Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“Did you do it?” she said fiercely. “Answer me!”

“Do what?” he croaked.

“Pull strings at the Department of Public Safety to get me the VPSO job!”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“The job that would have me working as your second number in the Park, you moron!” She poked him in the chest. “Did you try to get me that job?”

Mutt, observing all this from a safe distance, turned tail and vanished into the den, where she intended to remain until the decibel level fell.

Jim pulled off his hat, as if it had suddenly become too tight for his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Kate.” He dared to look at her again, knowing it was a mistake. He shouldn’t look. If he looked, he’d want to touch, and that wasn’t why he was here. Damn it.

He hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t asked, that he was still in town because he’d been called to testify at a trial involving the bust of a marijuana grow in the Valley he’d been TDY’d to the previous summer. And this under protest and only because the arresting officer scheduled to testify-a man he’d been assisting at the time-had been called Outside because of a death in the family. And now here he was, on the doorstep of this town house tonight, and pretty damn late it was, and where the hell had she been at this hour dressed like that?

Didn’t matter. He was here to make it clear to Kate Shugak once and for all that there was no relationship of any kind going on between the two of them, not even sex. Not even “sex with no complications-when its over, we go our separate ways, no harm, no foul.” Nope, not even that.

The jacket, made of some rich fabric that clung to every curve, the whispering black silk of the tuxedo pants tailored in so masculine a fashion that when worn by a woman they were nothing more or less than a blatant invitation to get her out of them. Which he suddenly knew he was going to do, given half the chance.

He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. Okay. He’d tell her it was over in the morning.

She stamped back into the house, pausing only to kick off her shoes. Jim followed her inside, watching her very fine ass move inside the black silk, and closed the door behind them.

“God, my feet,” she said, leaning a hand against the wall and raising one foot to rub at it.

He eyed the shoes. They had a barely discernible heel. “Sit,” he said, and steered her into the living room. She sank into the easy chair with a sigh, and he sat on the coffee table and lifted her feet into his lap. He began to knead them.

“Oh.” Her head fell back against the chair. “Yesssss.”

He’d heard that sound before, just not in this context. He had to shift a little where he was sitting. He cleared his throat. “Where did you go in that getup?”

She opened her eyes and looked down at herself. “Not bad, huh?”

“It’s fucking spectacular and you know it.”

She looked up, startled at the grim sound of his voice. He didn’t look happy, either. She sniffed the arm of the jacket and made a face. “Ick. Everybody was smoking like a chimney. I’ll have to wash my hair.”

“Where were you?” he said again. He’d been thumping on the door once every hour since 7:30 P.M. He arrested stalkers for less egregious behavior. The thought did not please him.

“At a party.”

“I deduced that from the camouflage. Whose party?”

“Erland Bannister’s.”

His hands stilled. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. Big-ass house down on the flats below the Turnagain Bluff.” She wriggled her feet suggestively and he started massaging them again. “Oh yeaaah.”

She moaned and he wanted to cry.

“I was scared to death there was going to be an earthquake the whole time I was there,” she said, “and that we were all going to fall into Cook Inlet.”

Disregarding this, he said, “Who was there?”

“Anyone who is anyone in Alaskan power politics.” She reflected. “Well, most of them. Seemed to be a contingent or two missing.”

“Like maybe from the nonwhite races?” Jim said.

“How did you guess.”

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t bother answering it. “Why did you go?”

“Because Erland invited me.”

“How did you come to meet Erland Bannister? Did his sister introduce you?”

“No,” Kate said, “I have it on the best authority that Erland and Victoria haven’t spoken since she went inside.”

“Thirty years?” Jim said. “What, she’s been cast off by her family?” He reflected. “Yeah, well, she killed their nephew, their grandson, their cousin. I can see it. I wouldn’t feel all that kindly toward her myself in that situation.”

It occurred to Kate that she had not thus far discussed in depth her current job with Jim. “No, I think it was her choice. She’s cut herself off completely from her family. I hear she still talks to friends, however, hitting them up for money to fund the school she’s running out at Hiland Mountain.”

“She runs a prison school?”

Kate nodded, and told him about it, and about the case.

“No wonder,” Jim said when she finished.

“No wonder what?”

“You’ve got that thing about teachers.”

This brought back memories of the week she’d spent picking morel mushrooms in the north of the Park, and of the teacher who had been killed there. She still grieved for him. But she said, “Doesn’t mean I think she’s innocent.”

He raised an eyebrow but forbore to comment. “So if Victoria didn’t introduce you, how did you wangle an invitation to Erland’s party?”

“He invited me,” Kate repeated thoughtfully.

“How did he know to call you?”

“Brendan gave me a list of the names of witnesses at Victoria’s trial.” Jim scowled. Kate ignored it. “I started calling them, and one guy sounded really upset and wanted to know if Erland knew what Charlotte was doing, reopening her mother’s case. I think he called Erland, and Erland called me.”

“Why?”

“Good question.”

“Why were you yelling at me?”

Warmth was spreading up from her feet through her body, and her mind was starting to wander from the case. “Oh. Because I thought you might have pulled some strings to get me the VPSO’s job at the new trooper post in Niniltna.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

She fluttered her eyelashes. It had seemed to work at the party.

His hands were warm and firm on her feet. The caress contrasted with the rise in the volume of his voice. “Why the hell would I want you around even more than you already are?”

She could have asked him what he was doing at the town house this evening, with her feet in his lap. Instead, she just smiled. “But I’m thinking now that there was something else going on there.”

He did his level best to resist the come-hither in her smile. “What?”

“Bruce Abbott was the one who made the offer.”

“Jesus. You really were flying high tonight, Kate, the governor’s right-hand man.”

Kate snorted. “Yeah. Real high. This guy doesn’t have a thought in his head that the governor didn’t put there.”

“It’s how he earns his salary.”

“Well, he didn’t earn it tonight.” She paused. “There was an implication-nothing overt, just a hint-that if I didn’t return home immediately, the job would go to someone else.”

“What? Bullshit. The department hasn’t even posted the job specs yet.”

“That’s another thing. He said that my attendance at the trooper academy in Sitka would be waived because of my prior education and experience.”

“What! Over my dead body! We want more than glorified security guards to back us up in the villages, Kate. VPSOs have to be trained in procedure, case preparation, and firearms, at the very minimum.”