WELCOME TO TYLER. CHANGES ARE AFOOT...

Tyler’s got a new female police captain—and everybody’s talking!

Come on down to Marge’s and share the speculations of America’s favorite hometown.

SHE SEEMS TOUGH AS NAILS

When Tyler’s favorite son Brick Bauer loses a promotion to outsider Karen Keppler, no one is pleased—least of all Brick.

BUT THEY CALL HER “CAPTAIN CURVACEOUS”

Thoughts of his beautiful new boss, however, are soon keeping Brick awake nights.

Unfortunately, no-nonsense Captain Keppler has this rule about not dating subordinates....

Previously Published.

“Crawled into your office to hide, did you, Karen?”

He didn’t give her a chance to answer before he roared on. “Funny, I didn’t take you for a quitter. I thought you were the type to face things head-on!”

“Brick,” she pleaded, “please understand. This can’t continue. I need the respect of the community. The support of my men.”

Suddenly she felt two broad, male hands on her waist. “None of that’s going to keep you warm at night, Karen. None of it’s going to put out the fire burning deep inside you.”

Then his lips claimed hers. It took all her strength to wrench herself away.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said coldly, through her misery. “If you ever touch me like that again, Lieutenant Bauer, I will have your badge!”

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Mills & Boon’s Tyler, a small Wisconsin town whose citizens we hope you’ll soon come to know and love. Like many of the innovative publishing concepts Mills & Boon has launched over the years, the idea for the Tyler series originated in response to our readers’ preferences. Your enthusiasm for sequels and continuing characters within many of the Mills & Boon lines has prompted us to create a twelve-book series of individual romances whose characters’ lives inevitably intertwine.

Tyler faces many challenges typical of small towns, but the fabric of this fictional community will be torn by the revelation of a long-ago murder, the details of which will evolve right through the series.

Renovations are almost complete at the old Timberlake lodge. They’re gearing up for the Ingallses’ annual Christmas party, which hasn’t been held at Timberlake for decades! There’s a new owner now, a man with a personal interest in showing Tyler folks his financial clout and with a private objective in reclaiming the love of a town resident he romanced long ago.

Marge is waiting with some home-baked pie at her diner, and policeman Brick Bauer might direct you down Elm Street if it’s patriarch Judson Ingalls you’re after. Brick calls Kelsey’s boardinghouse home, and you’re always welcome there. In fact, new police captain Karen Keppler is about to move into Kelsey’s herself. So join us in Tyler, once a month for the next eight months, for a slice of small-town life that’s not as innocent or as quiet as you might expect, and for a sense of community that will capture your mind and your heart.

Marsha Zinberg

Editorial Coordinator, Tyler

Blazing Star
Suzanne Ellison

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Betty Cook, who’s always there to lend a hand

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Suzanne Ellison for her contribution to the Tyler series.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joanna Kosloff for her contribution to the concept for the Tyler series.

CONTENTS

Cover

Back Cover Text

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

BRICK BAUER PARKED his old black pickup outside the main gates to the Schmidt farm, then hurried up the long gravel walkway that led through the dark to the house. It was already after eight, and he hoped the chief’s retirement party would be in full swing by now—the bigger the crowd, the less conspicuous his token appearance was likely to be. A half hour or so ought to do it, just long enough to say hello to everybody who’d be sure to notice if he lacked the courage to show up here tonight. All week he’d felt like a bug in a specimen jar, and he had no intention of spending the next week the same way.

Since last Monday, Brick’s name had been on the lips of every housewife who had her hair done at Tisha Olsen’s Hair Affair, every cop who hung out at Marge’s Diner and every old codger who was living out his sunset years at Worthington House. Nobody had dared to spread rumors at the Kelsey Boardinghouse, but Brick figured that was because his Aunt Anna had threatened to take a spatula to the backside of any of his fellow boarders who so much as mentioned that he’d been passed over for promotion, let alone that a woman from the other end of Sugar Creek County was going to take the helm instead of him.

The worst of it was that Brick still wasn’t sure how it had happened. He’d been Chief Paul Schmidt’s right-hand man at the Tyler Police Department for the past six years, and back in college he’d been engaged to Paul’s daughter, who was supposed to be making one of her rare pilgrimages home for the party tonight. Granted, Brick and Shelley had parted painfully, but nobody could blame him for that. It wasn’t his fault that Shelley had decided being a big-city microbiologist suited her better than marriage to a hometown cop. She still hadn’t married; she claimed she never would.

Brick was single, too, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want a family. He just hadn’t found his lifetime mate yet. He’d actually grown a bit weary of searching, but his Aunt Anna still spent a good deal of her time trying to find him the perfect wife. Her latest candidate was the new boarder who was moving in tonight.

Aunt Anna and Uncle Johnny had zipped off to Milwaukee at the last minute to put their daughter Kathleen on a plane for Switzerland, conveniently leaving Brick as the resident family member to greet the newcomer anytime after nine. He wasn’t holding out any hopes that he’d want to get particularly chummy with the new boarder, but he was pleased that he had such a good excuse to leave the party early.

As he pocketed his key and marched up the gravel walkway, Brick spotted a pair of long, magnificent female legs moving at a good clip in front of him. At once he found himself checking out some impressive curves that not even the stylish wool coat could conceal. Brick knew every woman in the retiring police chief’s life—there weren’t many—but for a moment he had trouble placing this one. The confidence of that saucy walk made him question his own memory; besides, there was something different about the hair. Shelley always wore her hair long and loose, the way he liked it. Tonight it was wrapped in a classy chignon but it was still dark and thick and tempting. In fact, in the moonlight, it looked even more silky than Brick remembered it. Shelley looked more silky than he remembered her! Womanhood had been good to her. Not only did she move with more compelling grace than she used to, but she’d put on a little weight, too...in all the right places.

As Shelley approached the porch where they’d exchanged fervent kisses so many times, Brick felt an odd sense of déjà vu. Was it possible that he still had deep feelings for her? Was that why he’d never really found another woman to take her place? Was that why she looked so good to him—better than ever—after all this time?

As December’s first tiny snowflakes began to fall, Brick remembered how Shelley had looked the first time he’d kissed her snow-sprinkled nose, when she was nineteen. She’d giggled ever after when he’d called her Snowflake. Oh, it was all over and done, but he had special memories of those days. He imagined that Shelley might, too.

Suddenly Brick realized that he didn’t want to greet her for the first time in years under the gossip-mongering eyes of every busybody in Tyler. Whatever they had to say to each other should be said alone outside.

He jogged the last few yards between them, reaching Shelley just as she pushed open the chain-link gate at the edge of the porch. Because she seemed to be rushing, Brick reached out with a friendly arm to encircle her waist, about to say, “Hey, Snowflake, you never used to be in such a big hurry to go inside when I took you home.”

He got as far as “Hey, Snowflake” when the most amazing thing happened. Shelley grabbed his elbow, jammed her hip into his leg and flipped him straight up and over the gate. Twisting sideways as he struggled to find his feet, Brick came down hard on the protruding edge of the chain link. Raw steel ends clawed his jaw and shoulder, shredded his best suitcoat and bloodied a fair amount of skin before he hit the ground on his side. Gasping for breath, he rolled flat on his back before he caught a good look at his assailant’s face.

She wasn’t Shelley! In a dizzying rush Brick realized that this classy brunette was a total stranger. She was beautiful; she was curved in all the right places; she was pulling out a .38 Smith & Wesson from underneath the left side of her coat.

“Don’t move a millimeter,” she threatened in a dry tone that rivaled Dirty Harry’s. “Touch me again and you’re going to lose a vital portion of your anatomy.”

“Lady, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole!” Brick grumbled, realizing even in his confusion that fear, not malice, was the reason she’d reacted so violently to such a simple touch. This stunning female had clearly been trained in self-defense. She’d also lived with the threat of urban crime or else watched too many cop shows. He wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to make a citizen’s arrest for...well, for whatever it was she thought he’d tried to do to her.

“I’m a police officer and I thought you were an old friend,” Brick explained, too woozy to sort everything out. His voice sounded odd and hollow. “Sorry if I frightened you. Now may I get off the ground?”

To his surprise, the woman did not immediately accept his explanation. She didn’t even look embarrassed. In fact, on closer examination, he decided that her beautiful gray eyes looked more fierce than frightened. Sternly she ordered, “Show me your police ID. Slowly.”

Brick was too angry to be scared, but he didn’t like the way she kept that gun trained on him. “Good God, you could shoot somebody with that thing, lady.” He dug out his ID and pushed it a few inches toward her. “Do you have a permit for that piece?” He didn’t ask her if she knew how to use it; it was obvious she knew all too well.

She barely glanced at his identification, unreadable in the darkness, before she barked, “What’s your badge number?”

Not his name, his badge number. A curiously eerie feeling, worse than the pain now coursing through his back, began to steal over Brick. How many women were so well versed in self-defense, handled a side arm like a pro and instinctively asked a question like that? Now that he was getting a grip on his equilibrium, he realized what all the signs pointed to.

His assailant was a cop.

She was also a rare beauty; she bore no resemblance to the woman who’d gotten his former partner killed. This lady wasn’t a tiny thing, but she wasn’t a husky bruiser, either. She looked to be five foot nine or ten, sturdy but slender, with high, sculpted cheekbones and infuriatingly well-curved lips. Even in his current situation, Brick found her femininity hard to ignore. He didn’t want to think about the effect she’d have on him if she ever traded in that scowl for a dazzling smile. Brick told her his number, then added darkly, “Lieutenant Donald Bauer, Tyler Police Department. Go ask my chief. He’s inside.”

“Lieutenant Bauer,” the husky voice countered, “Chief Paul Schmidt is now retired and the Tyler Police Department he ran for seventeen years no longer exists. You now represent the Sugar Creek County Sheriff’s Department. Archibald Harmon is your regional commander and Captain Karen Keppler is taking charge of the Tyler substation.” She sheathed the gun in a shoulder holster he hadn’t noticed underneath the thick coat. “Commit that information to memory, Lieutenant. You may be called upon to use it again.”

That was when he knew for sure. Brick felt his face flushing a furious red in the darkness, grateful she couldn’t see it but certain that she knew his face was hot. He was not a man who easily embarrassed, but he knew that only a miracle would save him from the whole damn town’s discovery of his humiliation.

It was bad enough that the brunette was a strikingly beautiful woman who’d gotten the better of him. Under any circumstances, Brick would have hated lying here on the ground, dizzy and wounded, with a looker like that leaning over him. Knowing that she was the one who’d hurt him, knowing that she was his new boss, knowing that she had stolen the job that was rightfully his and would lord it over him—lady it over him!—as long as she lasted in Tyler...it was just too damn much.

Incredibly, the brunette had the unmitigated gall to offer a hand to help him up. Brick ignored it. Still steaming, he struggled to stand up on his own, but when his wobbly knees gave out he plopped back down on the ground.

“I’m Captain Keppler, Lieutenant,” the beauty informed Brick, still towering over him. “Sorry about the misunderstanding. Are you injured?”

Brick tried to swallow his fury as the front door opened and he heard Paul Schmidt call out, “We thought we heard somebody out here. Glad you found the place all right, Captain.” Then, after a sharp breath, “What the devil—”

“Lieutenant Bauer had a little accident,” his new captain said bluntly, her husky voice devoid of humor or concern. “He’s bleeding.”

The next few minutes were a nightmare for Brick. Paul instantly called out, “Somebody get George Phelps out here!” and rushed over to his side. “Brick, what happened? Are you all right?”

Brick had to steady himself on the gate as he tried—and failed again—to stand. His spine felt battered and his scraped jaw stung. Blood dribbled down his chin to the gravel.

By this time half a dozen people had bounded out of the house. Through the din of worried friends and co-workers, he recognized a few voices: Judson Ingalls’s, Janice Eber’s, and—it was inevitable—Shelley’s.

She sounded just the way she used to when he’d gotten hurt playing football. “Brick! Oh, Brick! You’re bleeding! Let George take a look at you and—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” he burst out, ready to strangle the whole lot of them. He was fully upright now and his head was finally clear. “I’m fine, my suit’s a wreck and Aunt Anna wants me to meet some damn boarder at home by nine o’clock. I just dropped by to say hello to Shelley, goodbye to the chief and to meet Captain Keppler. I guess I’ve done all three, so if you don’t mind—”

“It won’t seem right without you here, Brick,” protested Zachary Phelps, a former chief of police, a fellow Kelseys’ boarder and a member of the town’s council. The tone of his voice said more than his words: Zachary was still feeling guilty for having voted to merge the Tyler Police Department with the Sugar Creek County Sheriff’s Department, even though he’d explained to Brick in detail why the town’s financial situation demanded it. Brick was certain that neither Zachary nor anybody else on the council had ever believed that the regional commander would bring in outside talent to run Tyler’s law enforcement in the wake of Paul Schmidt’s retirement. As Zachary studied Karen Keppler in the dim porch light, Brick read the same dismay on the old man’s face as he was sure Zachary read on his own.

“Brick, I thought we’d have a chance to talk,” Shelley said quietly, so quietly that probably no one but the nearby captain could hear. “I haven’t seen you in years.”

Brick gave his old flame a quick glance, trying to remember why he’d wondered if some seed of love for her still lingered within him. Oh, she was still pretty...though she’d cut her long, black hair. But she was a stranger, a woman who’d chosen the big city and the scientific world over anything Brick could offer, and he knew that his earlier momentary fantasy had had nothing to do with her.

Kindly he said, “I’ll call you, Shelley. Maybe we can have lunch sometime before you go.”

He saw something different in the eyes of Captain Keppler, who still stood tensely in front of him. Calculation, assessment...disapproval that did not bode well for a police officer under her command.

By this time George Phelps, head of staff at Tyler General Hospital and Aunt Anna’s boss, had pushed his way through the gathering crowd. “Everybody get back!” George commanded, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

They did pull back, but they didn’t disperse. Impatiently Brick snapped, “There’s nothing wrong with me a dab of Bactine won’t cure, George. If you want to help, just get all these folks to stop gawking at me, would you?”

George seemed to get the picture faster than anybody else. Then again, he was a doctor, and he knew when blood was serious and when it was just as embarrassing as hell.

His eyes were sympathetic as he called out, “Okay, everybody, Brick’s fine. Let’s go back inside.”

Before Brick could thank him, Captain Keppler asked in a businesslike tone, “Are you feeling strong enough to drive, Lieutenant? I can ask one of the other officers to take you home.”

“I can take care of myself, Captain,” he snapped. If she’d been a man, he would have been hard-pressed to keep from decking her. But he’d been raised to be gentle with women; he’d been raised to obey his boss. Still, he wasn’t used to the raging fury that was strangling him at the moment. It was something new and terrible, a beast he knew he must learn to subdue. A beast that drove from his heart the slightest interest in getting reacquainted with Shelley, lauding his old boss or kissing up to his new one.

Reluctantly Shelley said good-night, then turned back to the house. Her father shooed a couple of other men after her. Captain Keppler, rebuttoning her coat, had the nerve to look downright pretty as she brushed past Brick without another word and followed them inside.

While the sounds of laughter from the house drifted out to his still-red ears, Brick limped out to his truck. On the street he ran into two more late arrivals from the substation—Sergeant Steve Fletcher and tubby Orson Clayton—but he ducked into his truck before they could see that he’d been roughed up. Tomorrow would be soon enough for them to start their ribbing.

By the time he turned on the ignition, the scrapes on Brick’s jaw were beginning to clot over, but his backbone was hurting worse than ever. He’d broken up barroom brawls with less pain and certainly less humiliation! By morning every damn soul in Tyler would know how Brick Bauer had been bested by the new female captain who’d been hired instead of him. The gouges on his face would heal a lot sooner than the scars on his pride.

* * *

KAREN STAYED at the party longer than she’d intended, not because she was enjoying herself—she wasn’t—and not because she thought courtesy demanded it. It was Paul Schmidt’s moment of honor, which in a town this size meant that most of his fans and foes were likely to make an appearance. Karen wanted to study those people with great care...particularly the ones who’d been an important part of Schmidt’s life for the past forty years or so.

At the top of the list was Judson Ingalls. Everybody kowtowed to him as though he owned the town. Ditto for his elegant blond daughter, Alyssa Ingalls Baron. Ingalls also had a niece named Janice Eber, who seemed sweet and unassuming, but Karen wasn’t taking anything at face value. The doctor was a Tyler fixture, as was the lady who owned the diner and the flamboyant one who cut everybody’s hair.

And then there were the other cops. Lieutenant Bauer—why did they call him Brick?—had only lived here since high school, according to Karen’s information, but his relatives had lived here for generations, and that might be highly significant. Both Alyssa and Janice were Bauer’s aunt’s close friends. The fact that he had some sort of relationship with Schmidt’s daughter might also prove important, and not just because it had provided the catalyst for his unfortunate first meeting with Karen.

If only that handsome man had been able to read her mind! If only he’d guessed how terrible she felt about embarrassing him, how frightened she’d been by the way he’d lunged at her, how his virility had unnerved her even after he’d quelled her fear by revealing that he was a cop! She’d done everything in her power to fool him with her tough-as-leather facade, and she hoped she’d succeeded. She would need a full set of armor to run the Tyler substation—not to mention carry out Commander Harmon’s secret assignment.

Everything Karen had heard about Brick Bauer—and everything she’d read in his file—caused her to believe that he was a man of powerful convictions, keen loyalties and devoted to his fellow police officers. Under some other circumstances, Karen would have looked forward to working with such a man. Commander Harmon had given her the impression that he truly hoped she wouldn’t find any black marks on Bauer’s record—he’d even confessed that he still had high hopes for the lieutenant’s career. But Harmon was a diligent cop, if a chauvinistic one, and he had a reputation as a man who upheld the letter of the law no matter who got in the way.

Karen had glowed when he told her that she’d earned the same reputation since she’d moved from Milwaukee to Sugar Creek.

Living under the same roof with Bauer would certainly make it easier to ascertain which hometown loyalties bound him, but after their inauspicious meeting, Karen knew that their domestic situation was going to be a strain on both of them. The knowledge did not dishearten her. She’d devoted her life to the badge and she had police work in her blood. From birth her father had urged her, “Make your old man proud,” and she’d devoted her life to that goal. His death in the line of duty had only strengthened her determination.

Karen’s courage, however, did little to squelch the butterflies in her stomach as she rang the doorbell of Kelsey Boardinghouse, a beacon of cheery light in December’s nighttime gloom. The wreath-bedecked door swung open on the first ring, which surprised Karen. The sight of the man who opened it surprised her, too.

He was wearing low-slung jeans, thick socks without shoes and a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt. Droplets of water clung to his freshly washed short black hair; droplets of blood oozed from three deep gouges on his face. His blue eyes sparkled with fun and his square jaw was softened by deep dimples when he smiled. It was the sort of smile that could make a woman forget everything else in the world.

Karen found herself wrestling with her memory.

“Hi, there! I’m Brick Bauer, Anna Kelsey’s nephew,” he greeted her cheerfully, reaching for the suitcase in her hand. “She asked me to roll out the red carpet and give you the grand tour. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

Karen stared at him, wondering if Bauer had dual personalities. What a joy to find him so forgiving, so friendly, so...so damn male. With a jolt she realized that the man’s dimpled smile was triggering an unexpected female response within her, one she ignored a good deal of the time and always suppressed with policemen. Karen had an uneasy hunch that she was safer with this man when he was angry, but it seemed cowardly to go out of her way to make him mad.

As it turned out, such subterfuge was totally unnecessary. The instant she stepped into the lighted hallway, the smile vanished from Brick Bauer’s face. A shell-shocked look stilled the magic in his dancing eyes.

“Your aunt’s directions were quite clear, Lieutenant,” Karen said neutrally, firmly holding the suitcase handle. “I can carry my own things, thank you.”

Karen wasn’t sure why it hurt her to see Bauer change so drastically before her eyes. She didn’t know this man and couldn’t afford to like him. But she’d been spellbound by his delightful greeting when he’d assumed she was an utter stranger; now he was smoldering because he realized they’d met before.

“Captain Keppler?” His tightly controlled tone could not conceal the fury that now raged in his eyes. “My aunt didn’t mention her new lodger’s name. I didn’t realize that the new police captain would be—”

“Invading your home?”

His lips tightened at her bluntness. Karen almost regretted the hard words, but she knew that surprise and anger often drove people to reveal things they’d normally keep well hidden. If Bauer had any secrets, she wanted to find them out for Commander Harmon right away. She also wanted to clear the air about their respective positions. Sooner or later, they were likely to have it out over the way she’d been brought in to take the job he’d expected. Better to do it in private than in front of the men. They’d all be on his side. One to one, she had a better chance of victory.

“Captain Keppler, you are free to live wherever you like. I was just...startled to realize you were the new boarder. My information was incomplete.”

He said the words like a police detective who knew his stuff. Karen wondered how he’d managed to uncover so little in his investigation of the body found at the old Timberlake Lodge, recently purchased by Edward Wocheck.

So did Commander Harmon.

“I don’t like to advertise my private life, Lieutenant,” Karen told him. She didn’t need to add the obvious: she’d deliberately avoided revealing the nature of her job to chatty Anna Kelsey when they’d made arrangements on the phone. “I don’t have much off-duty time, but when I do, I want it to be all mine.”

“I feel the same way.”

“Good,” she said stoutly. “Then we have something in common.”

Bauer glanced away. He was fuming, she was certain, but trying to show respect. Karen had to admire him for it—even more than she had to admire his massive shoulders. Still, she couldn’t afford to let his hidden anger smolder.

“We have something else in common, Lieutenant. We both wanted the job I came here to do.”

His harsh gaze swung back on her. “Captain, I’m doing my damnedest to be courteous to you. Why the hell are you baiting me?”

“I don’t want you sandbagging me when we’re on the job, Lieutenant Bauer,” she told him truthfully. “I came here to run the Tyler substation to the best of my ability, and I’ll do it—with or without you. But as long as you remain here, we’ll have to work closely together. If you’ve got something to get off your chest, I’d rather deal with it right now.”

When he stared at her for a long, bitter moment, Karen had a sense of what it would be like to be a criminal collared by this man. He was a good six feet tall, his body a solid wall of muscle that looked as if he maintained it at a gym. Karen was used to dealing with all kinds of criminals. She was rarely intimidated just by a man’s physical strength, but this big guy had her struggling to keep her breathing even. She knew he would not be easy to control, physically or mentally. She’d flipped him over that fence only because he’d been oblivious to danger. She knew she’d never take him off guard again.

With slow, measured anger, he shut the door behind her. “On behalf of my aunt and uncle, welcome to Kelsey Boardinghouse, Captain Keppler,” he said as tonelessly as a robot repeating a coded message. Coldly he turned away from the door and began to head toward the back of the house, speaking as she followed. “Breakfast is served at seven o’clock. Dinner is served at six. There’s a refrigerator and a microwave you can use yourself as long as you clean up. The living room is for everyone. So is the phone. The den is my aunt and uncle’s private space. Only the family goes in there.”

He started climbing the back stairs, two at a time, and Karen found it hard to keep up with his long, angry stride while dragging the heavy suitcase she’d refused to let him carry. He took half a dozen steps down the hall, then dug into his pocket. “This is the key to the front door. This is the key to your room.” He dropped the keys in her palm, being careful not to touch her skin. Then he opened the door to her room and gestured for her to go inside.

With relief, Karen saw that the room was well-kept and charming. On the old four-poster lay a quilt, hand-pieced in yellows and blues. It matched the curtains. There was a small desk and a tallboy chest of Early American style. A chestnut-and-rust braided rug covered most of the shiny hardwood floor.

Before Karen could comment on the welcoming vase of flowers and the note she spotted on the nightstand, Brick marched over to the far door and pulled it open, revealing an equally quaint bathroom. “This is the bath. You share it with the lodger on the other side.” He opened the far door a crack as if to illustrate his point, but Karen couldn’t see much of the other bedroom.

When he took a stiff step and grimaced, Karen felt a sharp need to offer another apology. It was obvious that his scrapes and bruises were bothering him. As the secret investigator who might bring about his downfall, she couldn’t afford to show much mercy, but as a human being who prided herself on her quiet compassion and tact, Karen found it hard to keep from showing concern.

“Any questions?” he asked brusquely, interrupting her thoughts.

Will you always hate me? Will all the other Tyler cops hate me, too? Will I ever see those incredible dimples again?

Aloud she said, “No, Lieutenant. Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night,” he said stiffly, his cautious movements revealing his pain as he edged through the far bathroom door.

It took Karen a moment to realize the significance of that simple act. He’s the boarder who lives next to me! she realized in dismay. We’ll be sharing meals and the same bath.

As she juggled the memory of his anger with the realization that such proximity would make it easier to uncover Bauer’s secrets for Harmon, Karen closed the door between her room and the bath, locked it carefully, then read the note beside her bed. It started personally:

Dear Karen,

I’m so sorry we were called away tonight, but we’ll be back in the morning to fix you up with anything you need. In the meantime, you can count on my nephew to make you snug as a bug in a rug.

Isn’t he adorable? He’s Tyler’s finest police officer and single, too. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted. We’re so glad to have you with us. Just make yourself at home!

Anna Kelsey

Karen fought back a lump in her throat. Mrs. Kelsey would never know how much it meant to her to know that one person in Tyler actually welcomed her. The officers she’d met at the Schmidts’ had made it clear enough that they’d all been hoping Brick Bauer would be their new captain. And Bauer himself—why the hell did he have to be so handsome, why the hell had he greeted her with that dimpled smile at the door?—was probably already making devious tactical plans to oust her.

Wearily she began unpacking all she’d need for the first few days: her uniforms, a warm robe, jeans, sweatshirts and sturdy barrettes to clip her waist-length braid flat against her head whenever she was on duty. At the bottom of the suitcase Karen found the one sentimental item that followed her everywhere: a framed eight-by-ten glossy of her father in uniform, taken shortly before his death. He was smiling, as he’d so often smiled in life, and she felt his faith in his only child buoy her now.

“I’ll do it, Daddy,” she vowed softly. “I’m going to make you proud.”

She touched his beloved face through the cold glass, then placed the frame on top of the desk, took her gun out of its holster and laid it on the nightstand near the flowers. Quickly she took down her hair, shed her heels and peeled off her panty hose. She was standing in her bare feet, still wearing her slinky black dress and empty shoulder holster, when she heard a knock on the adjoining bathroom door a moment later.

“Yes?” she asked as she opened it uneasily. Karen wasn’t used to such domestic proximity with a handsome hostile stranger. Maybe he’s come to clear the air, she told herself hopefully.

Belatedly Karen realized that she truly didn’t want to go to bed in a strange place with her housemate and second in command furious with her, whether he was guilty of a cover-up or not. There was a fifty-fifty chance this man was innocent of any wrongdoing, and besides, a skilled police officer ought to be able to maintain civil relations with another cop without divulging any secrets. Surely she’d displayed enough strength for one night! Now maybe she could set things right.

But the minute she found herself face-to-face with that square, bloody jaw and those blue eyes dark with rage, Karen knew it was way too late for reconciliation.

“Captain Keppler, there’s something I think you should understand,” Bauer stated baldly, his great size seeming to fill the room. “I’m damn proud to be a Tyler cop, and that’s never going to change. If you can’t stand to work with me—” his tone grew nearly feral “—you’re the one who’ll have to move on.”

CHAPTER TWO

BRICK REACHED the station house early the next morning eager to arrive before Captain Curvaceous started turning his life upside down. Actually, she’d already done that, he mused darkly as he recalled the painful dawn battle between his razor and his half-scabbed face. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Karen Keppler while he’d limped down to the basement and done a very cautious workout in a futile effort to limber up his battered back. Brick would have preferred to present himself to a new boss feeling his best, but the Keppler woman’s acrobatic tricks had already nixed that.

He didn’t think she’d last too long, but he knew she’d keep him on his toes until she threw in the towel. Last night’s sparring had told him that his nemesis was tougher than he’d expected the new female captain to be. But a woman cop was still a woman cop, which meant she was weak, unpredictable and not to be trusted.

Brick did not consider himself a raging chauvinist. In fact, he generally liked matching wits with women and found them to be as bright and capable as men in most professions. He didn’t even mind female dispatchers and file clerks in prisons and police stations. His objection was to women serving on patrol with male partners whose lives depended on them.

Partners whose lives were lost because of them.

In Brick’s view, putting a female in charge of a group of fighting men—and what was a police squad but a military unit?—bordered on ludicrous. And hiring one from another substation to replace the man who’d been groomed for the position for years was just plain insane.

It was also troubling, because Brick knew that Commander Harmon felt much the same way he did about women in uniform. In fact, a year ago Paul Schmidt had confided that whether Tyler became a county substation or not, Brick was a shoo-in for the captain’s job. Last week Brick had asked Paul straight out what had happened, and Paul had looked him in the eye and said he didn’t know.

Brick didn’t know, either, but now that he’d taken stock of Karen Keppler’s physical attributes, he didn’t think it was going to take too long to find out. The only question was what bigwig she was cozy with...and whether he’d used blackmail or favors owed to put pressure on the commander or somebody up the line.

When Brick arrived at the station at 7:23, a full half hour before his shift began, he was surprised to find one of Tyler’s dispatchers, Cindy Lou, cowering by the police radio. The young blonde looked a bit bedraggled this morning. She could have been sick—this time of year there were a fair number of colds and sore throats going around—but illness wouldn’t account for her hangdog expression.

“What’s wrong, Cin?” he asked, taken aback by her uncharacteristic sobriety.

“I was over getting a cup of coffee when Clayton and Franklin called in,” she told him miserably, not even meeting his eyes. “It was just a doughnut stop, so I went ahead and put a spoonful of creamer in my cup before I came back over here and called back. By that time she had grabbed the mike and barked out a bunch of numbers I didn’t understand. She told me never to leave my post unless there was somebody else to cover me. Then she marched in there and slammed the door.”

Cindy Lou pointed to Paul Schmidt’s office, a place that Brick had once considered a source of warmth and strength. Now it was inhabited by a virago.

“I’ll talk to her, Cindy,” he volunteered. Serving as a liaison between the boss and the underlings had always been part of his job, but it hadn’t been all that taxing while Paul was in charge. “She’s new here and a bit high-strung. After a while she’ll figure out the way we do things in Tyler.”

Cindy Lou, who’d once set her cap for Brick but had recently resigned herself to being a good friend, smiled her gratitude. “Thanks, Brick. I don’t know what we’d do without you here. It’s so unfair that you—”

“I know. Let’s not talk about it, okay?” Before she could answer, he asked, “When did she get here?”

“About five. I was so shocked! Paul never came in until after daylight, and even you don’t show up that early!”

“Don’t ask me to understand the workings of that woman’s mind,” Brick replied darkly. “I think Captain Curvaceous attended police academy on some other planet.”

When Cindy Lou glanced up at Brick, giggling at the nickname he’d coined, her glance fell on his jaw for the first time. “Good heavens, Brick! What happened to you? I thought you were off duty last night.”

He was trying to think of a way to avoid confessing the humiliating truth when he heard the captain’s office door swing open.

To Brick’s dismay, that damned Keppler woman looked every bit as striking in a black uniform as she did dressed for a party. Her braided hair looked more prosaic than it did in a chignon, but somehow the stern image flattered her striking features.

“Bauer, glad you’re here,” the new boss briskly called out to him from across the room. “We’ve got a lot to cover this morning before roll call.”

“Roll call?” he echoed. With all of six men on each shift, it seemed like a ridiculous formality. “We, uh, don’t do roll call here.”

Karen Keppler straightened then, looking ominous in her uniform as she took a step toward him.

“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant. I believe I heard you say something like ‘we don’t do roll call here.”’

Reluctantly Brick nodded, trying to stifle a new wave of resentment. He was uncomfortably aware that the door behind him had just opened and several day-shift guys had just wisecracked their way into the room. “That’s what I said, Captain Keppler. Paul always—”

“Lieutenant, I am not interested in the sections of the county code violated by my predecessor unless they are serious enough for prosecution,” she cut in, her gray eyes showing all the warmth of a glacier. “I am interested in instituting proper police procedures in accordance with the newly revised manual. I did not devote most of a year of my off-duty time to updating this edition in order to have it ignored by the men under my command. Is that clear?”

During this unexpected speech, Clayton and Franklin had joined the day-shift fellows, gaping wordlessly as the new boss tongue-lashed the man they all considered their true leader. Brick couldn’t say that Paul had never chewed out a man in public, but he’d only done it when the man had failed to respond to more subtle direction.

Not once, not ever, had he done it to Brick.

With all the strength he could muster, he refrained from cutting Karen Keppler down to size. “I’m sure that Tyler’s officers will follow whatever regulations are important to you, Captain,” he reported stiffly. “I merely meant to explain that they had not been willfully violating any county requirements. Paul simply had a different way—”

“I am not interested in former Chief Schmidt’s ways, nor in his shockingly unprofessional habits,” the captain interrupted, ignoring the communal gasp of dismay from the men behind Brick. “From now on you will refer to him by his proper name, and you will address me by my proper rank.” Her tone was so sharp it almost left nicks on Brick’s still-bloodied face. “Do we understand each other, Lieutenant?”

Brick had not expected to like Karen Keppler. He had not expected to enjoy serving under her command. Last night he’d realized he would have to swallow a great deal of pride to tolerate being her subordinate, but it was not until this moment that he realized how seriously this woman was going to color his world. She’d stolen his promotion; she’d invaded his home. Brick was sworn by duty to uphold her orders and demand loyalty to her from his men.

But no duty could keep him from wanting to throttle her at this moment. And no badge would keep him from calling a spade a spade if she ever dressed him down in public again.

* * *

“SO HOW DID your first day of work go?” Anna Kelsey cheerfully asked Karen as her new boarder sat down to dinner. She was such a pretty girl, even if she was a bit sparing with her sweet smile. “You should have told me you were going to be the new police captain. I hear you took my favorite nephew by surprise.” Actually, she’d heard the story of Brick’s real surprise—being flipped on his backside by his new boss—from no fewer than six different people today. Dr. George Phelps, Anna’s boss, had told her the tale firsthand.

Karen took her napkin off the table and laid it carefully across her lap. “Well, it’s a small town, Mrs. Kelsey—”

“Anna, dear. Only strangers call me Mrs. Kelsey.”

Karen’s smile was genuine but strained. “Until I have time to buy my own place, Anna, I’m bound to brush elbows with some of my men.”

Anna tried to swallow a chuckle as she pondered other possible interpretations of that phrase, but red-haired Tisha Olsen, never one to pull her punches, laughed outright.

“It’s a worthy goal for most girls your age, honey,” the eccentric hairdresser teased with a good-natured grin. “With all the fine boys on our force, I imagine you’ll find yourself a man in no time.”

Anna was surprised to see Karen color; she knew Tisha had meant no harm. Still, it wouldn’t be easy for any woman of Tisha’s generation to understand why the girl wanted to be a police captain. Tisha had certainly never understood why Anna’s future daughter-in-law, Pam, wanted to be a football coach. Anna didn’t really understand it, either, but if it was what Pam wanted, she wanted it for Pam, and if Karen wanted to take her job seriously, then so should everybody else at Kelsey’s. Granted, it was a bit hard for Anna to feel happy about anybody taking the job Brick had wanted for himself, but it wasn’t Karen’s fault she’d been appointed.

“A pretty girl like Karen could get married anytime she wanted to,” Anna pointed out cheerfully. “She’s just got more important things to do right now. Isn’t that right, Karen?”

Karen flashed Anna a grateful look. “That’s about the size of it. My job is my life. I can’t imagine that any man would put up with it.”

“Brick’s the same way,” Johnny added laconically. After thirty-five years of marriage, little that her stalwart husband said took Anna by surprise. Despite his apparent indifference to the conversation, she knew he was trying to bolster the new young boarder in his own quiet way. “There’s something about being a cop, he always says. It’s not a job, it’s a way of life. From the time he was a little boy, it’s all Brick ever wanted to be.”

“I thought he wanted to be a football player,” Tisha countered, reaching for another poppy-seed roll. “Isn’t that how he got his nickname?”

Anna watched Karen carefully. Yes, her eyebrows did rise a trifle. She was a bit interested in Brick’s personal life!

“He was a wonderful guard,” Anna explained with renewed enthusiasm after she’d recapped the story of his childhood for Karen. After all, shouldn’t the girl know that Brick had lived with his aunt and uncle since his father died when he was fifteen? Shouldn’t she know that his mother had died when he was ten? “One night he stopped the Belton team practically all by himself. The sports reporter said they’d have had the same luck trying to score through a brick wall. Our boy, Patrick, started calling him Brick the next day. It caught on, and we’ve been calling him that ever since.”

“Except for your mother,” Johnny corrected her. “She’s the only one I know who still calls him Donald.”

“Well, Martha’s a bit long in the tooth to start changing her ways,” Tisha replied with a chuckle. She served herself some meat loaf and passed the serving dish to Karen. “I keep hoping she’ll match up with some friendly old codger at Worthington House, but she seems content to sit and sew.”

“She quilts,” explained Anna, who didn’t like to think of her darling, bright-eyed mother as growing old. “She belongs to a group of ladies who get together and piece quilts the old-fashioned way. They made a lovely one for Phil when he hurt his hip— Oh, you don’t know Phil, do you, Karen?”

Karen was eating carefully now, but her pretty gray eyes reflected interest as she shook her head.

“Phil is another of our lodgers. He’s a retired gardener. Used to work for the Ingallses. Have you met Judson Ingalls?”

“Briefly, at Paul Schmidt’s party.”

Johnny snorted. “You probably met his daughter, Alyssa, too. She never misses an opportunity to make a public appearance.”

Anna hoped that Karen hadn’t heard the bitterness underlying his neutral tone. Years ago, Alyssa had spurned Johnny’s best friend, Eddie Wocheck, and as a result, Eddie had left town. The fact that he’d recently returned to visit, rolling in money and justifiably proud of his accomplishments, had not changed Johnny’s feelings toward the woman who’d broken Eddie’s heart. But because Alyssa was one of Anna’s best friends, he tried to keep those feelings to himself.

Anna pressed on with her story. “Well, Phil’s lived with us for years—was our first boarder—and he’s only been at Worthington House—that’s our local convalescent home—since he slipped and broke his hip. He’ll be back soon, God willing. He’s the dearest old man...”

She stopped as Johnny interrupted with a comment of his own. “Honey, I forgot to tell you that Eddie’s going to use Phil’s room.”

“Oh? He’s back in town?” To Karen, she said, “Eddie grew up in Tyler but he’s been gone a long time. Recently he bought Timberlake Lodge from Judson Ingalls, and he’s going to add a wing to create a resort out there. He drops by every now and then—”

“What I meant was, he’s coming back to stay. Until things get under way at the lodge, at least. I told him he could stay in Phil’s room until Phil’s ready to come back.”

Tisha smiled, clearly enjoying the Kelseys’ attempts to educate their boarder about the town. “Phil is Eddie’s daddy, Karen, and Anna and Johnny forgot to tell you that their daughter Kathleen lives here, too, when she’s not gallivanting off to Switzerland for the winter. You ought to take notes. You might forget some of this, and you cops need to keep track of local gossip to solve your cases, don’t you? Would you like to wiretap my shop?”

Karen smiled warily, so warily that Anna wondered if she’d already figured out that Tisha deliberately tossed off outrageous comments to help maintain her flamboyant image. Karen had chosen a tough career, so she must be a pretty tough person. But Anna suspected that she’d had a hard first day at work, and tonight she needed warmth and support from her fellow boarders. Tisha often showed her affection for people by teasing, but Anna didn’t think Karen was in the mood to be teased. “You were about to tell us how things went today,” she tried again.

Karen met her eyes gratefully. “Well, it was...exciting, Mrs. Kel—Anna. Demanding. Different from...just being a regular cop.”

“Honey, are you telling us it isn’t exciting to be a regular cop? Why, I can’t tell you the number of nights we’ve sat here and listened to Brick tell us how satisfying it is to—” Tisha broke off and turned to Anna. “Where is Brick, anyway? He loves meat loaf. Didn’t I hear him ask the cook to make it tonight?”

Now Anna flushed. This morning Brick had asked for meat loaf, but he’d called an hour ago and told her he’d be coming home late because he was helping Patrick fix Pam’s carburetor after work. But Anna wasn’t fooled for an instant. It was far too cold to fuss with a car outside after dark at this time of year. It bothered Anna that she’d heard a tension in Brick’s voice that hadn’t been there since Shelley Schmidt had dumped him.

As she glanced at Karen, she realized there was only one recent change in Brick’s life: Karen Keppler. Despite the incident at Paul Schmidt’s party, she still had hopes for the two of them. After all, what woman could understand her nephew’s commitment to law enforcement better than another cop? Besides, Brick was such a sweet boy, so kind and loving, so much fun! He didn’t blow up often, and when he did, he was always quick to apologize. He wasn’t one to hold a grudge.

Anna wondered if the same was true of Karen.

“Brick’s busy tonight,” she explained. “I’ll save him some leftovers. And Zachary’s having dinner with Judson.”

Anna caught a glimpse of interest in Karen’s eyes as she listened to the news, and she hoped that Brick would come back before Karen finished eating. When she saw the two of them together she’d have a lot better sense of how they were really getting along.

Johnny asked another polite question about police work, and Karen was quick to answer it. Overall, she seemed happy to talk about her new job—in general, upbeat terms—but there was a tension in her that revealed to Anna that things were not going as well as she’d hoped. Karen praised Anna’s cooking and did her best to listen courteously to Tisha’s exuberant suggestions for styling her long black hair, but Anna had the feeling that this bright and cheery dinner was the highlight of Karen’s first day on the job. Loneliness would be her only ally once she retreated to her room.

Anna dragged out the dinner conversation as long as she could, urging Karen to have seconds of the chocolate cheesecake she’d made that afternoon. The girl had just finished the last crumb, insisting that she’d had enough, when the door to the kitchen swung open and Brick burst into the house.

“Where’s that meat loaf, Aunt Anna?” he called out cheerfully as he pulled off his jacket. “I’ve had one hell of a rotten day and I’m starving.”

Brick strode into the dining room, then spotted Karen. His smile vanished. As Karen rose to her feet with dignity, nobody in the room could fail to feel the electric charge that zapped between them. But to Anna’s dismay, it wasn’t a charge of passion or hope or pleasure. Karen’s face radiated uncertainty and distrust. Brick’s eyes darkened with rage.

For a long, tense moment they stared at each other. Nobody spoke. Not even Tisha could come up with a joke to break the tension.

Then Karen said stiffly, “You missed a fine dinner, Lieutenant, but I believe your aunt saved some for you.”

Bitterly he answered, “Did you instruct her on the proper procedure for labeling and marking the provisions, Captain Keppler? Did you provide her with the proper forms to account for culinary consumption by late-night nibblers? Did you dictate a memo regarding how many ounces each boarder should be served?”

That was when Anna knew that her dear nephew was in terrible trouble. In all the years Brick had lived with her, she had never heard him be rude to a guest.

And this one was his boss!

Karen ignored his needling tone—ignored him, in fact, altogether—and said to Anna, “Thank you so much for the wonderful dinner. If you’ll excuse me now, I have some work to do in my room.”

She gave the rest of them a quick good-night, then turned and marched up the stairs. Her steps were firm and she held her head high, but Anna wasn’t fooled.

She was a woman and she knew a woman’s heart. And she knew that her young boarder would shed some private tears tonight.

* * *

DESPITE HER EXHAUSTING first day at work, Karen had a hard time going to sleep. It hadn’t been easy holding her own with Brick Bauer, let alone weeping silently into her pillow so he couldn’t hear her as he settled into bed next door. It was after two when she finally dozed off, and long after six when she woke from a frightening dream in which Bauer was towering over her with a steak knife, threatening to kill her if she didn’t surrender her job.

Trying to ignore the nightmare, Karen quickly tugged off her nightgown, slipped into a robe and headed for the shower. To her dismay, the door to the bathroom was locked. She could hear Bauer singing “On Wisconsin” in the shower.

She was surprised that he knew how to sing, let alone that he had the heart for it. Apparently he felt better this morning. After all, last night he’d let off a little steam. So far he’d addressed her with stiff courtesy at the station house, regardless of his poorly concealed irritation, but apparently it was too much to ask him to keep his gloves off in his own home.

Karen couldn’t really blame him. She’d been tough yesterday, tougher than she would have been if she’d taken over a job supervising women. But women would have accepted her authority once she proved she knew what she was doing. That wouldn’t be enough for the men.

Worse yet, Paul Schmidt had left the place in a bureaucratic shambles. Oh, Karen imagined things had lumped along all right as long as there was some good ol’ boy to say, “Oh, sure, I remember that night five years ago. Don’t you remember that break-in, Steve? The kid had brown hair...”

It wasn’t good enough for a complex county system, and it wasn’t good enough for Karen. She’d spent most of the first day figuring out what had passed for record keeping and dictating memos to reestablish a professional code of conduct and an efficient game plan for day-to-day organization. Today she was going to do what she would have done the first day if things hadn’t been in such a mess. She was going to get acquainted with Tyler from a cop’s-eye view. And that meant she had to go cruise the town with the help of her right-hand man.

Assuming he ever got out of the shower.

After ten minutes, she banged on the door. “Lieutenant! Would you hurry up in there?”

There was no reply. She banged again, several times, but nothing happened. Finally she gave up, until she heard the buzz of an electric razor.

When Bauer opened the door at last and glared at her, Karen was struck at once by the realization that he was wearing nothing but a towel, casually knotted around his waist. His massive chest and biceps looked even more daunting naked than they did clothed. His legs were well muscled and hairy and compellingly male.

“Is there some emergency that won’t wait?” he grumped, not bothering to say good-morning. One of the gouges on his face had started bleeding again, but he’d done nothing to stanch the flow. “Is there some reason I can’t get dressed in peace?”

Karen felt a bit guilty for disturbing him, but she had her own agenda for the day. Besides, it was obvious that Brick was going to hate her no matter what she did. Why bend over backward to make him happy?

“I have to get ready for work, Lieutenant,” she explained briskly. “I can’t twiddle my thumbs while you sing in the shower for fifteen minutes. Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

“As a matter of fact, Captain, I did.” His blue eyes glittered with rage. “But since the house didn’t seem to be burning down, I couldn’t think of a good reason why I should cut short my shower just so you could assert your feminist authority in my bathroom.”

“It’s our bathroom, Lieutenant, and I assure you, my motives were quite mundane. I can’t even braid my hair until I wash it this morning, let alone get dressed until I shower. I have to be at work before the day shift arrives and—”

“And I don’t?”

“Well, of course you do. I made it clear yesterday that punctuali—”

“But you’re the captain. That makes your shower more important than mine?”

“I didn’t say that, Bauer.”

“I don’t recall what you had to say on the subject of showers, Captain. Aren’t they listed in Keppler’s revised police manual? I don’t recall receiving a memo instructing me on how many gallons of water I might use at exactly what temperature for precisely how many minutes. Silly me, I thought I’d just keep showering my old-fashioned way. But that wouldn’t work, would it? That would be one small portion of my life that you couldn’t regulate!”

Karen was so stung by the depth of his anger that she didn’t know what to say. Maybe she had come on a little strong at the station house, but...it had been necessary. Hadn’t it?

Unable to meet his furious glare, her gaze dropped, inadvertently focusing once more on the towel wrapped around his waist. Determined not to think about what lay beneath it, she concentrated on what she saw—that broad, virile chest, still sprinkled with drops of water from the shower. She was at war with this man. Why the hell did he have to have a physique that was so damned impressive? Thank God he was too angry to smile at her! She still remembered that radiant smile she’d only seen once—tempting, playful, unbearably appealing.

For a moment Karen was so engrossed with the sight of Brick’s magnificent body that she almost forgot they were having a fight. But she remembered as soon as she met his glowering eyes again.

Uncomfortably she told him, “Just let me know when you’re through, Lieutenant. Maybe tomorrow we can divvy up the time. I can get ready, say, from six to six-thirty, and then it’ll be all yours.”

“You work up a plan and send me a memo,” he answered sarcastically. “And be sure to specify how many minutes I should spend shaving as opposed to brushing my teeth.”

This time his razored tone really did hurt, but Karen wasn’t about to let him know it. “You decide what’s best for you and let me know,” she acquiesced, surprised when her voice came out pinched and low. She hadn’t yet put her armor on for the day, and it was hard to sound tough and haughty when she felt so alone.

“Ah, a compromise.” His eyes narrowed; suspicion laced his deep tone. “Coming from you, more likely a trap.”

“It’s a straightforward offer!” Karen burst out. “Damn you, Bauer, are you paranoid? Or just searching for more reasons to hate me? Don’t you have enough of them already?”

“I’m not the one who rode into town with my pistols cocked, Captain! I’m not the one who’s determined to gun everybody down!”

“Lieutenant, I’m just doing my job,” she insisted, torn between sounding tough as iron and begging him to give her a fair trial. “I’m trying to clean up an administrative mess. If there are a few emotional casualties—”

“A few? Open your eyes, Captain! There’s not one person at our substation whom you failed to offend yesterday! How can you believe that’s a requirement of your position? How can you be proud of that?”

Karen wasn’t proud of it; she wished she could have handled things more diplomatically. She especially regretted the way she’d shredded chubby Orson Clayton and tongue-lashed Cindy Lou. But she didn’t dare admit that to Bruiser Bauer.

“Lieutenant, it is not easy for a woman in my position to earn the personal regard or loyalty of her men,” she confessed reluctantly, forcing herself to meet his steely gaze. “It may never happen here. But I can and will demand a display of respect for my position. You know perfectly well that if I don’t crush any hint of rebellion in these first crucial days, I’ll never be able to do this job.”

Brick looked puzzled by something she’d said...or maybe by the fact that she was still talking to him at all. He reached down to tighten his blue-and-gold towel—it was starting to slip—as he said slowly, “Captain, I think you can consider the staff sufficiently crushed. One or two of them may be pulverized.”

Karen wanted to ask, How about you? but before she could speak, he turned away. She drew in a sharp breath as she gazed at his broad, bare back, purpled with bruises from his encounter with the gate. God, that must hurt! she realized painfully. And I barely even apologized.

Suddenly Karen knew she couldn’t let their discussion end like this. They had to smoke a peace pipe, or neither one of them would last another day.

“Lieutenant?”

He stopped, but he did not turn around. His towel was hanging dangerously low again.

“I’m sorry things have started out so badly between us,” Karen said sincerely. “I really wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

Now he did turn to face her, one hand lazily gripping the intersection of the terry-cloth tails. “What would you do over, Captain? Our spectacular greeting, when you embarrassed me in front of the whole damn town? Or yesterday morning, when you could hardly wait for me to step foot in the station house before you dressed me down in front of the men?” When he took a rough step toward her, Karen had to steel herself to keep from retreating. “Or would you like to replay this charming scene, when you barged into my shower and started giving me orders about my personal grooming?”

Karen swallowed hard, but she stood her ground. “I won’t deny that I’ve been rough on you, Lieutenant, but let’s be fair. We share the responsibility for this impasse. You know damn well that if I’d ridden into town as sweet as sunshine, you’d still be gunning for me.”

His square jaw jutted out. “You stole my job, damn you.” His voice was hard and low.

Karen straightened. This was the heart of the problem. She knew she had to meet his accusation head-on. The best defence was the truth—at least as much of it as she was at liberty to share with him. “I got this job fair and square, Lieutenant. I didn’t even know there was a Tyler man who expected to get this position until after I’d accepted it. I felt a twinge of regret for your misfortune, but not enough to toss away my own career.” She met his eyes boldly. “In my position, what would you have done?”

Brick did not look away, but his voice was stripped of most of his earlier anger when he finally answered, “I would have come to Tyler.”

Karen nodded, then pressed on to her next point. “When I tossed you over that fence, Lieutenant, I was acting on pure instinct. It was dark, I was alone, and I’d been listening to a large man’s footsteps moving faster and faster. He seemed to be chasing me. I didn’t know a soul in town, so I knew he couldn’t be a friend. When he grabbed me before I could reach the house, I defended myself the way I’ve been trained.” She shivered as an old memory stabbed her. “That maneuver once saved my life, Bauer. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday it saves my life again.”

He grabbed a tissue from the sink and patted the blood on his chin, but his eyes were still on Karen.

“I’m sorry it had to be you. I’m sorry everybody had to be there to see it. But I couldn’t undo it, and I couldn’t risk looking weak by fussing over you. Even a simple apology was risky. Considering your response to the situation, you wouldn’t have listened if I’d gotten down on my knees. You were far too concerned with your own reputation to give a plugged nickel for mine.”

Brick tossed the bloody tissue into the wastebasket and readjusted his towel one more time. It was a big towel, but it seemed to be causing him a great deal of trouble. It didn’t seem to cover quite as much of him as it had before.

“As to our first encounter in the squad room, you openly defied me within my first hour on the job. If you’d expressed your opinions privately, I could have heard you out, even if I disagreed. I might even have been able to compromise. But under the circumstances, the need to establish my authority outweighed my concern for your personal feelings.” This issue went beyond her pride and position. The safety of her men was on the line. “Someday we’re going to have a police crisis on our hands, Bauer. I’ll have to bark out orders. If the men waffle—if they ignore me and look to you—it could be a disaster. It could cost lives.”

She took a step forward then, so close that she could almost touch his powerful chest. Suddenly Karen realized that she wasn’t wearing a thing beneath her bright pink bathrobe, and every female inch of her was aware of it. “Lieutenant, I don’t doubt that you could do my job admirably. Nobody in Tyler doubts it, either. But at this moment in space and time, I have authority over you. That’s not good or bad, fair or rotten. It’s just the way it is. Cops have to accept bad luck all the time.”

“Cops don’t have to accept orders from women.”

She stared at him for a full minute, then said coldly, “The cops in Tyler do.”

Brick swore under his breath. His gaze swiveled to the wall.

“It would help us all if you could just think of me as a fellow officer instead of a woman. On the job, we all have to be sexless.”

His head jerked up. “Do we have to be sexless in our private bathroom, too?”

To Karen’s surprise, a slow blush flamed along her neck. She felt her cheeks go hot.

She could have admitted that she was acutely aware that he was a man—a naked man—and she was a naked woman in her bathrobe. But somehow it didn’t fit into their conversation. Her purpose had been to break the ice as fellow officers, not to open up new vistas of trouble.

“I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, Lieutenant,” she managed to utter.

“Well, you did! I don’t generally shave or shower with a woman unless I’ve specifically invited her to spend the night.”

Karen’s cheeks grew hotter as she fought a sudden vision of this powerful hunk of manhood with a woman in his arms...a woman with her face. Desperately she wished she’d started this conversation when they were both in uniform. She was accustomed to dealing with half-dressed men, but they never affected her the way this one did.

A terrible voice within her warned, Face it, Karen, this man alerts your female instincts even when he’s fully dressed. She was reasonably safe when he was angry. She knew that trouble lay ahead now that he’d calmed down.

“Obviously your sexual habits do not apply to our unique domestic arrangement, Lieutenant,” she declared crisply, sorely regretting the fact that they never would. “I am far more concerned with our situation at the station house. Have we cleared up any...misunderstandings?”

Brick eyed her carefully; she had the feeling it was a struggle for him to keep his gaze on her face. Did he realize that she was also bare beneath her robe?

Suddenly Karen felt hot and foolish. Utterly unarmed. To her astonishment, her nipples peaked, and she prayed that the thick pink fabric would conceal the hint of surrender from his view.

“Captain, I’m not sure if we’ve straightened anything out,” Brick said carefully, “but I have to admit that I’m not as mad as I was before. I thought you had it in for me. I didn’t realize that you were simply...scared.”

“Scared?” The word came out in a squeak. Surely he didn’t sense that he’d unwittingly aroused her!

“You’re scared to death you can’t do this job. You’re afraid the men will never obey you.”

The truth hurt more than Karen had ever expected it to. Worse yet was her terror that if Brick Bauer knew the truth, the rest of the men might know it, too.

“Bauer, I’d have to be run over by a locomotive to step down from this job,” she told him fiercely. It was the naked truth.

Slowly, he nodded. Karen thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

“I didn’t say you were a quitter, Captain. I just said you were scared to death to be swimming upstream.”

“I’ll do what I came here to do, Bauer. With or without you.” And I won’t yield to these sexual feelings, not now, not ever.

This time he shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you this, Captain. If you need me to shore you up, you’re not fit to command.”

“I don’t need you for anything, Bauer,” she insisted, desperately hoping that it was true.

And then he smiled, that lazy dimpled smile that had touched her so profoundly once before. “That remains to be seen, Captain. But I’ll make you a promise. I’m going to do my job the way I would if any other outsider was brought in here to run my station. I won’t go out of my way to keep you afloat, but I won’t stab you in the back, either.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I can’t expect any more than that.”

“You can’t expect any less, either,” he answered resolutely. “I’m not doing it for you, Captain. I owe it to the badge.”

There didn’t seem to be anything left to say after that. But as Brick took a step toward the door, Karen heard him chuckle.

“Lieutenant,” she demanded tartly, certain he was laughing at her expense, “you want to let me in on the joke?”

He laughed out loud, really beside himself now. “Do you do jokes, Captain? I wouldn’t think there was a place for them in the manual.”

“Dammit, Bauer!” she burst out. “Can’t you just—”

“Lighten up?” Again he laughed.

For no good reason, Karen started to chuckle, too. It was a brief moment of good feeling, but a shared one.

“Tell me,” she pressed. “God knows, after yesterday, I need a good laugh.”

“Forgive me, Captain,” he apologized, still smothering a fetching grin. “I was just trying to imagine if you’d be any good in a towel fight. It’s one of our favorite activities in the locker room. And then I had a sudden vision of your face if I whipped off this towel...” He stopped as a sudden flush darkened his neck.

Karen sobered, acutely aware of his gender. The look in his eyes warned her that he was acutely aware of the difference in their genders, too. “I, uh, have seen a naked man before, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I bet you have,” Bauer drawled in a tone so richly laced with innuendo that it would have required a reprimand if he hadn’t taken that moment to march through the door to his room.

Karen drew a deep breath of relief and ordered her sizzling body to cool down. But before she could lock the bathroom door behind him, Brick opened it a crack and tossed her his towel.

“Hang it up, would you, bunkie?” he asked with a fresh chuckle in his voice. Once more he dazzled her with his dimpled smile.

Suddenly Karen saw the rest of him—every manly inch—in her female imagination. It didn’t seem to make much difference that his body was completely hidden by the door.

CHAPTER THREE

BRICK MANAGED to beat Karen to the station house, but Sergeant Steve Fletcher poked his head out of the locker room and motioned him inside the moment he arrived. About Brick’s age and one of his closest friends on the force, Steve had been divorced for years and had two children. At the moment he was living with a pretty young woman in nearby Belton and trying to decide if he was ready to take the plunge again.

Steve was not alone in the locker room. Every man on the day shift was waiting for Brick, plus two guys from the night shift about to go home.

Some of them looked angry. Some of them looked shell-shocked. Orson Clayton, who was overweight and had trouble keeping his uniform buttoned, wore a pathetic frown. Brick remembered only too well Karen’s scathing comments the day before about Clayton’s appearance—delivered in front of the other men.

“You’ve gotta do something about Captain Curvaceous, Brick,” was Steve’s blunt greeting. “We’ve been talking it over, and we’re just not going to last. It’d be bad enough to take this kind of abuse from a man, even if we deserved it. But from a looker like that...”

“If I didn’t have another baby on the way, I’d quit right now,” vowed Clayton. “I’m a damn good cop, Brick. You know I’ve never shirked my duty, never run from a fight, never protested when you or Paul asked me to put in overtime. But I’ll be damned if I’ll take fashion lessons from a female!”

Each one of the men had a specific complaint to air. Some of them objected to writing meticulous reports; some objected to being told to shine their shoes. All of them objected to having to put the word Captain in front of a woman’s name. And all of them looked to Brick to make Karen vanish so everything would be the way it used to be.

Brick himself was torn. Up until this morning, he’d been quite certain that Karen Keppler was the enemy, a vicious-hearted woman who had no redeeming human features despite her tantalizing beauty. But during their latest sparring session, he’d glimpsed something in Karen he hadn’t seen before. A reason for her toughness...and a powerful longing for respect.

She wasn’t at all the cold fish he’d first expected. There was a genuine person inside that protective shell...an intelligent woman with hopes and fears and maybe even a sense of humor. Karen was determined to do her duty, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed being disliked. Brick was quite certain that his own resentment had truly wounded her.

After promising not to stab her in the back, he now felt a curious obligation to defend her from this communal onslaught. “Look, guys,” he said carefully, “we’ve got a difficult situation here. At the moment, this woman is the boss. Paul can’t help us anymore. I think our best bet is to try to play the game her way, at least until we get the lay of the land.”

“Why doesn’t somebody lay her instead?” one of the men joked.

“Well, hell, Brick’s got the best shot at it. He’s sleeping right next door to her.”

Brick battled with a sudden memory of the morning’s tango in the bathroom...Karen in her robe, he in his towel. He was rarely uneasy with women, but this morning he’d felt positively disconnected...and, to his absolute fury, he’d also felt aroused. He didn’t know what she’d been wearing underneath her robe and that magnificent black mane, but he knew it wasn’t a uniform. And he also knew, though he hated like hell to admit it, that he’d spent entirely too much time imagining what she looked like in the altogether.

His imagination was speaking to him now.

“I don’t know if ol’ Brick could stand sleeping with that porcupine. Talk about whips and chains! Can you imagine—”

“My point,” Brick said firmly, uncomfortable with the tone the men’s jokes were taking, “is that the oath I swore when I became a police officer means I have to obey her...at least when I’m on duty.”

Steve shook his head. “You can’t mean you’re just going to roll over and play dead, Brick! You can’t mean you’re just giving up.”

Brick’s lips tightened as he thought about the job that was rightfully his. But Karen’s rank required his public respect, and to his surprise, her honesty this morning commanded his personal respect as well.

Swallowing his own apprehensions, he insisted, “As long as she’s the captain, she’s the captain. No matter how bitter this pill is to swallow, in the line of duty we’ve got to give her the same allegiance we’d give any other cop.”

Orson Clayton said, “Hell, Brick, I’d like to strangle that broad, but that doesn’t mean I’d ever forget she’s a fellow cop when the chips are down.”

“Neither would I,” agreed Steve. “Neither would any of us. But I can’t see her rushing to an officer-in-need-of-assistance call if she’d scheduled the afternoon to dictate some damned memo.”

A day-shift guy said, “It’s just not fair.”

Another growled, “Dammit, we can’t count on her out there! I don’t want to get shot just because she does something stupid.”

Brick wondered, as the men shuffled out of the room grumbling, if Karen’s worst-case scenario might someday come to pass. What if she gave an order in a crisis and they all looked to Brick instead? Professional prudence would dictate that he relay his captain’s commands no matter what his own judgment told him. But his career wouldn’t be worth a damn to him if he ignored his own conscience and one of these fellows ended up dead.

* * *

BRICK LOOKED uncomfortable, but not surprised, when Karen asked him to give her a tour of the town later in the morning. Their odd encounter in the bathroom seemed to have cleared the air. She decided to ignore his whimsical farewell—bunkie, indeed!—and he seemed willing to give the illusion of respect during their encounters at the station house. There was a difference in the other men this morning also. They didn’t look quite so sullen and shocked as they had the day before.

Karen usually drove the first time she got in a car with a man, just to set him thinking of her in an equal light. This time, however, she decided that she needed to listen and observe. It was Brick’s town and Brick’s beat. She sat on the passenger side of the cruiser as he effortlessly took the wheel and filled her in on all the subtle things that a police officer needs to know about a new town. She couldn’t remember everything, but she made mental notes and a few written ones, too...especially on everything that pertained to Judson Ingalls.

As he drove, Brick recounted the highlights of Tyler’s history: tall tales of a Winnebago burial ground, stories of the original German and Swedish settlers, the beginnings of the now-fading tradition of dairy farming. When he told her a funny story about a local man who’d lost his favorite cow and found her in the middle of the town-square fountain, Karen was inspired to regale him with the highlights of her own disastrous first day as a rookie. They shared a hearty laugh together, and a little more ice was broken.

“This is the poorer side of town,” Brick informed her as they cruised to the south after riding for half an hour. “Not that any part of Tyler is really slummy. We’re not rich, we’re not poor. We’re just heartland.”

Karen took the opportunity Brick had unwittingly given her to probe into the subject of her secret investigation. “Does that go for the Ingallses, too?”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you know about the Ingalls clan?”

“Not a whole lot,” she replied vaguely. “Your aunt and uncle were talking about them last night at dinner. Tisha was bringing me up to speed about a lot of things.”

“Tisha!” He laughed. “You’d be surprised how many tips we get from her. Not that anybody confesses to her, you understand, but she’s a shrewd observer with some experience in these things.”

“What kind of experience?”

Brick shrugged. “The story’s a bit cloudy, but I understand she used to be a gangster’s moll.”

“You’re kidding! And she lives under our roof?”

“Captain, give her a break. It was a long time ago. Besides, Tisha’s a good person at heart. She’s just...distinctive. I’d rather have a woman like that than one who’s colorless.”

Karen wondered if he was talking about her. She did her best to appear colorless on the job—she didn’t dare come across as sexy, especially with men under her command—but that didn’t mean she wanted a hunk like Brick Bauer to think of her as a dishrag. Her potent response to him this morning didn’t change the fact that their professional situation precluded even the most subtle of flirtations.

Before Brick could divine her thoughts, Karen asked, “So when Tisha comes across some evidence, does she report it to the station?”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. This is Tyler. She deliberately drops some seemingly innocent remark over dinner that no one can ever trace to her. I put two and two together and go check things out. Sometimes it doesn’t add up to anything, but sometimes I make an arrest based on her tips.”

Karen watched him closely. “Is that the way you carried out investigations under Paul Schmidt?”

Now his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That’s only one part of the picture, Captain. I use every tool. There’s doing it by the book, and there’s doing it by the seat of your pants. Sometimes you need both approaches.”

Karen took a deep breath before she asked carefully, “Which one is helping you find out the identity of that woman they found out by Timberlake Lodge?”

Brick turned a corner and waved to a toddler digging a hole in the front yard before he nonchalantly observed, “That’s not really an active case, Captain. We figure she was either Margaret Ingalls or one of Margaret’s out-of-town guests. Nobody local was reported missing around that time, and we’d have no way of knowing who all was invited to those wild bashes.”

“The Judson Ingalls I met at the Schmidts didn’t seem like the partying type.” Tall, gray-haired, still robust, he hadn’t seemed like a candidate for Worthington House, but he’d given Karen the impression that he’d just as soon spend his Saturday nights at home.

“He’s not. That’s one reason Margaret left him. But before she did, she often brought her Chicago crowd back to Tyler.”

“You’d think Margaret would have noticed if one of her friends had disappeared,” Karen observed, certain that some names could be unearthed with sufficient legwork. “Judson doesn’t remember her mentioning anybody?”

“No,” Brick replied unhappily. “He doesn’t like to talk about Margaret. His daughter is one of Aunt Anna’s best friends, and she says she’s almost never heard him mention Margaret since she walked out on the two of them.”

The words struck Karen hard. A father and daughter, left alone by a high-flying mother: this she could understand.

Ashamed of the tightness of her voice, she asked, “How old was Alyssa when that happened? Was she grown?”

“Oh, no. She was a little kid. It was a long, long time ago.”

“About the time that woman they found near the lodge probably died?”

Brick did not answer at once. When he did, his tone seemed more guarded than before. “Yes, it was, and yes, we checked to see if anybody had ever seen Margaret again. The answer is no. But we can’t find her dental records, to check them with what’s left of the body.”

Karen wanted to ask how hard he’d looked, but she knew that question would take careful handling. Brick must never suspect she was secretly investigating him—Commander Harmon’s directions had been most specific in that respect. “When we get back to the station, Lieutenant, I’d like to go over the file with you,” she suggested, deciding that the best course of action would be to covertly track down the dental records, then assign the task to Brick to see if he tried to dodge taking the same steps. “Sometimes a new pair of eyes can spot something that you miss when you go over and over the same thing.” Before he could take umbrage, Karen added, “It’s happened to me lots of times.”

Brick nodded without comment, then pointed to a cozy-looking diner near the town square. “This place belongs to Marge Peterson. It’s where Tyler cops eat on their breaks and hang out when they’re off duty.”

“In that case, it would probably be a good place to stop for lunch,” said Karen, who was getting hungry. She also wanted to see her men in a different atmosphere than the station house. She knew it wouldn’t be possible for her to be accepted as “one of the guys,” but she still might gain some valuable insights about her officers and their town.

“Is that an order, Captain?” Brick didn’t sound angry this time, just unsure.

“It’s an invitation, Lieutenant. My treat. Good heavens, I never had to explain it when I said the same thing to my partner.”

She’d intended the words as a cheerful pleasantry, but for some reason Brick’s tone was jarringly cool as he muttered, “I guess now’s as good a time as any,” and parked the car.

Karen was sorry to see that he was glowering again, just when she’d hoped they were making genuine progress. It was an old story, but sometimes it really wore her down. How many times in her career had she run up against professional hostility from men? How many times had they opposed her openly or sabotaged her career behind her back? Her file was bulging with undocumented petty complaints by misogynist fellow cops. She didn’t know why she’d ever hoped she could expect better from Brick Bauer.

“Sometimes I think you forget that I’m a police officer, too, Bauer,” she said bitterly. “I’m really not so different from the rest of you.”

“Captain, you convinced me you were a real cop the first night we met,” Brick snapped. “You didn’t even have to show me your badge. You just dumped me on my head.” He studied her gravely. “Has it ever occurred to you that you might be working overtime trying to prove yourself?”

“Wouldn’t you?” Karen asked defensively. “I’ve taken over a substation where not one man likes me or trusts me. Every damn one of them would like to see my backside hightailing it out of town so you could take my place. I have nightmares about waking up with you standing over my bed with a knife!” She hadn’t meant to confess that, not to Brick, not to anyone. But the words were out, and now all she could say was, “I’m in an armed camp, alone against the enemy. In my position, don’t you think you’d be guarding your flanks, too?”

His square jaw jutted out as he faced her. “Permission to speak freely, Captain?”

Warily Karen answered, “Of course.”

“You’re right that the men don’t trust you. They think you’re mean as hell. But you’re missing the whole picture of the Tyler substation if you think you’re surrounded by the enemy. You haven’t yet managed to destroy the camaraderie that makes being a cop in Tyler something special, and at bedrock, you’re still an officer, still part of us. We’re sworn to protect the public, and by God, we’re sworn to protect each other, too. The men may joke about you in the locker room and curse each time they hold one of your stupid memos in their hands, but if you ever have to draw your weapon in the line of duty, Captain, there’s not a man on the force who wouldn’t lay down his life for you.” Before she could respond, he finished, “What hurts us all is that we don’t think you’d do the same for any one of us.”

Karen wasn’t sure how to answer that. She was touched and wounded, honored and crushed. Clumsily she said, “I’m good with a gun, Bauer. If I thought I could save a fellow officer’s life, I’d use it without reservation.”

“That’s what Sara Ralston claimed,” he hissed. “Brave as a man! Every bit as smart. She was teamed up with Mark McVey when I made sergeant. She froze during a robbery, and some bastard shot him right through the heart!”

Brick made no effort to cloak his grief, and Karen knew he couldn’t have done so, anyway. She knew what it meant to lose a partner. Rob Laney had once come perilously close to death. The bullet scar on her left shoulder was a permanent reminder of how she’d saved his life.

“Oh, Bauer, I know how that hurts,” Karen sympathetically confessed. “When my partner was shot, I—”

“You froze on him, too?”

Karen pulled back, angry and hurt all over again. “Isn’t it remotely possible that I did my part? My God, officers go down all the time when they’re teamed with men! Nobody jumps at the chance to cast blame in those cases!”

“Maybe you did your part and maybe you didn’t,” Brick growled. “Maybe your partner was too busy worrying about you to cover his own back. All I know is that Mark McVey was my partner, dammit, and I know that if I’d been beside him, he’d still be alive!”

“Then blame yourself for leaving him behind when you got promoted, Bauer! Don’t blame me and don’t blame every female cop!”

He jerked back as though she’d hit him. “You don’t think I feel guilty for moving on and leaving him? You don’t think I feel the weight of it bearing down on me at night like a tombstone on my chest?”

The anguish that filled his eyes made Karen ashamed she’d added to his pain. In hindsight she realized that Bauer wasn’t trying to attack her. He was only wrestling with his own despair.

“Bauer, I’m sorry.” Instinctively she gripped his arm. “I had no right to say that. This is a terrible business. People die in any war. Your partner’s death was tragic, but it’s not your fault.”

Through his regulation jacket, Karen could feel the masculine strength of his corded biceps. His tense breathing seemed to match her own, heightening her keen awareness of his powerful warmth. She didn’t want to be touched by his humanity, his maleness, the vulnerable corners of his heart. It was so much easier to see him as the enemy. So much easier to keep a hostile distance.

Brick turned away from her sharply, breaking her hold on his arm. While Karen swallowed her hurt, he stared out the window for a long, quiet moment, then confessed, “Captain, I’ve got a lot of reasons to resent you. Deep in my heart, I know that most of them don’t have a lot to do with you as a person. I’m sorry I’ve been so damn hard to work with.”

To her surprise, Karen said, “I’m sorry, too.”

He managed a thin smile. His dimples barely winked. “When I said most of them didn’t have a lot to do with you, I didn’t mean I like the way you’re running the station. You can be a bear. I just meant that...if I’m going to hate you, I ought to hate you for the right reasons. All this other baggage—my promotion, Mark’s death—well, that’s not playing fair.”

Karen had to admire Brick’s ethics. Even when he was angry, he seemed like a man she could trust. He’d come a long way in the past two days, and she didn’t want to push him. Still, she had to ask, “I don’t suppose you could consider not hating me at all? The men will take their cue from you. I’d rather not spend the next few years on the outside looking in.”

Brick studied her for a long, thoughtful moment. “You’ve spent most of your career that way, haven’t you, Captain?” he perceptively observed. “On the outside looking in.”

Reluctantly she nodded. It was too obvious to deny. “I’m a woman doing a man’s job in a man’s world, Bauer. I’m always staring at somebody’s back.” She paused a moment, then went on to say, “I am who I am, Lieutenant. I can’t be anybody else.”

“No,” he quietly agreed, his blue eyes finally showing a glimmer of warmth. “I guess you can’t. And frankly...I don’t think you should have to be. I’m sorry if I made you feel that...well, that the real Karen Keppler wasn’t welcome here.”

Karen had no idea how to reply to that, but fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything. Brick abruptly ended their heart-to-heart talk by opening his door and hopping out of the car. He didn’t open Karen’s door for her—some policemen actually had tried to—but he did keep the diner door from slamming in her face as she followed him inside.

Blocked by his impressive height and broad shoulders, Karen couldn’t see around Brick to get a good look at the place, but she could certainly smell the pepperoni and hear the cheery repartee. The instant he set foot inside, half a dozen people raised a hand or called out, “Hey, Brick!” while Brick himself gave the group one of those dazzling grins that felled Karen every time it was cast in her direction.

One grizzled old farmer called out, “I hear that new she-bear is blistering your backside, boy! How can we help you get rid of her?”

The fellow next to him joshed, “Oh, Brick don’t need no help. Just you wait. He’ll have that filly on the run in no time. Everybody knows that captain’s chair is Brick’s rightful place.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” said a woman behind the counter in a pink uniform, an old-fashioned beehive and nurse’s shoes. The name tag said Marge, and the tone of her voice announced quite clearly that she was proud to own the place. She snapped a dish towel at Brick, smacking him sharply on his badge as she grinned at him.

Brick stepped aside so Karen could see everybody in the restaurant better, and so everybody could see her. Marge swallowed a small gasp as she read the name on Karen’s badge, and gave an embarrassed grin.

“Marge, this is Captain Karen Keppler,” Brick declared with more dignity than Karen thought she could have managed in the same situation. And then, as the room went from jovially cheerful to starkly silent, he said, “I imagine if you serve the captain one of your corned beef sandwiches, you’ll have a friend for life.”

Under the circumstances, it was a gift...far more than Karen had expected from Brick Bauer. “Nice to meet you, Marge,” she said cordially.

“Nice to meet you, uh, Captain.”

Karen was about to feign an enthusiastic comment about corned beef—even though she hated it—when Brick started ushering her toward a booth in the back. As he sat down, her eyes met his with open gratitude, and he looked back with a curious blend of pleasure and discomfort.

Suddenly she felt ashamed of how crusty she’d been with him ever since she’d arrived in Tyler. He was a man, and her promotion had certainly stripped him of his pride before his friends. How many men would have treated her with warmth under the circumstances?

Yet abruptly, to Karen’s astonishment, Brick smiled. It didn’t seem like an accident this time; it didn’t seem artificial or strained. He looked like a man who was happy to stop for lunch with a friend or a colleague. Who was maybe even proud to be seen with a beautiful woman. Who might be pleased to know that the woman in question secretly thought he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.

Unable to stop herself, Karen found herself grinning back, thrilled to see those blue eyes sparkle, thrilled to share even the briefest moment of camaraderie with Brick. Her happiness grew as she heard him say to Marge with deceptive nonchalance, “The captain says it’s her treat today, so you better start running her a tab.”

Karen swallowed hard as she realized that Brick had just handed Marge Peterson—and everybody else within earshot—his personal letter of recommendation. He could have let this crowd assume that he was stuck with her today because he couldn’t refuse to eat lunch with his captain. Instead he’d found a way to say, “I’ll vouch for Karen Keppler.”

It was nickels and dimes, but it was a start.

CHAPTER FOUR

BY THE END of Karen’s first week on the job, Brick had resigned himself to accepting her captaincy. They were certainly on much better terms than they’d been the first time she’d rousted him from the shower, but most of the time she still remained pretty formal, especially at work. At home or alone in her office she sometimes said something downright friendly, and if Brick really worked at it, he could get her to laugh. But in front of the men she was still all business, and in their presence Brick made sure to treat her with the utmost respect. They were still wary around her, but they kept their anger in check. Steve still didn’t trust her, and said so on a regular basis. Cindy Lou cowered every time Karen entered the room. Orson Clayton had bought a larger shirt and had gone on a diet. Everybody knew but Karen.

Everybody also knew that there was no point in worrying about a woman who’d been dead for forty years, but Karen insisted on pursuing that investigation, too. She’d even set up an appointment to talk privately with Zachary Phelps, who’d been chief of police back then. Naturally Zachary had notified Brick at once and had confidentially reported the gist of the conversation. Karen didn’t know that, either.

She also didn’t know that although Judson had divorced Margaret on grounds of desertion years ago, he’d never gotten over her. Proof of her death, even now, would rock him. It would devastate Alyssa. Brick dreaded having to break such grim news, but it was not a job that he’d entrust to anybody else. The Ingallses were practically family.

When Joe Santori had discovered the body some months ago, Brick had gone through the motions of a preliminary investigation. When he’d found out that Margaret Ingalls’s dentist was dead, Paul had told him that the time-consuming task of tracking down her dental records would have to wait until after he finished the legwork on a current case or two. Paul had kept him busy with something else ever since.

But Captain Curvaceous had insisted that Brick hit the trail of the dental records again, and to his surprise, he’d turned up some new leads at once. A few quick calls to the dental association in Chicago had netted him the necessary records. The overworked county coroner had promised to cross-check them with the deceased’s teeth as soon as possible and get back to him sometime in the next week or two.

In the meantime, he had an investigation of his own to pursue, one he kept quite diligently from Karen. A few discreet calls here and there had sent out the hounds, and the first to report came to Brick by mid-December from Bill Riley, an old pal from the police academy. Nowadays Bill was a lieutenant at the Belton substation, with his eye on the captain’s chair.

“Sorry I’m late,” Bill apologized as he joined Brick for lunch at a coffee shop on the highway one Friday afternoon. It was about halfway between Belton and Tyler, a natural place to get together to catch up on old times, which they did every month or so. “We just got hit for the second time by two punks in a blue van. I had to check out an anonymous tip on my way here, but it didn’t pan out.”

“That’s okay. Sorry you couldn’t nail the guys,” commiserated Brick, who was enjoying spending his day off in a sweatsuit instead of a uniform. “Things have been pretty quiet out our way.”

“Well, that may be about to change,” warned Bill. “These two guys were working Casner for a few weeks before they moved on to us. Just when the Casner substation gathered enough information to lay a trap, they vanished into thin air.”

“And showed up ten miles down the road.”

“You got it. And since you’re another ten miles or so away from Belton, I figured they’ll head on to Tyler when they feel us nipping at their heels. Why don’t I have a copy of the file sent over to you? It might help you get the jump on them.”

They broke off long enough to order, then Bill asked, “I imagine you’re eager to know what I found out about your captain.”

“Well, now that you mention it...” Brick’s eyes met his friend’s. Two weeks ago he’d been reasonably certain that Bill, or one of the other guys he’d put on Karen’s trail, would turn up some dirt. Now, curiously, he suspected that her record was as clean as his own. Odder yet, he really hoped that nobody would uncover evidence that he’d be honor-bound to turn over to Commander Harmon for the protection of his men.

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