Читать книгу Blazing Star - Suzanne Ellison - Страница 11

BRICK REACHED the station house early the next morning eager to arrive before Captain Curvaceous started turning his life upside down. Actually, she’d already done that, he mused darkly as he recalled the painful dawn battle between his razor and his half-scabbed face. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Karen Keppler while he’d limped down to the basement and done a very cautious workout in a futile effort to limber up his battered back. Brick would have preferred to present himself to a new boss feeling his best, but the Keppler woman’s acrobatic tricks had already nixed that.

He didn’t think she’d last too long, but he knew she’d keep him on his toes until she threw in the towel. Last night’s sparring had told him that his nemesis was tougher than he’d expected the new female captain to be. But a woman cop was still a woman cop, which meant she was weak, unpredictable and not to be trusted.

Brick did not consider himself a raging chauvinist. In fact, he generally liked matching wits with women and found them to be as bright and capable as men in most professions. He didn’t even mind female dispatchers and file clerks in prisons and police stations. His objection was to women serving on patrol with male partners whose lives depended on them.

Partners whose lives were lost because of them.

In Brick’s view, putting a female in charge of a group of fighting men—and what was a police squad but a military unit?—bordered on ludicrous. And hiring one from another substation to replace the man who’d been groomed for the position for years was just plain insane.

It was also troubling, because Brick knew that Commander Harmon felt much the same way he did about women in uniform. In fact, a year ago Paul Schmidt had confided that whether Tyler became a county substation or not, Brick was a shoo-in for the captain’s job. Last week Brick had asked Paul straight out what had happened, and Paul had looked him in the eye and said he didn’t know.

Brick didn’t know, either, but now that he’d taken stock of Karen Keppler’s physical attributes, he didn’t think it was going to take too long to find out. The only question was what bigwig she was cozy with...and whether he’d used blackmail or favors owed to put pressure on the commander or somebody up the line.

When Brick arrived at the station at 7:23, a full half hour before his shift began, he was surprised to find one of Tyler’s dispatchers, Cindy Lou, cowering by the police radio. The young blonde looked a bit bedraggled this morning. She could have been sick—this time of year there were a fair number of colds and sore throats going around—but illness wouldn’t account for her hangdog expression.

“What’s wrong, Cin?” he asked, taken aback by her uncharacteristic sobriety.

“I was over getting a cup of coffee when Clayton and Franklin called in,” she told him miserably, not even meeting his eyes. “It was just a doughnut stop, so I went ahead and put a spoonful of creamer in my cup before I came back over here and called back. By that time she had grabbed the mike and barked out a bunch of numbers I didn’t understand. She told me never to leave my post unless there was somebody else to cover me. Then she marched in there and slammed the door.”

Cindy Lou pointed to Paul Schmidt’s office, a place that Brick had once considered a source of warmth and strength. Now it was inhabited by a virago.

“I’ll talk to her, Cindy,” he volunteered. Serving as a liaison between the boss and the underlings had always been part of his job, but it hadn’t been all that taxing while Paul was in charge. “She’s new here and a bit high-strung. After a while she’ll figure out the way we do things in Tyler.”

Cindy Lou, who’d once set her cap for Brick but had recently resigned herself to being a good friend, smiled her gratitude. “Thanks, Brick. I don’t know what we’d do without you here. It’s so unfair that you—”

“I know. Let’s not talk about it, okay?” Before she could answer, he asked, “When did she get here?”

“About five. I was so shocked! Paul never came in until after daylight, and even you don’t show up that early!”

“Don’t ask me to understand the workings of that woman’s mind,” Brick replied darkly. “I think Captain Curvaceous attended police academy on some other planet.”

When Cindy Lou glanced up at Brick, giggling at the nickname he’d coined, her glance fell on his jaw for the first time. “Good heavens, Brick! What happened to you? I thought you were off duty last night.”

He was trying to think of a way to avoid confessing the humiliating truth when he heard the captain’s office door swing open.

To Brick’s dismay, that damned Keppler woman looked every bit as striking in a black uniform as she did dressed for a party. Her braided hair looked more prosaic than it did in a chignon, but somehow the stern image flattered her striking features.

“Bauer, glad you’re here,” the new boss briskly called out to him from across the room. “We’ve got a lot to cover this morning before roll call.”

“Roll call?” he echoed. With all of six men on each shift, it seemed like a ridiculous formality. “We, uh, don’t do roll call here.”

Karen Keppler straightened then, looking ominous in her uniform as she took a step toward him.

“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant. I believe I heard you say something like ‘we don’t do roll call here.”’

Reluctantly Brick nodded, trying to stifle a new wave of resentment. He was uncomfortably aware that the door behind him had just opened and several day-shift guys had just wisecracked their way into the room. “That’s what I said, Captain Keppler. Paul always—”

“Lieutenant, I am not interested in the sections of the county code violated by my predecessor unless they are serious enough for prosecution,” she cut in, her gray eyes showing all the warmth of a glacier. “I am interested in instituting proper police procedures in accordance with the newly revised manual. I did not devote most of a year of my off-duty time to updating this edition in order to have it ignored by the men under my command. Is that clear?”

During this unexpected speech, Clayton and Franklin had joined the day-shift fellows, gaping wordlessly as the new boss tongue-lashed the man they all considered their true leader. Brick couldn’t say that Paul had never chewed out a man in public, but he’d only done it when the man had failed to respond to more subtle direction.

Not once, not ever, had he done it to Brick.

With all the strength he could muster, he refrained from cutting Karen Keppler down to size. “I’m sure that Tyler’s officers will follow whatever regulations are important to you, Captain,” he reported stiffly. “I merely meant to explain that they had not been willfully violating any county requirements. Paul simply had a different way—”

“I am not interested in former Chief Schmidt’s ways, nor in his shockingly unprofessional habits,” the captain interrupted, ignoring the communal gasp of dismay from the men behind Brick. “From now on you will refer to him by his proper name, and you will address me by my proper rank.” Her tone was so sharp it almost left nicks on Brick’s still-bloodied face. “Do we understand each other, Lieutenant?”

Brick had not expected to like Karen Keppler. He had not expected to enjoy serving under her command. Last night he’d realized he would have to swallow a great deal of pride to tolerate being her subordinate, but it was not until this moment that he realized how seriously this woman was going to color his world. She’d stolen his promotion; she’d invaded his home. Brick was sworn by duty to uphold her orders and demand loyalty to her from his men.

But no duty could keep him from wanting to throttle her at this moment. And no badge would keep him from calling a spade a spade if she ever dressed him down in public again.

* * *

“SO HOW DID your first day of work go?” Anna Kelsey cheerfully asked Karen as her new boarder sat down to dinner. She was such a pretty girl, even if she was a bit sparing with her sweet smile. “You should have told me you were going to be the new police captain. I hear you took my favorite nephew by surprise.” Actually, she’d heard the story of Brick’s real surprise—being flipped on his backside by his new boss—from no fewer than six different people today. Dr. George Phelps, Anna’s boss, had told her the tale firsthand.

Karen took her napkin off the table and laid it carefully across her lap. “Well, it’s a small town, Mrs. Kelsey—”

“Anna, dear. Only strangers call me Mrs. Kelsey.”

Karen’s smile was genuine but strained. “Until I have time to buy my own place, Anna, I’m bound to brush elbows with some of my men.”

Anna tried to swallow a chuckle as she pondered other possible interpretations of that phrase, but red-haired Tisha Olsen, never one to pull her punches, laughed outright.

“It’s a worthy goal for most girls your age, honey,” the eccentric hairdresser teased with a good-natured grin. “With all the fine boys on our force, I imagine you’ll find yourself a man in no time.”

Anna was surprised to see Karen color; she knew Tisha had meant no harm. Still, it wouldn’t be easy for any woman of Tisha’s generation to understand why the girl wanted to be a police captain. Tisha had certainly never understood why Anna’s future daughter-in-law, Pam, wanted to be a football coach. Anna didn’t really understand it, either, but if it was what Pam wanted, she wanted it for Pam, and if Karen wanted to take her job seriously, then so should everybody else at Kelsey’s. Granted, it was a bit hard for Anna to feel happy about anybody taking the job Brick had wanted for himself, but it wasn’t Karen’s fault she’d been appointed.

“A pretty girl like Karen could get married anytime she wanted to,” Anna pointed out cheerfully. “She’s just got more important things to do right now. Isn’t that right, Karen?”

Karen flashed Anna a grateful look. “That’s about the size of it. My job is my life. I can’t imagine that any man would put up with it.”

“Brick’s the same way,” Johnny added laconically. After thirty-five years of marriage, little that her stalwart husband said took Anna by surprise. Despite his apparent indifference to the conversation, she knew he was trying to bolster the new young boarder in his own quiet way. “There’s something about being a cop, he always says. It’s not a job, it’s a way of life. From the time he was a little boy, it’s all Brick ever wanted to be.”

“I thought he wanted to be a football player,” Tisha countered, reaching for another poppy-seed roll. “Isn’t that how he got his nickname?”

Anna watched Karen carefully. Yes, her eyebrows did rise a trifle. She was a bit interested in Brick’s personal life!

“He was a wonderful guard,” Anna explained with renewed enthusiasm after she’d recapped the story of his childhood for Karen. After all, shouldn’t the girl know that Brick had lived with his aunt and uncle since his father died when he was fifteen? Shouldn’t she know that his mother had died when he was ten? “One night he stopped the Belton team practically all by himself. The sports reporter said they’d have had the same luck trying to score through a brick wall. Our boy, Patrick, started calling him Brick the next day. It caught on, and we’ve been calling him that ever since.”

“Except for your mother,” Johnny corrected her. “She’s the only one I know who still calls him Donald.”

“Well, Martha’s a bit long in the tooth to start changing her ways,” Tisha replied with a chuckle. She served herself some meat loaf and passed the serving dish to Karen. “I keep hoping she’ll match up with some friendly old codger at Worthington House, but she seems content to sit and sew.”

“She quilts,” explained Anna, who didn’t like to think of her darling, bright-eyed mother as growing old. “She belongs to a group of ladies who get together and piece quilts the old-fashioned way. They made a lovely one for Phil when he hurt his hip— Oh, you don’t know Phil, do you, Karen?”

Karen was eating carefully now, but her pretty gray eyes reflected interest as she shook her head.

“Phil is another of our lodgers. He’s a retired gardener. Used to work for the Ingallses. Have you met Judson Ingalls?”

“Briefly, at Paul Schmidt’s party.”

Johnny snorted. “You probably met his daughter, Alyssa, too. She never misses an opportunity to make a public appearance.”

Anna hoped that Karen hadn’t heard the bitterness underlying his neutral tone. Years ago, Alyssa had spurned Johnny’s best friend, Eddie Wocheck, and as a result, Eddie had left town. The fact that he’d recently returned to visit, rolling in money and justifiably proud of his accomplishments, had not changed Johnny’s feelings toward the woman who’d broken Eddie’s heart. But because Alyssa was one of Anna’s best friends, he tried to keep those feelings to himself.

Anna pressed on with her story. “Well, Phil’s lived with us for years—was our first boarder—and he’s only been at Worthington House—that’s our local convalescent home—since he slipped and broke his hip. He’ll be back soon, God willing. He’s the dearest old man...”

She stopped as Johnny interrupted with a comment of his own. “Honey, I forgot to tell you that Eddie’s going to use Phil’s room.”

“Oh? He’s back in town?” To Karen, she said, “Eddie grew up in Tyler but he’s been gone a long time. Recently he bought Timberlake Lodge from Judson Ingalls, and he’s going to add a wing to create a resort out there. He drops by every now and then—”

“What I meant was, he’s coming back to stay. Until things get under way at the lodge, at least. I told him he could stay in Phil’s room until Phil’s ready to come back.”

Tisha smiled, clearly enjoying the Kelseys’ attempts to educate their boarder about the town. “Phil is Eddie’s daddy, Karen, and Anna and Johnny forgot to tell you that their daughter Kathleen lives here, too, when she’s not gallivanting off to Switzerland for the winter. You ought to take notes. You might forget some of this, and you cops need to keep track of local gossip to solve your cases, don’t you? Would you like to wiretap my shop?”

Karen smiled warily, so warily that Anna wondered if she’d already figured out that Tisha deliberately tossed off outrageous comments to help maintain her flamboyant image. Karen had chosen a tough career, so she must be a pretty tough person. But Anna suspected that she’d had a hard first day at work, and tonight she needed warmth and support from her fellow boarders. Tisha often showed her affection for people by teasing, but Anna didn’t think Karen was in the mood to be teased. “You were about to tell us how things went today,” she tried again.

Karen met her eyes gratefully. “Well, it was...exciting, Mrs. Kel—Anna. Demanding. Different from...just being a regular cop.”

“Honey, are you telling us it isn’t exciting to be a regular cop? Why, I can’t tell you the number of nights we’ve sat here and listened to Brick tell us how satisfying it is to—” Tisha broke off and turned to Anna. “Where is Brick, anyway? He loves meat loaf. Didn’t I hear him ask the cook to make it tonight?”

Now Anna flushed. This morning Brick had asked for meat loaf, but he’d called an hour ago and told her he’d be coming home late because he was helping Patrick fix Pam’s carburetor after work. But Anna wasn’t fooled for an instant. It was far too cold to fuss with a car outside after dark at this time of year. It bothered Anna that she’d heard a tension in Brick’s voice that hadn’t been there since Shelley Schmidt had dumped him.

As she glanced at Karen, she realized there was only one recent change in Brick’s life: Karen Keppler. Despite the incident at Paul Schmidt’s party, she still had hopes for the two of them. After all, what woman could understand her nephew’s commitment to law enforcement better than another cop? Besides, Brick was such a sweet boy, so kind and loving, so much fun! He didn’t blow up often, and when he did, he was always quick to apologize. He wasn’t one to hold a grudge.

Anna wondered if the same was true of Karen.

“Brick’s busy tonight,” she explained. “I’ll save him some leftovers. And Zachary’s having dinner with Judson.”

Anna caught a glimpse of interest in Karen’s eyes as she listened to the news, and she hoped that Brick would come back before Karen finished eating. When she saw the two of them together she’d have a lot better sense of how they were really getting along.

Johnny asked another polite question about police work, and Karen was quick to answer it. Overall, she seemed happy to talk about her new job—in general, upbeat terms—but there was a tension in her that revealed to Anna that things were not going as well as she’d hoped. Karen praised Anna’s cooking and did her best to listen courteously to Tisha’s exuberant suggestions for styling her long black hair, but Anna had the feeling that this bright and cheery dinner was the highlight of Karen’s first day on the job. Loneliness would be her only ally once she retreated to her room.

Anna dragged out the dinner conversation as long as she could, urging Karen to have seconds of the chocolate cheesecake she’d made that afternoon. The girl had just finished the last crumb, insisting that she’d had enough, when the door to the kitchen swung open and Brick burst into the house.

“Where’s that meat loaf, Aunt Anna?” he called out cheerfully as he pulled off his jacket. “I’ve had one hell of a rotten day and I’m starving.”

Brick strode into the dining room, then spotted Karen. His smile vanished. As Karen rose to her feet with dignity, nobody in the room could fail to feel the electric charge that zapped between them. But to Anna’s dismay, it wasn’t a charge of passion or hope or pleasure. Karen’s face radiated uncertainty and distrust. Brick’s eyes darkened with rage.

For a long, tense moment they stared at each other. Nobody spoke. Not even Tisha could come up with a joke to break the tension.

Then Karen said stiffly, “You missed a fine dinner, Lieutenant, but I believe your aunt saved some for you.”

Bitterly he answered, “Did you instruct her on the proper procedure for labeling and marking the provisions, Captain Keppler? Did you provide her with the proper forms to account for culinary consumption by late-night nibblers? Did you dictate a memo regarding how many ounces each boarder should be served?”

That was when Anna knew that her dear nephew was in terrible trouble. In all the years Brick had lived with her, she had never heard him be rude to a guest.

And this one was his boss!

Karen ignored his needling tone—ignored him, in fact, altogether—and said to Anna, “Thank you so much for the wonderful dinner. If you’ll excuse me now, I have some work to do in my room.”

She gave the rest of them a quick good-night, then turned and marched up the stairs. Her steps were firm and she held her head high, but Anna wasn’t fooled.

She was a woman and she knew a woman’s heart. And she knew that her young boarder would shed some private tears tonight.

* * *

DESPITE HER EXHAUSTING first day at work, Karen had a hard time going to sleep. It hadn’t been easy holding her own with Brick Bauer, let alone weeping silently into her pillow so he couldn’t hear her as he settled into bed next door. It was after two when she finally dozed off, and long after six when she woke from a frightening dream in which Bauer was towering over her with a steak knife, threatening to kill her if she didn’t surrender her job.

Trying to ignore the nightmare, Karen quickly tugged off her nightgown, slipped into a robe and headed for the shower. To her dismay, the door to the bathroom was locked. She could hear Bauer singing “On Wisconsin” in the shower.

She was surprised that he knew how to sing, let alone that he had the heart for it. Apparently he felt better this morning. After all, last night he’d let off a little steam. So far he’d addressed her with stiff courtesy at the station house, regardless of his poorly concealed irritation, but apparently it was too much to ask him to keep his gloves off in his own home.

Karen couldn’t really blame him. She’d been tough yesterday, tougher than she would have been if she’d taken over a job supervising women. But women would have accepted her authority once she proved she knew what she was doing. That wouldn’t be enough for the men.

Worse yet, Paul Schmidt had left the place in a bureaucratic shambles. Oh, Karen imagined things had lumped along all right as long as there was some good ol’ boy to say, “Oh, sure, I remember that night five years ago. Don’t you remember that break-in, Steve? The kid had brown hair...”

It wasn’t good enough for a complex county system, and it wasn’t good enough for Karen. She’d spent most of the first day figuring out what had passed for record keeping and dictating memos to reestablish a professional code of conduct and an efficient game plan for day-to-day organization. Today she was going to do what she would have done the first day if things hadn’t been in such a mess. She was going to get acquainted with Tyler from a cop’s-eye view. And that meant she had to go cruise the town with the help of her right-hand man.

Assuming he ever got out of the shower.

After ten minutes, she banged on the door. “Lieutenant! Would you hurry up in there?”

There was no reply. She banged again, several times, but nothing happened. Finally she gave up, until she heard the buzz of an electric razor.

When Bauer opened the door at last and glared at her, Karen was struck at once by the realization that he was wearing nothing but a towel, casually knotted around his waist. His massive chest and biceps looked even more daunting naked than they did clothed. His legs were well muscled and hairy and compellingly male.

“Is there some emergency that won’t wait?” he grumped, not bothering to say good-morning. One of the gouges on his face had started bleeding again, but he’d done nothing to stanch the flow. “Is there some reason I can’t get dressed in peace?”

Karen felt a bit guilty for disturbing him, but she had her own agenda for the day. Besides, it was obvious that Brick was going to hate her no matter what she did. Why bend over backward to make him happy?

“I have to get ready for work, Lieutenant,” she explained briskly. “I can’t twiddle my thumbs while you sing in the shower for fifteen minutes. Didn’t you hear me knocking?”

“As a matter of fact, Captain, I did.” His blue eyes glittered with rage. “But since the house didn’t seem to be burning down, I couldn’t think of a good reason why I should cut short my shower just so you could assert your feminist authority in my bathroom.”

“It’s our bathroom, Lieutenant, and I assure you, my motives were quite mundane. I can’t even braid my hair until I wash it this morning, let alone get dressed until I shower. I have to be at work before the day shift arrives and—”

“And I don’t?”

“Well, of course you do. I made it clear yesterday that punctuali—”

“But you’re the captain. That makes your shower more important than mine?”

“I didn’t say that, Bauer.”

“I don’t recall what you had to say on the subject of showers, Captain. Aren’t they listed in Keppler’s revised police manual? I don’t recall receiving a memo instructing me on how many gallons of water I might use at exactly what temperature for precisely how many minutes. Silly me, I thought I’d just keep showering my old-fashioned way. But that wouldn’t work, would it? That would be one small portion of my life that you couldn’t regulate!”

Karen was so stung by the depth of his anger that she didn’t know what to say. Maybe she had come on a little strong at the station house, but...it had been necessary. Hadn’t it?

Unable to meet his furious glare, her gaze dropped, inadvertently focusing once more on the towel wrapped around his waist. Determined not to think about what lay beneath it, she concentrated on what she saw—that broad, virile chest, still sprinkled with drops of water from the shower. She was at war with this man. Why the hell did he have to have a physique that was so damned impressive? Thank God he was too angry to smile at her! She still remembered that radiant smile she’d only seen once—tempting, playful, unbearably appealing.

For a moment Karen was so engrossed with the sight of Brick’s magnificent body that she almost forgot they were having a fight. But she remembered as soon as she met his glowering eyes again.

Uncomfortably she told him, “Just let me know when you’re through, Lieutenant. Maybe tomorrow we can divvy up the time. I can get ready, say, from six to six-thirty, and then it’ll be all yours.”

“You work up a plan and send me a memo,” he answered sarcastically. “And be sure to specify how many minutes I should spend shaving as opposed to brushing my teeth.”

This time his razored tone really did hurt, but Karen wasn’t about to let him know it. “You decide what’s best for you and let me know,” she acquiesced, surprised when her voice came out pinched and low. She hadn’t yet put her armor on for the day, and it was hard to sound tough and haughty when she felt so alone.

“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.

A terrible voice within her warned, Face it, Karen, this man alerts your female instincts even when he’s fully dressed. She was reasonably safe when he was angry. She knew that trouble lay ahead now that he’d calmed down.

“Obviously your sexual habits do not apply to our unique domestic arrangement, Lieutenant,” she declared crisply, sorely regretting the fact that they never would. “I am far more concerned with our situation at the station house. Have we cleared up any...misunderstandings?”

Brick eyed her carefully; she had the feeling it was a struggle for him to keep his gaze on her face. Did he realize that she was also bare beneath her robe?

Suddenly Karen felt hot and foolish. Utterly unarmed. To her astonishment, her nipples peaked, and she prayed that the thick pink fabric would conceal the hint of surrender from his view.

“Captain, I’m not sure if we’ve straightened anything out,” Brick said carefully, “but I have to admit that I’m not as mad as I was before. I thought you had it in for me. I didn’t realize that you were simply...scared.”

“Scared?” The word came out in a squeak. Surely he didn’t sense that he’d unwittingly aroused her!

“You’re scared to death you can’t do this job. You’re afraid the men will never obey you.”

The truth hurt more than Karen had ever expected it to. Worse yet was her terror that if Brick Bauer knew the truth, the rest of the men might know it, too.

“Bauer, I’d have to be run over by a locomotive to step down from this job,” she told him fiercely. It was the naked truth.

Slowly, he nodded. Karen thought she saw a glimmer of respect in his eyes.

“I didn’t say you were a quitter, Captain. I just said you were scared to death to be swimming upstream.”

“I’ll do what I came here to do, Bauer. With or without you.” And I won’t yield to these sexual feelings, not now, not ever.

This time he shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ll tell you this, Captain. If you need me to shore you up, you’re not fit to command.”

“I don’t need you for anything, Bauer,” she insisted, desperately hoping that it was true.

And then he smiled, that lazy dimpled smile that had touched her so profoundly once before. “That remains to be seen, Captain. But I’ll make you a promise. I’m going to do my job the way I would if any other outsider was brought in here to run my station. I won’t go out of my way to keep you afloat, but I won’t stab you in the back, either.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I can’t expect any more than that.”

“You can’t expect any less, either,” he answered resolutely. “I’m not doing it for you, Captain. I owe it to the badge.”

There didn’t seem to be anything left to say after that. But as Brick took a step toward the door, Karen heard him chuckle.

“Lieutenant,” she demanded tartly, certain he was laughing at her expense, “you want to let me in on the joke?”

He laughed out loud, really beside himself now. “Do you do jokes, Captain? I wouldn’t think there was a place for them in the manual.”

“Dammit, Bauer!” she burst out. “Can’t you just—”

“Lighten up?” Again he laughed.

For no good reason, Karen started to chuckle, too. It was a brief moment of good feeling, but a shared one.

“Tell me,” she pressed. “God knows, after yesterday, I need a good laugh.”

“Forgive me, Captain,” he apologized, still smothering a fetching grin. “I was just trying to imagine if you’d be any good in a towel fight. It’s one of our favorite activities in the locker room. And then I had a sudden vision of your face if I whipped off this towel...” He stopped as a sudden flush darkened his neck.

Karen sobered, acutely aware of his gender. The look in his eyes warned her that he was acutely aware of the difference in their genders, too. “I, uh, have seen a naked man before, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I bet you have,” Bauer drawled in a tone so richly laced with innuendo that it would have required a reprimand if he hadn’t taken that moment to march through the door to his room.

Karen drew a deep breath of relief and ordered her sizzling body to cool down. But before she could lock the bathroom door behind him, Brick opened it a crack and tossed her his towel.

“Hang it up, would you, bunkie?” he asked with a fresh chuckle in his voice. Once more he dazzled her with his dimpled smile.

Suddenly Karen saw the rest of him—every manly inch—in her female imagination. It didn’t seem to make much difference that his body was completely hidden by the door.