Serving Up Trouble Read online

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need my glasses.”

  Sam glanced around him as police stormed the building. The customers seemed to be still shell-shocked and only started moving when the police ordered them to walk single file out of the bank.

  “Do you see them?” she asked, her voice full of worry that was probably not related in the slightest to her lost glasses, but more to shock.

  Inches away, next to the body sprawled out and now moaning as he was being worked on by paramedics who just arrived, were the glasses. Crushed.

  She let out a soft sigh when he handed them to her, then she leaned back to rest against his strong, sturdy frame. “This is turning out to be a really bad day,” she said, looking calm, too calm. In-shock calm.

  “You were nearly killed.” He remained sitting on the floor, the fragile beauty in his arms and gestured to a paramedic, who held up a finger to indicate he’d be right there. “It’s okay to fall apart a little.”

  “I don’t fall apart.” And yet her voice wobbled in the growing din around them. “My glasses…”

  “Can be replaced. Your life sure as hell can’t.”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re right. You saved my life. I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, not giving a damn about a thank-you.

  “But I have no idea what would have happened if you hadn’t jumped right in. You were wonderful, so brave.”

  Obviously she was completely unaware he was a cop and, as such, paid to be brave.

  “In fact, let me—” She shifted against him and fumbled for her purse, which by some miracle was still hanging off her arm. “I want to give you…”

  Was she for real? She wanted to pay him?

  But the tremor that racked her was very real and she went suddenly, absolutely still. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, clutching her purse to her chest with a heart breaking expression. In her fist she held something that she smoothed out.

  A paycheck for 198.00 made out to Angie Rivers.

  “I never got to make my deposit.” She squinted at it. “I have my tips, but they’re not much.”

  She looked as though maybe she didn’t ever have much, but he held his tongue as an unwelcome wave of emotion washed over him.

  He hated this, he really did. All he’d wanted to do was to shift some money to his checking account, then head over to his partner and best friend Luke’s house for pizza and beer.

  Instead he’d stopped a bank robbery, and now he sat on the floor, holding the most amazing woman, feeling everything he’d trained himself not to feel.

  Finally the paramedics descended on them, taking the still shell-shocked woman from his arms. Sam rose to his feet, thankful to be free of the victim.

  Even if his arms felt empty.

  He had no idea why he followed her. She was sweetly arguing with the medics that she was fine, that she needed to hurry up and deposit her check and get back to work, she had tables to wait.

  The on-duty officers stopped her. They needed her statement, which she gave. Then it was his turn, and they pulled him aside from where he’d been standing, watching over her.

  When it was done, in front of all the wit nesses and far too many blood sucking reporters that had come out of the wood works, Angie reached out for him and hugged him. “I just wanted to thank you again,” she said, pulling him close, nearly squeezing the very life out of him with her nervous, awkward embrace.

  His arms wrapped around her before he could stop himself, and when she placed a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek, he sucked in a hard breath, shocked. He, Sam O’Brien, shrewd detective and hardened, cynical cop, who was never shocked by anything.

  She swiped at what he could only assume was lip gloss, which smelled like a bowl of peaches and cream. “Sorry,” she whispered, then beamed at him, her fingers still on his cheek, and because she was so close, he couldn’t help but feel her fingers tremble, see her smile wobble.

  Ah, hell. “You’re not okay.”

  “Yes, I am. Really.” But her smile was definitely shaky around the edges. “You were my hero today. I wish I could say I hadn’t needed one, but I did, and thank God you were here. I only hope someday I can somehow return the favor and do some thing this big for you.”

  Before he could so much as blink, she was walking away.

  Only to be mobbed by the press.

  Sam watched them deluge her with questions, shoving their microphones in her face.

  Just walk away, he told himself.

  But Angie’s expression went from shock to lost, and he let out one pithy oath before striding over there. “Go,” he said into her ear, his hand at the small of her back, giving her a little push. “I’ll hold them off.”

  That won him a smile that stopped him in his tracks.

  For some reason—it couldn’t be anything as simple as her smile—Sam stood there long after she’d fled. Long enough to get him his own mob of reporters.

  As a rule, he really hated the press. Most cops did. His dad had. It was one of those things he remembered about him. That, and how much his dad had loved everything else about being a cop. One of Sam’s first memories was of standing in front of the mirror, wearing his father’s police hat and holding up his fingers in a solemn vow to serve and protect.

  He’d been four.

  His conviction had held stead fast, even after his father had been killed in the line of duty during a routine traffic incident gone awry that same year.

  So while Sam stood there, being thanked for his quick reactions, being hailed a hero, he felt only a bone-deep weariness.

  He wasn’t a hero, not even close. He was just doing his job.

  When Sam finally made it home to his modest, quiet condo, he realized he’d for got ten to go to Luke’s.

  He’d for got ten the beer, the pizza.

  He’d for got ten every damn thing, which was very unlike him.

  To add to the insult, he dreamed about soft, creamy, satiny skin, and chocolate-brown eyes. Dreamed about her lithe yet curvy body and how it had felt against his. Dreamed about her voice, the intoxicating mix of sweet innocence and wild sexiness.

  Dreamed about the woman to whom it all belonged.

  Angie Rivers.

  Chapter 2

  When Angie woke up the next morning, every single light in her apartment was glaring. Wincing, she rolled over and hid her eyes from the brightness she’d used to ward off her silly fears during the night.

  So she’d nearly been killed. So what? She’d survived, hadn’t she? And the bad guy had been caught, so she didn’t really need to send her electric bill through the roof.

  But she’d probably do the same tonight.

  She really wished she’d somehow managed to save herself yesterday. Then she’d have felt stronger during the night. Invincible.

  Maybe next time.

  Getting up, putting on an old pair of glasses to replace the broken ones, she took comfort in her small, cozy and slightly messy apartment. Small and cozy being nice words for what was really postage-stamp sized.

  But cluttered or not, it was clean, it was her home, and she refused to let anyone frighten her here.

  “There. Take that, monsters. I’m not frightened.”

  In the bathroom, she gave herself a good, long, hard look in the mirror. She appeared to be the same as yesterday, average height, average body, average everything.

  But she wasn’t the same, not at all, and wouldn’t be ever again. “You know what? No more simply existing,” she told her reflection. “That’s not good enough for you.”

  With that small but effective pep talk, she went into the kitchen and had her usual break fast of champions—a bagel that had more cream cheese than bagel.

  A woman needed her protein.

  By the time she left for work, she’d taken several phone calls from her worried parents and friends, wanting to make sure she was okay. And mostly, she was.

  But what had happened t
o her yesterday had been a sign. A change-her-life kind of sign. A become-a-new-woman sign.

  She knew this, and didn’t plan on wasting it. She’d been reminded—violently—how fast it could all end. And she wasn’t ready for an end, not by a long shot.

  In light of that, she pulled out the local junior college application she’d received in the mail last month. Classes were due to start this week, a coincidence she’d take as another sign. She might love painting, but she couldn’t support herself that way. Time to find some thing she could do with her love of the arts that she could make a living at.

  Without giving herself a chance to talk herself out of it, she filled in the required forms, wrote a check for late registration and stuffed them into her pocket to drop off on her way to work.

  It felt…in credible. And she didn’t understand why it had taken her so long to do it, why she hadn’t seen what she’d needed to do a long time ago.

  The phone rang again, and Angie answered with an indulgent laugh, feeling better, wondering which of her friends had felt the need to check up on her this time.

  “Angie Rivers?”

  The laugh backed up in her throat. She instantly recognized that low, deep, slightly husky voice. She had a feeling a hundred years could go by and she’d still recognize it.

  That voice had been the first she’d heard after her terrifying ordeal yesterday. That voice had gone along with warm, strong arms and eyes filled with rage and concern, for her, in a way a man’s never had before.

  That voice liquefied her bones.

  With her spare glasses perched on her nose, she glanced at the front page of the news pa per sitting on her table, a page on which both she and Sam O’Brien—deco rated, revered, respected detective—were splashed across.

  “Yes, this is Angie,” she said, having to sit down because suddenly she was made of Jell-O, with no bones in her entire body.

  “This is Sam O’Brien, from yesterday—”

  “I know.” She was still looking at the picture of the two of them on the floor of the bank in the after math of the at tempted robbery. She’d already inhaled every little tidbit about what had happened.

  About Sam.

  The news pa per didn’t say he was tall, with wheat-colored, sun-bleached hair cut short to his head, which only emphasized his sharp, light brown eyes. It also failed to mention he was built with a rugged, athletic physique that revved her hormones, but then again, the reporter hadn’t been held in his warm, strong, wonderful arms.

  Angie had.

  She sighed, then shook her head. She had a plan, and a man did not fit into it. Never had, in fact, though she’d tried. She just didn’t seem to have what it took to please one—not the drive, not the easy sensuality so many other women had.

  So she’d given up.

  Until yesterday, that is, when she’d come far too close to death. Now she knew she would never give up on anything, not ever again.

  Life had to be lived, mistakes and all.

  “We need you to come down to the station,” he said. “We have some more questions. Do you need a car sent for you?”

  A ride in a squad car down to the station. An adventure she could really do without, if she had a choice. “That’s not necessary. I’ll…stop by.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He was going to hang up now. And though she couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t ready to let go, to stop hearing him. She’d like to be able to attribute it to lingering shock or fear, but she knew better.

  Nothing about his voice reminded her of shock or fear. Instead it invoked visions of things she’d never shared with anyone but had always fantasized about; lying in bed on a Sunday morning sharing the funny section of the paper, late-night forays into the freezer for a tub of ice cream that they’d feed to each other with one spoon, or better yet just eat off their bodies, phone calls during the day just to hear each other… “Are you the investigating officer then?” she asked. Subtle, Ang.

  “No, that would be Detective Owens. He’ll be questioning you.”

  But Sam had called her himself. Maybe he was dreaming of the comics and ice cream, too. Maybe he yearned and ached and burned for things he couldn’t quite put into words but knew he wanted.

  With her.

  “Owens asked me to call,” he clarified.

  Which pretty much dispelled both the fantasy and any lingering hope that somehow this strange, inexplicable attraction was two-sided.

  “Some times,” he continued, “in traumatic events like this, a familiar voice helps.”

  Was that what all this emotion crowding her chest was about? Because he was familiar? Because he’d been her hero in a terrible incident?

  That was pathetic.

  Even more so because he clearly felt none of what she’d allowed herself to feel. “I see,” she said, grateful that at least he couldn’t see her. “Well…thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  Wait. She wanted to tell him how much his actions yesterday had meant. How much she’d learned about herself since. How—

  Click.

  Dial tone.

  With a little sigh, Angie had to laugh. She set the phone down and decided to stick with reality. Her reality.

  Which at the moment, she thought, glancing at her clock, meant work.

  But later, she promised the new easel standing in her living room, later she’d paint. Just because she could.

  Sam spent the morning chasing dead ends, trying to crack the identity-theft ring that had already spent over a million dollars in stolen credit in the past calendar year alone.

  Back in his office, he collapsed in frustration at his desk before a commotion outside the door caught his attention. He tried to ignore it, but wasn’t lucky enough for that.

  A shadow crossed his desk. “Well, if it isn’t our local hero.”

  Sam glanced up at his partner, who until a second ago had also been his best friend, and scowled. Most people went running from that fierce, foreboding glare, or at least walked quickly away.

  Not Luke Sorrintino. He was dark-haired, darker-skinned and full-blooded Italian, and he didn’t scare easily. While he was only medium build to Sam’s tall, broader one, he was probably the toughest man Sam knew, and he rarely smiled.

  But he was smiling now, broadly.

  “What do you want?” Sam asked, already wary.

  “Two things. First…” He tossed down the morning paper.

  Front page, dead center. Sam on his knees on the floor of the bank, with a beautiful, disheveled woman in his arms, staring up at him with huge, grateful eyes.

  Angie.

  God, she looked so small, so defenseless. So absolutely, heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. Her sweater hung off one shoulder, revealing soft skin, which according to the color photo, had already started to bruise from her captor’s cruel grip.

  Sam’s jaw went tight. A headache kicked in. She’d gotten hurt after all.

  “You seem pretty…involved,” Luke noted.

  Sam’s eyes honed in on his face in the picture. Sure enough, he wasn’t just holding her, he was holding her, cradling her against his chest, one hand spread over her exposed throat. His expression was intense to say the least, and zeroed in one-hundred percent on Angie’s upturned face.

  It looked startlingly intimate, and if he didn’t know that he’d been concerned only with making sure she hadn’t been cut by the punk’s knife, that she was looking at him like that only because she could hardly see…damn. Take away the bank setting, take away the fact that there was a bleeding criminal on the floor behind them, and they could have been…lovers.

  “Interesting,” Luke said.

  Sam eyed his friend. The two of them had been through a lot together. High school. The academy. Being rookies. They’d been through family and wives unable, or unwilling, to handle the demands of their jobs.

  Death and mayhem. They’d seen or done it all.

  Were still seeing and doing it all.

  “Oh, I a
lmost forgot.” Luke actually kept grinning, which really made Sam pause. “There’s a delivery for you.”

  “Yeah? So bring it in.”

  “Delivery woman insists on giving it to you herself.”

  Delivery woman?

  With a long, warning look to Luke, Sam rose to his feet and came to the door of his office. He wasn’t pleased to see a small crowd of cops who plainly had nothing better to do than stand around and smile stupidly.

  In the center of the group was a huge bouquet of wildflowers sprouting three feet wide out of a basket. He couldn’t see the face of the person behind it, only that she was wearing sandals, with bright pink polished toenails and a dainty little gold toe-ring.

  Then from behind the basket peeked a smiling face.

  Angie.

  Around him there were hushed whispers and more than a few teeters and muffled laughter.

  Sam ignored them to stare at her in disbelief. Flowers. Lord, she’d brought flowers to the toughest, meanest cop in the precinct.

  He’d never live it down.

  “I’ve brought a thank-you for yesterday,” she said in a sweet, musical voice that somehow had him stepping from his office doorway toward her.

  He managed to stop himself a few feet away, very aware of their audience. “You already thanked me.”

  If his gruff ness startled her, as it tended to do to most everyone else, she didn’t show it. Her smile brightened even more, if that was possible, and she lifted a shoulder. “Truth is, Detective O’Brien, I could never thank you enough. You’ve given me more than you could ever know.”

  He didn’t want her gratitude. What he did want couldn’t be said in polite company.

  She peered into his small, none-too-tidy office. “Besides, it looks as though you might be able to use some color in that room. How do you work in there? It’s dark as a tomb.”

  Sam found himself staring at her petite form as she walked past him and into his office as if she owned the place. Her nicely rounded bottom sashayed beneath her sundress, as she marched right to his over crowded desk.

  “Wait—” No use, she was already making room, stacking piles of care fully sorted paperwork together—negating hours of work—and setting the basket down.