Lisa Childs - Evidence Of Attraction

Wendy was so tired that she didn’t understand what the assistant district attorney was talking about. “What’s lucky for me?”

“That the eyewitness is still alive,” Jocelyn said.

“She might not stay that way if she keeps fighting having a bodyguard,” Hart remarked with a pointed glance at Wendy.

She shivered, but she wasn’t scared for her safety, despite how much Hart and the assistant district attorney seemed to be trying to scare her. She was probably just cold. A thin T-shirt wasn’t enough protection against the chill of the late autumn evening.

And maybe she was a little chilled from the threats, as well. Needing backup, she looked down the conference table at Spencer Dubridge. “Don’t you think this is ridiculous, too?” she asked the detective who had had the pleasure of arresting Luther Mills. “We can protect ourselves.”

He glanced sideways at his female bodyguard and snorted. “I certainly can protect myself better than Bodyguard Barbie can protect me.”

Keeli Abbott glared at him and Wendy suspected Dubridge’s former coworker might be from whom the detective most needed to protect himself.

The conference room door opened and the chief stepped back inside. As if he’d overheard their conversation, he insisted, “Everyone is going to have a bodyguard—” he stared hard at Dubridge “—no matter who they are, until this trial is over and Luther Mills is sentenced to life behind bars.”

Judge Holmes shook his head. “I can’t be party to this conversation.”

“You didn’t need to be here,” the chief told him. “Your daughter is the one being threatened.” Bella Holmes was not a minor; she had to be at least midtwenties.

“And she wouldn’t leave her damn party until her father told her she had to,” Tyce Jackson grumbled through his bushy beard. Even though he didn’t work Vice anymore, he still looked like he had when he’d gone deep undercover.

Hart must have never worked undercover because he’d always been clean-shaved and well-groomed. That was why Wendy had had such a crush on him. He’d always looked so handsome.

Bella Holmes glared at Tyce. “I didn’t know who you were.” Maybe she’d judged him by the way he looked.

Tyce had been one of those vice cops who’d gone so deeply undercover that sometimes it was difficult to return to the life they’d once lived. Wendy suspected that was the case with him.

“If you’d listened to your dad’s message, you wouldn’t have been at that damn party,” Tyce griped.

So Wendy wasn’t the only one who hadn’t played a voice mail that she’d needed to hear. She didn’t feel any better about the situation, though. If she’d listened, she could have spared her dad a surprise and herself having to lie to him again.

“We are not going to stop living our lives just because of these threats,” Wendy reminded the chief. “So how do we explain having bodyguards? How is the rest of the precinct going to feel that you didn’t trust our fellow officers to protect me or Detective Dubridge or even Ms. Gerber?”

“You told your father that I’m your boyfriend,” Hart reminded her. “Maybe we just tell everyone else the same damn thing.”

Heat rushed to her face again, chasing away that chill she’d briefly felt.

Dubridge chuckled. “That’ll work for her. Everybody in the department knows she had a crush on Fisher even back when he was married.”

Wendy gasped in shock that everyone else had known about the crush she’d shared with only a few close coworkers. Maybe Hart was right. She couldn’t trust them.

The detective blithely continued. “But that won’t work for everyone else.”

The judge’s daughter glanced sideways at Tyce and nodded. “I should say not…”

“You’re not my type, either,” Tyce assured her, his voice so deep it was just a rumble.

“And chauvinist pig is certainly not mine,” Keeli Abbott remarked.

The chief groaned. His voice rising with frustration, he yelled, “You’re all supposed to be professionals here. Figure it out!”

“Professional partier maybe,” Tyce Jackson murmured with a glance at Bella Holmes.

She glared at him again.

Wendy didn’t even dare to glance at Hart. What did he think of her? He probably pitied her if he had heard the rumors like Dubridge had. Did he know she’d had a crush on him even when he was married—like some adolescent girl with a crush on a teen idol?

Still arguing, everyone else filed out of the conference room, leaving Wendy and Hart alone. Even the chief had stepped out, deep in conversation with Jocelyn Gerber. But then the door opened again.

Maybe he had returned.

But it wasn’t the chief who had walked through the door; a tiny little blonde girl barreled into the room. “Daddy!” she squealed. “Mr. Parker said you were back.” She jumped onto Hart’s lap.

He closed his arms around her. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he admonished. But the rebuke was gentle, as were his warm brown eyes as he stared lovingly at her.

Hart Fisher had a child?

How had Wendy never heard that?

The little girl noticed Wendy and shyly buried her face in the doll she grasped in her delicate-looking arms. Then she suddenly pulled the doll away from her face and held it up near Wendy’s. Her blue eyes widened with shock as she looked from Wendy to the stuffed doll and then back at Wendy.

“She looks like my dolly, Daddy,” she murmured, her voice soft with awe. “She looks like Annie.”

Wendy felt her face heat all over again with embarrassment. First, she was outed for crushing on her bodyguard like a schoolgirl. Now she was being compared to a rag doll.

Her ego had taken a hell of a beating—far more painful than anything Luther Mills or his crew could have doled out to her.

“My dolly’s name is Annie,” the little girl told her. “What’s your name?”

“Wendy,” she replied. An only child who’d grown up around the teenage football players her father had coached, Wendy wasn’t comfortable around little girls. Despite her mother’s best efforts by forcing pink and frills on her, Wendy had never been a little girl herself. She had always been, and probably still was, a tomboy.

“Winnie,” the little girl repeated—incorrectly.

Wendy didn’t correct her. She just asked, “And what is your name?”

“Felicity…” she said slowly, as if she struggled to pronounce her own name. It was quite the mouthful.

“That’s pretty,” Wendy said.

“You’re pretty,” the little girl said with that slow, shy smile.

Something wrapped around Wendy’s heart, tightly squeezing it. Felicity’s mother was reputedly a former beauty queen. Why in the world would the child think Wendy was pretty?

She was obviously just a very sweet girl.

“You are the pretty one,” Wendy said. Felicity looked like a doll, but the kind made of porcelain and kept behind glass—delicate and beautiful—not one made with burlap and bright red yarn.

The little girl scrambled off her father’s lap and climbed onto Wendy’s. She held out her doll for Wendy to admire. “Grandma made me this doll when I was borned,” she said. “Now Grandma is an angel.”

That grasp on Wendy’s heart tightened even more. “I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured.

“Why?” the little girl asked. She reached out and fingered a lock of Wendy’s curly hair. But her touch was tentative as though she thought it would be hot since it was so red. Wendy smiled reassuringly at her, and the little girl smiled back.

“People say that when they find out you’ve lost someone you love,” Hart explained to his daughter.

Wendy hoped nobody would have cause to say that to her. She could not lose her parents. Luther was just trying to scare her into destroying the evidence. Right? He wouldn’t actually harm them…