Книга - The Lawman Who Loved Her

The Lawman Who Loved Her
Mallory Kane


And as Dana Maxwell gazed into the steely eyes of the officer assigned to protect her from a madman, her senses burned hot. Here was the one man guaranteed to turn her orderly world inside out. Tall, dark and devastatingly charming Cody Maxwell–Dana's former husband.Cody's worst enemy would kill Dana to get to him–and Cody vowed on his badge and his honor that it would never happen. Being in his care would make Dana spitting mad, but Cody trusted her safety to no one else. Danger had once torn them apart–now it tied them together for a reckoning long overdue!







Memories stirred…

Through the endless sleepless nights, she had yearned for the comfort of his long, warm body, and the closeness they’d once shared. For an instant Dana leaned into Cody’s embrace, unable to stop herself.

His hand ran up her back to her neck and he wrapped his fingers around her nape, his thumb tracing her jaw. She lifted her head, caught in a dream of her own making, believing she could have just this one kiss, and then go back to her orderly life without a regret.

His mouth touched hers, the taste and feel so familiar, so welcome, it made her want to cry. She shivered.

“Cody, I’m not sure we should do this.”

His mouth came back to hers and he kissed her again, stealing her breath, her will.

“What should we be doing, then?” he muttered, his breath warm on her lips. “Arguing about the best way to keep you alive?”


Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

Yet again we have a power-packed lineup of fantastic books for you this month, starting with the second story in the new Harlequin continuity series TRUEBLOOD, TEXAS. Secret Bodyguard by B.J. Daniels brings together an undercover cop and a mobster’s daughter in a wary alliance in order to find her baby. But will they find a family together before all is said and done?

Ann Voss Peterson contributes another outstanding legal thriller to Harlequin Intrigue with His Witness, Her Child. Trust me, there’s nothing sexier than a cowboy D.A. who’s as tough as nails on criminals, yet is as tender as lamb’s wool with women and children. Except…

One of Julie Miller’s Taylor men! This month read about brother Brett Taylor in Sudden Engagement. Mystery, matchmaking—it’s all part and parcel for any member of THE TAYLOR CLAN.

Finally, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Mallory Kane, who debuts at Harlequin Intrigue with The Lawman Who Loved Her. Hang on to your hat—and your heart. This story—and this hunky hero—will blow you away.

Round up all four! And be on the lookout next month for a new Harlequin Intrigue trilogy by Amanda Stevens called EDEN’S CHILDREN.

Happy reading,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue


The Lawman Who Loved Her

Mallory Kane






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Mallory Kane worked in the medical field for many years before leaving to make time for her other loves, writing and art. She loves romance and suspense, and two of her favorite things are dangerous heroes and dauntless heroines. She lives in Mississippi with her husband and their two dauntless cats.

She would be delighted to hear from readers. You can write to her c/o Harlequin Books, 300 East 42nd Street, Sixth Floor, New York, NY 10017.




Books by Mallory Kane


HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

620—THE LAWMAN WHO LOVED HER










CAST OF CHARACTERS


Dana Charles Maxwell—She divorced Cody to protect her heart. Now he’s back, and she’s running for her life.

Detective Cody Maxwell—His job is everything to Cody, or so he thinks, until a killer threatens the one person who means more to him than his own life.

Gerard Fontenot—The diabolical killer vowed to make Cody pay for what he’d done. Now neither Cody nor his wife are safe.

Detective Devereaux Gautier—The intimidating cop has a soft spot in his heart for his best friend, Cody, and Cody’s wife.

Captain Hamilton—While the police captain heads the hunt for Fontenot, he sends Cody and Dana to safety, he thinks.


This one is for the intrepid critiquers, Lorraine,

Debbie and especially Sherri, who has already said,

“I told you so.”




Contents


Prologue (#u978efcae-b191-56d2-b966-584351d73a27)

Chapter One (#u9655ea85-1941-52bb-a55f-cf4a7900b5be)

Chapter Two (#ue94857b9-1551-54b4-a16c-65fd336cd707)

Chapter Three (#u2d2edee5-9f1c-5339-aff5-dd914d62c34f)

Chapter Four (#uacb049bf-9830-5b00-a2e0-4ace6ba5e43e)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Prologue


Gerard Fontenot stood in the shadows, in an alley off St. Peter Street, waiting. Waiting was something he understood. He didn’t like it, but he could do it. He had waited for four years to be here tonight. And while he waited, he’d planned.

A small smile played around his thin lips. Detective Maxwell had underestimated him. They all had. They couldn’t pin his wife’s murder on him, although Maxwell had tried. For some reason, he had taken Fontenot’s case as a personal vendetta. He’d dogged Fontenot’s footsteps until he’d nearly driven him crazy.

Shooting Maxwell four years ago had been a foolish mistake, caused by Maxwell getting too close. Maxwell had almost blundered onto the truth about Fontenot’s wife’s death.

No more mistakes. He’d learned patience and control in prison. He’d perfected his plans and honed his hatred to razor sharpness. He’d always known he was smarter. Now he was invincible. No one could touch him now.

He was playing with Maxwell, toying with him like a cat with a mouse, and the results were already more than he could have hoped. It was a brilliant maneuver to involve Maxwell’s ex-wife. Brilliant. Maxwell was spooked. Fontenot could tell. The detective knew what he was up to, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

Fontenot’s smile widened as Maxwell’s Laser pulled up to the curb. The detective unfolded his lanky frame from the car, and glanced around. Fontenot stood absolutely still, relishing the tingling excitement as Maxwell’s gaze flickered past the shadowed alley in which he stood.

His heartbeat accelerated and a bead of sweat limned his upper lip as Maxwell disappeared into the stairwell leading to his upstairs apartment. Although Fontenot could no longer see him, his mind counted out each step, each action, as Maxwell moved inevitably toward his destiny.

Fontenot didn’t move a muscle, didn’t breathe. His muscles tensed, and his groin tightened in anticipation as sweetly agonizing as slow, drawn-out foreplay. He waited.




Chapter One


By the time Cody’s brain registered what he’d heard, it was too late. He threw himself sideways with every ounce of strength he commanded, but it wasn’t enough. His head hit first, and slid as his shoulder slammed into the hardwood floor. For a few seconds, the quiet, ominous click echoed in his ears, seeming louder than the explosion which followed.

He lay, tense and still, listening for any sound that would tell him his attacker was still there. Nothing. The building was quiet, now that the echo of the gunshot had faded. Down the hall, he heard a door slam. His mouth turned up. Thanks, neighbor. Good thing he wasn’t hurt. Cautiously, he reached for his gun, and his left shoulder screamed with pain.

Too slow. Dev and the other guys would give him hell for being too slow to dodge a bullet. Dana would be terrified.

He winced at that unguarded thought. No she wouldn’t. She wasn’t part of his life anymore. He sat up slowly and took stock of his condition. Nasty bump on his forehead, painful scrape on his cheek. Bullet wound in his shoulder. From the way it felt, he guessed the bullet had gone clean through the meaty part of his bicep. He turned his head and saw the mark on the wall. Yep.

He stood, and swayed with unexpected dizziness. His left arm didn’t want to work, and he could feel blood, hot and sticky, wetting his sweatshirt. He glanced down. Damn. His leather jacket was ruined.

Cody pulled out his cell phone and nudged it open with his chin. He pressed a fast-dial button and leaned against the wall, praying that his partner hadn’t let his cell phone battery go down.

“Dev? Hey, man. I need some…help.” Cody blinked against the blackness that was seeping in from the edge of his vision and looked at the kitchen chair, which had been positioned directly in front of the door.

“Help? How’d you manage to get in trouble in the past fifteen minutes? What’s up?” Detective Devereaux Gautier’s voice was tinged with amusement.

“Well, I’ve got a situation. At my apartment. Can you get over here right away and call it in?”

“Situation? You okay?” His partner’s voice immediately became professionally crisp.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said wryly. “Just a flesh wound. Fontenot booby-trapped my door. Listen, man, I’m afraid he may have done something to Dana’s place.” His gaze roamed over the revolver and the nylon cord securing it.

“Fontenot? So your crazy notions about that bastard ain’t so crazy, eh? Stay there, Cody. I’ll be right over.”

“Nope. Can’t. Dana’s out of town. Her answering machine says she’ll be back tomorrow. I’ve got to check her house tonight. Dev? Can I count on you?”

“You know it, my man.”

“Thanks.” He flipped off the cell phone and walked over to look more closely at the .38 special. The cord had been run through the trigger guard and around the back of the chair, then fashioned to an intricate pulley mechanism attached to the doorknob.

He looked at the barrel of the gun, then at the door, then back at the gun.

Cody cursed as he took in the full implications of what he saw. “If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead, wouldn’t I? You’re playing with me.”

Anger, harsh and swift, cut through him, then his knees went weak. “Dana,” he whispered, refusing even to allow his brain to imagine what Fontenot might have done at her place. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the tiny gold disk he’d found this morning on his car seat. He closed his fist around his ex-wife’s earring.

“I swear to God, Fontenot,” he whispered to the empty room. “If you hurt one hair on her head, I will hunt you down like the monster you are.”

He glanced around his apartment, now a crime scene. Dev would take care of things here. Cody had to get to Dana’s.

DANA MAXWELL SANK gratefully into the scented water. It was so hot her skin tingled. As she leaned her head back against the headrest molded into the fiberglass tub in her ultramodern apartment in Metairie, the stiffness began to seep out of her neck muscles. She rolled her head and groaned, flexing the aching tendons.

Why had she thought working in corporate law would be less stressful than the courtroom? Maybe it was less exciting, but spending an entire week in meetings with stodgy, old-guard businessmen who were stuck in the fifties, maybe even the forties, was not conducive to a good mood.

If she’d had to hear “honey” or “little lady” one more time, she thought she might have contemplated murder. Then, this afternoon, the senior partner had the gall to ask her to step outside while the “menfolks have us a confab that might not fall too sweetly on your pretty little ears.”

Dana sank a little lower into the water. She’d stepped outside all right. She’d stepped out of the room and into her car and driven back to New Orleans, calling her office on the way and telling them she was sick, and wouldn’t be in the next day, Friday.

She cringed. She’d walked out on an important meeting. She’d lied to her boss about being sick. Was there anything else she could think of to do to jeopardize her job?

Bennett was the biggest client her boss had ever assigned to her. Today was Thursday and she was supposed to have that new contract signed by Friday. What would Mr. Fraser do?

Over the weekend, she’d have to come up with a plausible excuse for walking out on Irwin, Borne and Howe’s third-biggest corporate clients.

Are We Boring and How was the name Cody had given the law firm. She smiled involuntarily at the thought. He hadn’t tried to stop her from quitting the public defender’s office and moving to corporate law, but he’d looked at her in that way he had and said that being bored to death was a horrible way to go.

Dana frowned at the direction her thoughts were taking. Why was she thinking about that? She didn’t want to go back there.

Ugh. She gave a mock shudder. No way. She’d had enough of long hours and hopeless cases to last her a lifetime.

And talk about tired. On countless nights, she had dragged in after nine or ten, dead on her feet, only to have to turn around and go back to work early the next morning.

Dana stretched her stiff neck muscles, thinking longingly of the big old claw-foot tub in Cody’s French Quarter apartment. Now, that tub was made for relaxing. She would fill it up, sink down until the water lapped at her nape like fingers teasing, massaging. The smile kept tugging at her lips. How many times had Cody run her a bath and crouched behind the tub to massage her neck? She closed her eyes, almost able to feel his fingers kneading, rubbing, coaxing out the stiffness as he whispered risqué suggestions in her ear.

Then his touch would lighten as her muscles relaxed, and he’d pick up the soap and run it over her shoulders, across her collarbone and down, until her breasts and belly were slick with suds and his teasing fingers were doing things with the soap that Procter & Gamble never dreamed of.

“Damn it, Cody, get out of my head,” Dana muttered, splashing water as she sat up. It was all his fault. If he hadn’t called earlier in the week, his voice sounding oddly serious on her answering machine, she wouldn’t be fighting off these memories that should have had no meaning for her anymore.

She blinked away a stinging sensation behind her eyelids and pushed thoughts of Cody out of her brain.

How could a man be so easy to love and so impossible to live with?

She picked up the soap and began washing her shoulders and arms briskly, thinking longingly of a glass of wine, a new book and soft white sheets.

Tomorrow, she would ignore her conscience and drive up to the lake. She could actually have a mini-vacation, the first one she’d taken since…well, in a long time. A weekend at the converted fishing shack on Lake Pontchartrain that belonged to her grandfather’s best friend was just what she needed. Then she could relax and think up answers to the questions her boss would fire at her on Monday.

She’d made up her mind on the way home today. She’d even written it in her day planner.

Friday: buy junk food, buy two romance novels, spend weekend alone at the lake house, reading and eating.

She’d leave all her messages unanswered, her mail unpicked up, and just go. Maybe on Sunday, she’d pull up some weeds and replant the bulbs she’d planted four years ago, the last time she and Cody had gone up there together, right before that awful night when Cody had nearly died.

Dana shook her head angrily. She was not going to let the memories get to her this weekend. It had been four years. She was doing fine. Just fine.

A muffled thump echoed through the apartment. She jumped, then froze, but she heard nothing else. It was probably the neighbor’s dog knocking over her trash can again. She sank back into the water.

The bathroom door swung open slowly.

Her heart slammed into her chest. She couldn’t scream, couldn’t even get a breath. Her gaze darted quickly around the room but there was nothing she could use as a weapon. Her fingers clutched the wet soap as the door creaked and the sound of labored breathing reached her ears.

A scuffed brown loafer appeared and an irritatingly familiar voice said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Damn it, Cody!” The soap slipped from her fingers and plopped into the water. She forced a huge gulping breath into her lungs and sank even lower, trying in vain to spread the washcloth over her breasts. “You scared the daylights out of me.”

Relief that it was just Cody set her heat-loosened muscles to quivering as a wave of anger washed over her. Then his words sank in.

Her face burned. “What do you mean what am I doing here? I live here. The question is what are you doing here? Get out of my bathroom. How did you get in?”

Cody grinned stiffly and held up a bank card. “Accepted in thousands of locations worldwide.”

“Somehow I never pictured you carrying a gold card,” she muttered, looking him over. There was something wrong. His smart-mouthed remark hadn’t sounded quite biting enough. His voice had a hollow ring and his grin was crooked and meager.

His jeans were brown with dust. An angry red scratch marred his cheek and a bruise discolored his forehead. He leaned against the bathroom door trying to look insolent and nonchalant, but he was pale as a ghost and his jaw was clenched tight.

Still, that didn’t keep his gaze from roaming over her with a hunger she could feel along every wet, trembling inch of her body. It affected her just like it always had. Even if her mind was determined not to get caught up in painful memories, her body had no such compunction. A wave of remembered desire streaked through her, making her legs feel like jelly and her breasts tighten, intensifying her anger.

She tried to make the washcloth cover more, and drew up one leg in an attempt to cover her nakedness. “Get out of here,” she snapped. “Hand me my robe.”

He shook his head slightly and winced. “Nice to see you, too,” he muttered dryly, then grabbed her robe and tossed it toward the tub.

She caught it just in time to keep it from falling into the water. “Get out of here, Cody.” She stood, holding the robe in front of her.

He complied without comment.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was right by the door, so she had to squeeze past him. She marched into the living room in her bare feet and started to open the blinds. “Would you please tell me why you—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted in an oddly quiet but compelling voice.

She shrugged and left the blinds closed, then turned to peer at him in the darkness. He looked tired and bedraggled. His trademark leather jacket wasn’t sitting quite as carelessly on his wide shoulders. The collar wasn’t turned rakishly up. His posture wasn’t the insolent hip-cocked leaning that always sent a shiver of desire through her. He looked…exhausted. Something was wrong.

Dana forced her thoughts away from how her ex-husband looked. She reminded herself that he was here because he’d broken into her apartment. “I have a perfectly good doorbell. Would you please tell me why you felt you had to break in?”

“I thought you were still gone,” he said. “How many times have I told you not to put that kind of information on your…answering machine? The whole city of New Orleans doesn’t…need to know you’ll be out of town until Friday. You might as well take out an ad—’I’m gone. Please…steal me blind.”’

She ignored the strain in his voice. “Oh, I see. You only broke in because you thought I was gone? You’ve turned to burglary now, I guess. The police force isn’t dangerous enough for you.” She switched on the lamp and pulled her robe tighter around her.

Her fingers touched something sticky on the terry cloth. She looked down. Dark red streaked the front of her robe, where she’d brushed by Cody, and stained her fingers. Blood. It was blood. Slowly, reluctantly, her brain wrapped itself around the thought. Her throat closed. She looked at Cody, a sickening dread overriding her anger.

His left arm hung uselessly at his side, and in the lamplight, she saw what she hadn’t noticed before. Blood dripped slowly onto the floor.

“Oh, Cody, you’re bleeding. What have you done now?” she moaned, mesmerized and horrified by the dark drops that trickled down his motionless fingers to fall onto the polished wood.

He shrugged and tried to grin, but a grimace of pain crossed his face. His eyes closed and his legs buckled and he slid down the wall.

Through lips white with pain, he muttered, “Dana, don’t be mad. I’ll leave.”

Déjà vu surrounded her in shades of slowly dripping red, spinning her head crazily. “You obviously can’t leave. You can’t even—” her voice caught on a sob “—stand up.” She hated her accusing, bitter tone, but she couldn’t help it. She’d been here, done this, and she didn’t want the T-shirt.

“Look at you. Damn it, Cody….” He hadn’t changed—although that was no surprise. He’d never changed and he never would. He would always step right into danger’s path. He would always be the same cocky, brash kid she’d fallen in love with at first sight.

They’d only dated a few weeks before Cody had talked her into getting married. She’d been in law school, and he’d just joined the New Orleans Police Department. But that was a long time ago. Now their marriage was over, and he had no right to come into her house, bleeding and hurt. He had no right to make her start worrying about him again. She opened her mouth to say so, but his head lolled to one side and his body slumped.

“Oh, God.” She stared at her ex-husband, passed out on the floor. She kneeled down and pushed his silky hair out of the way to feel his forehead. “Cody, wake up! What do I do?”

He opened his eyes and looked a little to the left of her head. “Whoa,” he whispered. “There’s two of you, Dana. Wow, twice as much to love.”

Something deep inside her ached with loss and sorrow. No. Please don’t use the word love. I can’t stand it. She concentrated on helping him.

“Where are you hurt? What happened?” She stood up and pulled on his unbloodied arm, trying vainly to master the queasy fear that was stealing her breath. Cody was hurt. Again. “Can you stand up?”

He looked at his left hand, covered in blood. “Look. I’m bleeding on your floor. I’m sorry, Dana, I know how much you hate a mess.” His voice was faintly slurred. He wiped his fingers on his jeans, streaking the dusty fabric with thick black blood and shearing what was left of Dana’s breath from her lungs.

Her gaze followed the path of his hand. Blood. Cody’s blood. “Cody, shut up. Talk to me.”

Cody laughed weakly. “Pick one, chère.”

“How bad are you hurt? Should I call a doctor?”

“No!” He pulled himself upright with a huge effort. “Please, Dana. No doctor. It’s not that bad. Just a flesh wound. Damn,” he whispered, leaning back against the wall, his face turning paler, if that was possible. His forehead furrowed and more lines appeared on his face. He looked as though he was in agony.

Dana’s heart pounded so loudly the echoes seemed to reverberate around her. Cody was in trouble. It was the same old story, the same old Cody, and Dana felt the same old terror squeezing her chest.

Not again. I can’t do it again.

Because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, she grabbed his good arm and draped it around her shoulders. “Damn it, Cody, when are you going to figure out you’re not immortal? When are you going to realize that those bullets are real? This isn’t cops and robbers. That’s not make-believe blood.” She stopped herself with an effort. Her voice was beginning to sound hysterical.

“When are you going to…remember my name is not ‘Damn it, Cody.”’

She sniffed in exasperation. “Come on. We’ve got to stop that bleeding.”

“I know. Messing up your floor.” Cody was mumbling and leaning heavily on her. He was almost out again.

She glanced at the tiny bathroom, then dismissed it as too small. Instead, she turned him toward the bedroom. “Wait a minute. Can you stand, just for a second?” She peeled his arm from around her shoulder and jerked her new Battenberg lace bedspread off the bed.

Cody made a short, derisive sound and Dana’s face burned. “It’s brand new….” She stopped, embarrassed. He was bleeding to death and she was worried about a bedspread.

“Don’t worry, chère, I understand. Hard to get that blood out…wouldn’t want a stain. Wouldn’t want a mess.” His voice was fading, but she heard him.

She started to respond but Cody was losing his fight to stay upright. She caught him around the waist as he swayed.

“You still smell like roses,” he said, his voice rumbling against her shoulder and his breath warm on her ear. “Al…always like roses.”

And you smell like danger, and trouble, and everything I lost. “Can you stand up long enough to get the jacket off?”

“Maybe,” he said. But just as she reached for the collar to pull it off his shoulders, his knees buckled again and he crumpled onto the bed. “Then again…maybe not.”

“Damn it, Cody, how can you joke at a time like this? You’re bleeding and in trouble. Try to take it seriously, please. Turn over. I’ve got to get that jacket off.” She pulled at the sleeve, and when it slid off, she saw where the blood was coming from. Her stomach turned upside down and she had to swallow against the queasy lump that began to form.

“Oh, God,” she breathed as her stomach pitched. “Cody, you’ve been shot.”

“You got that right,” he whispered, then groaned as she tugged on the torn sleeve of his sweatshirt. It was soaked with blood and stuck to his skin. There was an ugly black hole in the upper arm.

She looked at his back. Another hole marred the shoulder. “Is—is this the same b-bullet? How many times were you shot?”

“Just once,” he gasped. “It went clean through. I heard it hit the wall behind me.”

Dana moaned at the picture his words evoked. “It went through,” she repeated doggedly. “That’s good, I think. We need to get you to the emergency room.”

“No.” Cody shook his head against the pillow and grabbed her wrist with his good hand. “Just wrap it up, please.”

She pulled away. “God, Cody. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever known. You need stitches, and probably a tetanus shot, and a blood transfusion for all I know.”

“No, I don’t. Got a tetanus shot, last year, when I—never mind. All they’d do is…wrap it up. Please, Dana?”

“Fine,” she grumbled, grabbing a pair of scissors from the sewing box under her dressing table. “What do I care, anyway? It’s none of my business. I don’t know why you even came here.”

Her fingers shook and her mouth filled with acrid saliva as she cut the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Nausea burned in her throat. She swallowed hard, while a shudder ran up her spine.

It was just like before. Like all the times before. “You haven’t changed a bit. It’s just like the last time, and the time before that. How many times were you shot in the two years we were married? Three times? Four?”

Dana hadn’t seen much blood in her life, and most of it was Cody’s.




Chapter Two


Dana licked dry lips as she peeled fabric away from Cody’s skin. It didn’t matter if he’d been shot three times or thirty. It was too many. The last time had been a head wound. Then the blood had streaked his forehead and his cheek and had run down his neck to soak the collar of his shirt.

“And how many times did you go to the doctor? Once. And that wasn’t even your idea. You were unconscious, for God’s sake!”

She hadn’t ever wanted to see his blood again. That was why she’d left him. It was the reason that, no matter how much she loved him, no matter how much it had hurt her, she’d had to leave. His job had always come first. Always had and always would.

“Dana, could you shut up and get on with it, please?”

She pushed the memories to the back of her mind and concentrated on getting the sweatshirt off without tearing open his wound. “Oh, Cody,” she moaned.

His beautiful golden skin was torn and bloody. The holes in the sweatshirt matched the holes in his arm, right through the meaty part of his bicep. Blood oozed out of both wounds.

Dana stared in fascination as the present and the past rushed toward each other like runaway trains. She had to concentrate to keep them from colliding in her brain.

Cody. Wonderful, dangerous Cody. The only man she’d ever loved. Once she hadn’t been able to imagine life without him.

Then, as she began to realize just what being the wife of a cop meant, the possibility of life without Cody became all too real. She’d already had more experience than she ever wanted of waiting at home for someone who never came back. She couldn’t face that again, not even for Cody.

So she’d divorced him. He wasn’t her problem anymore, hadn’t been for four years.

She kept on talking, more in an effort to ground herself in the present than because she actually had anything to say. “How many times can it happen, Cody? How are you always in the middle of the danger? Why does it always have to be you?”

He didn’t answer, just lay there, his sweat staining her new pillowcases, his eyes squeezed shut and a grimace of pain marring his even features.

She pressed her lips together and stood, holding out her bloodstained hands like a surgeon as she backed out of the room. “I think I still have some gauze pads and peroxide from the last time,” she muttered as she walked into the bathroom, reached for the faucets and ran cold, clean water over her hands, watching in bitter fascination as Cody’s blood ran down the drain.

She dug around in the bathroom cabinet until she found the supplies, and brought them and a wet washcloth back into the bedroom.

Even in the middle of this latest crisis with Cody, the sight of him lying on her bed caught her off guard. She stopped dead still in the doorway. For a split second, the years vanished, and she and Cody were together and in love. Dana was shocked at the spear of desire that streaked through her. She winced and shut her eyes briefly.

Cody opened his eyes to a slit and gazed suspiciously at the bottle of peroxide. “You brought that stuff with you when you moved out? That means it’s four years old? You sure it’s still good?”

Dana straightened. His words reminded her of why he was here. “I’m sure it’s okay. I’ve kept it capped. Remember, the hospital gave it to me when I brought you home.”

“I remember.”

The bitterness in his voice surprised her. She glanced at his face, but he’d closed his eyes and his breathing was ragged. She sat down beside him on the bed.

“We were married two years and you were shot two times. It’s like you’re some kind of a bullet magnet.”

Cody lay on his side, his mouth set, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out. There were lines around his eyes, deep lines, lines that hadn’t been there four years ago. Her fingers twitched to smooth them out. A strange regret raised a lump in her throat.

He licked his lips. “I’ll tell them to quit picking on me, okay? To shoot somebody else for a change,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll tell them you said so. But could you shut up for a minute and give me some water and maybe an aspirin?” Beads of sweat gathered on his forehead and ran down his face. “I’m hurting a little.”

The lump in her throat swelled and tears stung her eyes. Damn it, Cody. Don’t make me feel sorry for you. I will not cry for you!

She tried to steel herself against his pain. It had always scared her to death how vulnerable, how fragile he looked when he was hurt. Usually he was so strong, so competent, so capable. He’d always been bigger than life to her. His tall, lean body had always seemed invulnerable.

She’d trusted him, admired him, loved him with all her heart. She’d always loved to watch him move. He moved so fast, so gracefully for a tall man, handling himself like a dancer or a predatory cat, his energy and strength barely constrained inside his golden skin. But when he was hurt, like now, he looked smaller, human, breakable.

Dana forced herself to stop thinking and just act. She inspected his wounds and saw that blood still oozed down onto the remains of the sweatshirt. She poured peroxide onto the raw flesh. The liquid foamed and sizzled and Cody sucked in a long, hissing breath.

“Hey…” he groaned raggedly.

“I’ve got to clean it.” Her voice sounded harsher than she’d intended, but she had to do something to stop the memories. She didn’t want to be here doing this for this man who lived his life so close to death it had almost driven her insane. It had driven her away. Why couldn’t you love me enough to stay safe?

Cody opened his eyes and looked at her. “I know. Sorry,” he said, and smiled.

Oh, Cody. His smile stole her breath. It was still as angelic as it had always been. Her heart hurt to see him so pale and gaunt, smiling at her and apologizing.

The intervening years hadn’t really made that much difference in him physically. He’d gotten harder, if that was possible, maybe leaner. Where before he’d been a handsome, cocky young man, now he was more mature, more solidly male, and even more handsome. The lines in his face added character.

His hair, damp and matted, was still honey-brown and soft as a baby’s. His face was streaked with sweat, the skin drawn tight over the bones, but his eyes were the same electric blue, with thick brown lashes that were obscene on a man. Right now, the blue eyes seemed filled with pain and regret and something else she couldn’t identify.

His gaze slid downward, and she felt it, like fingers, touching her neck, her collarbone, the hastily pulled-together edges of her bathrobe.

“Sorry I interrupted your bath,” he whispered. “You always hated that.”

“Ha,” she sniffed. “I never got to finish a bath the whole time we were married.” As soon as she said the words, she regretted them.

His eyes lit with amusement, and Dana knew with the intimate knowledge of two years of marriage what he was thinking. The same thing she was. They both remembered how many of her baths had ended with damp, tangled sheets and shared laughter. Dana felt the liquid heat that had always burned through her at his touch. She saw the spark of it in his eyes.

Embarrassed by her thoughts and the knowledge that he was reading them, she mangled a strip of tape as she applied it, then impatiently ripped it off. He jerked and grimaced. “Ouch. What are you trying to do, kill me?”

“I don’t have to. You’re doing a fine job of it by yourself,” she retorted. “Now, shut up.” Her mouth tight, she finished taping up his wounds. She cut the ruined sweatshirt off and slid his jacket out from under him, working doggedly, trying to ignore his labored breaths and the occasional quiet grunts when she hurt him.

“How did you get shot this time?” she asked in spite of herself. If she could take back the question, she would have. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to own the knowledge of this latest proof of Cody’s mortality.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said softly, his words slurring.

She breathed a sigh of relief, ignoring the tiny inner voice that speculated on how bad the answer must be if he didn’t want her to know. She didn’t need another life-size image for her mental scrapbook—Cody being shot, Cody falling, Cody lying still and pale on the ground.

She finally finished dressing his wounds, thankful when his torn flesh was covered. It scared her to realize how fragile he was, merely human under his skin, no matter how invulnerable he appeared. Biting her lower lip, she pushed the thoughts out of her head. It wasn’t her problem anymore if he got himself shot once a year or once a month.

“Dana?” he whispered.

“What, Cody?” she asked curtly as she gathered up the towels and washcloths and his jacket. She turned back toward the bed. “Well?”

“Thanks.”

The word cut through her like a knife. Her suddenly nerveless fingers almost lost their grip on his clothes. “Don’t thank me. Don’t try to play on my sympathy. Why did you come here? Why would you think I’d want to help you? Damn it, Cody, why?”

His eyes opened and he looked up at her, a small smile quirking his mouth. “I told you. I didn’t think you were here. My apartment wasn’t—safe. Besides, you’re the one person I know I can trust, no matter what.”

“No!” she shouted, throwing the clothes toward the bathroom. “Don’t say that, Cody. Don’t try to make me responsible. You’ve got the entire New Orleans Police Department to watch out for you. You didn’t have to come running to me. I am not going to patch you up and send you back out there. I can’t do it. I’m where I want to be. I’m finally over…everything, and I won’t let you turn my life all upside down again.”

A flicker of darkness clouded his eyes, but his voice was light, if a bit hollow, when he replied. “Don’t worry. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, okay?” He closed his eyes, his lashes resting like fuzzy caterpillars on his scratched cheek. He’d fallen asleep or passed out.

Dana reached out a trembling hand and pushed his silky hair back from his forehead. Without her conscious consent, her thumb traced the faint lines, less prominent now that he was asleep. She deliberately kept her eyes off his naked chest and abdomen, trying not to remember his delicious planes and curves. She tried not to drink in the sight of him, golden and familiar, in her bed. Deliberately, she focused on his shoulder, but that only made her ache with compassion and wince with empathic understanding of how badly he was going to hurt when he woke up.

She gritted her teeth. He didn’t deserve her compassion or her empathy. He was her ex-husband. And the operative part of that word was “ex.”

She’d filed for divorce because she hadn’t had the strength to patch up his wounds again. His or her own. He’d loved her, she’d never doubted that. Just not enough. He’d loved the danger more. She’d thought she could handle being a cop’s wife. But Cody could never be just a cop. He had to go for the dangerous cases. He craved the excitement. And it was going to get him killed. It had already left its scars on both of them.

He had physical, external scars. But her scars were just as deep, just as permanent. On that awful night four years ago, while she’d waited to hear whether her husband would live or die, she had miscarried the baby they’d both wanted so badly. It had been the last link that had bound her to him. So as soon as she was sure he would be okay, she’d filed for divorce, because she couldn’t bear losing anyone else.

“I just couldn’t do it,” she whispered, her fingers still lingering on the tightly drawn skin over his cheekbones. “I couldn’t face years of that. Not again. Sitting at home, afraid that this might be the night you didn’t make it.” Just like my father.

She touched his mouth, the little lines that laughter had put there. “But, oh God, it was hard. You’ll never know how hard it was to leave you. I miss your laughter.” She shook her head. She must really be upset, to be talking to herself like this. She didn’t miss the danger, she reminded herself sternly, looking down at her terry-cloth robe, where the blood was already drying. The danger more than canceled out the fun.

She was content now…she was safe. She was no longer in love with Cody…not at all. She certainly was not responsible for him anymore. She’d shed that responsibility along with her wedding ring four years ago.

Sighing, she lay down next to him, her eyes still tracing his beloved features, trying not to notice the paleness in his face, trying not to hear his ragged breathing, trying desperately and without success not to care what happened to him.

When he woke up, he’d have to leave.

FONTENOT SAT UP into the night, soldering, wiring, testing, until he was satisfied with his latest creation. Finally, he stood, stretching cramped muscles, and walked around it, surveying it critically.

His face creased in a slow smile. Perfect. Naturally. He held up the bottle of spring water, toasting himself, then took a sip. No alcohol, nothing but natural substances went into his body. Chemicals interfered with brain function, and nothing was going to interfere with his perfect plan. His perfect revenge.

Nothing and nobody.

He stared out the window, thinking about the booby trap he’d rigged at Maxwell’s apartment. His lip curled in disdain. Maxwell wasn’t as smart, or as quick, as he’d given him credit for being.

He’d heard the sharp retort of the gun, at the very second he’d predicted. Then a few minutes later Maxwell had come rushing out and headed for his car. But Fontenot had overestimated the detective. He’d timed the trigger mechanism perfectly, to a reaction time designed for a man in Maxwell’s physical condition. But the stupid man had been too slow, so the bullet, which should have harmlessly hit the wall behind him, had instead caught him in the shoulder.

He had to give Maxwell credit, though. Even with his shoulder bleeding, and his face pale with pain and fear, he’d still cranked up his car and headed for Metairie, for his ex-wife’s house, just like Fontenot had known he would.

Fontenot chuckled. Just wait, Maxwell. I’m not through with you yet. Before I’m done you’ll suffer for every minute I spent in prison. You’ll wish you were dead.

He finished his water and went back to his creation, considering the best way to set it up for installation. He had to be able to set it up in five minutes, and not one second more.

The sweet throb of anticipation began within him. This would be even better than the booby-trapped gun. He took a long, shuddering breath and went back to work.




Chapter Three


Cody was in hell. He was doing his best to fight his way out, but he wasn’t having much luck, because Satan had his pitchfork rammed through Cody’s shoulder, and he wouldn’t let go. Cody jerked against the devil’s grip.

Damn, that hurt! He tried to turn around and attack but for some reason, he couldn’t move. He took a long breath, preparing to try again, but mingled in with the sulfur and brimstone in the air was the delicate scent of roses.

“Ahh!” Cody jerked awake. His shoulder felt as if it was still in hell, but as he came to consciousness, he remembered where he was. He was at Dana’s. How had he gotten all the way out here to Metairie?

His head cleared slowly, and he remembered the rest of it. The booby trap at his apartment. The pain. The fear that Fontenot had rigged a similar trap for Dana, and his relief when he’d found nothing wrong. Then his surprise when he’d discovered her in the bathtub. She had changed her plans. Dana never changed her plans.

He sniffed the air again. Roses. Without raising his head, he opened his eyes. He was in her bedroom, in her bed, and she was lying next to him. He looked at her across the hills and valleys of white cotton sheets. She was asleep, on top of the covers, still wrapped in the bloodstained terry-cloth robe. Her hands were clenched into fists and curled against her breast.

It was how she’d slept during the last few disastrous months of their marriage, all scrunched up, like she was sleeping as fast and as hard as she could, like sleeping was just another chore, along with taking out the garbage, or paying the bills, or putting up with him.

He frowned. She’d always hated his job. Sometimes he didn’t blame her. Sometimes he hated it, too, like last night when he’d opened his apartment door and realized a split second too late what Fontenot had done.

The quiet click of the hammer should have been enough warning. But it wasn’t. He was lucky the bullet had only torn through the flesh of his upper arm. If he’d been a split second slower, it would have caught him square in the chest. He snorted.

That’s what Dana would say. Four years ago he’d have responded by saying that a split second faster and it would have missed him. But it hadn’t missed him, and Cody knew why. He’d been preoccupied with worry for his ex-wife.

The day the jury returned the verdict that sent Fontenot to prison, the madman had smiled serenely at Cody and promised he’d be back, his gaze resting briefly but meaningfully on Dana.

Cody got the message, and Fontenot knew it.

Now Fontenot was free because of an overcrowded prison system and slick lawyers, and Cody still remembered that smile and his meaningful look. Cody had no doubt that Fontenot would make good on his threat. He had no doubt Dana was in danger.

She stirred and murmured softly, and memories of the two of them crowded thoughts of Fontenot out of Cody’s brain. As he watched, she moved a little closer, and briefly, he saw the young, serious law student he’d fallen in love with all those years ago. She appeared carefree and relaxed, without that tiny double line between her eyebrows, without the ever-so-slightly turned-down mouth that made her look older than she was.

He lay there, ignoring his aching shoulder, and watched her sleep. The faint lines around her eyes smoothed out, and a hint of a smile curved her mouth.

God, she was gorgeous. His mouth turned up. She’d always objected when he said that. She never got over the idea that he was just teasing her. She’d never quite believed how much he loved her olive-green eyes, the dark blond wavy hair she complained about, even the crooked front tooth that made her look impish when she grinned.

With an effort, he moved his injured arm and curled his fingers loosely around hers. The tension in her clenched fist made his chest ache. She’d always been too serious. Always worried about the damnedest things. She obviously hadn’t changed much, he thought wryly.

He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, savored the softness of her skin against his. He loved to touch her. She was like silk over steel, her skin as soft as an angel’s. But it was the steel that fascinated him. He admired her determination, her certainty. She never had doubts, never made mistakes.

Except for him. He was her only mistake, and he knew how much she regretted making it. He’d come into her comfortable little world and dared to disrupt it. She was safety and stability and he was danger.

He’d always wanted to be a cop. Dana knew that before she’d married him. But when it came down to the reality of it, she hadn’t been able to live with the danger and uncertainty that was a part of him.

But while it was good, it was very, very good. He reached to push a hair away from her cheek, forgetting his injured arm.

“Ouch!” he growled, and cursed.

Dana stirred, turning toward him. She opened her eyes, and when her green gaze met his, it was like old times. Her mouth softened and she almost smiled. “Morning, tough guy.”

“Morning, chère,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.

Her eyes widened and she stiffened, although how she could have gotten any more tense was beyond his comprehension. She’d remembered why he was here, and she wasn’t having any of his New Orleans charm. He knew because the two little frown lines had reappeared in her forehead. She sat up.

“Oh. I forgot you were…how is your shoulder?” she asked, pushing her hair out of her eyes. The silky blond strands caught around her fingers, and she winced as she disentangled them, scattering pins as the waves tumbled around her face and neck.

Cody didn’t move, partly because it hurt less when he stayed still, and partly because Dana’s robe had come loose and he could see about eighty percent of one delicately veined breast. His pulse sped up as he remembered the feel of her small, perfect breasts under his palms.

Dana frowned and followed his gaze. “Humph. Grow up, Cody.”

“Why?” he muttered. “So I can be as grumpy and stodgy as you?”

She glared at him. “No, so you can get a real job and quit playing cops and robbers.” She pulled her robe together and got up, then looked down at the brown streaks on the terry cloth as if she’d never seen them before. Her face grew white and she clenched her jaw.

She looked up at him, accusation and pain in her olive-green eyes. “Go away, Cody,” she said tonelessly, holding up one hand, palm out. “Just…go away.”

She left the room and Cody turned gingerly onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. Nothing had changed. She still blamed him. Of course, he knew how she felt, because he blamed himself.

He’d never had a chance to talk to her after he’d gotten out of the hospital. Not really talk. She’d done an excellent job of avoiding him, even while they were still living together. Then, once he’d recuperated enough to go back to work, she’d moved out, and their communications had been through their lawyers.

He’d tried over and over to tell her how sorry he was. He’d wanted to grab her and hold her and grieve with her over the baby they’d lost. He’d have promised her anything just to wipe the sadness from her eyes. He’d have sworn to her that he’d get out of police work, that he’d sack groceries if she’d just come back to him, but he never got the chance.

She left him.

So he’d thrown himself even deeper into his job. But it was never quite the same out there without her to come home to. He hadn’t realized how much he depended on her to be there, until she was gone.

There was still the satisfaction of putting a criminal behind bars, but without Dana to celebrate with him, it didn’t mean as much. Her admiration for his devotion to his job had been lost somewhere along the way, and with it had gone a lot of his reason for wanting to do a good job.

Slowly, gingerly, he got out of bed and made his way into the kitchen. Dana had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and was drinking coffee from his favorite mug, the one with the chipped rim. He lowered himself carefully into a chair.

“I thought you couldn’t find my mug,” he remarked, faintly accusing. “It disappeared when you moved out.” He was a little surprised that she’d kept it.

Dana’s face burned and her fingers tensed around the rough surface of the pottery mug. “I couldn’t. It was in the bottom of a box.”

“That was my favorite mug.”

“It’s not your mug, it’s my mug. I made it.”

“I know,” he said, smiling. “It never sat evenly. I spilled my coffee at least once a week because it wobbled.”

Dana couldn’t look at him, and she couldn’t unwrap her fingers from the mug. She had made it for him. It was the only thing she made during that whole ceramics class that hadn’t cracked in the kiln. He’d always claimed it was his favorite. Why, she had no idea.

With a supreme effort, she managed to speak. “If you want it, you can take it with you when you leave.”

Cody shook his head and clenched his jaw against the throbbing ache in his shoulder. He hadn’t missed her emphasis on the word leave. “Got any aspirin?”

She nodded without looking at him and stood up. As she got the tablets and a glass of water and a mug of coffee for him, he looked around the kitchen, wondering what Fontenot had done to her apartment while she was out of town.

“Sit down, Dana,” he said as he took the coffee from her unsteady fingers. “We need to talk.”

“There is absolutely nothing to say,” she said, but she sat down and picked up the chipped mug and wrapped her fingers around it again.

Cody watched as she realized what she’d done and put it down abruptly. It wobbled slowly and noisily on the table until he stopped it with his fingers.

It was funny how the oddest things took on meaning between two people. He loved the mug because she’d made it. He let it go. It wobbled again until he stopped it. If it had been perfect, it wouldn’t be nearly as precious.

“I tried to call you Tuesday,” he said, letting his fingers trace the whorls on the mug’s surface. Why had she kept it? he wondered. It hadn’t meant anything to her.

“I know. I picked up my messages.”

“Why did you come back last night? Your answering machine said you’d be gone until today.”

“I couldn’t take Big Daddy and his good old boys talking at me like I was a simpering southern belle.”

Cody looked up. “Big Daddy?”

Dana shrugged and her mouth turned up. She reached out and took the mug. “The ultraimportant client I met with in Baton Rouge. You know the type. He owns a chain of hardware stores there. He wants to expand to New Orleans and I was drawing up the contracts. He was insulting, so I walked out.”

Cody laughed. “You walked out? Dana Maxwell walked out on a meeting with clients? I do believe hell has frozen over again. Call Don Henley and tell him to do another album.”

Dana banged the mug down on the table. His easy, intimate humor invaded places inside her she didn’t want exposed. The two of them, sitting together drinking coffee, reminded her of lazy Sunday mornings and kisses flavored with café au lait, of her trying to study, while he….

“I can’t do this. I can’t sit here and have an idle, ordinary conversation with you. We’re not old friends sharing a cup of coffee and memories. I want you out of here,” she groused, lifting her head.

The laughter faded from his eyes and their blue brightness dulled to a gunmetal gray. “Dana, there’s something you need to know. Did you find anything out of place when you got back? Anything unusual?”

She heard a strange note in his voice. The frown on his face intensified her apprehension. Cody was worried about something, and that wasn’t like him. She shook her head. “Nothing except an ex-husband breaking in and bleeding all over everything.”

Cody reached his right hand awkwardly into his left jeans pocket and pulled something out. The movement obviously caused him pain, and she ached to see him hurt. She blinked fiercely, reminding herself his pain was no longer her concern.

But she had trouble dragging her gaze away from his bare chest with its faint dusting of honey-brown hair, and his broad shoulders, still streaked with dried blood.

He held up a small golden disk.

“What’s that? Is that mine?” She reached out and took it from his fingers. It was one of the gold coin earrings he’d given her on their first anniversary. They had cost way too much, but she loved them. She’d worn them almost every day until their divorce. Since then they’d lain in her jewelry box under her bed.

She stared at it. “What are you doing with my earring?”

He covered her hand with his, wrapping her fingers around the disk. “Chère, look at me.”

Reluctantly she raised her head. Something was very wrong. A frisson of fear slithered up her spine.

“This earring was on the seat of my car two mornings ago. I almost didn’t see it.”

She tugged against his grip, but he wouldn’t let go. The post of the earring dug into her palm. “Stop it, Cody. It’s obviously not my earring, then, because mine is in my jewelry box. You’re just trying to scare me.”

“It is yours. Go check.”

“I’m not going to check. If it’s mine then you got it out of my jewelry box this morning. Why are you doing this to me?”

Cody shook his head, his eyes dark and cloudy. She didn’t want to look into them, didn’t want to see the pain and the fear deep in those eyes that had so often sparked with laughter, but she couldn’t pull her gaze away.

“Fontenot is out of prison.”

She froze. “F-Fontenot?”

He nodded grimly.

“The man who shot you,” she said. “How—how can he be out?”

“Good behavior, and good lawyers.”

Dana closed her eyes. “He put a bullet in your head. He almost killed you. They can’t let him out.”

“Dana, listen to me. Fontenot swore he’d make me pay for putting him away. ‘I shot you this time, but there are things that hurt more than a gunshot, Maxwell,’ he said.” Cody’s blue eyes burned into hers.

She jerked her hand away and stood abruptly. “I don’t care, Cody,” she lied. She remembered Fontenot. Too well. She’d been with the public defender’s office, but as the wife of the detective who’d been shot, she was barred from participating in the case.

She’d already filed for divorce by the time Fontenot came to trial, and she’d tried to stay away from the courtroom, but she’d had to hear the verdict with her own ears. She had to be there, to be sure they put that monster away.

“He looked at you when he said it.” Cody stared at her. “And now, he’s back. He got your earring out of this apartment without you even knowing he’d been here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she countered. “I’d know if anyone had been here.”

Cody shrugged carefully. “Go check.”

She could hardly catch her breath, the growing fear was sitting so heavily on her chest. “Why are you doing this?” she asked again, still unwilling to believe that Fontenot was out of prison and once again a danger to Cody. “I don’t want to be in the middle of your blood feud with that madman.”

“You don’t have a choice. Fontenot isn’t asking your permission. You are in the middle of it.”

Old grief and pain ripped through her like a straight razor and her voice shook with passion and fury. “Because of you. You walked into that courtroom with your head still bandaged, so weak you had to lean on a cane, just so you could prove to the world that Cody Maxwell was tough enough to put him away.”

She took a shaky breath. “He almost killed you. Your job almost killed you. It did kill my baby. And I am never going through that pain again!”

She gasped at her own words. It was the first time she’d ever said it aloud, to him, and she saw the effect of her words etched in the new lines on his face.

An anguish too profound to bear washed over his features, draining the color from his face. But then, anger replaced the anguish, and he vaulted up from the chair and grabbed her arm with his good hand.

“Our baby,” he ground out between clenched teeth, his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath on her mouth, could see the darkness behind his blue eyes. “It was our baby, not just yours. I came home from the hospital to find out my wife was divorcing me and the baby we’d wanted so badly was never going to be born.”

He took a ragged breath and released her arm, pushing her away. “So don’t talk to me about pain. Pain is something I know all about.”

He whirled and stalked out of the kitchen, his naked back and bare feet not detracting at all from his stiff, oddly dignified exit.

It was true. By the time he’d come home from the hospital, she might as well have already been gone. Then when she had moved out, he’d never questioned anything. He’d just gone along with whatever her lawyer wanted. At the time she’d thought he didn’t care. She’d never even considered how he might be feeling.

No. She clenched her fists and squeezed her eyes shut, determined not to cry. She could not let him get to her. She’d promised herself a long time ago she would never cry again, not for him, not even for herself. She’d already cried all her tears.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen until the stinging at the back of her eyes subsided. She realized she was still holding the mug—his mug. She set it down so hard she was afraid it might break, but it was tough.

She smiled grimly. Tougher than she was. The mug had made it through their two years of marriage with only a tiny chip in the rim. She hadn’t fared as well. Her heart and soul had been scarred, and she wasn’t sure those scars would ever go away.

She followed Cody into the bedroom and found him standing in the middle of the room, looking around. As she watched he went over to the bed and crouched down.

“What are you doing?”

“This is where you keep your jewelry case, isn’t it?” he asked without looking up.

“Cody, do you mind? This is not a crime scene, it’s my bedroom. Your shoulder is bleeding again. Aren’t you going to go to the doctor?”

He stood and held the jewelry case out to her. She looked up to find his blue eyes regarding her with a mixture of impatience and triumph. “It is a crime scene, chère. Take a look. There’s only one earring in there.”

She jerked the box away from him. “Don’t you want to preserve the fingerprints?” she asked acidly.

“Fontenot’s too smart for that. You couldn’t even tell he’d been in here, could you? You said there was nothing out of place.”

Dana tried to remember walking into her apartment the day before. She’d been distracted, thinking about how she was going to tell her boss she’d just walked out on his biggest client. The apartment could have been turned inside out and she probably wouldn’t have noticed.

“No…” she said tentatively. “No. I’m sure. I’d have noticed.”

Cody looked meaningfully at the jewelry case, so she sighed and opened it. Nothing looked out of place, except that there was only one coin earring. She picked up her pearls and pushed aside a bracelet. The other earring wasn’t there.

“I must have lost it,” she said in a small voice.

Cody laughed. “You never lose anything. Remember the time I thought I’d lost my wedding band? You had put it where I always kept it. I didn’t find it because I’d already looked there.”

The grin slowly faded from his face. “That was early on, before I found out nothing ever gets lost around you. You won’t allow it.”

For some reason, Cody’s words embarrassed her. He’d always made fun of her orderly ways. His teasing had been endearing once. Anger and embarrassment crowded into her breast, along with a peculiar longing for that long-ago time, before Cody’s dogged determination to save the world alone had turned her neatly ordered life into chaos.

“Why are you so sure he got into my apartment? Nobody just waltzes into an apartment, finds a hidden jewelry case and takes one earring. That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous if his purpose is to show me how close he can get to someone I—to you. You wore those earrings every day. You wore them in the courtroom. Fontenot doesn’t miss anything. He saw them. He knew I’d understand the significance.”

“The significance. And just what is the significance, Detective?”

“The significance is that he can go anywhere. He can do anything. The man is psychotic, but he’s brilliant. He could just as easily have been waiting for you here.”

“I don’t want to…” She turned away, frightened by the intensity of his gaze.

He caught her arm. “Listen to me. Ever since they let him out of prison, things have been happening. Little things at first, but escalating.”

“Th-things?” she stammered, against her will.

“A cup of coffee on my desk from Mintemans, my favorite place. And I didn’t order it. Then my car was on empty one night when I got home, and full the next morning.”

“I don’t…understand.” She was lying, of course. She understood, too well. Cody had always maintained that Fontenot was diabolical. He’d been obsessed with putting the man away. Dana knew what Cody was telling her shouldn’t make sense, but it did. It made frightening sense, because it meant that Cody was right about Fontenot. A horrible, shivery feeling skittered up her spine.

“Then, yesterday morning,” Cody continued, “I opened my car door, and this—” he dangled the earring in front of her eyes “—was on the driver’s seat.”

“How…?” She bit her lip. She did not want to know how he’d gotten shot, but she couldn’t help herself. “How did you get shot?”

For a split second, an unguarded look appeared in his eyes. A look of fear. Dana’s heart pounded. “Cody?”

He shook his head angrily. “I was…distracted.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, Dana. I guarantee you, you don’t want to know.”

“You’re right, but I’m afraid I need to.”

“I’m late. I’ve got to get out of here.” He looked around the bedroom. “Is there an old sweatshirt of mine around here? Or a T-shirt?”

Dana started to press him for the answer, but her pounding heart was stealing her breath. He was right. She didn’t want to know.

Reluctantly she went to her dresser and pulled out his police academy T-shirt, the one she slept in. She smoothed her palm over the soft material before she handed it to him. It was sad, in a ridiculously sentimental way, to give it up. His shirt had comforted her on many a lonely night. Somehow, she felt safe when she slept in it.

“My academy T-shirt. I thought I’d lost it. I should have known you’d still have it.” He grinned at her as he shook it out, preparing to pull it on over his head. “Do you have anything else that belongs to me?”

Dana’s face burned. “No,” she snapped, a queer regret settling into her heart. When he left, taking his mug and his shirt with him, she wouldn’t have anything that belonged to him. “Absolutely nothing. Aren’t you ready to leave yet? I’ve got plans for this weekend.”

“You’ve got plans for every moment of your life,” Cody remarked dryly as he prepared to don the shirt.

She wanted to turn away. She didn’t want to watch his lean muscles undulate as he pulled the T-shirt over his head. She certainly didn’t want to see him wince as he lifted his wounded left arm. But somewhere along the way her will had gotten lost, so she stood helplessly, her eyes filled with the sight of the shirt molding his chest and abdomen.

With a grunt he finally got the shirt on and smoothed his hands down the front of it. She swallowed nervously. That T-shirt had clung to her breasts so many nights. Her own hands had smoothed the material across her belly, seeking comfort when she lay alone in bed.

His hands had once roamed over her like they now ran down his own body. No. Not exactly like this. This was a natural grooming gesture. He was just making sure the shirt was in place. His hands on her had been different—gentle but insistent, seeking, touching, teasing, and always, always strong.

She licked her lips and dragged her gaze away from the word Academy stretched across his chest.

“I’m going to check your apartment and take a look around outside.”

“What?” she asked, distracted.

“I’m going to take a look around,” he repeated. “What’s the matter with you?”

She quickly turned away, pretending to look for something on the dresser. It wouldn’t do for Cody to get a good look at her face right now. She was sure every thought, every emotion inside her was written in her expression.

“Fine. Fine. Just get out of here. And go to the doctor, if you can manage to find the time, what with saving the world and all. You’re going to have an awful scar there if you don’t.”

“It’ll go with the rest of them.”

“God knows you’ve got enough.” She glanced up at his mirrored image, regretting her words, but not able to stop them.

“You’re a cold woman, Dana,” he said, shaking his head, a touch of sadness marring his features.

She turned around and looked at the man who had once meant everything in the world to her, and wondered if he would ever know how wrong he was. “I have to be. Otherwise I’d never stop hurting.”

Cody’s eyes changed, darkened. He took a step toward her, but she backed away.

“Don’t…” she snapped, holding up a hand defensively. “Just go.”

He shrugged, then winced when the movement hurt his shoulder. “No problem, counselor,” he said flatly. “Send me a bill for services rendered.” Then he turned on his heel and left.

Dana heard his shoes on the hardwood living room floor, then heard the front door open.

“Dana.”

She sighed in irritation and stepped through the hall to the living room. “What?”

“Be careful, and call me if you notice anything strange. Anything, you understand? Fontenot isn’t a man to mess with. I’ll have a patrol car check the apartment.” He turned to go then turned back one more time.

“What, Cody? What now?”

“Why don’t you go over to Pensacola? Visit your sister. Get out of town for a day or two.”

“No. I told you, I have plans. Your life, your quarrels, your ex-cons full of revenge, don’t have anything to do with me. I divorced you so I wouldn’t be subjected to this. I have a life, a nice, quiet, boring life. No danger, no heroics, no guns. I like it just fine.” She folded her arms tightly and scrunched her shoulders, pulling in, away from his searing blue gaze.

She’d had more than she could take of Cody for one day—for a lifetime. His presence was opening wounds that hurt too much to be borne. “Please go away and stay gone. I don’t want to know when you get killed, thank you.”

A dark hurt shadowed his face briefly, then his mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Oh, you’re welcome, my dear ex-wife,” he retorted. “I guess I’d better change ‘next of kin’ in my official personnel file. But, Dana, just remember this. When I die, it’ll be for something good, instead of dying of boredom, a day at a time, like you are.” He slammed the door.

She stared at the door, peculiarly stung by his words. He held her sane, safe life in such contempt. Sometimes she couldn’t figure out why he’d married her. Sometimes she wasn’t sure why she’d married him.

Oh, she knew why she loved him…had loved him. Cody was easy to love. It had to do with the kind of man he was. He was an honorable man, a good man. A modern-day hero, a superman in jeans and a leather jacket. He truly believed that he could make a difference in the world. He’d been raised to be a cop, to spend his life keeping the world safe for others.

He believed in what he did. And therein lay the problem. Cody believed he was invincible. He believed the good guys always won. Moreover, he believed the good guys had a responsibility to the world.

Oh, Cody.

She closed her eyes and tried to feel relieved that he was gone, but all she could find inside her was a faint apprehension and a hollow sense of loss that had been there ever since she’d left him.




Chapter Four


Cody stomped down the steps. Dana was just as irritating as she’d ever been. Sometimes he wondered how he’d stood her rigid insistence on order for even two years. When they’d first met, she was so focused on getting her law degree, that he’d have to coax her to take an afternoon off. In her life, there was no room for spontaneity, no room for joy. Everything had to be just so, from the way the toilet paper rolled to the way they planned their vacations. The only time she let down her guard was when they made love.

The thought of her beneath him, her body covered with a sheen of sweat, her eyes filled with passion, her lips parted and swollen with kisses, hit him unawares. He almost stumbled on the last step.

“Hell,” he muttered.

That part of it had always been good. Not just good…great. It always amazed him to watch the transformation he could bring about in her with just a touch.

Never, before or since, had a woman responded to him the way Dana had. Not that there had been many since, he thought wryly.

Somehow it wasn’t the same anymore. The edge, the wonder, wasn’t there like it had been with Dana, so he’d found himself withdrawing, until he’d just about become a monk.

Cody shook his head to rid his brain of the distracting thoughts. What he needed to do was make sure Fontenot hadn’t done something else, like booby-trap Dana’s car. A sick fear gnawed at his insides. If anything happened to her…

He looked up and down the street, but there was nothing going on. It was Friday morning, and the only people stirring were businesswomen and men leaving for work.

He walked around her car, his eyes and his thoughts focused on noticing anything unusual, anything strange. He reluctantly dropped to the ground with a grunt, wincing as his shoulder throbbed with pain, and crawled underneath the car, looking for wires, or anything else that looked out of place. Nothing.

He dug his key, which he’d never given back to her, out of his jeans, and opened the car door, moving carefully, deliberately, listening and watching. The bastard wouldn’t catch Cody Maxwell off guard again.

DANA REALIZED SHE’D BEEN staring at the apartment door ever since Cody had slammed it. She shook herself mentally. He was gone. He wasn’t her problem anymore.

Then why did his hurt blue eyes still haunt her? Why did she feel like she’d just been treated to a brief moment in the sun, then had it snuffed out, leaving her alone and cold?

A shiver, like a cold rigor, slid up her spine. She pushed her maudlin thoughts away as she brushed her hair back from her face, and walked into the kitchen. She could still drive up to the lake and spend a quiet couple of days. If she’d thought she needed a relaxing weekend before, now she was even more convinced. And it was obvious she wasn’t going to get any rest around here with Cody playing cops and robbers.

She picked up the two coffee mugs to rinse them, then stared at her hands.

Cody’s mug. Her fingers spasmed and she almost dropped it.

“Damn it, Cody,” she muttered. “Why didn’t you take it with you?”

She didn’t want the rickety, chipped thing around. It was silly to have kept it all this time. She should have thrown it away years ago. She touched the little chipped place.

He’d made fun of it when she brought it home, but every time she’d tried to throw it away he’d insisted on keeping it.

“Once you get used to the way it wobbles,” he’d told her, “it’s a pretty nice mug.”

She washed it carefully and dried it. Stupid sentimentality! Well, if Cody wanted the worthless thing she’d mail it to him or something. She set it beside her purse.

Looking at the clock, she hurried into the bedroom and threw some clothes into a travel bag. She didn’t need anything fancy. She wasn’t going to see a soul.

She stepped into the bathroom to get her makeup and nearly tripped over the pile of bloody clothes and towels. With a grimace of distaste, she picked up the towels. Underneath was Cody’s leather jacket.

She picked it up half-reluctantly. The brown leather was creased and cracked, with scrapes and tears that Dana was sure Cody could identify without missing a one. She knew several of them herself.

That huge scrape on one shoulder was where he’d been thrown out of a car going about sixty miles an hour. The tear in the cuff—

“Stop!” Dana yelled out loud. She wasn’t going to get caught up in useless reminiscing. Without realizing it, she’d hugged the jacket to her breast. Deliberately catching it between finger and thumb like a dirty diaper, she went back into the kitchen.

There was no way Cody was going to insinuate himself back into her life. She didn’t care if he’d gotten himself shot again. She didn’t care if Fontenot was out of prison. Cody was wrong. It had nothing to do with her.

She avoided thinking about her earring.

She’d just take the cup and the jacket by his apartment on her way to the lake. That way he wouldn’t have any reason to contact her.

After making sure her apartment was secure, the coffeepot was turned off and the timer was set to turn the lights on at dusk, Dana grabbed her travel bag and Cody’s stuff and let herself out.

AFTER CODY HAD SATISFIED himself that he’d checked everything, he positioned his car at the corner of Dana’s street, where he could see her front door, but she’d have a hard time seeing him, then he dialed Dev’s cell phone.

“Dev, where y’at?”

“Trying to keep your sorry butt out of trouble, as usual. The captain’s hot. I convinced him to let you alone last night, but you’ve got to make a statement.”

“I know,” Cody acknowledged. “I’ll be there in about an hour. Just as soon as Dana leaves for work. I want to be sure she’s not followed.”

“Code, my man, this little booby trap here at your place is pretty slick.”

“I’ve been trying to tell you guys that Fontenot’s a freaking genius. What’d you find?”

“What you’d expect. Nothing. It’s a common .38 special. A street piece, no ID. We can run it through, but ten to one its pattern won’t be in our files.”

Cody shook his head. “Yeah, I know. And there are no fingerprints, and the cord was from my kitchen drawer.”

“You got it, my man.”

Cody flexed his shoulder and groaned. “Look, Dev, I’m headed to the doctor as soon as I make sure Dana gets to work okay. Then I’ll be on over. See if I can spot anything you guys missed.”

He held the phone away from his ear and grinned as Dev let loose with a string of colorful Cajun expletives that described in vivid detail what he thought about Cody finding anything he’d missed.

“Yeah, right. See you later.”

“Hey, buddy. The captain’s got a place on his wall where he’s planning to hang what’s left of your ass after he chews it. I’d get over here sooner, rather than later.”

“On my way.” Cody cut the connection, and briefly debated the advisability of taking the time to run to the doctor. His damn shoulder was throbbing like hell, and Dana was right, he probably did need stitches. He checked his watch. If Dana hadn’t changed her habits, she’d be leaving for work in a few minutes. And he had to get to his apartment before the captain had a stroke.

He knew Fontenot was no fool. He wouldn’t be within ten miles of Dana’s apartment this morning, and he sure wouldn’t go back to Cody’s. He wouldn’t take the risk of being caught at the scene of the crime.

Still, Cody didn’t like the idea of Dana going anywhere without protection, even work. He picked up his cell phone again, to call and arrange for someone to keep an eye on her, when the door to her house opened.

Dana came out, a bundle of something in one arm and her purse and a travel bag slung over her other shoulder. What was she doing? It was obvious she wasn’t going to work.

She hurried down the steps toward her car.

For an instant, Cody thought about waylaying her, but he decided he’d just follow her. She must have decided to go to her sister’s after all. He’d just make sure she made it out of town safely, then he could get over to his apartment and see if there was anything he could spot that would connect Fontenot with his shooting.

As he shifted in the car seat, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt his shoulder, he studied his ex-wife. She hadn’t combed her hair or changed out of the faded jeans that hugged her shapely bottom so nicely. He squinted in the early morning sun. The bundle she carried was his leather jacket.

Cody raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten his jacket, but his mind had been on other things. He wondered what she was going to do with it. His mouth quirked in a mocking smile. Probably taking it to the cleaners. That would be just like her.

On her way out of town under threat from a dangerous criminal, Dana Charles Maxwell stopped at the cleaners to leave her ex-husband’s leather jacket to have the bloodstains removed.

He pulled out behind her, keeping a safe distance so she wouldn’t spot him, and at the same time watching to be sure nobody else was following either of them.

DANA PARKED IN FRONT of Cody’s Rue Royal apartment, trying her best not to feel nostalgic. They’d lived here together for the two years they’d been married. As she dashed up the stairs, she wondered why he’d kept it, after she moved out. Of course, he’d always loved the old place. She had too, back then.

Early on, she’d rushed home every evening, anticipation quickening her heart, knowing Cody would be there soon, knowing the evening would end in tender, urgent lovemaking.

But after he’d been shot the first time, the anticipation began to turn to apprehension. Reality washed with the color of Cody’s blood, slammed her in the face. Cody’s job would always be like the ultimate cops-and-robbers game to him. As she’d watched him take more and more chances, she’d accepted that one day he would end up dead.

So she’d begun to withdraw, and eventually, the thrill of being with him, the love they’d shared wasn’t enough to make up for the old, familiar fear that gnawed inside her every time he was late, or the phone rang at odd hours of the night. She knew how awful the silence of an endless night of waiting could be. Would she have married him if she’d known she was letting herself in for a replay of her early life, waiting for her father to come home?

As she got to the third floor, she saw the yellow Police Line tape across Cody’s door and the uniformed officers milling around.

Her heart slammed into her throat, and her knees buckled. She had to grab the stair rail to keep from falling.

“Oh, no!” she breathed. Cody!

The man crouched in front of the door looked up. It was Dev, Devereaux Gautier, Cody’s best friend and partner. His trademark scowl darkened his even features.

When he recognized her, the scowl deepened, and his black eyes flashed dangerously, then he stood and smiled, his white teeth shining behind the dark beard that shadowed his lean cheeks. “Dana! What are you doing here?” he said, his voice infused with false cheer. He walked toward her casually, but Dana wasn’t fooled. Dev was trying to shield the scene with his body.

She grabbed his muscular arm. “Dev? What is it? What’s happened? Where’s Cody?”

He didn’t answer, just put his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her away from the door. The grimness behind his false smile sent terror streaking through her.

“Dev, answer me! Is it Cody? Is he…dead?” Dana stared up into Dev’s black eyes, praying he wouldn’t say what she was deathly afraid of hearing, praying that Cody wasn’t lying inside that police barricade dead. He’d been in her apartment less than an hour ago.

“Cody’s okay. He’s been shot, but you know the tough guy, there ain’t no bullet that can bring him down. Bullets, they bounce off him.” Dev tossed his head. His longer-than-regulation black hair immediately settled down on his forehead again.

“Shot? You mean again?” Dana clutched Cody’s jacket in her fists, willing herself to be calm, not to care, but her heart didn’t listen. It beat so hard and fast it was painful to breathe.

Dev cocked his head and looked down at her. “So he told you about the booby trap? That surprises me.”

“Booby trap? What booby trap?” Dana scooted past Dev and looked in the door of the apartment. What she saw there stole the last dregs of her sanity. “Oh, my God…”

Right inside the front door was a chair with a revolver tied to its ladder-back. The cord coiled around the hammer and down to the trigger. More cord hung limply between the open door and the gun. Even more tangled piles of cord coiled around the chair legs. Dana looked down at the floor. Several black spots marred the wood finish. Cody’s blood.

Dev put his arm loosely around her shoulders. “Gruesome, eh?” he remarked, indicating the booby trap with his expressive hands. “He must have pushed the door open and felt the resistance, then thrown himself sideways.”

Dana looked at the intricate setup, and knew the terror Cody must have known when he opened the door and realized he’d stepped into a booby trap.

“Too slow,” she whispered in shock, looking back at the drops of blood on the floor. She could see it in her mind’s eye as if it were happening right in front of her in slow motion—the bullet traveling through the air, tearing into his arm, then bursting out through the skin on the other side. She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth.

“You got that right,” Dev said, shaking his head. “The tough guy should have beat that bullet, I guarantee. Must have had something on his mind.”

“Something on his mind,” she repeated, and a hollow laugh escaped her lips.

Dev looked at her strangely.

Her earring. “He was thinking about me.” That was why his reflexes had been too slow to dodge the bullet. Her stomach heaved alarmingly and she grabbed at Dev as she swayed.

“Dana? Here, why don’t you sit yourself down.” Dev gently tried to push her down to the floor.

“No,” she said, licking dry lips. “I don’t want to sit down. I knew Cody was shot. He came to my apartment last night. But he didn’t tell me about the booby trap.”

“So he’s on his way over here?”

Dana shook her head, staring at the gun barrel. “I don’t know. He didn’t say where he was going.” The black hole from which the bullet had emerged looked bottomless. She turned around slowly.

“Dana? You okay?”

“Cody said he heard the bullet hit the wall behind him,” she muttered. Sure enough, imbedded in the wall was a bloodstained bullet. Dana’s legs almost gave way again. She leaned on Dev.

“Olsen, get over here,” Dev yelled. He nodded toward the wall. “There’s your bullet,” he said coldly.

The other officer turned pink, then took his knife and dug into the wall.

Dev turned his attention back to Dana. “You and Cody spent the night together?” His black eyes held amusement and affection.





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