The Chase (5 page)

“Gabe, I’m not trying to give you a hard time.”

“Yeah, you are.”

She scrambled to the sofa and sat next to him, touched his hand and—mistake. This man had some nice hands. Hands that could do some fairly spectacular things to a thirty-three-year-old lawyer who hadn’t been under a man’s spell in a long time. She took a mental bulldozer to that thought.

“I’m really not. Honestly. Being there when the warrants are executed is important to me. I do so much behind-the-scenes work that getting into the thick of it is exciting. It’s the culmination of all that effort and I get to put my hands directly in it. I get to bag up the evidence. It’s a rush for me and I don’t get that every day.”

Maybe that was TMI. Talk about sounding like a brat. She jumped off the sofa. “Wow. I’m sure you’ve just about solidified listening to me whine. I’ll order us a pizza and crack a bottle—or five—of my favorite merlot. How’s that?”

In the kitchen, she grabbed the bottle of wine from the under-cabinet wine rack and pulled the opener from the drawer.

From the corner of her eye, she spotted Gabe walking toward her. “You can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

He pointed to the bottle. “Open that with one hand.”

She stared at the bottle.
Hell
. Then she grinned up at him. “I bet I could gnaw through the glass.”

“I have no doubt, but let’s save that for a better occasion. I’ll open the wine. And the other four. If this keeps up, I’ll need it more than you.”

He paddled his hands and the gesture, so fun and childlike for a man who embodied such fierce presence, gave her a blood rush.

Charming in a sort of perverse way. That’s what he was.

She handed him the bottle, then the opener.
Let’s see if the big, bad ESU Sergeant can handle a waiter’s corkscrew.
He snapped the blade side open, dealt with the foil on the bottle and went to work on the cork. In seconds, he’d completed his task.

Incredibly irritating. “That just pisses me off,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Is there anything you’re not good at?”

He grinned. The shark grin.
Dangerous
.

“Nope.”

“And so humble too.”

“Why would I admit my shortcomings to you? Do you like pansies?”

Over the expanse of the counter, he handed her the bottle and their fingers brushed. A light touch and certainly not the first time they’d ever had contact, but this time, something sparked. Jo went rigid. No movement. Except to bring her gaze to his, which only intensified her current state.

His dark gaze zoomed in on her. “Jo?”

And oh, that voice. Warm chocolate. “Yes?” she croaked.

“Are you gonna take this bottle or what?”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He leaned forward. Shark Gabe. “More early onset menopause?”

If her free hand weren’t shattered, she’d have walloped him. “Listen, Sergeant, cut the crap.”

“What crap?”

She poured two glasses of wine. “You know what crap. I dare say you’re flirting with me.”

“Impossible.”

But the jerk was smiling at her, those perfect full lips tilting up in a way that made her think about all the places she’d like them to be. She set the bottle aside and stepped back. At this point, the counter between them wasn’t nearly enough space.

Something’s changed
.

Being a tall, somewhat attractive blonde, she’d had her share of good looking men chase her. She’d even dated some. At least until her aggressiveness scared the bejesus out of them and they ran like hunted animals. As an alpha woman, she’d yet to find someone comfortable enough with himself to handle her.

Most of the men she’d frightened off thought she wanted to wear the pants in the relationship. To be the one in charge. Maybe she did. She wasn’t sure. What she knew, without hesitation, was that she didn’t want to wear the pants one-hundred-percent of the time. What she needed was a man to stand beside her, to not be intimidated by her strength. A man who would give her some leeway when she got pushy, but wasn’t afraid to call her out when she went too far.

Like Gabe had today.

She supposed, when it came down to it, every once in a while she wanted to be a woman taken care of by her man.

The feminists would stone her.

Her phone beeped. An email coming in. With her eyes still on the sexy sergeant, she scooped it up and stole a glance at the screen. Her assistant. Nothing important. She dropped the phone.

Gabe rapped his knuckles on the counter. “Maybe I’m flirting a little.”

“And maybe I’m not in early onset menopause.”

“Good to know.”

Still, he kept his focus on her and she inched backward. Somehow the space closed in and the damned heat incinerating her from inside wouldn’t quit. All the jokes she and Bev had shared about Gabe being Mr. August—the hottest month on a man-candy calendar—zipped through her mind. Were they objectifying him? Probably. They both knew he was so much more than man candy though. Not that it made it right, but women had their fantasies too.

The stainless steel cabinet handle bumped her ass. Nowhere to go. She had to be smart here. She wanted the task force to lead to her dream of a nationwide initiative. The mayor of New York, arguably one of the most powerful men in the nation, saw her as a professional, someone determined to shut down vendors selling illegal products.

Somehow, becoming the world’s biggest cliché by having a one night rodeo with a hot ESU sergeant didn’t seem like a good career move.

Oh, to try it
.

“It would be a huge mistake,” Gabe said.

A burst of air exploded from her mouth. “I’m so glad you said that.”

He nodded. “I actually hate that I said it. Right now, I could give you a pretty good go and we’d both walk away smiling.”

“Shut up.” Since her broken hand was out of commission, Jo threw her forearms over her ears. “I’m ready to leap over this counter and attack you, and you say that? I mean, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Then something beyond crazy happened. He smiled. Not the shark smile. The honest-to-God, Gabe-being-Gabe smile that she’d rarely seen and—
pow!

I’m in big trouble
.

She tore around the breakfast bar and he swiveled on the stool to face her. One of them should stop this.

One of them.

Not her.

Too late. His feet were hooked into the side legs of the stool, leaving plenty of room for her to fit between his thighs. He extended his arm and she nearly dove into him, slamming herself against him and kissing him. The kiss—as they say—left nothing on the table. Except maybe her flaming desire to
be
on the table. Lips clashed, tongues explored and—
yowzer
—this was beyond better than she’d imagined. Suddenly, every inch of her body expanded. That damned simmering heat spread and her skin felt too tight, too hot, too confining. Like a zipper needing to burst.

Such a mistake
.

Bev would have a heart attack.

Jo jumped back and her chest hitched. “Hang on, sailor.”

Gabe threw his arms up. “Not my fault.”

She took three more steps back. One, two, three. She exhaled, a humongous, deep release, and then smacked her good hand over her chest. “
That,
Sergeant, was completely insane.”

He smiled the Gabe smile. “You’re right. Let’s do it again.”

Shaking her fist at him, she drooped against the wall. “You’re
killing
me.”

She slid down the wall until her butt hit the floor. Flipping nightmare. She finally understood the Beyoncé song about beautiful nightmares.

The heat clicked on, literally. The furnace rumbled—just what she needed—and she fanned herself. Had to be early onset menopause. Had to be. Only explanation for these hot flashes. She brought her gaze back to Gabe, who remained on the stool, dressed in his tactical uniform, looking like the hero he was. The disgusting, paralyzing,
maddening
truth hit her.

“I’m not a one-night rodeo girl.”

Crap on a cracker. Gabe wrapped his fingers around his forehead and squeezed. Was he out of his fucking mind? For months this woman had driven him to the brink of insanity. On several levels. No matter what it was, she pushed and pushed and pushed. Sometimes she got her way. Sometimes not. She lived with it. Chalked it up to another day and moved on.

That moving on might be the only thing that had kept him from killing her. She knew when to cut her losses. Above all, she was a sharp, demanding woman who believed in righting the wrongs of the world.

And he wanted her. What that want entailed had eluded him, but at some point in the past few months, he’d decided he wanted to get a whole lot closer to Jo Pomeroy. In many ways.

He brought his hand down, reached for a glass of the untouched wine and slammed half. From the spot on the floor, Jo laughed and, in an otherwise quiet apartment, the sound brought relief to his confused mind.

He set the glass down. “Two things,” he said. “One, I know you’re not a one-night rodeo girl. I never thought that. Two, we’ve gotta be smart about this. We could screw each other stupid tonight and not say a word to anyone. Our secret, right? But that’s crap. When people hook up, things change and others notice. Pretty soon, the guys in my unit are breaking my balls and hounding me. The more I keep quiet, the more they suspect I’m banging the leggy blonde attorney and—trust me on this—that makes me a hero. There’s not a guy in my unit that hasn’t thought about it. They’ll have a goddamned field day.”

Her eyes went big and round and she shook her head. Violently. At least she was hearing the message.

“Then,” he continued, “the mayor gets word that two key people on his pet project are doing the nasty. You may have figured out by now that our mayor is good at his job, but he’s a monster asshole. He’d have no problem launching us both if we embarrass him.”

She sighed. “I know. I’d go from respected attorney to a woman who can’t keep her legs closed for a guy in uniform. I see the way some of the guys look at me. They’re pigs.”

“Exactly.”

“So what do we do? Business as usual?”

He shrugged. “It’ll be painful, but yeah. Business as usual.” Then he grinned. Shark Gabe. “At least until we figure something else out.”

Chapter Four

Jo sat patiently on a metal frame chair while Gabe’s friend Rich—Dr. Bowles—assembled his masterpiece of a red cast. The “casting room” as Rich had called it, was the size of a small conference room with whitewashed walls and an examining table dead center. She had opted for the chair rather than the table. Along the one wall was a roughed-up counter with cabinets. On top were shiny metal instruments and a couple of electric saws with circular blades.

In the far corner stood Gabe, wearing low-slung jeans, a plain black sweater and the confidence of someone who knew how to control a room. Here was a man who, on his day off, insisted on taking her to the doctor.

When it came to men, women, and the sudden exploration of their sexual attraction, mornings after were always tough. This one was tough for all the wrong reasons. Gabe rarely got a full day off and he’d offered to drive her to the doctor when he could have been sleeping or doing whatever it was he did on his downtime.

For that reason alone she should have boffed his brains out. Therefore, she could only surmise that her morning after discomfort had nothing to do with a one-night stand.
Her
regret came from a non-one-night stand.

Tragic. Jo focused on the doctor layering strips of wet cloth on her wrist. Dark blue scrubs hung on his rail-thin body. When she’d been standing, she’d been an inch taller than him. Somehow, she’d pictured someone bigger. As if Gabe wouldn’t have short friends.

She tilted her head and Rich added another layer. Such a perfectionist. “Don’t you have someone who does this for you?”

“I do.”

“And yet, you’re here with me. Should I be flattered?”

“Jo,” Gabe said from his spot in the corner. “Leave him alone.”

She gawked. “Yeesh. I’m just asking a question.”

“You never
just
ask a question. Every one of your questions is packed with dynamite.”

Another layer of cloth was added. “I think he’s tired today,” Jo whispered to Rich.

“I heard that.”

Using her free hand, she flipped Gabe off. The good doctor burst out laughing, one of those hardy, addictive laughs.

“Now that’s an awesome laugh,” she said. “I still want to know why you’re doing this instead of handing me off. I promise I won’t sue you if your assistant screws it up.”

Rich glanced at Gabe. “She’s something else, this one.”

Gabe sighed. He knew all too well.

“I’m in here,” Rich said, “because Gabe has referred a lot of people to me.”

Gabe cleared his throat loud enough to shake the room. What on earth was his problem? “He said you two have been friends a long time.”