Amanda Stevens - Secret Admirer

Taking a deep breath, Eve walked over to them. “Hi,” she said over the music. “Mind if I join you?”

Both men turned at her voice. Tony barely slanted her a glance before tossing back his drink. Nick leaned his elbow against the bar, giving her a slow examination. She wondered why his scrutiny didn’t offend her the way Vic D’Angelo’s had.

Extending her hand, she said, “I’m Tony’s new partner. Eve—”

Nick Gallagher cut her off. “Barrett, right? From the neighborhood.”

Eve’s mouth dropped. “You remember me?”

“Sure I remember you. You were, what? Fifteen, sixteen last time I saw you?”

Actually, Eve had been twenty, almost twenty-one, when she’d seen both Nick and Tony at Ashley’s funeral. But neither one of them had noticed her that day. She’d stayed at the back of the chapel during the service and hadn’t approached the family at the cemetery. Tony’s grief had been too much for her to bear. She’d slipped away quietly to grieve in her own way for what might have been.

Nick smiled down at her, a slow, sexy curving of his lips that might have sent Eve’s pulse racing into the stratosphere if Tony hadn’t been standing nearby. The Gallagher brothers were both sexy as hell, but Tony was…

Tony.

Both sets of blue eyes were on her now, and Eve felt her color heighten. Their perusal was very unnerving, especially the way Tony was almost glaring at her. He cocked his head, regarding her in a manner Eve couldn’t decipher.

Finally he said, “Evie? Hell, it is you.”

His voice held a note of incredulity, and Eve managed to shrug. “I wondered when you’d get around to recognizing me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” he demanded.

“Wait a minute,” Nick said. “You mean to tell me Eve is your new partner, and you didn’t even recognize her? For God’s sake, Tony, are you blind?”

“Well, she has changed,” Tony retorted, letting his gaze slip almost sheepishly over her features. “And it has been awhile.”

Eve smiled. “I don’t wear glasses anymore, and the braces are gone. Plus I’ve put on a few pounds.” She gave a fatalistic shrug.

“Yes, you have,” Nick agreed. “And in all the right places, from what I can see. You used to be almost scrawny, as I recall. And where did all your freckles go?”

“Oh, they’re still there, unfortunately. You just have to look closely.”

“Where? I don’t see even one.” Nick straightened from the bar and moved toward Eve, staring down into her face as if searching for her freckles took all of his investigative know-how.

Behind him, Tony muttered, “Oh, please—”

Nick gave him a sharp glance. “Am I cramping your style, Tony? Just say so, if I am.”

“You always do,” Tony muttered, motioning for the bartender. “But when has that ever stopped you before?”

Nick gave Eve a conspiratorial wink, then bent and brushed his lips against hers. “Nice seeing you again, Eve. And my condolences, by the way, for having to work with this punk.”

Caught off guard by the kiss, Eve stared after Nick for a moment before turning to meet Tony’s blue gaze. He didn’t look the least bit jealous, she noticed with a flicker of disappointment. Just faintly amused. “Watch out for him,” he advised.

“You’re warning me away from your own brother?”

“Damn right.” The bartender appeared, and Tony said, “Another boilermaker, Curly.”

The man didn’t have a single hair on his head. He glanced at Eve curiously. “Haven’t seen you in here before.”

“My first time,” she admitted.

“We’ll try to be gentle. What’ll you have?”

“How about a Guinness?”

“Good choice.”

Curly disappeared to get their drinks, and Eve perched on a bar stool. “I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” she said, knowing it was too late if he did.

Tony shrugged. “I guess you’d better. This crowd’s starting to look pretty hungry.”

She knew he was referring to the glances she’d gotten earlier, but she laughed it off. “I take it you don’t get many women in here.”

“Oh, we get enough. We just don’t get many who look like you.”

Eve’s stomach fluttered at his words. She wondered if he was flirting with her or if he was actually paying her a compliment. She was confident enough to appreciate her own attractiveness, but she was also a realist. She was attractive, but not beautiful. She had neither the face nor the figure to stop traffic—not like Ashley.

The bartender set their drinks before them, and after he left, Tony leaned toward her. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were in Clare’s office?”

“I thought it would come to you. When it didn’t…” Eve shrugged again. “It was a little embarrassing. No one likes to be forgotten.”

Tony’s gaze drifted over her face, stopping for one infinitesimal moment on her lips. Was he remembering that he’d given her her first kiss?

She’d been such an innocent. So naive and so impressionable. Tony had been the exact opposite. Wild, reckless, the neighborhood bad boy. But he could pour on the charm when he wanted to. Eve, fresh out of braces and glasses, didn’t stand a chance.

“You were always so quiet,” he said. “Always real shy, the best I remember. What made you decide to become a cop?”

She hesitated, not sure how to answer without giving too much of herself away. “In a way, I guess you’re the reason. You and your family,” she added quickly. “I don’t know if you remember or not, but my mother died when I was thirteen. Her death hit my father really hard. He’s never been particularly outgoing, so he didn’t have many friends and no family to lean on except me.”

She paused, taking a sip of her Guinness. “Your dad started dropping by sometimes on his way home from work. They’d sit out on the front stoop, and Detective Gallagher would talk to my father about his investigations, what was going on at the station. Just small talk, but it meant the world to my father. To both of us. Detective Gallagher made a very big impression on me. He was a really nice man.”

A shadow flickered in Tony’s eyes before he turned back to his drink. “Yeah, he was.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to him. Your family must have been devastated.”

Tony shrugged, but a pall had suddenly been cast over the evening. Eve had just been starting her senior year in college when she’d heard about Sean Gallagher’s disappearance. Coming as it had just weeks after Ashley Dallas’s murder, the news had been an even more stunning blow.

Eve didn’t have to struggle to recall the details. Even though she’d attended school out of state, she’d kept up with the case from the moment she’d heard of Ashley’s death. Ashley and Tony had attended an end-of-the-year party at college, along with some of their friends. For some reason, Ashley had ended up leaving the party alone, and her beaten and stabbed body had been discovered early the next morning.

The murder weapon, a switchblade, had been traced back to a man named Daniel O’Roarke. He had attended the party, also, and witnesses described an altercation he’d had with Tony. The two of them had never gotten along, primarily because their families had been sworn enemies for over seventy years.

Eve hadn’t known about any of that until it had all come out at Daniel’s trial. By that time, Sean Gallagher, who had been the lead investigator on the case, had disappeared without a trace. The consensus at the time was that Daniel, or someone in the O’Roarke family, had murdered Sean and disposed of his body, either to keep further evidence from coming to light against Daniel, or for revenge.

Eve couldn’t imagine what it had been like for the Gallaghers over the years. The not knowing had to be agonizing, she thought, watching Tony.