Suzanne Ellison - Blazing Star

“Ah, a compromise.” His eyes narrowed; suspicion laced his deep tone. “Coming from you, more likely a trap.”

“It’s a straightforward offer!” Karen burst out. “Damn you, Bauer, are you paranoid? Or just searching for more reasons to hate me? Don’t you have enough of them already?”

“I’m not the one who rode into town with my pistols cocked, Captain! I’m not the one who’s determined to gun everybody down!”

“Lieutenant, I’m just doing my job,” she insisted, torn between sounding tough as iron and begging him to give her a fair trial. “I’m trying to clean up an administrative mess. If there are a few emotional casualties—”

“A few? Open your eyes, Captain! There’s not one person at our substation whom you failed to offend yesterday! How can you believe that’s a requirement of your position? How can you be proud of that?”

Karen wasn’t proud of it; she wished she could have handled things more diplomatically. She especially regretted the way she’d shredded chubby Orson Clayton and tongue-lashed Cindy Lou. But she didn’t dare admit that to Bruiser Bauer.

“Lieutenant, it is not easy for a woman in my position to earn the personal regard or loyalty of her men,” she confessed reluctantly, forcing herself to meet his steely gaze. “It may never happen here. But I can and will demand a display of respect for my position. You know perfectly well that if I don’t crush any hint of rebellion in these first crucial days, I’ll never be able to do this job.”

Brick looked puzzled by something she’d said...or maybe by the fact that she was still talking to him at all. He reached down to tighten his blue-and-gold towel—it was starting to slip—as he said slowly, “Captain, I think you can consider the staff sufficiently crushed. One or two of them may be pulverized.”

Karen wanted to ask, How about you? but before she could speak, he turned away. She drew in a sharp breath as she gazed at his broad, bare back, purpled with bruises from his encounter with the gate. God, that must hurt! she realized painfully. And I barely even apologized.

Suddenly Karen knew she couldn’t let their discussion end like this. They had to smoke a peace pipe, or neither one of them would last another day.

“Lieutenant?”

He stopped, but he did not turn around. His towel was hanging dangerously low again.

“I’m sorry things have started out so badly between us,” Karen said sincerely. “I really wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

Now he did turn to face her, one hand lazily gripping the intersection of the terry-cloth tails. “What would you do over, Captain? Our spectacular greeting, when you embarrassed me in front of the whole damn town? Or yesterday morning, when you could hardly wait for me to step foot in the station house before you dressed me down in front of the men?” When he took a rough step toward her, Karen had to steel herself to keep from retreating. “Or would you like to replay this charming scene, when you barged into my shower and started giving me orders about my personal grooming?”

Karen swallowed hard, but she stood her ground. “I won’t deny that I’ve been rough on you, Lieutenant, but let’s be fair. We share the responsibility for this impasse. You know damn well that if I’d ridden into town as sweet as sunshine, you’d still be gunning for me.”

His square jaw jutted out. “You stole my job, damn you. ” His voice was hard and low.

Karen straightened. This was the heart of the problem. She knew she had to meet his accusation head-on. The best defence was the truth—at least as much of it as she was at liberty to share with him. “I got this job fair and square, Lieutenant. I didn’t even know there was a Tyler man who expected to get this position until after I’d accepted it. I felt a twinge of regret for your misfortune, but not enough to toss away my own career.” She met his eyes boldly. “In my position, what would you have done?”

Brick did not look away, but his voice was stripped of most of his earlier anger when he finally answered, “I would have come to Tyler.”

Karen nodded, then pressed on to her next point. “When I tossed you over that fence, Lieutenant, I was acting on pure instinct. It was dark, I was alone, and I’d been listening to a large man’s footsteps moving faster and faster. He seemed to be chasing me. I didn’t know a soul in town, so I knew he couldn’t be a friend. When he grabbed me before I could reach the house, I defended myself the way I’ve been trained.” She shivered as an old memory stabbed her. “That maneuver once saved my life, Bauer. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday it saves my life again.”

He grabbed a tissue from the sink and patted the blood on his chin, but his eyes were still on Karen.

“I’m sorry it had to be you. I’m sorry everybody had to be there to see it. But I couldn’t undo it, and I couldn’t risk looking weak by fussing over you. Even a simple apology was risky. Considering your response to the situation, you wouldn’t have listened if I’d gotten down on my knees. You were far too concerned with your own reputation to give a plugged nickel for mine.”

Brick tossed the bloody tissue into the wastebasket and readjusted his towel one more time. It was a big towel, but it seemed to be causing him a great deal of trouble. It didn’t seem to cover quite as much of him as it had before.

“As to our first encounter in the squad room, you openly defied me within my first hour on the job. If you’d expressed your opinions privately, I could have heard you out, even if I disagreed. I might even have been able to compromise. But under the circumstances, the need to establish my authority outweighed my concern for your personal feelings.” This issue went beyond her pride and position. The safety of her men was on the line. “Someday we’re going to have a police crisis on our hands, Bauer. I’ll have to bark out orders. If the men waffle—if they ignore me and look to you—it could be a disaster. It could cost lives.”

She took a step forward then, so close that she could almost touch his powerful chest. Suddenly Karen realized that she wasn’t wearing a thing beneath her bright pink bathrobe, and every female inch of her was aware of it. “Lieutenant, I don’t doubt that you could do my job admirably. Nobody in Tyler doubts it, either. But at this moment in space and time, I have authority over you. That’s not good or bad, fair or rotten. It’s just the way it is. Cops have to accept bad luck all the time.”

“Cops don’t have to accept orders from women.”

She stared at him for a full minute, then said coldly, “The cops in Tyler do.”

Brick swore under his breath. His gaze swiveled to the wall.

“It would help us all if you could just think of me as a fellow officer instead of a woman. On the job, we all have to be sexless.”

His head jerked up. “Do we have to be sexless in our private bathroom, too?”

To Karen’s surprise, a slow blush flamed along her neck. She felt her cheeks go hot.

She could have admitted that she was acutely aware that he was a man—a naked man—and she was a naked woman in her bathrobe. But somehow it didn’t fit into their conversation. Her purpose had been to break the ice as fellow officers, not to open up new vistas of trouble.

“I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, Lieutenant,” she managed to utter.

“Well, you did! I don’t generally shave or shower with a woman unless I’ve specifically invited her to spend the night.”

Karen’s cheeks grew hotter as she fought a sudden vision of this powerful hunk of manhood with a woman in his arms...a woman with her face. Desperately she wished she’d started this conversation when they were both in uniform. She was accustomed to dealing with half-dressed men, but they never affected her the way this one did.