Serving Up Trouble Read online

  No doubt, she loved what she did. She made that clear with every smile, every laugh, every touch. She remembered orders without writing them down, and always had a kind word. It was amazing.

  She was amazing.

  She was also the sweetest, most giving, warmest woman he’d ever met. And completely guile less. If he’d harbored any doubt of her sincerity and naiveté, it’d vanished while watching her serve her customers those mornings.

  God help him, there was some thing about the fanciful, joyous, wide-eyed and oddly vulnerable beauty that tugged at him, when he didn’t want to be tugged at.

  “You could just ask her out, you know.”

  Sam jerked his gaze off the opening through the kitchen doors, where he’d been staring like an idiot at Angie, and faced Josephine, who calmly filled up his mug with fresh coffee. “What?”

  “I said, you could just ask her out—”

  “Yeah. I mean no.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re one of those.” Josephine plopped her considerable frame next to Sam, with a large bowl of fruit and a paring knife. “One of those uncommittable types.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I am when it comes to Angie.”

  “No?” Calmly Josephine started cutting fruit with the knife that looked sharp enough to cut through glass. “Why not? She not good enough for you?” She hefted the knife in her hand as she looked at him. “Maybe you ought to rethink that.”

  Sam looked at the knife, at the way she was wielding it, and lifted a brow of his own. “You threatening a cop, Josephine?”

  “I’m threatening a man.” Unapologetically, she reached for a cantaloupe. “Consider me a mother lion. Possessive and protective as hell.”

  “Not asking Angie out has nothing to do with her not being good enough. She is. She’s…” Better than good enough, but he lifted his mug to his mouth to keep the thought to himself and burned his tongue for the effort.

  “She’d go.” Josephine continued to slice up the fruit. “If you asked her.”

  Sam sighed and put down the mug. Scalded tongue and all, he said, “I’m not interested in her that way.”

  “Then why are you hanging around here every morning?” Josephine raised a brow. “My coffee isn’t that special.”

  “Actually, it is. And…” He risked one more look at Angie through the kitchen door, who was smiling at a man who had to be ninety years old.

  “That’s Eddie. He’s been coming here for fifty years, through eight different owners, he’s told me. He’s nearly deaf and has arthritis pretty bad, but he’s got all his faculties together. Watch. She’ll keep talking to him and cut up his food at the same time so he doesn’t have to work his fingers, and he’ll never know what hit him.”

  Indeed, Angie shifted forward, set down a pot of coffee and, with a sleight of hand, she cut up the man’s food for him. All while smiling and chattering and keeping her eyes out for her other customers.

  “She’s been hurt,” Josephine said into the silence. “By a man.”

  Damn it. “I don’t want to know this.”

  “He wanted to change her. Make her into something she wasn’t, and in the doing of that, took away most of her confidence. She’d deny it, of course, but it was the truth.”

  “Look, I’m just here to make sure—”

  “That she’s okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t want to know more, because you might realize the truth—”

  “Josephine—”

  “—that you care, too. That you know she’s not quite as strong as she pretends to be. That you could hurt her.”

  “I am not going to hurt her. We’re not together. Not in that way.”

  “Right. I forgot.” Josephine got up and took away both the pot of coffee and his mug.

  Apparently he was done here.

  Chapter 5

  Angie spent her free afternoons at the book store. There, in a lovely corner the owners had set up as a reading and study spot, she absorbed the books for her classes and day dreamed.

  In between reading and fantasizing—which included far too much time spent on one Sam O’Brien—she chitchatted with the owners, George and Ellie Wilson. A couple in their mid-fifties, they’d put everything they had, including their retirement fund, into the store the year before, and were on pins and needles trying to work their way out of the red and into the black.

  Ellie seemed to have a soft spot for Angie, and always wanted to hear about her life. They’d talked about the holdup, the dramatic rescue, her life after ward, and seemed very supportive that she’d decided to take control of her destiny.

  “So…has your cop asked you out yet?” Ellie asked during a lull in between customers. “He’s not my cop, but no, he hasn’t asked me out. He’s not going to.” Angie wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  Okay, she was disappointed.

  “He sure stops by to see you a lot,” Ellie noted casually.

  “That’s because of his work, that’s all.” She’d explained Sam’s current case, and how she’d recognized his prime suspect, how she was determined to help him put the guy in jail.

  “Oh, dear.” Ellie came around the counter and took Angie’s hand. “It’s all about his work? That’s it?”

  Unfortunately. “Yes.”

  “So he’s being difficult.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Isn’t that just like a man. You know, you’d be better off to walk away. Police work can be dangerous.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I’m not in any danger.”

  “Just be safe, dear.”

  “I will, but—” She stopped when her cell phone rang. For a moment, her heart kicked in gear, thinking it might be Sam.

  How ridiculous that would be.

  Ellie patted Angie’s hand and went off to see to another customer.

  Angie looked down but didn’t recognize the incoming call, and figured it for a sales pitch or a wrong number. “Hello?”

  “Stop calling the cops.”

  The hair on the back of her neck rose at the gruff, unrecognizable voice. “Excuse me?”

  “Back off, Angie, and stay there.”

  “What?” But she heard the telltale click and pulled the phone away from her ear to stare at it.

  “Angie? You okay?” This from Ellie again, who was rushing through the aisle, looking busy, harassed and yet sweetly concerned. “You seem a little peaked.”

  “Oh, no. I’m fine.” Angie managed a smile and a little wave. “Everything’s just…fine.”

  With a nod, Ellie continued on, and Angie stood there for a moment, a strange and odd sense of unreality washing over her.

  Back off, Angie, and stay there.

  Definitely the message was for her. Oh boy. She sat back down, feeling a little shaky.

  That her first instinct was to call Sam and let out all her fears really disturbed her.

  Sam was not her friend. Not her sounding board. And if she needed a cop, she would call one. A different one.

  Stop calling the cops.

  She wouldn’t do that. But Sam didn’t want to be involved in her life, any more than she wanted him there. No. That was a lie. She did want him—as a friend, a lover.

  But she had her pride.

  And yet…this involved his case. It had to, because what else could it involve? With regret and a loud sigh, she broke down and dialed.

  “O’Brien.”

  “Sam.” She drew a deep breath. “Look, I—”

  “I’m not avail able,” came his recorded message. “Leave your name and number.”

  His machine. She waited for the beep. “Hi. It’s me. Angie.” Why did she sound like such a loser? “I received a prank phone call today and I’m pretty sure it’s related to your case. So…call me. Bye.”

  Yep, loser. A loser who missed him. Grabbing her things, she let herself out of the store, thinking if she couldn’t have Sam, an ice-cream sundae might just do.

  Several hours later, as Angie sat in class learning fas
cinating things about the daily uses of algebra, she had a burning need to look at her cell phone.

  She pulled it out of her purse, wondering how to bring up the list of calls she’d received. Reading the instructions would have helped.

  Did she even still have them? Maybe the arrow button…

  Dialed—911.

  Hmm, that was her last call out on her cell phone, which had been when she’d seen Sam’s suspect…days ago now.

  “Uh…Angie? Earth to Angie, come in, Angie.”

  She jerked her head up to realize several things at once. First, the professor had apparently been addressing her for the past few moments. Second, the entire class was staring at her.

  And third, every time she’d hit a button on her phone, it had beeped. Loudly.

  With an apologetic smile, she slipped the phone back into her purse. “Sorry,” she whispered, sinking into her seat.

  With an exasperated look, the professor turned back to the board. Eventually people stopped staring at her.

  And for the first time since class had started, Angie waited with baited breath for it to be finished, only to, on the way home, nearly drive into a pole when her cell phone rang again. She pulled over, lifting the phone close to her face where she could read the incoming number. Same as before. “Hello?” She hated the nerves that vibrated through her body, and forced herself to sound…not scared. “Hello?”

  “I told you not to call the cops. Now back off.”

  At that frightening, gruff voice in her ear, she instinctively cut off the call and dropped the phone into her purse as if it were a hot potato.

  In spite of the cool evening, her palms were damp, her stomach lodged in her throat.

  He knew she’d called Sam. How did he know?

  Back off. What did that even mean? She wasn’t a threat to anyone, she knew less than nothing…didn’t she?

  Slowly she pulled back out into traffic, driving through the night toward her apartment, where she’d call Sam again with the latest and probably sleep with every light on. So much for fearless. But she wouldn’t run scared, she wouldn’t.

  Back off.

  “Like hell,” she muttered, down shifting with aggression. “Like hell.”

  Sam and Luke stood in front of a seedy, run-down apartment in downtown Los Angeles.

  “No one’s home,” Luke said with disgust, turning away from the opened window they’d peered into. “Not that it matters, there’s nothing much to see. Some lead that weasel Lou gave us.”

  “Well, he’s not called a weasel for nothing.” But Sam was disappointed, too. They’d spent countless hours searching through the student database at Pasadena City College for all the students with the first name of John. In credibly, there hadn’t been that many. Slowly but surely over the past week they’d worked their way through the list.

  The guy who lived here, one of their “John’s,” had a mysterious back ground and an oddly far away location from the school. Seemed suspect.

  But there was nothing to indicate this place was connected to their case, nothing to indicate anything at all except… Sam put his face back to the window and eyed the small stack of papers just on the inside, right within reach on a little desk directly beneath the glass.

  He could reach them if he wanted. And he wanted. He looked at Luke, who shook his head.

  Sam reached in anyway.

  Luke sighed and promptly turned the other way. “Nice night.”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, hitting the jackpot. “Really nice.”

  Luke whipped back. “How nice?”

  “Well, we have an interesting receipt.” Sam stared down at the book store receipt, from the very same book store Angie swore their suspect kept popping up at.

  “Could be coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Me neither.” Luke’s eyes went hard, as did Sam’s. They’d both been through far too much to trust anything to hap pen stance or fate. “Let’s come back and talk to good old John when he’s home sometime soon.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  On the way back to Pasadena, Sam called in for his messages, his heart stopping when he heard Angie’s voice telling him she had a little problem.

  At the details of that little problem, his heart started again, a heavy, unnatural beat. He called her cell phone, her work, her apartment. No answer.

  And his feeling went from bad to worse.

  God, he hated this, the worry factor. Just work, he told himself. It’s just work.

  Tell that to Dad, came a little voice inside his head. His father had lived work. And died work.

  Sam had been only four when his father had been shot during a routine pull-over, but he’d made his vow to grow up and become a cop, too, even if his mother had been against it with every fiber of her being. Being on the force was all he’d ever wanted, still wanted, even when his mother objected to the point of asking him to walk right out of her life. Even when his wife had done the same, both unable or unwilling to deal with the danger and demands of the job that so consumed him.

  Sam had learned to close off his heart for good, and told himself—never again.

  It was a plan that had worked well, for the most part. He still called his mother on her birthday. Some times she even picked up. But she kept a careful distance, and Sam knew it was all she had to give him. Fair enough, he supposed, since he apparently had nothing to give her in return.

  It didn’t matter. He had his own life, and it was a life he loved. Everything was fine. Or had been until a certain bank incident.

  Now Sam couldn’t get his head on straight, and he knew whose fault that was. Angie’s.

  “I’ll give the paperwork twenty minutes,” Luke said when they got back to the station and their respective paper-ladened desks. “But then I’m outta here and on my way to a late, hot date.”

  “It’s been a long time since you put a woman before duty.”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to.” Luke looked Sam over solemnly. “You oughta think about doing the same, getting a life outside of this place.”

  “I’ve tried that before. And so have you.”

  “Maybe it’s time to try again.”

  No, it wasn’t. Luke was just currently being run by hormones. It’d pass, it always did.

  Sam made himself as comfortable as he could on his hard chair with a cup of the worst coffee on the planet and looked at the piles of paperwork waiting on him.

  No good. He couldn’t concentrate. He bypassed the mess and reached for the news pa per from the day of the holdup. He looked at himself on the floor holding the most in credible woman, who was staring at him with stars in her eyes.

  Not since the time he hadn’t taken her seriously in his office had she looked at him with those stars in her eyes.

  And now, terrifyingly enough, he was the one with stars in his eyes.

  Just work, he reminded himself. Work would get him through.

  But beautiful dark brown eyes kept his thoughts murky, and he kept his ears cocked for a return call from Angie, which clearly meant no matter what he wanted to believe about what was happening between them, this was far more than work.

  Angie opened the door of her car and stared out into the night that suddenly seemed dark and yawning.

  From where she stood, she couldn’t see her front door. The path was covered by the yard she hadn’t yet trimmed back. What looked charming and full of personality during the day, with all its color and vibrant growth, now seemed thick and unwelcoming.

  Slowly she started up the path, thinking she shouldn’t have just called Sam, she should have gone to the station.

  After the last prank call on her way home, she’d decided to turn off her cell phone. Maybe that was like an ostrich putting her head in the sand, but it worked for her.

  Someone seemed to think she knew more than she did. But she didn’t, and surely this nervousness was nothing a good hot shower wouldn’t cure. Maybe by then,
she’d have heard from Sam, and he’d calm her down. He could do that, with just his low, husky voice and sharp, piercing eyes that didn’t miss a thing. He’d tell her if she was over reacting, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  Odd, how that could be soothing and a charge at the same time. He was an enigma, that man, no doubt there. The sexiest enigma she’d ever met.

  She made it to the front door without event, and then inside, where she lit up the place like Christmas. Then she went into her bedroom and stripped out of her clothes, leaving them where they fell because it was already way past laundry day. She’d gather them tomorrow.

  Tony had hated that habit. With him, everything had a place and had to be in it, at all times. Her happily cluttered apartment, with its plants scattered here and there, and mismatched throw rugs and shelves filled with books that were for reading not collecting drove him crazy. Basically, she drove him crazy. And as a result, she’d begun to doubt herself. Her looks, her smarts, her everything, which had only led to hurt.

  She hadn’t imagined being happy without him, and yet she was happier now than she’d ever been.

  Oddly enough, it was the holdup—the most terrifying moment in her life—that had taught her the life-changing lessons all in a flash.

  When she thought of it that way, a good part of her nerves vanished. Relieved, she headed directly for the shower, where she stood for nearly half an hour under the spray of water.

  Twice she imagined she heard some thing from the other side of the bathroom door and froze. And both times she ended up shaking her head at herself. She’d lived here for years, and no one had ever bothered her. Still, she poked her head from behind the curtain and glanced at the cell phone she’d placed on the counter. It was still off, damn it. which probably explained why Sam hadn’t called her back. But at least it was right there if she needed it, with 911 already programmed in.

  The shower felt heavenly, both the tingle of water on her skin and the easing of her mind. For a moment, loose and relaxed, she wished she had a man with her in the water. Sam. Sam with slow, knowing hands and a body hungry for hers.

  But that was a physical need and could be ignored. Still his face flickered in her mind, and the need tightened because she was quite certain when he set his mind to some thing, say making love, he’d do it right.