Читать книгу All A Man Can Do - Virginia Kantra - Страница 9

The Plaza Apartments’ one elevator was out-of-order again. Tess shifted the bag of groceries in her arms to open the fire door, propping it with her hip so her mother could walk through.

“I wish you’d let me take you out for dinner instead,” Tess said.

Isadora DeLucca smiled shakily. “Oh, cooking’s no trouble.”

No trouble for who? Tess wanted to ask, but years of protecting her mother’s feelings made her bite her tongue. If her mother needed to cook her a high-fat lunch to make up for all the years when Tess had opened cans to feed herself and her brother, well… Whatever her mother needed was fine with Tess.

The hallway smelled like cabbage and mold. No one who could afford to live anywhere else paid rent at the Plaza. The paint peeled, the radiators sweated and the toilets over-flowed. But the aging building provided a first shot at freedom for the very young, a last stab at independence for the very old.

Even on a reporter’s salary, Tess could afford better now. Mark thought she was crazy for not buying into one of the snazzy new condos going up by the lake or even moving to a newer, nicer apartment. But Tess told herself this apartment was fine. Mark was back. Her mother was on the wagon. Her life was fine. And if anything happened to make it not fine again, at least she wouldn’t be forced out of her home.

Tess had lived at the Plaza ten years, longer than any other resident except ninety-four-year-old Mrs. McMurty on the second floor. Against the advice of her doctors and the pleas of her son, Mrs. McMurty swore she would leave the Plaza only to go to her grave.

On her bad days, Tess imagined she’d escape the same way. Feetfirst and alone, having died of old age.

She unlocked her door.

“I don’t know why you don’t get yourself a cat,” Isadora said as the door opened on Tess’s apartment. “You used to love animals.”

She still loved animals. But sometime during her twenties, Tess had decided she didn’t have the energy left to tackle the care of a house plant, let alone a pet.

“I don’t have time for a cat,” she muttered, cramming the groceries onto the narrow ledge that passed for a counter.

“You should make time.” Isadora puttered around the galley kitchen. She waved a spatula at her daughter. “Love is all you need, you know!”

“Mom.” Tess started unloading bags. What on earth was she going to do with an entire bunch of celery? She didn’t need celery in her life. She didn’t need love, either. Love meant dealing with someone else she was bound either to support or disappoint, and she really, really didn’t want that.

She dumped the celery on an empty refrigerator shelf and turned back to her mother. “That was a catchy song. But it’s not a very practical philosophy.”

“Little Teresa.” Isadora smiled in fond disappointment at her only daughter. “Always so practical.”

Like she had a choice? Tess had been eight or nine when she figured out that somebody in the DeLucca family had to get the laundry done and the kids to school and dinner on the table. But she didn’t want to remind her mother of that. Isadora had been doing so well lately.

The phone shrilled. Her mother stood in the way, poking into a cabinet. Tess sprinted down the hall to pick up in the living room.

“Tess DeLucca,” she said breathlessly. Oh, great. She sounded like a phone sex girl.

“This is Butler in News Affairs.”

News Affairs. The Chicago Police Department. She had been after them to return her calls for two days.

“Officer Butler.” She forced warmth into her voice. “I really appreciate you taking the time to—”

“Sergeant.”

“What?”

“It’s Sergeant Butler, ma’am.”

“Oh. Excuse me. Sergeant.” Deliberately, Tess relaxed her grip on the receiver. “Anyway, my newspaper is doing a profile on former detective Jarek Denko, and I was hoping your department could give me some background information.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “What kind of information?” her caller asked cautiously.

“Well, anything. Everything. Maybe we could start with his employment history, and then—”

“Personnel can give you his rank and dates of employment.”

She was hoping for an exposé, not a résumé. Denko was hiding something. Had to be. And it was up to Tess to strip the luster from the police chief’s shiny gold star. “I have those, thanks. I was hoping for something more substantial? Commendations, complaints…”

“Let me see.”

Another pause, while Tess’s mother drifted into the living room. “Don’t you have any garlic powder?”

Tess covered the mouthpiece of the receiver. “You didn’t tell me you needed garlic powder.”

“Well, no, dear, I just assumed you had some.”

“I don’t cook, Mom. Why would I have garlic powder?”

“You still there?” Sergeant Butler asked.

Tess turned her back on the kitchen and grabbed for a pad and pen. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay. Well, Detective Denko received an Award of Valor as a patrol officer.”

She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Thanks. Yes, I found that on your Web site. And that was fifteen years ago. Can’t you give me something a little more current?”

Like, Chief Check-Out-Those-Biceps Denko beat his ex-wife. Or was on the take. Something, anything, to make the man less of a saint, and this story more than a board member’s bio in a corporate newsletter.

“You want current, talk to Denko,” Butler said. “I don’t have anything for you. You understand.”

Oh, she understood all right. She understood no cop in Chicago was going to rat on one of their own to a reporter from Eden.

She could let it go.

Or she could go digging for the truth and deliver more dirt than a home and garden feature on Big Boy Tomatoes.

No neon sign hung over the door of the Joint on Belmont Street, only a black-and-white ad for Old Style: Bottles And Cans. The bar’s patrons—cops and police groupies—didn’t need more. Either you knew what waited beyond the heavy wood door, or you didn’t belong.

Jarek belonged. One week away didn’t change that.

Responding to a tip, a middle of the night phone call, he’d left his king-size bed and tidy three-bedroom house to drive an hour and twenty minutes south to Chicago. When he opened the bar door, the warmth and the smells, the smoke and the noise, swirled to greet him. He breathed them all in, let them wrap him like a favorite old sweater.

The place was full. The four-to-midnight shift had ended two hours ago. Four-to-fours, they called it, because most cops didn’t roll home until four in the morning. His ex-wife had hated that part of the job. Had hated most parts of his job, actually.

Jarek scanned the room. His brother Aleksy—Alex—was sitting in a booth by the pay phone with a beer in front of him and three off-duty detectives beside him. Catching Jarek’s eye, he raised his beer in silent salute before tipping the neck of the bottle toward the bar.

Jarek looked where his brother pointed. And there, perched on a bar stool like any badge bunny, sat Teresa DeLucca in black leather pants and a midriff-skimming top that raised the temperature in the crowded, narrow bar another twenty degrees. She was talking with his former partner, Steve Nowicki, a good detective with the biggest mouth in Area 3. And Stevie, who looked like he couldn’t believe his luck, was pouring out his heart and practically drooling down her cleavage.

Hell. Jarek ordered a beer and considered his options.

Aleksy slid out from the booth and sauntered over, still in his street suit. His dark hair was ruffled and his eyes were wicked.

“It took her fifteen minutes to zero in on Nowicki,” his brother informed him, “and he’s been bending her ear for over an hour. Who the hell is she?”

Jarek accepted his beer with a word of thanks to Pat behind the bar. “Teresa DeLucca. She’s a reporter for the local paper.”

Aleksy raised his eyebrows. “No kidding. You actually have news in Mayberry?”

A reluctant smile tugged Jarek’s mouth. “Brother, in Eden, I am the news.”

“So, her interest in you is purely professional?”

Jarek took a careful sip of his beer, pushing away an inconvenient memory of Tess’s soft lower lip and candid eyes. He had a department to run and a daughter to raise. A relationship with any woman would be a distraction. A preoccupation with some puzzle of a reporter would be a disaster.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“And your interest in her? You get to put her in handcuffs yet?”

Jarek narrowed his eyes in warning.

Aleksy backed off, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Just asking, big brother. Something got you out of bed in the middle of the night.”

“You did,” Jarek reminded him. “You called me.”

“Yeah, and as soon as you heard this babe was here asking questions, you hotfooted it down. I told you I could handle things for you. In fact,” Aleksy waggled his eyebrows, “I’d be more than happy to handle her.”

Jarek’s burst of male territorial instinct surprised him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself marking trees and pawing at the ground. “Holster it, hotshot,” he ordered briefly. “She’s too old for you.”

“Are you kidding? She can’t be a day over twenty-five.”

“Thirty.” He’d run her driver’s license. “And you date nineteen-year-olds.”

Aleksy shrugged. “Only when they ask me nicely.”

Jarek smiled faintly, his attention still fixed on Nowicki and Tess at the other end of the bar.

Aleksy’s dark eyes danced with mischief. “Anyway, isn’t she a little old for you, too? I thought you were totally involved with a nine-year-old these days.”

“Ten,” Jarek corrected him absently. “Allie’s ten. And I’m not getting involved with the woman.”

“Really? What are you going to do with her? Arrest her?”

Jarek’s jaw set. “Like you said, she’s over twenty-one. She has a right to drink in a public bar.”

“She’s still invading your space, bro.”

“My turf,” Jarek said, setting down his beer. “My rules.”

Quietly he moved along the bar. Under the drifts of conversation, the bursts of laughter, his former partner’s voice carried plainly.

“—was always the calm, collected one,” Nowicki was saying, leaning forward earnestly to look down Tess’s top. “Like a computer, you know, storing up all these names, pictures, little connecting things you’d think wouldn’t matter to anybody and then—click, click, click!—the picture comes up and he’s put it all together, who, why, how, the whole puzzle.” Nowicki took a long pull on his bottle. “Working with somebody like that makes it a pleasure just to show up in the morning.”

“You must miss him,” Tess observed.

“Hell, yeah, we all miss him. He was a terrific guy. A great detective. We miss him a lot.”

“You can stop the commercial, Nowicki,” Jarek said. “I don’t think Miss DeLucca’s buying.”

His partner turned, genuine pleasure lighting his broad face. “Ice Man! We were just talking about you.”

“I guessed,” Jarek said. He looked past Nowicki to Tess on her bar stool, her casual posture a pose, her eyes a challenge. His libido flared. Annoyed with himself, he spoke coolly. “Hello, Tess.”

Nowicki’s head went back and forth. “You two know each other?”

“We’ve met,” Tess murmured. “How’s it going, Ice Man?”

She didn’t miss a trick, Jarek thought, torn between admiration and annoyance.

He spoke without moving his gaze from hers. “Would you give us a minute, Steve?”

Nowicki laughed, four beers past discretion. “Don’t be a spoilsport, Jare. We were getting somewhere here.”

“Someone was getting something,” Jarek said. He jerked his head slightly, an unmistakable signal to his partner to get lost.

Nowicki sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m gone.”

Jarek stepped back to let him pass and then slid onto his abandoned stool. “This is a hell of a place to be at two o’clock in the morning,” he said quietly.

Tess arched her eyebrows. “You’re here.”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“No,” Tess agreed. “That was the problem.”

“It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

“It’s my story. And you’re still holding out on me.”

“So what?”

“So, it’s a challenge.” She flipped her dark hair over her shoulders and shot him a look that dried his mouth. “I’ve never been able to resist a challenge.”

He sipped his beer, which bought him some time and lubricated his tongue enough so he could talk again. He didn’t need any more challenges. He had all he could handle sleeping tucked up in his old bedroom under the eaves of his parents’ house. A ten-year-old challenge with his eyes and her mother’s scowl.

Teresa DeLucca was playing with fire. He had to find a way to prove to her that she could get burnt. “You’re wasting your time, Tess.”

“No, I’m not. Your partner’s not like you. He answers my questions.”

“Honey, at two o’clock in the morning, the bearded lady could walk into this bar and Nowicki would answer her questions. Most cops are easy when they’re coming off shift. Of course, it didn’t hurt any that you’re wearing those pants.”

She stiffened defensively. “So, they worked. I got what I wanted.”

“You were lucky. You could have gotten something you didn’t want.”

“Like what?”

Jarek drew a short, sharp breath. He could do this, he told himself. He would prove to both of them that he was scorch proof.

“Like this,” he said, and leaned forward, and covered her mouth with his.

He surprised her, and Tess prided herself that very few men could do that anymore.

His mouth on hers was warm and sure. She recoiled slightly—from shock and the faint taste of beer—and then let herself be persuaded, let her mouth be taken, by his. He was disarmingly direct. Devastatingly thorough. Competent, she thought almost resentfully, before her brain shut down. He angled his head and used his tongue, and she shivered and melted and sagged on her bar stool, seduced by the nearness of his firm, warm chest and that hot, bold mouth moving on hers.

Oh, boy.

He raised his head. Maybe he had surprised himself, too, because his eyes, that she remembered as gray and cool as midwinter ice, were dark and hot.

She blinked.

He eased back. “Didn’t your mother ever warn you not to come on to strange men in bars?”

Indignation warred with…oh God, was that disappointment?

She cleared her throat. “Obviously you’ve never met my mother.” She picked up her drink, pleased when the ice cubes did not rattle. She was still shaking inside from his kiss. It was just her bad luck Chief Law-and-Order Denko could kiss as well as he did everything else. “Anyway, you kissed me.”

He shrugged, not denying it. “That may have been a miscalculation.”

“Gee, thanks,” she drawled. “Worried it will ruin your reputation?”

His teeth glinted in a brief smile. “No. Kissing you will do wonders for my reputation.”

She refused to be charmed. “Thank you. I think.”

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.”

“And you drove down here to shut me up.”

“Actually, he drove down to shut Nowicki up,” Aleksy said.

She waited for Jarek to deny it. He didn’t.

She straightened her spine. “Excuse me. I’m going home.”

“Let me take you,” Jarek offered. “We can argue in the car.”

She wouldn’t go home with him if he were the sexiest man alive and she hadn’t had sex in a billion years. Which was a good thing, because at least one of those was true.

“I have my own car,” she said.

His gaze went to her drink. “Are you okay to drive?”

“It’s soda water,” she said through her teeth.

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll follow you, then.”

Aleksy raised an eyebrow. “You’re not spending the night at Mom and Pop’s?”

“Why?” Jarek asked.

“To see Allie.”

“What’s the point? She’ll be busy getting ready for school in the morning. She won’t have time for me.”

“Who is Allie?” Tess wanted to know.

“His daughter,” Aleksy said.

Tess sucked in a breath. “You have a daughter? Who lives with your parents?”

Jarek’s eyes narrowed at her tone.

“Just since Linda died,” Aleksy explained. “That’s why he took the job in Pleasantville.”

Jarek shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay. I think we’re done here.”

“I guess we are,” Tess said.

He had a daughter.

And he hadn’t shared even that much of himself with her. Not over breakfast, when they’d talked about their families, not tonight when she had asked him directly about his reasons for moving to Eden.

Maybe he didn’t think the daughter was important.

Maybe he didn’t think the interview was important.

Maybe—and this was depressingly likely—Tess wasn’t all that important, either.

She slid off her bar stool. Well, the hell with him. It wasn’t like they had a personal relationship. She didn’t even want a personal relationship. Not with any man. Certainly not with Officer Frosty here, with his hot kisses and his cool silence and his family secrets. Tess had more than enough family and plenty of secrets of her own.

She tugged her sweater down over her suddenly cold midriff. Jarek Denko was only another story. Twenty column inches and maybe a picture above the fold. And she wasn’t about to let his tall, dark and silent routine stop her from doing the one thing she did well.

“Nice talking to you,” Aleksy said cheerfully.

“I’ll bet,” said Tess.

She stalked out of the bar.