Tori Carrington - You Only Love Once

She scrubbed her damp palms against the scratchy material of her police issue slacks and whispered a long line of curses that would have done her police chief father proud. Well, it would have done him proud if, indeed, she’d ended up being the son he’d wanted instead of his only daughter. But she hadn’t, and it was a fact he never let her forget. Not when she’d played little league baseball. Not when she’d enrolled in the academy at twenty. Not when she’d graduated and was denied a spot with the D.C. Metropolitan Police. It hadn’t helped any when she learned that her father made sure her status was knocked down to third tier standby, essentially barring her from a job on the force. Apparently he had thought she would lose interest in her pursuit while in the academy. He’d always been so overprotective. As he’d told her, no little girl of his was going to get her butt shot off so long as he had any power within the department. And as Regional Assistant Chief for the East, he had more than enough to waylay her…at least in D.C. In New York, however, his power was nil.

The driver’s door finally opened and Kelli nearly launched from her seat. David slid behind the wheel. She pointedly avoided his gaze and suspected he did the same beside her.

He’s just as much a victim in this as I am, she reminded herself. But for some reason his undisguised disbelief when they were introduced irritated her. Shock, she expected. Disbelief? Suddenly agitated, she shifted. She told herself to give him the benefit of the doubt. That there was a good chance he wasn’t like eighty percent of the other males she’d worked with who thought her completely incapable of her job as a police officer. Okay, maybe not a good chance. But there was a chance. And after last night, she, um, owed him at least that much consideration.

He moved. She forced herself to look at him. His mouth was moving, but no words made it past his impossibly wicked lips. She swallowed, reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to notice what a great mouth he had…or remember all the naughty places that mouth had been mere hours earlier.

His attempts at speech continued, nudging up her impatience level. Finally, she said, “Look, I didn’t expect this anymore than you did, David…um, McCoy.” Stick to last names. Maybe that would afford her the distance she so desperately needed right now.

His crack at imitating a wide-mouth bass out of water stopped and he seemed to relax. “Actually, Hatfield,” he said, stressing her last name. “That’s not entirely true. Last night you knew you were going to be reporting to work at this station and that you would be assigned a new partner. That’s a helluva lot more than I was privy to.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling of the car. Okay, she’d give him that. Still… “Come on, David, we met at a cop bar. Surely you had to know there was some connection.”

“All right. Sure. Maybe. But as someone’s daughter. Or sister. Or…”

She raised a brow, daring him to say “cop groupie.”

He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t expect you to be a blasted police officer.”

She stared out the windshield as a couple of uniforms walked by, openly curious about the couple in the squad car a few feet away. “Don’t you think we should get going?”

“Huh?” He followed her line of vision. His long-suffering sigh told her he’d somewhat snapped out of his momentary trance.

“Look, David, when I came in this morning, this was the last thing I expected.” She hated that she noticed his eyes were an even more vibrant blue in the light of day. “I say we do this. Go on about our business for now and pretend last night never happened.”

He blinked as if the effort took every ounce of his concentration. “Are you crazy?” he said, startling her with his intensity. “I have the best friggin’ sex of my life and you tell me to forget about it? Act like it never happened?”

Heat spread quickly through Kelli’s veins, making her remember just how incredible last night had been for her, too. But last night was last night. And, oh boy, did the guy who sang “What a Difference a Day Makes” ever know what he was talking about.

David started the cruiser and began to back out. “Ain’t a chance in hell I’m going to forget about last night, Kelli.” He looked at her. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you forget either.”

THEY ARRIVED on the scene to find the street glutted with blue-and-whites. David spotted the scene commander and within moments he and Kelli were next to him. A brisk December breeze brought her scent to him. Damn, but she smelled good. Like ripe peaches picked fresh from the tree.

He grimaced. Yeah, she was a peach all right. A peach with a gun.

“Glad you could join us, McCoy,” Sutherland said dryly.

An officer David recognized as being at the bar the night before chuckled as he elbowed his partner.

“Look, loverboy has himself a new partner.”

“Can it, Jennings,” David told him. His gaze rested on Kelli’s face to find bright spots of red high on her cheeks. But whether her flush was a result of the cold, or the obvious gossiping going on, he couldn’t tell. Her shoulder-length toffee-colored hair was caught back in a neat French braid, her skin nearly flawless where the gray morning light caught it.

She looked at him. He immediately looked back at the commander. “Why don’t you bring me…us up to speed on what’s going on?”

Sutherland did, covering much the same ground O’Leary had at the station. Except his details were more specific. The perp was on the third floor. Door was open, but there wasn’t a clean shot. He pointed to where the perpetrator’s estranged wife stood shivering next to a nearby patrol car, then to a fire escape on the side of the building. Across the way on the roof of a neighboring building a couple of sharpshooters were setting up shop.

“The perp demands to talk to his wife before he’ll give up the three-year-old girl.”

“The perp is the child’s father?”

“He ceased being a father the minute he took his own child hostage, McCoy.”

David stepped backward until the fire escape was in sight, ignoring the red-and-white flashes of light against the brick building.

“What is it?” Kelli asked, coming to stand next to him.

He looked at her again. Damn, but just looking at her did all sorts of funny things to his stomach. “Just that the guy couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this, that’s all. You’ve got the tired third shifters exhausted and pumped up on caffeine, their trigger fingers itchy as hell. Then there are the first shift guys barely awake and pissed as hell that their coffee-and-donut run was interrupted.” He grimaced. “Really bad timing.”

Her gaze swept him from forehead to mouth. Was she remembering last night as vividly as he was? Was she thinking about how great it had felt to be joined together, far, far away from this mess? She looked quickly away and this time he was sure the color of her cheeks wasn’t due to the cold. “Any ideas on how to end it?” she asked.

He mulled over her words. “Yeah. I think what I just said makes a lot of sense.”

“What, let SWAT take him out?”

“No. The donuts part. If the father’s just coming off third shift he probably hasn’t had breakfast yet. A guy can get awful hungry after putting in a full one.”

“Are you saying we should feed the perp?” she asked, a suspicious shadow darkening her green eyes.

“The father, Hatfield. The guy is the kid’s father.” He grinned. “And yeah, I think we should try feeding him.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

He scanned the street. At the corner was a small donut shop. He thrust five dollars at her. “Here. Get a half dozen and a couple of coffees.”