Frances Housden - Love Under Fire

What was he really after? It was unlike Rowan to be ingratiating. And how could he bear to watch Harry doing the work he’d had to give up? If she’d lost her job, the way Rowan had, she’d never enter another police station.

Spinning on her heel, she marched along the corridor, her steps brisk, concealing her doleful thoughts. But soon her true nature won through. She had a comic mental flash of what might have been, if Rowan had still been there when she’d arrived with Ginny. She broke into a grin as she pictured Rowan’s face.

All teenagers morphed into an alien life-form these days. What was the betting Ginny would have gone off the planet? Jo was grateful Rowan hadn’t heard the wolf whistle of approval coming from her car. With a sigh, she acknowledged she’d made a few hormone-driven moves herself in the last hour, as if her body had been taken over. The green light had gone on the moment he teased her about her offer to show him everything she had.

Then later…her feeble attempt to get a reaction from him, well that memory was plain embarrassing. Rowan would never really be attracted to her. She’d known him too long. In future it would pay to keep her eyes to herself and off Rowan. The problem being, the new Rowan was just so easy on the eye.

Dear heavens, now there was a thought to jump-start her brain. She was responsible for the new and improved model. Responsible for all the pain he’d gone through while they’d fought to piece his shattered leg together. She forgot how many times he’d gone under the surgeon’s knife.

Rowan’s strength of mind showed in taut, sleek muscles that couldn’t be bought. She ought to be thankful he hadn’t lost himself in the pain her foolish actions had inflicted.

How would she fare if she lost her career?

Would she even know herself anymore?

She burst through the door, mind made up. All thoughts of Rowan as a living, breathing babe were banned. All her priorities were in a straight line. She needed his help to prove her father’s ex-partner had burned down his house, not to discover how it felt to kiss a man with a moustache.

Of greater importance was a chance to prove to her superiors that she’d always known Rocky Skelton was a liar. Maybe then they would take a fresh look at the black marks on her father’s record. She simply had to place that doubt in their minds, and make them realize Milo Jellic had been done wrong.

Rowan had barely passed through the doors when Harry Jackson asked, “How’s it going, McQuaid? Was Jo able to set your mind at rest?”

Rest wasn’t exactly the way Rowan would phrase it. Set fire to his libido? Yeah. Tightened the thumbscrews on his hormones? You bet! After this, he’d be lucky to get a good night’s sleep for dreaming of Jo. Being over her, under her, inside her.

Damage control! He pulled a lead curtain across his thoughts.

Harry’s grin didn’t attempt to hide that he’d been conniving as he looked from one to the other of them. He and Bull were the only two who knew he’d come home. The only two he wanted to know. His old friend probably thought he’d been doing Rowan a favor by not warning him the detective he’d come to see was six feet of luscious curves. No way could Harry know they had a history together, or that most of his friends blamed Jo for his departure from the force. The way they told it he would have done the same for anyone. Anyone stupid enough to become a target. He wasn’t so sure. He’d only known he couldn’t let the bastard shoot her.

“Bull has given us a week to pull it together. Then I can okay Skelton’s payment.” The black look he’d expected from Jo didn’t materialize. Instead her attention focused on a little redhead, sitting on a bench by the far wall staring at him with her mouth gaping. He gave a mental shrug. Kids.

“Harry. Why is Ginny still here?”

The sergeant’s voice dropped a notch while he spoke to Jo, “Her mother had to work and her father won’t be home till later. Ms. Wilks said to send her on home, she’d be all right. But I had a feeling you’d rather see she got there.”

“That’s for real. Thanks, Harry, I’ll still have to speak to the mother, though. Where does she work?”

“The Hard Luck Inn.”

One black eyebrow rose as Jo’s gaze left Harry and zeroed in on him. “Looks like we’ve got two birds to kill tonight.” The lopsided smile quirked her lips, producing a dimple. “That will be Ms. Wilks’s hard luck.”

The conversation was interrupted by Bull and Jake bringing two men through the door from the cells under protest.

“Uh-oh, gotta go,” muttered Jo, her gaze on the girl. “I’ll catch you tonight, McQuaid. For now, I have to baby-sit.”

Harry let Jo get out of earshot before he produced the question Rowan could see hovering on his lips. “You two got a date tonight?”

“Not so’s you’d notice. We’re going to visit Jo’s chief suspect.” As soon as he’d said it, he remembered Bull’s reaction and wished he could pull the words back.

“You mean Rocky?”

“Yeah, but keep it under your hat. I don’t think it’s for public consumption. You know the guy, Harry. What do you think of him? Is he capable of flights of fantasy? Satanists?”

“Must admit I thought it far-fetched when I first heard the story, but everyone else was convinced.”

“Everyone but Jo?”

“I guess you could say if I took it with a pinch of salt, she used a bloody ladle. But then, she never worked with Rocky, didn’t know him the way we do.”

“And what do you know?”

Harry’s mouth twisted as he considered. “He can be pretty sharp, and if that’s how things are shaping, watch you don’t get cut.”

“Thanks for the warning.” He hitched one trouser leg and sat down on the corner of Harry’s desk, getting comfortable. “Talking about warnings, why didn’t you do me the same favor with Jo?”

“Made your heart jump, did she? She’s one beautiful woman.”

“There are lots of beautiful women.”

“Yeah, but you still haven’t married any of them.”

“Hell, you’re as bad as Scott—”

“Oh, I can tell you and him are the same. Time you were both married.”

“Well, he’s decided he doesn’t need an heir as long as Taine and I are around, but Taine can’t do the same for me, so I ought to marry and beget heirs.”

“Been matchmaking, has he?”

“You could say that. Now that I’ve left the force, he feels obliged to introduce me to all the eligible women in his circle. He never once said anything against me leaving him to look after the firm to become a cop, but I can tell he’s glad it’s behind me now. I guess he’d always had this idea I was invincible because of being so much bigger.”

“Yeah, it always was you who got him out of trouble.”

“Well, he’s turned that around now with the firm.” He slipped Harry a wry grin. “If it hadn’t been for Scott, we wouldn’t be living in the style we’ve become accustomed to.”

“Scott’s done well by us all.”

“Have you got shares as well?”

“I’ve got the ones your father gave mine, when he worked for him. Probably thought Dad earned them putting up with you lot.”

“Come off it, you spent as much time at our house as you did at your own.”

Harry had the grace to look sheepish. “I helped Dad.”

“Is that what you called it? Well, I’m helping Jo and I’ll probably be about as much use. You can’t find what’s not there.”

Heaven help him, was he starting to think like her? The last thing he wanted was to suspect Rocky Skelton of fraud. If that happened he could be here for longer than a week, long enough for the woman to get under his skin again.

Hell, she was under there now.