for help if she’d ever seen one.

She gave him a slow, easy grin, and for a quick half moment, considered leaving him there to fight his own way out.

She didn’t recall the cop who’d given her that last traffic ticket taking pity on her.

But she knew she couldn’t do that.

Over a group of boys chorusing that they wanted to ride in a police car, she reached for his hand and gave a surreptitious nod toward a fire door down the hall.

Whit said a quick goodbye to the crowd, and they hurried toward the door, Brody following.

Jill was laughing outright when they’d safely reached the outside. “You haven’t had a lot of experience with kids, have you?” she said.

He frowned. “Zilch.”

“No nieces or nephews?”

“A pair of nieces—my sister’s kids. But they’re safely away in Minnesota.”

Jill caught the emphasis on safely. His interplay with Brody was apparently a rare occurrence, then, something totally alien to his nature. And he had been nervous standing in front of the class; she realized that now.

So why had he agreed to ice cream with her and Brody?

“How do you feel about Dairy Delight?” he asked the two of them when they reached the school’s circle drive where she’d left her car.

Brody exclaimed that not only was it his favorite, there was one near his house.

They made plans to meet there in a half hour.

Whit needed to run by the station and finish a quick report. And no doubt endure a bit of razzing about his afternoon at school, he was sure. But an afternoon at school had its own reward, he thought, as he watched Jill settle her son into a well-worn green station wagon.

He took a moment to enjoy. Just enjoy.

What was it the woman did to his senses? he wondered as he leaned back against the fender of the patrol car. And why did it scare him to death?

Just then the kids issuing from the front of the building spotted him and the car. “Oh, damn,” he muttered beneath his breath and prepared for a siege.

It had been a long time since Jill had primped for a man, and she wasn’t really primping now, she told herself as she ran a quick comb through her hair. She was merely freshening up after a long day at the shop, then a visit to Brody’s school.

So why was she changing earrings, putting on that new pair she knew bobbed enticingly at her ears? Why had she changed into a pair of jeans that cut off circulation to her legs and impaired her breathing?

Could it be that she wanted to impair the breathing of one certain sexy cop?

“Don’t answer that, Jill,” she said aloud.

“Mommy, we’re gonna be late. Hurreeee,” Brody said, jumping around in the hall outside her bedroom.

Jill put down the bottle of perfume she’d been about to spritz on herself. Her son had a way of adding reality to her life—and this was one of those times. She was a mother, and she didn’t need to be losing her head over some man, any man. Not without considering the consequences beforehand.

And she wasn’t sure she wanted to consider the consequences of losing her head over Whit Tanner.

“I’m ready if you are,” she told Brody.

The ice cream shop was a short walk from their house. Whit wasn’t there when they arrived, and for a quick moment she feared he might have decided against coming.

But not every man was like Michael, she tried to tell herself.

Besides, she’d seen him at school not forty minutes before. What could have happened in that length of time?

“Whit probably got detained at the station,” she said to her son. “Come on, let’s go find us a booth.”

“What’s d-de-tained?” Brody asked, sliding in ahead of her.

“Uh—that’s when something comes up that keeps you from being somewhere else.”

He pondered that for a moment. “Like when my daddy can’t take me to the park?”

Jill wasn’t sure how to answer that. Whatever else Michael Harper was, he was still Brody’s father. And though he wasn’t worth the effort, Jill steadfastly tried to preserve what image of the man she could. For Brody’s sake. Her own illusions of him had shattered long before.

“Not exactly, sweetie,” she said.

Fortunately she was saved from further explanation when Whit strode through the front door. Brody spotted him and let out a whoop of joy. Jill could have done the same, but held her own opinion of the man to herself, content instead to only take in the all-male look of him as he made his way toward them.