Believing Again (2 page)

“Which is?”

“Danita, if you really have to know.” She was not about to confess to trying to be one of the guys when she was a kid by turning the name she didn’t much like into a boy’s name. Needing to change the subject to something other than her, she grabbed onto the first topic that came to mind. “Speaking of names, I should have thought of this earlier but your last name is familiar. You have relatives who are doctors, too?” She managed to remove her hand from his as she asked her question.

“Generations of them. A tradition on both sides of the family. I followed one grandfather onto the staff at Kaiser. The other grandfather was on the faculty at the medical school. My mother’s a pediatrician up at Doernbecher. My brother is a psychiatrist in Vancouver. My father’s a surgeon at Emanuel.”

“That’s it. I think your father was the doc who put Sam back together a few years ago after he got shot up.”

“He’ll remember if he was. I swear my father can recall the name of everyone he’s ever treated. And if Sam was his patient he’ll be happy to hear he’s doing great. Boosts his ego to hear how well his work turned out.”

“Speaking of work, I better get back to mine. We’ll be in touch. Promise me that if something, anything, happens that even vaguely seems like it’s related to this, you’ll call us.” Reaching into her pants pocket she pulled out a business card and handed it to him. “My number’s on here. If Sam forgets to give you his card, ask for it.”

He scrutinized the card. “Hmm. No home address so I can come and roust you out.”

“No, Jake. And don’t bother with four-one-one. That won’t find me either.” She smiled before heading to the patrol car where the responding officers were congregated.

• • •

Damn. Why the hell had he been such an S.O.B. when he first met her? Now she wouldn’t give him the time of day — unless it was the time she’d be at her desk, willing to listen to any evidence he might have. That wouldn’t be the worst way to get back into her good graces. If only he could find something.

As he watched her walk away, he noticed that the rear view of the very attractive detective was almost as good as the view from the front. She was tall, maybe five-eight, five-nine. And she walked like she owned the place, a long stride with a controlled sway to her hips that wasn’t sexual but was surely sensual. And those hips and fine ass were covered by chocolate brown pants that fit like a glove. The cream-colored shirt she wore looked good with her honey blonde hair and bourbon-colored eyes.

Where the hell were all the food images coming from? He wasn’t hungry; he’d eaten breakfast that morning. Maybe not enough. Or maybe it was that he thought the lady looked good enough to eat. Although, she had a mouth on her that made him certain she’d be no lady when she was in charge of who was eating what.

He shook his head to stop this disastrous train of thought. The image of Danny Hartmann, on her knees in front of him, deciding who was eating whom, had to go before it took up residence in his head and distracted him for the rest of the day. He had surgeries waiting for him. Even food metaphors describing her hair and eyes were better than the very pleasurable image of her naked that was filling his thoughts and making his mouth dry.

“You okay, Doc?” Sam Richardson interrupted his fantasizing, looking concerned.

If Sam only knew how
not
okay Jake’s thoughts about his partner were, he’d be more than concerned. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Jake shook his head again, trying to clear it. “You finished talking to people?”

“Mostly. For now anyway. The patrol officers are about to leave. Danny and I will be around for another half hour or so. If you need to get to the clinic … ”

“Nope, on my way to the hospital. I’m in surgery for most of the day but if you need me, here’s my number.” He pulled out his own card, tucking Danny’s into his wallet as he did so. “Leave a message and I’ll get back to you between cases.”

“Sounds good. Is that Danny’s card? I’ll give you mine, too.” Sam handed him a business card and looked as if he was about to walk away.

“Ah, Detective Richardson? One more thing, not related to what happened here. It’s personal and I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer.”

“Okay, what is it?” Richardson sounded very curious and a bit wary.

“It’s about Detective Hartmann … Danny. Is she attached?”

“Attached? If you mean professionally, yeah, she is. To me. She’s my partner. But if you mean personally, the only attachment I know of is to the classic VW convertible she restored and rebuilt from the engine out.”

“Wow.”

“Yup. That about covers it. She’s a ‘wow’ kind of woman.”

Sam had a look on his face that said he wanted to say — or ask — more, but he didn’t, much to Jake’s relief. Jake wasn’t even really sure why he’d asked about her. It wasn’t like there was a chance she’d be interested. Not after the way he’d behaved when they first met.

Fortunately, Sam merely shook his hand and walked away. Jake got out of there as fast as he could, kicking himself for behaving like an idiot, first with Danny, now with her partner. He needed to lose himself in his work.

Danny didn’t go all gooey-eyed over a man, no matter how good-looking or sexy he was. She thought women who did that were silly. She made fun of the females she and Sam interviewed who preened for him. Even teased him that no man well into his forties, happily married and the father of three, should put up with that kind of behavior.

Point of fact, she didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about any of the men she came in contact with every day. First of all, she was too damn busy trying to do her job. Second, she was used to being around a whole hell of a lot of men, which had inured her to most of them.

Third, and probably most important, it was usually more trouble than it was worth to think about someone because he looked attractive or seemed interesting enough to get involved with. Her hours were long, her job was demanding. And no matter how charming or handsome they were, most of the men she’d met so far didn’t understand how important her job was to her.

The only men who understood were other cops, and her one foray into that dating pool had been a disaster. With the schedules they had, it had been hard work making the time to see each other and when they broke it off after almost two years of trying, only making detective and moving to Central Precinct had made her comfortable about going back to being merely colleagues again.

No, it was easier to be businesslike with the men she met. She didn’t really need a man in her life to make her happy anyway. What made her happy was her work.

Growing up she hadn’t collected pictures of wedding dresses or named the children she planned to have with the as-yet unknown groom. She was more the pretend-to-be-a-snake-eating-Special-Forces-operative kinda kid. Her mother had despaired of her ever wearing a dress or learning to dance or, heaven help her, dating. Her mother had been homecoming queen in both high school and college — where she’d majored in English literature — and wanted her only daughter, her beloved Danita Rebecca Hartmann, to follow in her footsteps as a wife, a mother, and a college professor.

Instead she’d come within inches of getting Captain or Major or Colonel Danny Hartmann. The military had been where Danny was headed until a college professor piqued her interest in the justice system and police work. So, instead of watching her daughter go off to the Army, her mother saw her obtain a degree in criminal justice, move to Portland with a college friend, join the Portland Police Bureau, and make detective at a younger age than any woman in the history of the Bureau.

Danny sometimes felt her choices in life had put a strain on her relationship with her mother. It was part of the reason the move to Portland had been easy. Although her mother always said she was proud of her daughter and loved her, Danny was pretty sure she was just as happy living a state away in California where she didn’t have to come face to face with her daughter’s life on a regular basis. And Danny didn’t have to explain it at the family gatherings and holiday dinners she’d avoided like the plague since leaving California. Her colleagues were her family. They understood.

That kind of determination and focus had gotten her as far as she’d come in her career and usually erased the memory of any guy she met ten minutes after she met him. However, this morning, in spite of everything she told herself about how important her work was and how unlikely it was that Jake Abrams would be interested in someone like her, he had managed to insinuate himself into Danny’s thoughts. There was something about him that wouldn’t leave her consciousness.

When she returned to Central Precinct, she had the urge to Google him — to find out about the veterans’ clinic, she told herself. But as soon as she typed his name into the search box on the Google homepage she shut it down. This was stupid. She would ask him about his practice and what his deal was with the clinic the next time she saw him.

As to whether he was married, engaged, or otherwise paired up, that was irrelevant. Wasn’t it?

Idiot
, she chastised herself.
Let it go. You have work to do
.

• • •

Two days later, Danny was on her computer trying to catch up on her reports when she was interrupted by a deep male voice coming from over her shoulder.

“So, is it true what all those cops on TV shows complain about? You guys spend all your time doing paperwork?”

She turned to see a grinning Jake Abrams, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, staring down at her with a look she was sure could boil water. It certainly seemed to be moving her blood in that direction.

With the jeans he wore a cream-colored cable knit sweater over a red turtleneck. The other morning he’d been in dark trousers and a tweed jacket with a white shirt open at the neck and no tie. Very doctor-like. Dressed like this, he looked more relaxed, unruffled.

Hot.

It unnerved her to have him towering over her the way he was. He’d moved in so close she didn’t see how she could stand up without bumping against him.

She tried to laugh off her uneasiness. “Yeah, our job consists of hours of paperwork, frequent stretches of painstaking legwork nailing down boring details, and the occasional moment of sheer terror. Although the sheer terror moments have decreased significantly since I made detective and stopped busting down drug house doors or pulling over strange cars weaving back and forth on the freeway. How about your job?”

Her attempt at humor managed to take the heat in his eyes down to a more manageable level, thank God.

“There are some similarities,” he said. “The long hours. The paperwork. Boring administrative details, although not so much the legwork. And my sheer terror isn’t worrying about what someone might do to me but what I might do to them when I have them on an operating table in front of me.”

The heat reappeared in his eyes and an image flashed through her mind. She was spread out in front of him, not in surgery surrounded by a crew of operating techs dressed in scrubs but in a bed. Neither one of them was dressed. She could feel the mattress move as he lowered himself onto the sweet smelling sheets, saw his hand reach for her …

Shit. This had to stop. She felt flustered and said the first thing she could think of. “What’s your specialty?”
Dammit. Next thing I’ll ask is, “What’s your sign?”
“I didn’t think to ask the other day.”

“Thoracic surgery. Didn’t you Google me?” The smug smile was back. “I sure as hell Googled you.”

Not sure if she was more embarrassed that he somehow knew what she’d been tempted to do or that he had done it himself, she said, “I doubt you found anything of interest.”

“You play basketball for a city league team, you volunteer with the Sunshine Division at Christmas, you earned a commendation for outstanding service. No mention of a Facebook, LinkedIn, or blog presence, no pictures of a social life, a boyfriend, husband, or lover. Did I miss anything?”

She cleared her throat and squirmed in her chair. “So, a thoracic surgeon. A lot of call for that at the vets’ clinic?”

Cocking his head, he smiled, as if to say, “I’ll let you get away with not answering for now.” Then he responded to her question. “I did graduate from medical school before I went on to cracking open chests. I can still treat ordinary ailments with the best Doc-in-a-Box clinic.”

“But you must do a lot of trauma work in your regular practice. Is that how you ended up in the Guard?”

The flirty twinkle disappeared and a cool expression took over his eyes. He was deathly serious, his mouth a thin line. “That and a misguided sense of patriotism.”

“What’s misguided about serving in the military?”

“I learned pretty quickly that killing for your country isn’t as patriotic as I had thought it was. However, I learned even more quickly that caring for the men around me was.”

She was glad after the seriousness of his response that she hadn’t made a smart remark about his dressing in the colors of the American flag. Instead she said, “I can tell your commitment to the troops stayed with you when you came home. And I bet that’s why you’re here. But I’ve been diverting you from telling us.” She emphasized the
us
, trying to get the focus back on the professional, rather than the personal. “What can we do for you?”

“I stopped by to see if I could talk you into coming with me to one of the transient camps. I heard that a woman who was in the camp the night Jim Branson was killed slipped away before we got there. One of my patients thinks she might be able to help figure out what happened. I know her and I’m pretty sure she won’t open up to me. I thought maybe she might talk to another woman.”

Danny picked up a zippered leather case the size of a file folder, shoved a pen and notebook inside, and said, “Let me tell Sam where I’m going.” In what she thought was a smooth move, she scooted her chair away from him so she could stand without being too close. Unfortunately he seemed to understand why she’d moved and grinned knowingly.

• • •

Having offered to drive them to the camp, Jake led Danny two blocks away from Central Precinct, stopping beside a sleek black SUV.