Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Do

And then he spoiled it by adding, “Besides, now every guy in the place knows you’re off-limits.”

Tess set down her drink and glared at him. “Is that why you did it? Because you thought you were making a point?”

“I did make a point. It’s not safe for a woman looking the way you do to walk into a cop bar and imagine the only thing she’s going to leave with is information. But that’s not why I kissed you.”

“Oh, yeah?” she asked, very nastily because her body was still humming and her feelings were all mixed up. “So, why?”

“I must have wanted to.” His eyes were dark and direct. “I think I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I met you.”

Her heart thumped in excitement. She straightened defensively on her bar stool. “And being a police officer, you figure you can take what you want, no questions asked?”

He frowned. “No. Don’t theorize ahead of your facts, Tess.”

The fact was, she didn’t trust cops.

The fact was, she was attracted to this one.

And she didn’t like that one bit.

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to tell me you’re an honest cop?”

“I’m not telling you anything,” Jarek said evenly.

No, he wasn’t. The only thing he had admitted to was wanting to kiss her.

She nodded toward a booth by the door, where his former partner had joined a table of other off-duty detectives. “They seem to think you walk on water.”

He shrugged. “I did my job.”

“More than that, I heard. Ice Man? Cool under pressure. You took a gun away from some psycho commuter on the train—”

He looked uncomfortable. “That was years ago. When I was a patrolman. Detectives don’t get written up for stuff like that.”

“But didn’t you face more dangerous situations as a detective?”

He regarded her silently for a moment. “You’re the oldest in your family?”

She was confused. He confused her. She wasn’t used to men remembering what she said. “Yes. How did you—”

“As the oldest, there are things that are expected of you, right?”

Tess squirmed on her wooden perch. She didn’t like thinking about her adolescence, the years she struggled to keep Mark fed and out of trouble, the mornings she woke for school already dog-tired and sick-to-her-stomach worried and overwhelmed. She certainly never talked about them. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, you don’t make a big deal out of meeting your responsibilities. You just do your job.” He met her gaze directly. “Same thing if you’re a detective. I did my job.”

Tess fought the seductive tug of understanding. He was a cop, she reminded herself. They had nothing in common. “Very macho,” she said dryly.

His mouth curved. “Damn straight.”

She caught herself smiling back and thought, Uh-oh. She didn’t need these little sparks of connection. She couldn’t afford this tingle of attraction. She didn’t like the way Jarek kept turning this interview around. She was the reporter, wasn’t she? Dispassionate. Objective. In control of the conversation and herself.

Sure she was.

“What made you decide you didn’t want to be a detective anymore?” she asked.

“Circumstances.”

“Would your decision have anything to do with your wife’s death a year ago?”

He set down his beer. “Who told you that?”

She’d caught him off balance, Tess thought, cheered. Good. It made up, a little, for his uncomfortable perception, his unexpected understanding, his devastating kiss.

I think I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since I met you.

She pushed the thought away. “Nowicki,” she said.

“Nowicki has a big mouth. And you should check your facts.”

“She didn’t die?”

“She wasn’t my wife. Linda and I divorced eight years ago.”

Well. Tess wasn’t sure if she was relieved the new police chief wasn’t still grieving or disappointed that she had lost her story hook. “So, your loss wasn’t a factor in accepting the job in Eden?”

Jarek stopped looking impassive and started to look annoyed. Score one for the Girl Reporter.

“Why don’t you just write that I liked the idea of making a fresh start?”

“I understand that part,” Tess said. “What I don’t get is why you’d choose some little resort town on the edge of nowhere.”

“The Wisconsin border.”

“Same thing.”

His guarded smile reappeared. “Not a fan of small town living, are you?”

“It’s all right. If you don’t mind wearing the same label you got stuck with in the second grade for the rest of your life.”

“Then why not get out?”

“Oh.” Nobody asked her that. She’d given up even asking herself. Everyone knew, or thought they did, how things were with the DeLuccas. “Well, my father split on us. Maybe I didn’t want to follow his example. Besides, my brother needed me.”

“Both your parents are gone?”

“No. Well, my mother—” She stopped.

“Your mother?” Jarek prompted gently.

Her mother was a drunk.

“She needed me, too,” Tess said. Sure, Isadora DeLucca was sober now. But what would she do if Tess left her?

Tess picked up her drink again. “Anyway, here I am, thirty years old and living two miles from home, defending truth, justice and the American way for twenty-two thousand a year.” She laughed self-consciously. “Now you’ll tell me I have a Super Girl complex and I’ll have to slug you.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Right. You’ll just think it.”

He gave her one of his straight, cool looks. “You have no idea what I think of you.”

Her heart slammed into her ribs. She had a slow-motion moment when the smoky, raucous bar swirled and faded and refocused with Jarek as its center, his calm eyes and his firm mouth and his blunt-tipped hands turning the bottle.

She felt the heat crawl in her cheeks, and then a new voice rattled between them like ice cubes dropped into a glass.

“Are you going to introduce me to this seriously hot-looking babe, or do I need to find an excuse to drive to Mayberry?”

Tess blinked.

A man stood at Jarek’s shoulder. She recognized one of the detectives from the booth by the door, the young one with the ruffled hair and creased jacket.

Jarek looked resigned. “Tess, this idiot with the suit and no manners is my brother Aleksy.”

The Boy Scout. She recovered enough to offer her hand. “Tess DeLucca.”

“Alex. It’s a pleasure.” His smile was wide, his handshake firm, and his eyes assessing.

She let him hold her hand two beats too long, aware of the look that passed between him and his brother.

“You don’t mind if I join you?” he asked.

Jarek stood. “Actually, we were just leaving.”

“There’s gratitude,” Aleksy complained. “You owe me.”

Jarek tossed two quarters on the cloudy surface of the bar. “That’s for the phone call. We’ll settle the rest later.”

“Wait a minute.” Do not overreact, Tess told herself. “He called to tell you I was here?”

Jarek hesitated.

“Take the fifth, bro,” Aleksy advised him.

Tess stiffened with sudden certainty. Of course he called. Her stomach sank. Cops stuck together. Why else would Jarek show up at two in the morning at a cop-and-groupie bar on Belmont? Because he’d been drawn by some magical, electrical connection between them? What a joke.

But not nearly as big a laugh as the fact that somewhere at the back of her pathetic, needy little mind, Tess had accepted that he must have done exactly that.

Because he drew her.

“What did he tell you?” she demanded.

“Aleksy mentioned there was a woman here asking questions,” Jarek admitted quietly. “From the description, I thought it might be you.”