Jill Shalvis - Serving Up Trouble

“With your help,” Luke said.

Lou started to sweat more. “But I told you already, man. I know nothing. Nothing at all.”

“You know enough, I think,” Luke said pleasantly.

“No, Luke, maybe Lou here is right.” Sam came around front and stared at Lou coldly. “Maybe he can’t help us. Never you mind, Lou. We’ll just take you down the hall, book you, and-”

“What?” Lou cried, shrinking back, shoving his hands into his pockets as if to avoid the cuffs. “But you just said you don’t care what I’ve done.”

“Not if you help us.” Luke smiled again. Sweet as an innocent babe. “Why don’t you help us, Lou?”

“Don’t bother, he doesn’t want to.” Sam pulled out a pair of hand cuffs, yelled for a guard and walked toward Lou.

“Okay, okay!” Lou shot them a shaky smile as sweat poured down his face. “Sheesh. Maybe I can get you…some thing.”

“Now you’re talking,” Luke said very kindly. “Keep going.”

“Uh…”

Sam held up the cuffs and raised an eyebrow. Waiting.

Lou sighed. “Okay, listen. The kid making the new IDs…he’s some computer whiz kid at P.C.C.”

“If he’s a whiz kid, why is he going to Pasadena City College instead of a four-year school?” Luke asked.

“No money.”

Sam thought about this then shook his head. “Don’t buy it. This guy, if he’s the right one, is making a fortune off this gig. Two hundred thousand last month alone.”

“He’s not the boss, he’s just a paid joker.”

“Who is the boss?”

“Don’t know.”

“Give us a name,” Luke coaxed. “That’ll be a good start.”

“John.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “That’s convenient. How about a last name, ace?”

“That’s all I know,” Lou insisted. “That’s all I know.”

When they were back in Sam’s office, Luke looked at Sam very seriously. “I’ve got to ask.”

“Okay,” Sam said, expecting a question on the case.

“Get any more flowers today, lover boy?”

Luke was grinning at him, the bastard. “You know I didn’t.”

“Then you didn’t play your cards right.”

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Luke merely laughed. “You’re still in the papers this morning, did you see that? Such a hero, our Sam. Can I have your au to graph?”

Each of them had been through some pretty rough times, and each of them had come through with different attitudes. Luke tended to put his emotions out there, despite his tough ness.

Sam did not.

Sam didn’t like to acknowledge his emotions in any way, shape or form. They had disappointed and hurt him once too often.

Anyway, for all those reasons, or maybe none of them, Luke’s dark eyes rarely did that sparkle dance thing as they were doing now, no matter how amused he might be.

Nice as that was to see, Sam didn’t care for it being at his own expense, even if he was aware Luke was just trying to get a rise out of him.

If only Luke knew, just thinking about Angie got a rise out of him. “Can we talk the case, do you think, or do you want to joke around all day?”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t look sorry. You look disgustingly…I don’t know. Happy.”

Luke lifted a shoulder. “Maybe I got lucky last night.”

“With Sara?”

“Maybe.”

“About time. You’ve been dating her a month.”

“Some things are worth waiting for.”

Sam eye balled the known womanizer Luke Sorrintino. “That sounds serious.”

Luke shrugged again and turned away.

“Oh, now that we’re talking about you, we’re done?”

“That’s right. Besides, our little problem awaits us- Well, hello. ” Luke smiled broadly at someone in the doorway, and even before Sam glanced over and saw his partner’s flirtatious expression, he knew.

Angie.

She stood there with her sweet face smiling right at him, in her second hand glasses that emphasized her huge eyes and a floral, gauzy dress covered in sunflowers that made him wish he had a pair of sun glasses just to look at her.

“You look tense again,” she said to Sam. “Am I interrupting?”

Yes.

“Of course not,” Luke said before Sam could speak. “We were just questioning a witness. I was the good cop. Sam here…” They both turned to stare at him.

“I bet he makes a scary bad cop,” Angie said with a secret little smile.

As if she knew him.

Well, if she did, and she could read his mind right now, she’d know this terrible urge he had to go to her, touch her. She’d probably run screaming from the room.

“You catch far more flies with honey instead of vinegar,” she said, wrinkling her nose delicately as she looked around his office with a sort of morbid curiosity.

“A mess, isn’t it?” Luke tsked, and Sam glared at him.

“I suggested opening the shades and fumigating,” Angie said. “But he wasn’t interested.”

“No, he’s very tense, our Sam.”

Oh, very funny.

“At the very least, he should try aromatherapy,” Angie said told Luke.

“I agree. I mean, just look at him.” Now Luke sidled over toward Angie, so that both of them were looking back at him; his partner with laughter in his eyes, and Angie, with…uh-oh. An un mistakable spurt of…some thing, all right. Some thing that made his insides do a juvenile sort of quiver. Damn it, he thought he’d taken care of that the last time they’d stood in this office together.

No attraction between them. Not now, not ever.

He faced them both. “I don’t need sunshine, fumigating or aromatherapy, thank you.” He took Luke’s arm, showed him the door and closed it behind him.

“Before you say a word,” Angie said. “I just wanted to say, I didn’t come here to discuss the horrid color of your walls or the way you keep your office.”

“But you had to mention it.”

“Well, yes. Since I was here.” She smiled, a totally disarming smile. “That was just a bonus suggestion, you understand, and I’ll try to restrain myself in the future. I’m not here to make a pest of myself.”

Oddly enough, she wasn’t. Because somehow, simply by standing there, his day seemed…brighter.

Not good. “I’m pretty busy.”

Her smile dimmed slightly, and he wondered what exactly it was about her that made him such a jerk. “I wanted to see that picture again,” she said.

“Picture?” All he could think of was the photo of them in the paper, when she’d been snuggled against his chest, when he’d been staring down into her face-

“The suspect drawing.”

“Oh.” Idiot. “It’s here…some where.” He went to his desk and started rifling, nearly growling when she came close and leaned over his desk, too, her sweet-smelling hair brushing his arm.

“Sorry,” she said, tossing it over her shoulder. “I tend to get in people’s spaces. I know you don’t like to be touched.”

Oh, he liked to be touched. Sexually, that is. Which, unfortunately, was suddenly all he could think about at the moment. “Here.” He found the picture before he made a fool of himself and pulled it from the disaster masquerading as his desk. “What did you need it for?”

“I just wanted to add…” She took the paper, set it on the desk, reached for a pencil and-

“Hey, that’s-”

“Yes,” she breathed, straightening, holding up the sheet to inspect her handiwork. “That’s it. Now it’s perfect.”

Sam grabbed the composite drawing and stared at it. She’d added a little goatee.

“Some thing about the rendering has been bothering me.” She peeked over his shoulder, which she had to stand on tiptoe to do. He could imagine her a little closer, just enough that her breasts would press into his back and-