“Hey, McCoy, here’s your new partner.”

David took one look toward the door and felt an inexplicable urge to run. Walking toward him was Kelli Hatfield—the same sexy, innocently insatiable, utterly feminine Kelli Hatfield he’d shared a bed with last night. Her face mirrored the shock he felt.

It couldn't…there was no way in hell that this…that she…was his new partner. The reality that this gorgeous woman was actually a cop was enough to send him reeling.

Kelli appeared to regain her bearings before he did. “Officer McCoy,” she said, clearing her throat. Apparently remembering where they were, she thrust her hand—her delicate, talented hand—toward him.

David took it, tempted to pull her into the nearest room where they could have a little talk…and then some. He looked up to find Officer Kowalsky studying them guardedly.

“You two know each other?” he asked.

David looked into Kelli’s eyes. “Yeah,” he said, tempted to add, In the biblical sense.

Dear Reader,

Sexy as sin and impossible to forget—that’s THE MAGNIFICENT MCCOY MEN! First brothers Marc, Mitch and Jake stole our romantic hearts. Now the youngest McCoy, David, is proving he’s just as much a McCoy as his brothers.

In You Only Love Once, maverick cop David McCoy never dreams that the magnificent woman he undresses one night will show up at the precinct in uniform the next morning. Worse, Kelli Hatfield, David’s sexy new partner, is determined to prove herself his equal—on the job and in his bed. Has the precinct Casanova finally met his match?

We’d love to hear what you think of the youngest McCoy. Write to us at: P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, or visit us at the Web site we share with other Temptation authors at www.temptationauthors.com. And be sure to keep an eye out for the next and final book of the series, featuring stubbornly sexy Connor McCoy, available in July.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and many happy endings.

Lori and Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

You Only Love Once
Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

We heartily dedicate this book to romance-friendly booksellers and librarians everywhere, especially Mark Budrock, Dawn Rath, Kathy Andrico, Jim Beard, Chris Champion, Barb Kershner, Sharon Harbaugh, Kathie Freedly, Joan Adis and her lovable staff, Lisa Hamilton, Kristin Fennell, Kery Han, Betty and Fred Shultz and their partners in crime, Joan Selzer, Cathy Bartel, John Cleveland, Colleen Lehmann, Kathy Hendrickson, Heather Osborn, Lori Grassman, Judy and Bob Dewitt, Cy Korte, Michele Patrykus, Gayle Davis, Tracy Marr, Molly Carver, Rosechel Sinio, Bessie Makris, Eileen Masterson, Linda Membel, Donna Leaver, Delores Silva and last but certainly not least, Donita Lawrence.

Although we write the stories and Harlequin publishes them, its each and every one of you who makes sure our books find their way into the readers hands. Thank you doesnt begin to cover it.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

1

“YOU’RE LATE.”

David McCoy slid onto a stool next to his brother Connor and shrugged out of his sheepskin coat. He glanced at his bulky black sports watch as he rubbed his hands together to warm them. It was cold even for December in D.C., the kind of cold that inspired the saying, “it’s too cold to snow.” But the bar was pleasantly warm and decked out festively for the holiday season. Green garland laced with red lights hung behind the counter, and hurricane candle centerpieces were placed on tables around the room. He motioned for Joe, the bartender at The Pour House, to bring him a brew when he finished serving a guy down the long length of the oak bar. “Yeah. Lieutenant Kowalsky wanted to have a few words after I knocked off tonight.” He greeted a couple of fellow officers taking their seats a few stools down. “Looks like I get a new partner tomorrow.”

Connor knocked back what remained in his own glass. “Should be interesting.”

“Yeah.” David paid Joe and made a comment on the busyness of the place this early on a Thursday night. Joe shrugged and told him whatever paid the bills.

“What will this be? The third?” Connor asked as Joe took an order down the bar.

David grimaced at his older brother. Connor knew how many partners he’d gone through. He could probably recite their names, and exactly how long it had taken David to scare them off. Connor was good that way. Always the one to remember when one of them had gotten the measles, when their homework had been due and which forms he had to forge so they could participate in school-sponsored road trips. Mostly, his diligence was welcome. There were times, however, when he wished Connor would get a life—preferably, his own.

He had the sinking sensation this was going to be one of those times.

He drank more of his beer than he intended and gritted his teeth at the onset of a cold headache. Of course, in the case of his last partner, Lupe Ramirez, he hadn’t exactly scared her off. In fact, she’d very nearly been killed off. A perp at a twenty-four hour convenience store had taken a potshot at her while he’d been making his way around the back. Lupe was still in rehab, learning how to walk on her reconstructed knee.

“At least the odds are against me getting another female,” he said.

Connor grinned. “You sure about that? If Ramirez filled some sort of gender quota, odds are probably in favor of you getting just that.”

David shook his head adamantly. “No…Kowalsky might not like me very much, but he wouldn’t do that to me again. Uh-uh.”

His brother shrugged. “No skin off my nose who you work with or don’t. I’m just pointing out the possibilities.”

“And I’m telling you the possibility isn’t even remote, not even slim. In fact, the possibility is so remote, it’s an impossibility.”

Connor’s grin grew wider.

“What?”

His brother shook his head. “Did I say anything?”

“No. You didn’t have to. That stupid grin of yours says it all.” David sat up and straightened his denim shirt. “Anyway, at least I do know my partner isn’t fresh from the academy. He’s a transfer from outside. And no matter what you say, he will be a he. I’ve done my duty as far as equality between the sexes goes. Is it too much to ask to be assigned a guy this time around?”

Connor seemed exceedingly interested in the bottles lining the wall behind the bar and took a slow sip of his beer, his grin apparently making it difficult.

David couldn’t resist. He slapped his hand against his older brother’s back, nearly causing him to spew the contents of his mouth all over Joe, who now stood before them putting together a purple concoction on the other side of the counter.

“So tell me, Con, what’s the deal with you? Why did you want to meet here?” He held his hand up. “Wait, don’t tell me, you’re getting married, too, aren’t you?”

Connor’s expression grew darker with each question until he looked a word away from knocking David from his stool.

David held up his hands. “Hey, don’t look at me that way. You’re the one who called me, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember, all right. Though I’m having a hard time recalling why.” He visibly winced. “Married? What on God’s green earth would make you ask that?”

For some reason David had never tried to decipher, he’d always loved getting under Connor’s skin. Maybe because it was so easy. Or perhaps because it was so much fun to watch Connor go from self-righteous know-it-all to a put-up-your-dukes teen in a blink of an eye. Pops had warned him that one day he’d take his banter a little too far and find himself knocked into the middle of next week. But somehow David had always known Connor would never lay a fist on him.

And, for other reasons he preferred not to pursue, he suspected it was why he’d always felt slightly separate and apart from his brothers. Too young to participate in all the older McCoy guys’ reindeer games. The one to be sent to his room when discussions grew serious. Hell, he didn’t even look like them, what with having blond hair and being a tad bit shorter than them all at five foot ten. And he didn’t even have the benefit of a red, glowing nose so he could prove to them that he was up to the task of leading them through a foggy night—or any task, for that matter.

He shrugged. “Why not marriage? Seems like everyone else is getting hitched these days. Why should you be any different?” He knew the quickest route to pissing Connor off was mentioning him and marriage in the same breath, and he’d done it not once, but twice. His brother had been miserable during Thanksgiving dinner at the McCoy house three weeks ago. Grumbled comments ranging from “all these damn women running around the place” to “you’ve all turned into a bunch of wusses” encompassed the whole of Connor’s contributions to any ongoing conversation.

David braced himself for another Connorism as his brother scowled. “What was it you said to Mel when she asked when you were going to settle down? When Satan takes up snow skiing?”

Connor’s grin made a comeback. “Yeah. Well, that’s about the time I get anywhere near an altar, too.”

David leisurely watched a woman in tight jeans walk by, then turned back toward his beer and his brother. “So why did you call then?”

“Does there have to be a reason?”

He watched the way Connor shifted on his stool. Yeah, he’d say his brother had something on his mind, something heavy. “With you, uh-huh. There definitely has to be a reason.” He took a long pull from his own bottle. “Come on, Con, just spill it, will you? You’ve never been the kind of guy for a boys’ night out drinking. Actually, you were always telling the rest of us when it was time to lay off the stuff. So what gives?”

Connor grimaced. “I don’t know. It’s just this thing with Pops….”

David waited for him to continue…and waited…and waited.

“Man, you’re about as talkative as Jake tonight. You know, if you really want this to begin resembling a conversation, you’re going to have to start with finishing your sentences. I’m no mind reader.”

Connor leaned back and released a long-suffering sigh. “Look, this isn’t easy for me, you know? You guys are usually the ones coming to me for advice.”

“Yeah, it must really eat you that you’re stuck with me.”

Connor looked at him, a question in his blue-green eyes. “Is that what you think?”

David was the one who shifted in his seat this time. “Come on, Con, quit pussyfooting around and get to the point already, will you?”

“It’s just…aw, hell, David, do you think I did the right thing with Pops? You know, telling him I didn’t approve of his going out with Melanie’s mother?”

David remembered the incident at the cemetery. His brows shot up. “Didn’t approve? You practically told the old man you’d disown him if he didn’t stop seeing Wilhemenia.” He motioned for Joe to bring Connor a fresh bottle. “Have you two even spoken a civil word to each other since then?”

His brother looked away.

“You haven’t, have you?” He rubbed his chin, thinking of the times the family had gathered together over the past couple months. He couldn’t come up with a single time when he’d seen Connor and Pops talk to each other. Oh, yeah, Connor may have mumbled a jab or two under his breath, but he’d never directly spoken to their father. “Out of all of us, you were always the closest to Pops. I don’t know if it’s an age thing…” Connor gave him a glowering look. “Sorry. What I’m trying to say is that if two men ever understood each other, it was you and Pops.”

“Yeah, well, I guess this Wilhemenia stuff really got to me, you know? Thanks.” He grabbed the bottle Joe put in front of him. “Of all the women Pops could have chosen, why did it have to be that sourpuss excuse for a human being?”

David’s burst of laughter died down. He thoughtfully rolled his beer bottle between his palms. “I don’t know what you’re looking for here, Connor, but if it’s reinforcements, you’re looking in the wrong place. I, for one, don’t happen to see anything wrong with Pops getting a little—”

Connor whipped up his hand to stop him. “Don’t. What I’m interested in finding out is how you would feel about him…well, actually bringing her into the family.”

David thought that if his eyes had widened any farther, his eyeballs would have splashed into the bottle he was just about to press to his lips. “You mean, like marry her?”

A shadow of a smile played around Connor’s mouth. “See, it bothers you, too.”

David put his bottle down on the bar. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

“So what would you say…exactly?”

“I…I don’t know.” He looked at his brother. “Do you think it’s that serious?”

Connor sighed. “I don’t know. Right now, no. I think after…our little talk, Pops did stop seeing her. But it’s only natural to think that he was serious about her. I mean, it’s not like Pops has ever dated before.”

David frowned. “Wait a minute here. If he’s not seeing her anymore, then what in the hell are you worried about?”

Connor fell silent, staring at his bottle as if a genie would appear any moment and supply him with the answer. “It’s just that…I don’t know. Pops looks so…”

“Miserable?” David grinned at Connor’s quick glare. “Hey, I’m capable of noticing some things, too. And Pops is definitely miserable.”

“Yeah, well, he’ll get over it.”

“If that’s how you really feel, then why are we talking about it?”

Connor looked at him as if he was surprised by the realization. “I don’t know.”

A wink of neon pink distracted David. He turned to watch the tantalizing back of a woman walking toward the pool tables. The pink of her top clung to slender shoulders and a narrow waist before giving way to form-fitting black slacks designed to drive a man wild. She met another woman, then picked up a pool stick, flicking her silky blonde, shoulder-length hair over a sculpted shoulder. David got a good look at her face. Heart-shaped. Large green eyes. A bow-shaped pink, pink mouth. Everything about her seemed delicate in some way. Utterly, totally feminine. Innocent. So unlike most of the women he typically dated.

His gaze drifted lower. Whoa. There was nothing innocent about the way that top fit. The curve-hugging material outlined her breasts perfectly, and hid very little—like the fact that she was either cold or tuned in and turned on by his slow visual examination.

He groaned deep in his throat. He managed to croak out a response to Connor. “Yeah, well, you might want to try figuring out the answer to that question before you go on to the next.” His gaze again strayed to the pool table.

Damn, but she’s more woman than any two men could handle, David thought as she returned his measuring gaze. A smile turned up the sides of her mouth and he came close to letting loose a long, appreciative whistle. Despite the fact that they were in a cop bar, there was no way this woman was one. Nor was she a cop groupie like the table of women nearby who consistently went to cop bars pretending to be out for nothing more than a good time, but were really angling for a wedding ring.

No. This woman was neither. She probably did something…womanly. Sold wedding dresses, worked in an antique shop, sold perfume at an upscale department store. She probably wouldn’t know how to hold a gun, much less fire one. The thought was altogether appealing. Especially since he didn’t plan to repeat the mistake of sleeping with someone on the force again.

He cleared his throat, then slanted a loaded gaze his brother’s way. “Speaking of the weather, I think I just heard that Hell’s forecast calls for a blizzard.” He pushed from his stool as if compelled by a force greater than himself. “I just spotted me the woman I’m gonna marry.”

“Who was talking about the…” Connor’s spine snapped military straight as he apparently realized what was going on. “Aw, hell, David, I didn’t come over here to watch you play Casanova.”

“You can have the friend,” he said, straightening his shoulders.

“Gee thanks, but no thanks.”

“We’re done, here, right? All we’re doing is talking in circles anyway. Come on. Let’s see if we can go get in on some of this action.”

Connor hiked a skeptical brow.

“I’m talking about pool, doofus. What did you think I meant?”

“I don’t play pool.”

David barely heard him, his gaze fastened on the woman even now bending over to set up her next shot. Her toffee-colored hair swept down over her face and, with cleanly manicured nails, she pushed it so the strands mingled with the hair on the other side of her perfect head. Her gaze shifting back to him, she pulled the pool stick back then scratched, completely missing the ball. She might not know much about the game of pool, but she’d look damn hot stretched across the green felt…naked as the day she was born.

“Look out, here he goes again,” he overheard a fellow officer say to another as he walked by them, the comment punctuated by laughter.

David’s grin merely widened.

“IF THE DEVIL wore jeans, this is what he’d look like.”

Kelli Hatfield laughed at her friend’s whispered comment, then self-consciously tugged the snug, unfamiliar pink material of her new top away from her skin. She didn’t have to ask who Bronte was talking about. The blond guy from the end of the bar, who could easily have posed for Michelangelo’s David, was sauntering their way. And saunter was about the word for it. With his sexy gaze openly fastened on her, he gave the impression that she might be his destination. She swallowed hard, straightened, then resisted the urge to pluck at her top again. She caught her friend’s cautionary gaze but purposefully ignored it. The same way she had ignored Bronte’s groan earlier when she saw what she was wearing. And her arguments when Kelli had suggested they go to the renowned D.C. cop bar for “just one drink and a game of pool.” And her warnings that she was just looking for trouble by shimmying like that when she bent over to take a shot. Until that moment, Kelli hadn’t known she could shimmy.

A delicious, reckless shiver glided down her spine.

Bronte leaned closer. “Don’t even think about it, Kell. The guy’s Grade-A trouble. In capital letters. Bolded. Underlined. A lady-killer and a half.”

Kelli’s smile widened as she brushed off her friend’s warning. When was the last time she had felt this way? Keyed up? Sexy? Ready to take on the world? Well, okay, maybe not the world, but certainly the prime male specimen heading her way. She frowned slightly, not knowing what was worse—the fact that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way, or the suspicion that she never had. The unclear answer made her all the more determined to pay attention to the fiery emotions.

Sure, she admitted it probably wasn’t very wise to openly encourage a guy in a cop bar, considering her circumstances. But it was her first night living in D.C. after three long years. And, by God, it felt good to be home, in the city where she’d been raised and where she planned to live out the rest of her life. It felt good thinking about her new job and knowing she had a choice apartment in Columbia Heights, the equivalent of which she would never have been able to afford in New York City. Overall, she felt good. And the instant she’d exchanged glances with the man now close enough for her to see the color of his eyes—a warm, vivid blue that sent another shiver sliding behind the other—she’d felt the overwhelming need to cut loose in a way she never had.

“Tonight, maybe Grade-A trouble is what I’m in the market for,” Kelli said, enjoying her friend’s shocked expression.

There wasn’t much capable of shocking Bronte O’Brien. If she were to be honest, Bronte had always been the shocker out of the two of them. Ever since forming an odd union of sorts while taking pre-law at George Washington University, Bronte had been the racy one, reckless, the girl on scholarship who hid her brains behind her good looks. Kelli had lived vicariously through her best friend for years, though she had to admit Bronte’s life had become boring as of late. Still, it was long past time Kelli started doing her own living.

Bronte rubbed the smooth skin between her brows and sighed. “You know, Kelli, I take back everything I’ve ever encouraged you to do. For years, I’ve been telling you that you need to loosen up. Get out and experience life. Get a life.” She slowly shook her head, the dim light burnishing her short red hair. “But this is definitely not what I had in mind. If you won’t take the advice from me, personally, take it from your trusted attorney—you don’t want to do this. I know the guy he’s with—I’ve run across him on the job. He’s a marshal. Anyway, a guy like this one making a beeline for you…well, he has catastrophe written all over him. He should come with a warning label—Commitment Phobic—Use For One-Night Stand Only.”

“You’re not my attorney, Bronte. You’re a U.S. attorney. And I’m not interested in his friend. I’m interested in him.” Kelli looked her full in the face. “Besides, maybe a one-night stand is all I’m looking for.”

“That’s what you say now. Let’s see how fast that story changes afterward.”

Kelli leaned against her stick. “Come on, Bron, lighten up. You’re acting like my sleeping with this guy is a forgone conclusion.” She held up a rigid finger. “One. That’s the whole of my experience with the opposite sex.” An experience she didn’t want to repeat much less remember. “Only then I was so green you could have planted me.”

“So you say. Mark my words, Jed was an amateur. This one’s a pro.” Bronte hooked a thumb to where the guy in question stopped to talk to a couple of men at the bar, though his gaze never strayed from their direction. “A regular heartache waiting to happen.”

Kelli rolled her eyes to stare at the ceiling, then laughed. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” She drew her thumb along the smooth wood of the pool stick then bit softly on her bottom lip. “Come on, Bronte, I’m tired of being a good girl. Fed up with always doing the right thing, both in my job and my personal life. The perfect worker who passes up a vacation day because a coworker needs to go to his kid’s school play. The friend who’s always home because she never goes anywhere, never does anything. The boring neighbor who doesn’t mind feeding your pets while you’re away sipping Bahama Mamas on some tropical island. I want to step outside my safe little box, live a little, even if just for this one night.”

Kelli swallowed, not understanding the scope of her restlessness until that very moment. There had been hints over the past few months. The Egyptian silk sheets she’d dropped a fortune on because she thought they were sexy. Her new interest in cooking exotic foods; she’d even bought a wok, for God’s sake. Her sudden, insatiable hunger for romance novels, addictive books she had only picked up on occasion before, but now her collection had grown so large it had taken five huge boxes to cart it from New York. The simple truth was that she no longer wanted to rub her legs against the sheets…alone. She didn’t want to spend hours concocting the perfect meal only to be disappointed when she discovered she and her dog Kojak were the only ones around to eat it. She wanted to live the lives of those romance heroines rather than just read about them.

“And as for your worrying about me getting my heart broken,” she continued, “give me a little credit, will you? I think I deserve at least that after all the heartaches I watched you experience. I never said word one to you all those times you got yourself in trouble over some walking stud muffin.”

“What, are you actually inventorying each of my doomed romances so you can be sure to get in all your I told you so’s?” Bronte grimaced and held up her hand. “And don’t try to give me that innocent look either.” Her blue eyes twinkled as she sipped her purple drink. “Just how do you think I learned how to give you a hard time now?”

Kelli squinted at her.

“Every little jab I’ve just hit you with, you’ve poked at me over the years.”

Touché. She leaned over the table and lined up her next shot. Right before she would take it, she glanced past the cue ball and directly into the suggestive eyes of the man in question. She scratched so badly she nearly tore a hole in the green felt.

The guy grinned and began swaggering their way again.

Bronte dropped her voice. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so, you hear?”

Kelli didn’t absorb her friend’s words, concentrating instead on the heat spilling through her bloodstream, the tingly tightening of her breasts. Tonight she wanted to be the ravisher and the ravishee. She wanted to throw her hands up in the air and say “I am woman, hear me roar.” And she wanted to swallow the gorgeous guy moving toward them whole.

Shamelessly she openly eyed the man’s physique. Oh, he was a cop all right. There was no denying that. Everything about him spoke of cockiness and authority, a rough-around-the-edges attitude that stemmed as much from knowing himself capable of saving someone’s life as from the certainty that he could take a suspect’s. And he was still young enough to think himself immortal.

She briefly caught her bottom lip between her teeth again. Maybe he was just the thing this good girl needed to turn very, very bad.

He reached the pool table just as someone finished feeding the jukebox a slew of coins. Bronte rolled her eyes as Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” attempted to drown out the hum of conversation and clink of glasses from behind the bar.

The devil in blue jeans slapped a fiver on the edge of the pool table near the coin slot. “I play the loser.” His grin made her heart race. “David McCoy.”

Kelli repositioned her pool stick and slowly shook his hand, the heat the simple touch generated exhilaratingly cathartic. “Kelli Hatfield.” She released his hand then tapped the stick lightly against her side. This was one game she was going to enjoy losing. “You’re on.”

TWO HOURS LATER, David launched a renewed assault on Kelli Hatfield’s luscious mouth and backed her toward her stripped bed in the corner. Her hungry but obviously inexperienced response made him harder than steel. As drop-dead sexy as the woman was, an innocence clung to her silky skin like an irresistible perfume, making him want to breathe her in, eat her alive, thrust into her like nobody’s business.

And that’s exactly what he intended to do. That is, if he could pull his thoughts together long enough to take things further than kissing.

The strength of his reaction was like a sucker punch to the gut. Even he had to admit surprise at how quickly they’d ended up back at her place, clawing at each other’s clothes, devouring each other’s mouths. He’d lay ten-to-one odds that the woman even now clumsily unzipping his fly had never uttered the words “one-night stand” before, much less indulged in one. Still, he hadn’t had to resort to any of his old come-on lines at the bar. It had always been a bit tricky trying to get a woman between the sheets while keeping her well away from serious commitment territory. After their sexually charged game of pool, he’d simply suggested they get out of there, and she’d agreed. Even Connor and her friend, Bronte, had held up their hands as if their leaving were inevitable and said little more than “Bye” when they grabbed their coats and practically ran from the bar.

Just thinking about the remarkable, lightning-fast string of events sent David’s pulse rate skyrocketing off the charts. Hell, he felt he might lose it if he couldn’t bury himself in her hot flesh right then and there.

He supposed she might be drunk, but he knew what signs to look for and she displayed none of them. In fact, he didn’t detect a hint of liquor. Rather, he tasted something hot and undeniably sweet on her tongue. Then there was her skin….

Peaches. She tasted like peaches, for crying out loud.

Off went that stretchy pink top and her lacy bra. He palmed her breasts and groaned at their nicely rounded weight. Not too big. Not too small. Pure heaven.

“Wait…I…” she whispered huskily.

He pulled an engorged, pale nipple into the depths of his mouth. She gasped and ceased trying to speak.

With more strength than he would have thought possible, she reversed their positions then pushed him toward the mattress. Off went her slacks, his jeans. Before he knew it, his fingers were entangled in her hair, his mouth greedily pulling at hers, and she was poised, ready, above him.

He tugged his mouth from hers and met her eyes. In the fleeting beams of passing headlights, he saw on her face a gravity, a need, a beauty that made him groan. He’d experienced one or two one-night stands in the past, but this was different somehow. Rather, Kelli Hatfield was different. He’d never felt so in tune with a woman, so completely wrapped up in her. And though they didn’t know each other well, he felt that he knew her on a level that transcended the trivial details normally exchanged during the traditional first few dates. He didn’t know what college she had attended in New York, where she’d said she just moved from, but he knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. And that was saying a whole lot.

Her gaze remaining locked with his, Kelli lowered herself. His hips bucked and suddenly her tight, slick flesh surrounded him.

He recaptured her mouth and closed his eyes, feeling an odd sensation of inner calm even as their movements grew restless, their breathing ragged. When they climaxed together minutes later, he felt an odd sense of completion that stemmed from more than just the physical. The sensation was foreign, frightening, electrifying, and completely blew his mind.

“Wow,” Kelli whispered, her damp flesh resting against his.

“Yeah…wow,” he repeated.

Slowly, his breathing evened, his heartbeat went back to normal, and the world came back into focus. He glanced around the room. Boxes everywhere. There weren’t even sheets on the bed, though the old radiator in the corner emanated so much heat, it didn’t matter. He vaguely wondered if she’d just moved in, but didn’t have the energy to ask. For the first time since he could remember, David McCoy was completely devoid of words.

She rolled off of him and reached for a robe pooled on the bare wood floor. He fought the urge to pull her back.

“I could do with a glass of something cold. How about you?” she asked, tucking her tousled hair behind her ear.

David noticed the way she didn’t look directly at him, rather concentrated on a spot just over his right shoulder. His brows shot up. He recognized her actions all too well, because, simply, he was usually the one who made them after sex. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. God, this was a first. “I…yeah, sure. I could go for some water or something.”

A whole holding tank full of ice-cold water, he thought.

Tying the robe around her trim waist, she scooped up the empty condom packet from the nightstand, then padded barefoot from the room.

David lay still for a long moment staring after her. So that was it, huh? The most explosive sex he’d had…well, that he’d ever had, and it was over. It was time for him to leave.

He closed his eyes and groaned. Mitch had always warned him that one day he’d pay for his errant ways. He absently scratched his head, the thought of one brother leading to thoughts of another. Was Connor somewhere getting better acquainted with Kelli’s friend, Bronte, right now? Or had he taken off right after he and Kelli had?

For the life of him, he didn’t want to move. He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened just now. The sex between him and Kelli was…well, whatever it was, he had to get himself some more of that.

Something cold and wet nudged against his foot. David went from complete relaxation to nearly catapulting from the bed at Olympic record-setting speed. He thoroughly searched the area but found nothing on the quilted blue-flowered mattress. If that was a bug, it had to be one of the slimiest…

There was a click-click against the wood floor. David looked anxiously around the room for something to defend himself with. He settled on one of his hiking boots. He slowly moved toward the end of the bed aided only by the boot and the dim light filtering in through the window. Not only did it have to be the slimiest, it must be the biggest damn bug—

A hulking, jowl-drooping blond boxer stuck his head out from around the corner of the bed and eyed him, his tongue seeming to curve upward toward his nose. David sagged with relief. A dog. It was a dog. Sensing that the crisis had passed, the ugly pooch came loping around the corner, his wagging short tail making his entire overly plump body shimmy.

David reached down to let the canine sniff the back of his free hand. “Hey…” he craned to see, “boy. How are you doing, huh?” He heartily rubbed him behind the ears.

A switch clicked, then an overhead light filled the room with its harsh glare. David blinked rapidly to adjust his eyesight, then looked at where Kelli stood in the doorway, a brow raised in question. David grimaced at his undressed state and the hiking boot he still held. Way to go, McCoy. It began to sink in that he wasn’t going to be getting anymore of anything anytime soon.

WOW.

The word ran through Kelli’s mind like a hit compact disc on permanent replay, despite the strange scene she encountered when she returned to her bedroom.

Her brain had effectively stopped working, oh, about an hour and a half ago at the bar, when she’d basically decided she was going to take one delectable David McCoy home with her. And it hadn’t switched on again until she found herself lying on top of David, gloriously sweaty, wondering what in the world had just happened.

Despite her arguments to Bronte to the contrary, the limited scope of her experience had left her criminally unprepared for this man and her phenomenal reaction to him. She pulled her white, threadbare robe more tightly around herself with one hand. If this was what made Bronte jump into every bed she came across, then she herself had definitely been missing out on a whole lot of something for much too long.

The only problem was that remembering how very bad she’d just been made the good girl come out to do some mental finger-shaking.

The boot David held clunked to the floor and he grinned boyishly. “Uh…your dog and I were just getting acquainted.”

Dog… Oh, God, her dog! “Kojak! Come here, boy.” She’d purposely closed the bedroom door when they’d come in, but the pooch must have snuck in while she was in the other room. “There you are.”

“I thought he was a bug.”

“What?”

David was tugging up his jeans, his back to her, his firm, rounded behind tempting her touch. She averted her gaze and felt her cheeks color—which was ridiculous, because mere moments before she’d shamelessly run her fingers all over the flesh in question. “Never mind.”

“I have your water,” she blurted needlessly, the plastic glass in her hand.

Clad only in jeans, he sauntered over to her and accepted the cold drink. While he drank, Kelli covertly skimmed the well-toned body she had hungrily molested in the dark and was shocked by the rush of desire to consume him all over again. She mimicked his movements by swallowing hard. The guy was perfect in every sense of the word. His abs stood out in wondrous relief, making her itch to run her fingers over the sculpted muscles, down to where a thin line of blond hair disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.

“So that’s it then, huh?” he asked, holding out the glass to her.

Kelli took it. “Did you want more?”

The odd way he looked at her made her rethink her question. “Depends on what you’re referring to.”

Kelli’s cheeks burned hotly all over again. He wasn’t talking about water. He was likely referring to the fact that she hadn’t given them the chance for more. After they’d…had sex, she couldn’t have run from the room quicker had it been on fire.

The dog butted his head against her shin, then ran around her legs in an attempt to gain her attention. “Not now…Jack.”

David’s grin nearly knocked her over. “Good thing you clarified who you were talking to, ’cause I was just about to grab my shirt.”

Bronte would be happy to know that every last thing she’d uttered about David McCoy was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent true. He was a pro. And now that Kelli’s head was working again, she was beginning to fear she was greener now than she’d ever been. Beginning to fear that it was impossible for her to have casual sex, because tomorrow kept intruding, making her wonder about stupid things like whether or not he would call her, or if he liked Chinese food.

Her gaze drifted down the sculpted planes of his chest and her own breathing grew curiously ragged. Green or not, she still wanted this man with every fiber of her being. She looked at his flat, beaded nipples and her own tightened and ached to be touched. She saw the thick ridge pressing against the zipper of his jeans, and felt a rush of hot desire between her bare legs.

She flicked her eyes up to stare into his, recognizing and instantly responding to the need reflected in the midnight blue depths. The hungry, sex-deprived wanton may have abandoned her, but she was finding that the good girl wanted everything she had…and more.

A tiny whimper gathered in her throat. Oh, to hell with tomorrow and consequences and hearing Bronte say “I told you so.” The simple truth was that it was still night, and she wanted to spend every single last moment of it with David McCoy cradled between her thighs.

Forgetting the dog, she practically leapt on David, circling her arms around his neck, pasting her mouth against his and hungrily letting him know exactly what she was feeling. He slid his hands inside her robe and the ineffective belt slid to the floor…right along with the empty plastic glass. David grinned then scooped her up and practically tossed her back on top of the bed.

2

“YOU’RE LATE, Officer McCoy. Again.”

David waved away O’Leary, the desk sergeant, and his penchant for protocol as he rushed by on his way to the briefing room. He’d run into bumper-to-bumper traffic near Dupont Circle, so had parked his car in the station commander’s spot in front of the street level building to save time. His uniform shirt was wrinkled because when he’d looked for it on the passenger’s seat—where he thought he’d put it when he leapt into the car half-dressed—he found instead that he’d been sitting on it. And he hadn’t had a chance to clean and check his firearm, as he did every morning.

Despite all that, he caught himself whistling.

Okay, so it was tuneless, and he was also pretty sure he looked like Gomer Pyle on drugs, but he couldn’t help himself.

Slowing his step, he made sure the back of his shirt was tucked in, folded his police issue winter jacket over his arm, and started to turn the corner. Lieutenant Kowalsky would have his ass for being late again. Still, suffering through old Kow’s impending wrath didn’t bother him half as much as it normally would. His good humor might have something to do with last night, and the incredible mind-blowing sex he’d had with Kelli Hatfield.

Kelli Hatfield.

If it was true what they said about the whole Hatfield and McCoy feud…well, then, he and Kelli had made it their duty to put a huge dent into righting old wrongs.

“Nobody’s in there.”

O’Leary’s words reached him the instant David opened the door to find the briefing room empty. He relaxed his shoulders from their stiff at-attention angle then glanced at his watch. Certainly, he hadn’t missed roll call.

“Okay, O’L, what gives?” David stalked back to the front desk.

“Didn’t have your radio on during the drive in, did you, kid? Everyone’s downtown. Some guy’s holding his little girl hostage until he can talk to his estranged wife. The whole city and county forces are down there now, not to mention every branch of the news media.”

David felt the familiar, all-powerful burst of adrenaline kicking in. A hostage situation. Now that was a meaty way to start a day. He sprinted for the door, shrugging into his coat as he went.

“McCoy!”

David winced at Kowalsky’s shout. He’d recognize that low, eardrum-popping sound anywhere. The guys around the station joked that you could hear his voice in the next county if you listened hard enough.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” he said, turning to face him, though he maintained his momentum.

“Going somewhere?” Kow asked, eyeing his shirt and raising a brow.

David either had to go through the door or stop. Given the warning written all over his superior’s face, he opted for stop. “Yes, sir, I thought I’d head downtown to see if I could be of assistance.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Sir?” Methodically, he patted his badge, his firearm, his cuffs. All there.

“Your new partner, McCoy. I’m talking about your new partner.”

David winced for the second time. That’s all he needed. A new guy to play getting-to-know-you with during the ride downtown. He quickly rebounded. “Sorry, sir. I’d assumed that since I was late, he would already be on the scene.”

Contrary to his name, Kowalsky was a six foot five African-American with the manner of a drill sergeant and a monstrous grin he used only to his advantage. That he grinned now made David mutter a mild oath.

“What was that, McCoy?”

“Nothing, sir. My new partner… Where can I find him?”

Kow’s grin widened. “Right here, McCoy.”

He turned to find the hall empty. The grin left his face. “Hatfield!”

The bottom of David’s stomach dropped out. Hatfield. His mind quickly calculated the odds that he would meet two Hatfields in less than twenty-four hours. They were very small. So small as to be minuscule. So tiny as to be impossible…

Naw. He had Hatfield on the brain, that’s all.

He made the mistake of looking at Kow’s suspicious grin, noting the telling absence of his new partner—as if he or she didn’t want to be seen—and felt the sudden, irresistible urge to run. Especially when the sweetly sexy, innocently insatiable, utterly feminine Kelli Hatfield popped out from around the corner, her face mirroring the shock he felt.

Forget his stomach. The floor had just dropped out from beneath his feet.

It couldn’t…wouldn’t…there was no way in hell that this…that she…was his new partner. Hell, last night he judged her competence to be somewhere between squirting perfume on little blue-haired ladies with platinum credit cards and helping panicky brides try on their wedding dresses. The reality that she was actually a cop was enough to send any man reeling.

Kelli appeared to regain her bearings before he did. “Officer McCoy,” she said, clearing her throat. Apparently remembering their company, she moved her coat from her right to her left arm, then thrust her hand—her soft, slender, delicate hand—toward him.

David took it, tempted to use it to pull her into the nearest room so they could have a little talk. Now. Kow be damned.

Speaking of Kow, he glanced to find him staring at them guardedly. “You two know each other?”

David nearly choked on the words, “yep, in the most sinful sense.”

“Yes, sir,” Kelli answered instead. “We met last night at The Pour House. First night back in town, as luck would have it.”

“Good.” Kow nodded. “Now isn’t there some place you guys need to be?”

He had to be dreaming. That was it. This was all some sort of sick, twisted nightmare brought on by what happened to his ex-partner and his anxiety of who his new partner would be. At any moment he would—

“McCoy!” Kow barked. “Get with the program, man.”

David winced. If this was a dream, what the hell was Kowalsky doing here?

Kelli gave him a pointed look. “We’re on our way, sir,” she said.

Completely dumbfounded, David watched her walk by him. Catching a whiff of her subtle scent didn’t help matters any. His gaze zipped around the station lobby, but he didn’t find any chuckling officers hiding behind any doors or around the corner. O’Leary wasn’t even watching them. And Kow’s expression darkened further with each second that passed.

This is for real. It wasn’t some really bad practical joke being played on him by fellow, prankster officers. Kelli Hatfield truly was his new partner.

Yeah, and he was the king of Siam.

Picking up his jaw off the gritty tile, David hurried after Kelli’s trim little bottom. The door closed after them and he stopped again. After a few steps, she turned toward him, shrugging into her coat. “Are you coming, McCoy?”

“There’s no way…I mean, I don’t believe… Come on, Kelli, you can’t be a police officer,” he blurted.

She planted her fists on her hips, her expression altogether thunderous. “Which one’s ours?”

“Huh?”

“The car, Officer. Which is our vehicle?”

David pointed left to the cruiser in the lot and watched her head for it. She reached the driver’s side. The impact of what her actions meant provided the impetus he needed to finally move. He was next to her in no time flat. “I’ll drive.”

Rolling her eyes toward the sky, she took her hand off the handle, then rounded the car and got in the passenger’s side.

David stood still for a long moment, concentrating on little more than his breathing. This couldn’t be happening. Any second now he expected to wake up from this dream—nightmare—and find his mind was playing some sort of sick joke on him after last night’s recklessness. He bent over and looked through the window. Kelli was fastening her seat belt. He snapped upright again. Nope. She was still there.

Damn.

KELLI SAT flagpole straight, staring at the dash like a dazed crash victim waiting for the airbag to deflate. Her friend Bronte’s words of warning from the night before echoed in her mind. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so….”

Somehow she didn’t think this was what Bronte had in mind. Though her friend would probably argue it was exactly what she deserved—right after she laughed herself into hysteria.

Kelli closed her eyes tightly. Only to her. This could happen only to her. Her first night back home in D.C., the one and only night out of her entire life that she had thrown caution to the wind, and she wound up spending it with her new partner, screwing up both her personal and her professional life.

She scrubbed her damp palms against the scratchy material of her police issue slacks and whispered a long line of curses that would have done her police chief father proud. Well, it would have done him proud if, indeed, she’d ended up being the son he’d wanted instead of his only daughter. But she hadn’t, and it was a fact he never let her forget. Not when she’d played little league baseball. Not when she’d enrolled in the academy at twenty. Not when she’d graduated and was denied a spot with the D.C. Metropolitan Police. It hadn’t helped any when she learned that her father made sure her status was knocked down to third tier standby, essentially barring her from a job on the force. Apparently he had thought she would lose interest in her pursuit while in the academy. He’d always been so overprotective. As he’d told her, no little girl of his was going to get her butt shot off so long as he had any power within the department. And as Regional Assistant Chief for the East, he had more than enough to waylay her…at least in D.C. In New York, however, his power was nil.

The driver’s door finally opened and Kelli nearly launched from her seat. David slid behind the wheel. She pointedly avoided his gaze and suspected he did the same beside her.

He’s just as much a victim in this as I am, she reminded herself. But for some reason his undisguised disbelief when they were introduced irritated her. Shock, she expected. Disbelief? Suddenly agitated, she shifted. She told herself to give him the benefit of the doubt. That there was a good chance he wasn’t like eighty percent of the other males she’d worked with who thought her completely incapable of her job as a police officer. Okay, maybe not a good chance. But there was a chance. And after last night, she, um, owed him at least that much consideration.

He moved. She forced herself to look at him. His mouth was moving, but no words made it past his impossibly wicked lips. She swallowed, reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to notice what a great mouth he had…or remember all the naughty places that mouth had been mere hours earlier.

His attempts at speech continued, nudging up her impatience level. Finally, she said, “Look, I didn’t expect this anymore than you did, David…um, McCoy.” Stick to last names. Maybe that would afford her the distance she so desperately needed right now.

His crack at imitating a wide-mouth bass out of water stopped and he seemed to relax. “Actually, Hatfield,” he said, stressing her last name. “That’s not entirely true. Last night you knew you were going to be reporting to work at this station and that you would be assigned a new partner. That’s a helluva lot more than I was privy to.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling of the car. Okay, she’d give him that. Still… “Come on, David, we met at a cop bar. Surely you had to know there was some connection.”

“All right. Sure. Maybe. But as someone’s daughter. Or sister. Or…”

She raised a brow, daring him to say “cop groupie.”

He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t expect you to be a blasted police officer.”

She stared out the windshield as a couple of uniforms walked by, openly curious about the couple in the squad car a few feet away. “Don’t you think we should get going?”

“Huh?” He followed her line of vision. His long-suffering sigh told her he’d somewhat snapped out of his momentary trance.

“Look, David, when I came in this morning, this was the last thing I expected.” She hated that she noticed his eyes were an even more vibrant blue in the light of day. “I say we do this. Go on about our business for now and pretend last night never happened.”

He blinked as if the effort took every ounce of his concentration. “Are you crazy?” he said, startling her with his intensity. “I have the best friggin’ sex of my life and you tell me to forget about it? Act like it never happened?”

Heat spread quickly through Kelli’s veins, making her remember just how incredible last night had been for her, too. But last night was last night. And, oh boy, did the guy who sang “What a Difference a Day Makes” ever know what he was talking about.

David started the cruiser and began to back out. “Ain’t a chance in hell I’m going to forget about last night, Kelli.” He looked at her. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you forget either.”

THEY ARRIVED on the scene to find the street glutted with blue-and-whites. David spotted the scene commander and within moments he and Kelli were next to him. A brisk December breeze brought her scent to him. Damn, but she smelled good. Like ripe peaches picked fresh from the tree.

He grimaced. Yeah, she was a peach all right. A peach with a gun.

“Glad you could join us, McCoy,” Sutherland said dryly.

An officer David recognized as being at the bar the night before chuckled as he elbowed his partner.

“Look, loverboy has himself a new partner.”

“Can it, Jennings,” David told him. His gaze rested on Kelli’s face to find bright spots of red high on her cheeks. But whether her flush was a result of the cold, or the obvious gossiping going on, he couldn’t tell. Her shoulder-length toffee-colored hair was caught back in a neat French braid, her skin nearly flawless where the gray morning light caught it.

She looked at him. He immediately looked back at the commander. “Why don’t you bring me…us up to speed on what’s going on?”

Sutherland did, covering much the same ground O’Leary had at the station. Except his details were more specific. The perp was on the third floor. Door was open, but there wasn’t a clean shot. He pointed to where the perpetrator’s estranged wife stood shivering next to a nearby patrol car, then to a fire escape on the side of the building. Across the way on the roof of a neighboring building a couple of sharpshooters were setting up shop.

“The perp demands to talk to his wife before he’ll give up the three-year-old girl.”

“The perp is the child’s father?”

“He ceased being a father the minute he took his own child hostage, McCoy.”

David stepped backward until the fire escape was in sight, ignoring the red-and-white flashes of light against the brick building.

“What is it?” Kelli asked, coming to stand next to him.

He looked at her again. Damn, but just looking at her did all sorts of funny things to his stomach. “Just that the guy couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this, that’s all. You’ve got the tired third shifters exhausted and pumped up on caffeine, their trigger fingers itchy as hell. Then there are the first shift guys barely awake and pissed as hell that their coffee-and-donut run was interrupted.” He grimaced. “Really bad timing.”

Her gaze swept him from forehead to mouth. Was she remembering last night as vividly as he was? Was she thinking about how great it had felt to be joined together, far, far away from this mess? She looked quickly away and this time he was sure the color of her cheeks wasn’t due to the cold. “Any ideas on how to end it?” she asked.

He mulled over her words. “Yeah. I think what I just said makes a lot of sense.”

“What, let SWAT take him out?”

“No. The donuts part. If the father’s just coming off third shift he probably hasn’t had breakfast yet. A guy can get awful hungry after putting in a full one.”

“Are you saying we should feed the perp?” she asked, a suspicious shadow darkening her green eyes.

“The father, Hatfield. The guy is the kid’s father.” He grinned. “And yeah, I think we should try feeding him.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

He scanned the street. At the corner was a small donut shop. He thrust five dollars at her. “Here. Get a half dozen and a couple of coffees.”

Kelli frowned. “But—”

“Do it, Hatfield.”

Her eyes flashed, but she started toward the shop—though not without looking back a couple of times first.

The instant she was out of sight, David grabbed a bullet-proof vest from the back of a riot wagon, then strode toward the fire escape. He pulled down the ladder even as he shrugged into the vest. He pulled his weight up on the first rung, then methodically climbed until he reached the third floor landing. Ducking off to the side, he peeked in through the window. The father was sitting on a couch out of view of the front door and of the sharpshooters across the street, grasping his little girl in one hand, a twelve-gauge shotgun in his other. The little girl looked unharmed. More than that, the toddler didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that things were out of control as she giggled and toyed with the buttons down the front of her father’s work shirt.

David ducked back out of sight and took a deep breath. He figured out the scenario in his mind. The father had just knocked off work at a nearby factory, had stopped by to see his daughter, his soon-to-be ex refused to allow him to, and he’d taken matters into his own hands.

Any way you cut it, what had begun as a harmless domestic squabble had spiraled out of control until you had the situation he now faced.

“I’ve got a clean shot,” a sharpshooter’s voice crackled over the radio fastened to David’s gun belt.

“Be at the ready,” scene commander Sutherland’s voice responded.

Shaking his head, David reached over and tested the old wood-frame window. Unlocked. Hoping the bit of luck would stay with him, he pushed the window up before the guy inside, and the commander outside, had time to react.

“Whoa, there, cowboy,” David said, swinging his feet over the sill and sitting with his hands up. “My name’s McCoy and I’m here to make sure no one gets hurt.” He grinned. “Especially me.”

OFFICERS, uniformed and otherwise swarmed the small, neat apartment, talking into radios, issuing orders and generally making a mess out of things. In the middle of the chaos, Kelli finished reading the perp his Miranda rights, then cuffed him. Distractedly, her gaze trailed over to where David stood near the door holding the little girl. She clung to him like a young chimp. He leaned in and whispered something into her ear, then chucked her under her dimpled chin. She twirled her blond, sleep-tousled hair around her chubby index finger, then giggled shyly. Somehow, David had not only skillfully managed to keep the girl from seeing her father being arrested, he had made her laugh. Kelli couldn’t help noticing how…right he looked holding the little cherub.

Testing the cuffs, she forced the unwanted thought aside and concentrated instead on her total lack of amusement only moments before. David’s sending her off on some two-bit, phony errand so that he could play maverick hero set her blood to simmering.

“This way,” she said, grasping the perp’s elbow, then angling him toward the door.

He hesitated. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted my face to be one of the first she saw this morning, that’s all,” he told her. “It’s her birthday, you know. All I wanted was five minutes to give her a hug and her present. I would never have hurt my little girl.”

Kelli took in his aggrieved expression. “I hope not. But that’s for a judge to decide, isn’t it?”

David handed the child off to another female officer who would likely take the toddler to her mother and Kelli passed the handcuffed perp off to the first officer on the scene.

“That was a stupid stunt you pulled, David,” Kelli muttered as they walked out of the apartment together.

“Just so long as it’s over and no one got hurt.” He acknowledged a hearty slap on the back from one of their colleagues with a nod. He flashed a loaded grin at her. “I didn’t know you were so concerned about my backside.”

“I’m your partner,” she said, her breath catching at the teasing expression on his face. “I’m supposed to be concerned about your backside. But that’s not what I was talking about. I didn’t much care for your little diversionary tactic, David. Do you even know the definition of the word partn—”

“McCoy! Get your ass over here now, boy,” Sutherland’s voice boomed up the stairwell.

“Speaking of backsides…” David groaned. “I’d better go see what he wants.”

Kelli opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. She got the impression that whatever she had to say wouldn’t make one iota of difference anyway.

She stopped and let him pass in front of her. “Go ahead. I just might enjoy watching the scene commander take a piece out of you.”

David’s grimace was altogether too cute. “Be careful what you wish for, Hatfield. At this rate, I won’t have any behind left to risk.” He waggled his brows.

Sutherland was at the bottom of the steps and was apparently ready to do just as David forecasted. Even so, Kelli couldn’t help eyeing the backside in question. The clinging, unattractive material and bulky weapons belt was unable to hide the fact that David McCoy’s behind was the stuff of which fantasies were made. She started to push wisps of hair from her forehead only to find her hand shaking. She greeted an officer, then outside on the street away from the crowd she took a deep, calming breath.

Why did she get the feeling that everything in her life had just been turned upside down? And why was it that she suspected that a certain precinct Casanova named David McCoy was solely to blame?

3

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kelli caught herself daydreaming as she stood in front of the toaster. She’d been thinking about David in a way that had nothing to do with the way he’d treated her yesterday, nothing to do with her plans to nab a detective’s shield, and everything to do with hot flesh and cool sheets.

Sighing in a mixture of wistfulness and frustration, she pushed her run-dampened hair from her cheek, then stuck half an onion bagel smothered with grape jelly between her teeth. Ignoring the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and the empty carton of orange juice on the counter, she clutched her full coffee cup, then elbowed open the kitchen door. She had forty-five minutes before roll call. Plenty of time to peel off her sweats, catch a shower and get down to the district three station to have that little talk she and David had never really gotten around to yesterday.

The tension she had just spent a half an hour and three miles running off settled solidly back between her shoulder blades.

After the hostage case and Sutherland, there had been the press to deal with. She remembered how David’s easy grin and easygoing personality had transferred well over all forms of media and felt her stomach tighten along with her shoulders. Reporters, especially female—although she’d noticed a couple of males responding to David’s charming, daredevil ways—were all over him. When they’d finally gotten back to their squad car, it seemed a quarter of D.C.’s population had a crisis of some sort that needed attention. She and David had spent the day on back-to-back runs ranging from the simple—helping find an elderly woman’s “stolen” social security check in a neighbor’s mailbox—to the complicated—an obvious gang member who would probably lose an eye but would never give up the names of his homies or the opposing gang.

Still, no matter how many calls came in, how much paperwork they had to fill out, a thread of awareness had bound her and David together. It was a connection not even her sharpest retort could hope to cut.

Yeah, well, today she planned to take a machete to work. She’d get a handle on her runaway hormones if it was the last thing she ever did.

Kelli wove her way through the maze that was currently her apartment into the dining area of her living room. She dodged precariously stacked, half-unpacked boxes, a hundred pound bag of diet dog food and her treadmill. Finally she nudged a manila folder aside with her mug, then put her coffee on the cluttered dining room table. Her attention catching on a pink message slip, she freed the bagel from between her teeth and took an absent bite. The message must have slipped from one of the files, the blue ink nearly faded. She leaned closer to see the date. March 25, 1982. The day her mother was murdered. The day she’d decided she wanted to be a homicide detective.

A sharp bark made her jump.

“Yikes, Kojak, you just about gave me a coronary.” Frowning down at the drooling blond boxer she’d rescued from a New York animal shelter, she considered the disgusting concoction that served as her breakfast then held it out to him. He sniffed, licked, then whined and walked away.

Kelli stared at the now inedible bagel half. “Thanks a lot.” She tossed it into a nearby bag she hoped was empty, then switched on the television across the room with the remote. The local news broadcaster’s voice filled the apartment reminding her again how David had charmed the reporters. His too handsome mug had been plastered all over the news last night, every hour on the hour, if not on the news itself, then in the news previews. “You don’t want to miss our story of the day as local man in blue David McCoy saves the day….”

It was enough to make a person ill.

Kelli plucked up the remote again, moving to switch off the television before the news could launch into another “local hero” bit featuring her partner the sexist cad, when a completely different scene stopped her. “We’re on the outskirts of Georgetown where a woman was found dead in her apartment, earlier this morning. Eyewitnesses tell us the murder of this quiet, private school teacher bears all the markings of the work of the man dubbed the D.C. Degenerate.” The female spot reporter looked over her shoulder.

Kelli wryly nodded. “Zoom in on the standard body shot,” she said under her breath.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “If so, then I, for one, think we need to upgrade his name to D.C. Executioner. Because it appears he’s just lost interest in playing out sick sexual fantasies and has just graduated to full-fledged killer.”

Kelli pressed the mute button, the case too similar to another for her comfort. She picked up the message slip lying on the table in front of her, wondering how much detectives knew about this latest guy. And if they would do any better catching him than they had her mother’s killer.

It had been awhile since she’d reviewed the contents of the folders strewn out before her. Three years, in fact. Ever since transferring to New York where doing any footwork on the case would have been impossible. She sat down and curled her right leg under her. Now that she was back home, though…

The telephone chirped. Propping a file open with one hand, she reached for the cordless with her other.

“Yeah?”

“Jaysus, Kelli, is that the way you answer the phone?” her father asked with obvious exasperation.

Kelli closed the file and reached for another. “I don’t know, Dad, you’d be the better one to answer that question since you are the one who’s calling me every five minutes since I got back in town.”

She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth. Not because she shouldn’t have said such a thing to her own father, but because of what it would ultimately lead to.

She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable speech.

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have to call you if you were staying here, now would I?”

“No, Dad, you wouldn’t,” she said almost by rote.

“You know I have more than enough room for you. There’s no sense in your going off and getting an apartment.”

“Yes, Dad, I know.”

The sound of crumpling paper caught her attention. She turned to find Kojak nosing around in the bag for the uneaten bagel.

“Have you watched the news lately? It isn’t safe for a woman to be living on her own in this city.”

Kelli nodded. “Not safe.”

“And that damn mutt of yours is no kind of security either, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s nothing but an overgrown cat.”

“Cat…”

“Kelli Marie, are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, girl?”

“Sure, Dad. Though I really don’t have to because you’ve said it so often it’s etched in my brain.” She pulled another file in front of her and flipped it open. “Was there a specific reason you called, Dad? Or is this just another of your check-ins?”

Silence, then, “Can’t a dad simply want to talk to his daughter?”

Kelli slowly spread her hand out palm down on the table. She should have seen that one coming as well but stepped right through the open barn door all the same. Her voice was decidedly more subdued when she said, “Of course you can, Dad.” She leaned back in her chair. Sometimes it seemed it had always been just her and her father. “You and me against the world,” he’d said when he’d found her crying in her mother’s closet after the funeral. Words he’d repeated time and again after she’d gotten knocked down over and over while proving to everyone and to herself that she was just as good as the guys. “It’s just you and me against the world, kid.”

She curled the fingers of her free hand into a loose fist. “Dad…I know it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it…and Lord knows I’ve avoided bringing the topic up enough times…but I have to know.” She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her. “Does it ever bother you that Mom’s killer was never caught?”

She regretted the question the instant it was out. The silence that wafted over the line was as palpable as her own unsteady heartbeat. “You know I don’t like talking about the past, Kelli.”

“I know, but—”

“What’s done is done. Nothing can change it.”

I can change it. “But don’t you think sometimes that it can be changed? That by—”

“No.”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking anymore questions, no matter how much she wanted to. She knew from experience that she would only upset her father more. And the more upset he got, the more he clammed up, locking himself away even from her. She didn’t want to make that happen. Not in her first few days back home, no matter how desperately she needed answers.

“Okay, Dad. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She switched the phone to her other ear, focusing her entire attention on lightening the conversation, coaxing it back to safer ground. “So tell me, big bad police chief…did you go for the Café Vienna or the French Vanilla this morning?”

For the next ten minutes she and her father talked about everything and nothing, with Kelli carefully redirecting the conversation whenever it moved too near career territory…too close to family issues that might include mention of her mother. It was altogether easier for both of them to forget that she was a police officer. Um, edit that. It was infinitely easier to make her father forget she was a police officer, much less why she had chosen the career to begin with. She wasn’t sure what he told everyone about her time in New York, but if she knew Garth Hatfield, and she did, it probably had something to do with art school.

Of course that explanation would not only raise some brows now that she was back in town, it would call into question his mental capacity.

Kelli glanced at her watch. “I gotta run, Dad.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She methodically closed each of the files in front of her and piled them back up, chucking any idea she had of going through them this morning. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Later.”

“Goodbye.” She started to get up and nearly tripped over where Kojak was licking a jelly stain from the wood floor.

“Hold up a second, Kell.” Her father’s voice stopped her from hitting the disconnect button. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

She absently watched the muted images slide across the television screen. Stories of murder and corruption, all against the background of the most powerful capital of the world. Never a dull moment. “What is it?”

“How did it go yesterday?”

Kelli paused, wondering at the neutral sound of her father’s voice. She decided to play it as vaguely as he was. “It went well. Really well.” Liar. Although she was sure her dad would approve of her trouble with David even less than the idea of her putting on a uniform every morning.

“You meet your new partner yet?” he asked.

She slowly reached out and switched the television off. “Yes.”

“Are you getting on well?”

Kelli crossed her free arm over her chest. “Yes.”

Her father’s sigh burst over the line. “Come on, girl, this isn’t an official interrogation. You can give more than a yes or no answer. Do you like the guy or don’t you? Do you want me to have you assigned somewhere else? Another district station, maybe?”

“Like out in Arlington where the most serious crime is loitering? No, Dad, but thanks just the same.” She rubbed her forehead. So much for avoidance measures. “And my partner’s name’s McCoy. He’s a pigheaded, male chauvinist who needs an ego adjustment, but I can handle him.” At least she hoped she could.

There was a heartbeat of a pause. Kelli fought the desire to ask him if he was still there.

“McCoy?” he finally said gruffly.

“Yeah. David. Do you know him?”

“Of him. I know his father.”

“That’s nice, Dad. Maybe you and he can get together and plot how to scare your kids off the force over a beer sometime. Look, I’ve—”

“If Sean McCoy and I ever end up in the same room together where there’s beer, I’d just as soon crack a bottle over his head,” her father said vehemently.

Kelli’s mouth dropped open. She’d never heard him say such a thing about another person. Yes, he was quite adamant on where he stood on her decisions, but that was different. In almost every other aspect of his life he was as open-minded as they came. “Dad…I don’t quite know what to say. I’m…shocked.”

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be if you knew the guy. They don’t make them any cockier than Sean McCoy.”

He hadn’t met David yet. “When’s the last time you spoke to this…Sean?”

He mumbled something she couldn’t quite make out.

“What was that?”

“Twenty years.”

Kelli smacked her hand against her forehead. “Gee, and here I thought it was something a little more recent. Like yesterday.”

“It was. I might not speak to the old geezer, but I see him just about every day on the job.”

“Wait, don’t tell me. He’s on the force, too. What is he? Regional Assistant Chief for the West or something?”

“Chief?” Garth nearly shouted. “Hell, Kelli, aren’t you getting the drift of anything I’m saying? The guy’s a damn beat cop. Always has been, always will be.”

“So?” she said carefully. “Look, Dad, call me slow, but I’m not getting this. What is this, a modern day replaying of the old Hatfields and McCoys thing?” She glanced at her watch and nearly gasped. “I gotta run, Dad. We can talk about this later, okay?”

She pressed the disconnect button while he was still blathering on. She cringed. No doubt she would hear about that later, as well.

DAVID STARED at his watch for the third time, although no more than a minute had passed since the last time he’d looked. The briefing room was already filled to capacity. Which wasn’t abnormal in and of itself, except the collection of plainclothes at the front of the room had ignited gossip among the officers surrounding him.

Where is she?

“What do you think’s up?” Jones, next to him, asked.

David shrugged. “Beats me.”

“Harris thinks it’s the Degenerate case.”

He grimaced. “All this attention for a sexual deviant? Seems a little excessive.”

“Where you been, man? The guy’s been promoted. He’s chalked up his first killing. Body was found this morning, though they think she’s been dead a couple of days.”

David recalled the case. “Damn.”

Jones chuckled. “You got that right.”

“Did I miss anything?”

David looked to his left where Kelli had claimed the seat he’d been saving for her. She looked far too fresh, too alert, for first thing in the morning. And far too enticing. It was all he could do not to pant all over her like a Chihuahua, bug eyes and all.

“You’re late,” he said, unhappy with the simile. A Chihuahua? He should be something more manly, like a German shepherd at least.

And Kelli was one hundred percent groomed white poodle, pink bow and all.

She smiled. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

It took David a full second to realize she was referring to her lateness, not to his mental comparison.

She shifted her weight so that she could slip his notepad out from under her curved bottom. “This yours?”

David snatched it away, telling himself the paper couldn’t possibly be warm after so brief a contact.

“Did I miss anything?” she asked again.

David crossed his arms, tempted to ignore her. After her dumping maneuvers yesterday after they kicked off work, he’d spent the entire night at his father’s place glowering…and watching Pop glower, too. Not a fun way to pass the time. “It’s about the Degenerate case.”

Her eyes lit up. “You mean the D.C. Executioner case now, don’t you?”

“You know?”

“Of course I know. Don’t you watch the news, McCoy?”

He wanted to tell her that no, he got enough of real life on the job, but he didn’t think it would reflect well on him. So instead he said nothing, because to imply that he usually did watch the news, but had missed it now, might hint at a break in his routine. Which might then lead to her assumption that she was the cause for this disruption. He wouldn’t in a million years let her think that. No matter how on the mark the assumption would be.

Instead, he grinned. “I, um, had other things to do last night.”

The light extinguished. “The news came through this morning.”

David shrugged. “Same difference.”

Kelli sat back in her seat and sighed. “Please, do spare me the details.”

He leaned in a little closer, eyeing the clean stretch of flesh just below her ear. “Oh, I don’t know. I was hoping you and I could, um, go over them blow-by-blow. Say tonight? Over dinner?”

He never saw her fist coming, but he had no doubt that’s what hit him in the arm. “Ow,” he said, rubbing the sore spot.

“Come on to me again on the job and you’ll be hurting a lot worse than that, McCoy. Now stop your whining. They’re about to start.”

And start they did. But David only listened with half an ear about the formation of a special task force headed up by homicide in cooperation with the Sex Crimes unit. They were looking for a few good men and women to go undercover. SC already had three detectives working undercover at three different sex shops across the city that the earlier victims may have frequented. They needed another.

David couldn’t care less. His academy test scores had all basically come up with “does not play well with others.” It was exactly the reason he’d been through three partners in less than seven years. Even if he had a mind to apply for a position on the task force—and he didn’t—they’d probably laugh him out of the interview.

Still, it wasn’t his lack of interest in the goings-on that worried him. Rather, his intense interest in the woman next to him.

Why had she dodged his attempts to get her alone last night? One minute he’d been shooting the breeze with a couple of other officers back here at the station, the next he’d turned around to find her gone.

He’d thought about showing up at her place unannounced with a six-pack. And probably would have had she been anyone else. But for some reason the thought of her shutting the door in his face had chased him out to Pops’s instead.

Was it his imagination, or had the sex between them the other night been as good as he remembered? And if that was the case, why was it that Kelli looked like she’d rather be anyplace else on earth than sitting next to him?

Unless…

Oh, God, he couldn’t even bear to think that he’d somehow fallen short of the mark performance-wise. Missed the three-pointer. Left her swinging in the proverbial wind.

He shifted and covertly eyed her. Naw. It wasn’t even remotely possible that lady-killer David McCoy had left a woman sexually unsatisfied. Hell, he had a black book full of names to prove differently. An endless list of women just begging for a phone call from him.

He crossed his arms. It wasn’t possible.

He slanted her another glance. Was it?

“That’s it. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask the detectives here. We should be getting a suspect sketch out to all units before the end of first shift.” A pause. “And officers, I won’t kid you. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, what the suspect’s capable of and how far he intends to go. The female officer who signs on will be faced with a very dangerous situation. We want you to take that into consideration before tendering your name.”

David practically sprang from his chair. “Thank God, that’s over. You ready?”

Kelli grimaced. “I’ve got…something to do first. Meet me out at the car?”

He shrugged. “No prob.”

Women. Probably had to go powder her nose or something. Lord forbid she should look less than her best to apprehend a shoplifter.

KELLI DISCREETLY wiped her sweaty palms down the length of her slacks when she finally left the briefing room. Her chances of winning the grand prize in the Publisher’s Clearinghouse sweepstakes were probably better than getting on that task force. She’d only been on the job in D.C. for two days. What did it matter that she had three years of solid experience in New York? Or that she’d gone undercover twice there as a prostitute to arrest potential johns?

Still, she’d had to submit her name for consideration, no matter what the outcome. Chasing down men who preyed on women was exactly what she’d always been driven to do. If she couldn’t find closure in her mother’s case, she could make damn sure no other young girl had to face what she had. She would offer them closure. A chance to see the offender punished for what he’d done to a loved one. An opportunity to go on with life knowing that there was some justice in the world.

She had to do it. No matter how dangerous the road she had to take to get there.

She shrugged into her coat and opened the outer door, admitting that maybe her chances at the assignment were better than she thought. Even she was surprised to find the task force already had her personnel file. Written there in black and white for the entire world to see was her career goal: become a full-fledged homicide detective before she reached thirty. She cringed. Sure, that was her goal. But what had she been thinking when she wrote that little tidbit down for her supervisors to see? She might as well have written that when she was ten she’d wanted to be president of the United States.

“Smooth move, Hatfield,” she muttered to herself as she put on her hat.

She wasn’t surprised to find David glowering in the squad car, tapping the face of his watch like a taskmaster. Kelli climbed into the passenger’s side, inclined to tell him that she had enough on her hands with one father, she didn’t need another. But that might lead to her revealing who her father was, and she wasn’t quite up to dealing with that can of worms right now.

“Took you long enough,” he said, backing out. “What did you do, eat some bad Chinese or something last night?”

Kelli stared at him, her mouth agape. Of course he would think she’d needed to make a pit stop at the bathroom. She wouldn’t be surprised if he thought she’d needed to powder her nose, or whatever men thought women did nowadays. Lord forbid she’d have any interest in joining the task force. And far be it from her to fill him in. It would only make it worse when she found out she hadn’t made it.

She snapped her mouth shut. “Yeah, something like that.” She switched on the radio and picked up the handset. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two, heading out.” She settled back into her seat. “Look, David, you and I really need to have that talk I mentioned yesterday.”

“About what?”

His blank expression told her he truly didn’t have a clue. “About the little stunt you pulled yesterday morning.”

He didn’t look enlightened.

“When you sent me out for donuts while you, by your lonesome, went out and saved the world.”

“Oh, that,” he said, grinning. “I didn’t save the world, Kelli. Just kept a guy who needed some sleep from mucking up his life any more than he already had.”

“Did it ever cross your mind to consult with me first? To work out a plan together, then have Sutherland approve it?”

He appeared to think her question through, then shook his head. “Nope.”

She pointed her finger in his direction. “That’s exactly the reason we need to talk. Just what did you think you were doing climbing that fire escape without backup? Without anyone knowing just what you were doing? Then barging through that open window like…like some uniformed supercop there to save the day?”

He arched a brow. “Uniformed supercop?”

Kelli bit her tongue. She’d picked up the description from one of the many news reports the night before.

“Look, Hatfield, you and I could argue about this all day…and all night,” a decidedly suggestive twinkle entered his eyes, “but when all is said and done, there was no time to plan. SWAT had a shot and Sutherland was about to give the order for them to take it. I had to act, and I had to act fast.” He stopped at a red light. “Okay, I admit, sending you to get donuts was a pretty rotten thing to do—”

“Downright crappy.”

He grinned. “Yeah. But, hell, I was still shocked to find you were on the force, much less my partner, and I needed some time to adjust before going out and playing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, you know?”

His explanation made Kelli more agitated. Only because it made a twisted sort of sense. What was the world coming to when she understood the inner workings of a mind like David’s?

Worse yet, what was with her desire to keep looking at the way the material of his slacks clung to his hunky, well-defined thighs?

“Just don’t do it again, McCoy, or else you won’t have to worry about Sutherland taking a piece out of your behind. I’ll be the one with that honor.”

He flashed that devil-may-care grin at her again, making her want to smack her forehead against the dash in exasperation. “Sounds fun.”

She mumbled a series of unflattering remarks under her breath.

David’s grin vanished. “That was just a joke. Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll let you take the lead on the next call that comes in, okay? Whatever it is—bank robbery, car chase, shoplifter. You name it, I’ll stand back and let you handle it any way you want to. You’ll be completely, totally, in charge.”

Naughty images that had nothing to do with police work slid through her mind. Finally, she managed to say, “I don’t want to be the leader, McCoy. I just want to be your partner.” She uncrossed her arms and smiled. “But you’ve got a deal.”

Just then, the radio crackled. The dispatcher named a code and a location. “All officers in the vicinity, please respond.”

Kelli rolled her eyes. A domestic dispute. It figured. The one call she was going to get to control and it would probably be settling an argument over who left the cap off the toothpaste.

“Aren’t you going to call it in, Hatfield? We’re only two blocks away,” David said, then laughed so hard he had to slow down the car.

Kelli glared at him. “I was thinking about letting another patrol get it.” Then she sighed and picked up the handset. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. We’ve got it. ETA five minutes.”

4

BOY, SHE’S EVEN more beautiful all worked up. David slipped his nightstick into his weapons belt, then closed his car door. On the other side, Kelli did the same, the high color on her cheeks reflecting how she felt. And he knew it was in response to him. He inwardly grinned. She might act like being around him didn’t affect her one way or another, but her sparkling green eyes told him differently. He’d be the first to admit that having her pissed at him wouldn’t be his first choice in responses, but hey, he’d take it over her pretended indifference any day.

They stood on the curb looking at the four-story, low-rent walk-up. Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him. Windows were closed against the December cold. A man in his thirties was leading a bicycle from the door and carrying it down the ten or so cement steps.

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