Jill Shalvis - Serving Up Trouble

“I couldn’t place it right away,” she said softly, clearly having no idea his thoughts had taken him to the gutter. “Not until I saw him again.”

Sam stepped clear and faced her, not allowing himself to look anywhere but into her dark eyes. “You…saw him again?”

“Not since I called you, no. I’ll let you know if anything else comes to me. Well, I know you’re too busy to stand around talking, so…”

Sam stared at her, but all he saw was her pretty little behind as it sashayed toward his door. “Where are you going?”

“To work,” she said. “I skipped the bank this morning. Still don’t feel comfortable going inside. I’m finally replacing my lost ATM card.”

She made his head spin. “Angie-”

But she was gone.

Two days later, Sam and Luke were still checking on every “John” registered at P.C.C. when Sam’s cell phone rang.

“Sorry to bother you,” Angie said in his ear. “But Mr. Suspect just walked down the alley between the café and the book store. And you know, I keep for get ting to ask you. What’s his name? What’s he wanted for?”

“We don’t know his name and he’s part of an identity-theft ring-wait.” He shook his head to clear the strange pleasure that had come over him at hearing her musical voice. No matter how much he ignored her, she’d been in the back of his mind. Hell, okay, the front of his mind. “You saw him?”

“That’s why I’m calling, Sam.”

Lord, she was going to give him gray hair before he hit thirty-five. “Angie.”

“Yes?”

“Stay right where you are.” He pulled a U-turn to head back across town. “Don’t even think about going after him yourself.”

She didn’t say anything, and a bad, bad feeling overcame the good one he’d had at the sound of her. “I mean it, Angie. If you-”

“I hear you perfectly well, Sam,” she said in a rather subdued voice. “And believe it or not, I even understand the English language, so there’s no need to repeat yourself. I won’t go after him myself, that would be stupid.”

When the dial tone sounded in his ear, he swore and tossed the phone aside.

“Angie?” Luke asked.

“Yeah.”

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.” Sam sped them toward the café and tried not to panic over all the possible scenarios Angie was creating at that very moment. “Big trouble.”

“Isn’t that just like a woman.”

Twenty minutes later, Sam had searched the alley, the closed book store, the café, the parking lot in back…every where. He’d showed pictures of their suspect to the few people he found on the street, but no one, not a single soul, had seen him.

Other than Angie.

Luke came back from the alley, which he’d walked yet again, shaking his head. “No sign of life back there anywhere.”

Sam sighed, rubbed his aching temples and turned toward Angie. She stood in the opened doorway of the café, apron on, hair haphazardly piled on top of her head. Half in shadow, half in sunlight, her body was clearly outlined. Legs, nice and toned. Softly curved hips. Perfectly rounded breasts straining the front of her blouse. And for a moment, his brain assimilated her not as a victim, not a responsibility, but as a woman. All woman.

A woman who was looking at him hope fully.

Slowly he shook his head.

She turned away, as if she was disappointed in him, of all things. As if it was his fault she was crazy.

“Angie.”

“I have customers,” she said over her shoulder. “Sorry to have bothered you again.” And then she shut the door.

“Like I said,” Luke offered. “Just like a woman.”

Luke waited until they were nearly back at the station to speculate. “She’s awfully sweet. Sort of whimsical, I think. And strong as hell, given what she went through at the bank.”

Sam would have said tenacious. Stubborn. “How about pain in the ass.”

Luke arched a brow.

“And annoying,” Sam added, getting into it. Damn, why had she given him that look of disappointment? Was he doomed to get that look from every single female in his life? Not that she was in his life. Nope. No way. “And really irritating.”

“Annoying and irritating are the same thing,” Luke pointed out. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. She drives me crazy.”

“You’re being kind of tough on her, aren’t you?”

She’d only barged into his life unannounced, unexpected and unwanted. And had stayed there. “I’m tough on everyone.”

“Yes.” Luke nodded thought fully. “And most can’t hack it.”

Which was why Sam had never remarried after his one short, disastrous union with Kim. It was why his own mother was so disappointed in him. “So?”

“So,” Luke said in a patient voice that made Sam want to slug him. “I don’t think Angie fits into the ‘most’ category.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’re not going to scare her off with the bad-cop thing. That despite the fact she’s young, and maybe even a touch naive, she looks pretty tough to me. Not only that, she’s…”

“What?”

Luke smiled. “Hot. Very hot.”

“Luke?”

Luke turned toward him. “Let me guess. Shut up?”

“Please.”

College started. Angie had decided on several general education classes after talking to a college advisor who’d suggested a teaching career.

Teaching art…it appealed in a way she hadn’t imagined. She could use her passion and still make a living. On her first night of class, she nearly burst with pride as she picked a seat among the students and soaked up the next hour.

She loved it. Loved everything about it: the smell of the room, the desk that made her bottom numb, the thirst for knowledge all around her.

Okay, it was only her thirst. All the other students were younger, more hip…and bored.

Which made no sense to her at all. Nothing about it bored her, not when she was finally there. Which probably explained why she’d grinned like an idiot all the way through the English lecture that put just about every other student in the room to sleep.

The self-pride sustained her all the way home, in her 1974 VW Bug that had seen better days. It wasn’t the lack of money in her check book that kept her loyal to the ancient clunker, though that was why she hadn’t gotten the pale blue Bug the paint job it long ago deserved.

She simply loved the car. It’d been her first, bought with hard-earned money she’d saved from her various assortment of jobs over the years, and she saw no reason to change it.

Her entire life was changing. In light of that, keeping the old Bug was a sort of security blanket. Her one allowed weakness from the past.

She could live with that.

Her phone was ringing when she pulled into the carport next to her apartment. The place had been built in the early 1920s, and was a bit run-down since its last renovation in the early 70s, but she loved it, too. The wrap around porch, the myriad little windows and turrets…the place had charm and personality and never failed to warm her heart when she came home.

Though it sat on prime land in South Pasadena, and by rights should have been far out of her rent bracket, she got the place for practically nothing. Mostly because she kept up the yard, and also because she always had time to chat with Mrs. Penrow, who’d owned the place for more than fifty years.

As Angie hustled through the small, cozy and comfortably over grown yard, with the grass she needed to cut this weekend, and the daisies just beginning to take over the ground at the rosebushes’ roots, her phone continued to ring.

The hour was late, which meant, darn it, it wouldn’t be Ed McMahon saying she’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweep stakes.