All A Man Can Ask

“Virginia Kantra never ceases to amaze me. All a Man Can Ask really packs a wallop, combining heart-pounding excitement, heartwarming emotion and heart-stopping sexual tension. Alex is a potent and charming hero, and Faye is a heroine you’ll be rooting for. A fabulously fun and deliciously sexy read. I loved it.”

—USA TODAY bestselling author Elizabeth Bevarly

But he did exactly as he had warned, giving her time to change her mind, giving her a chance to pull away. One hand slid to circle her throat. The other traced her ribs, skimmed her back.

Her pulse went wild under his rough fingers. Keeping his eyes on hers, he lowered his head, blotting out the lake and the night behind her. She felt the slow rise of heat, from him, in her.

And he stopped, a breath from her lips.

“I’m giving you a choice, Detective.” Her mouth curved. “Kiss me or die….”

Dear Reader,

A new year has begun, so why not celebrate with six exciting new titles from Silhouette Intimate Moments? What a Man’s Gotta Do is the newest from Karen Templeton, reuniting the one-time good girl, now a single mom, with the former bad boy who always made her heart pound, even though he never once sent a smile her way. Until now.

Kylie Brant introduces THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Alias Smith and Jones, an exciting novel about two people hiding everything about themselves—except the way they feel about each other. There’s still TROUBLE IN EDEN in Virginia Kantra’s All a Man Can Ask, in which an undercover assignment leads (predictably) to danger and (unpredictably) to love. By now you know that the WINGMEN WARRIORS flash means you’re about to experience top-notch military romance, courtesy of Catherine Mann. Under Siege, a marriage-of-inconvenience tale, won’t disappoint. Who wouldn’t like A Kiss in the Dark from a handsome hero? So run—don’t walk—to pick up the book of the same name by rising star Jenna Mills. Finally, enjoy the winter chill—and the cozy cuddling that drives it away—in Northern Exposure, by Debra Lee Brown, who sends her heroine to Alaska to find love.

And, of course, we’ll be back next month with six more of the best and most exciting romances around, so be sure not to miss a single one.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

All a Man Can Ask

Virginia Kantra

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VIRGINIA KANTRA

credits her enthusiasm for strong heroes and courageous heroines to a childhood spent devouring fairy tales. A three-time Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist, she has won numerous writing awards, including the Golden Heart, Maggie Award, Holt Medallion and Romantic Times W.I.S.H. Hero Award.

Virginia is married to her college sweetheart, a musician disguised as the owner of a coffeehouse. They live in Raleigh, North Carolina, with three teenagers, two cats, a dog and various blue-tailed lizards that live under the siding of their home. Her favorite thing to make for dinner? Reservations.

She loves to hear from readers. You can reach her at VirginiaKantra@aol.com or c/o Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017.

To Michael, with all my heart.

Special thanks to former police officer

and fellow writer Lynda Sandoval Cooper,

to Lieutenant Joseph T. FitzSimmons,

and to artist and friend Kristin Dill.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

He was back.

Faye Harper froze, her paintbrush poised over the wet paper. Heart thumping, she stared through the glass sliding doors toward the lake. The bright blue sky was wide and empty, the water dark and still. Soft greens and deep ochers defined the shore. The only signs of life were the dragonflies dueling in the air and the ducks squabbling around the weathered dock.

And the man in the navy windbreaker trespassing on her patchy strip of lawn.

Faye was almost sure it was the same man she’d spotted yesterday. And the day before. Dark-haired and broad-shouldered, too old to be a student and too neat to be a vagrant. But something about him—the set of his head or the tense line of his back or the coiled energy of that long, wiry body—pushed all her warning buttons and raised the fine hair on the back of her neck.

A blob of ultramarine dripped off her brush and onto the wet paper. Faye hissed and grabbed a sponge to dab at the spreading blot. By the time she lifted the color and looked out her window again, the man was gone.

She inhaled slowly. Good. She’d fled to Eden to rest and to paint. She didn’t need some tall, dark intruder disturbing her shaky peace.

Involuntarily she flexed her right wrist, testing for soreness. The fracture was healed. The cast had been cut off a week ago. But some hurts could not be bandaged over.

Seventeen-year-old Jamal’s frustrated face flashed through her mind. You can’t help me. Can’t nobody help me. The memory tightened her chest.

She drew another deep breath. Jamal was right, she told herself. She had only made things worse. She knew better now.

She narrowed her focus to her painting, tipping the board so the colors flowed down the paper, lightly working water into the still-damp wash to turn the blot into a cloud. When she was almost satisfied, she glanced over at the sky.

And saw that man again, down by the dock.

Misgiving spread through her. She really, really did not want to get involved in confrontations. In explanations. But this was her aunt’s land. This was Faye’s vacation. She couldn’t risk either one being ruined by the actions of a stranger.

What was he up to now?

She snatched her camera off the sofa table. Sidling to the glass doors, she fumbled with the zoom until she had the trespasser in her sights. He was prowling the muddy bank above the bushes with that long-legged stride she was beginning to recognize. She couldn’t see his face. He was turned toward the lake, where a breeze broke the flat surface with shards of gold. She glanced across the water to the luxury homes on the far shore.

And then he pivoted toward the cottage, and she identified the glint of binoculars.

Okay. That was it. The final insult. The last straw.

Maybe Faye hated confrontation, but she wasn’t standing around—literally—while some pervert peeped through her windows.

Her pulse racing, she set down the camera, picked up the phone and dialed 911.

It was a long time before the police came knocking at her door.

Faye hugged her elbows and paced Aunt Eileen’s square living room, her wet-on-wet wash drying, her concentration wrecked. She thought she heard a car approach and went to the door.

Nothing.

But when she looked out her windows again, an officer with short hair and a cowlick was crossing the grass. Even with his outline thickened by whatever it was policemen wore under their clothes, he looked young and strong. Faye was reassured.

But her intruder wasn’t frightened off. He stood with one leg slightly behind the other, his right arm down by his side, and waited for the young officer to come to him. Like a gunslinger, Faye thought.

They talked. Faye saw that, though she couldn’t hear what they said. At one point, her trespasser reached for his hip pocket, and she held her breath. The last three years had made her suspicious of any gesture that could produce a knife or a gun. But he only pulled out—well, it was hard to tell, squinting through the camera lens—but it looked like his wallet. He flipped it at the officer. They talked some more.

And then they started toward the house.

Her stomach sank. Oh, dear. She really didn’t want…

The young officer bypassed the steps that led up to the deck. The two men disappeared along the side of the house. Maybe they would just go away?

Her doorbell rang. No.

Faye brushed her skirt with trembling fingers and went to open the door.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” The young officer loomed on her porch. “Would you mind stepping out for a moment?”

Well, of course she minded. But she summoned her courage and a smile from somewhere and unlocked the screen door. Cautiously she edged out onto the porch. Her gaze slid sideways to her intruder.

Everything about him looked hard—hard face, hard body, hard, dark eyes. She shivered. She knew she made an unimpressive adversary, five-foot-two and twenty-five, with a little girl’s short haircut and an old lady’s flowered skirt.

Officer Cowlick cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I have to ask. Do you know this man?”

She looked away, snapped from the hold of those bold dark eyes by a welcome jolt of outrage. “Is that what he told you?”

“He said that you’d seen each other.”

Faye crossed her arms against her negligible chest. Indignation warmed her voice. “And I suppose if he told you those binoculars were for bird-watching, you’d believe that, too.”

Her trespasser grinned.

The officer frowned. “No, ma’am. But I did check his ID. His driver’s license lists him as Alec—Alex—”

“Aleksy,” the intruder said.

“Denko,” the officer snapped.

She was confused. “I don’t know any Denkos.”

“He does.” Denko’s voice was deep and confident. His eyes were wickedly amused. “Jarek Denko is the chief of police in this town.”

She arched her eyebrows. “And who are you? His long lost cousin?”

He looked at her with a faint, surprised respect. “His brother.”

She didn’t want his respect. She wanted him gone. She appealed to the officer. “I don’t care who his brother is. I want him off my property.”

“Yes, ma’am. What I need to know is, will you be filing a formal complaint? Because—”

“Oh, dear God.” She saw it now, as Denko swiveled to face the officer. A faint bulge at his back, covered by his jacket. “He has a gun.”

The officer pivoted.

“Easy.” Denko stepped back, palms up and wide. “It’s in the belt clip at my back. I’ll let you pat me down, but I don’t want you getting excited and grabbing for the gun.”

He turned around slowly, his hands still in the air. The officer leaned in and slid the gun from its holster before ducking away.

“Just a suggestion,” Denko said over his shoulder. “Next time you might want to do the search before you bring a possible suspect up the complainant’s porch steps.”

The officer flushed dull red. “I’ll have to detain you, sir. Please put your hands behind your back.”

Faye’s heart thumped with alarm.

But Denko only shrugged and held his wrists behind him. The officer snapped on the cuffs and tightened them.

Faye did not want to get involved. She really didn’t. But some residual sense of responsibility forced her to ask, “Don’t you have to, um, read him his rights or something?”

The officer slipped his fingertip out of the cuffs and took another step back. “He’s not under arrest, ma’am.”

“Then, why—”

“Only sworn law enforcement officers can carry concealed in Illinois,” the officer said tightly.

“You’ve been watching too much TV, cream puff,” Denko told her. “You don’t have to Mirandize until you’re going to question somebody. Usually at the station.”

Faye goggled. Cream puff? What was with this guy? He was apprehended, disarmed and in handcuffs and yet somehow he wasn’t subdued at all. A small part of her almost envied him.

The officer with the cowlick frowned. “Hey, are you on the—”

“At the station,” Denko repeated. “I can fill you in there.”

The two men exchanged glances. Faye felt more out of her depth than ever. “Yeah, okay,” the officer said.

“Don’t you need me to make a statement?” Faye asked.

The officer shifted his gaze to her. “We’ll be in touch.”

She watched him steer his prisoner toward the black-and-white cruiser. He’d parked on the side of the porch, under cover of Aunt Eileen’s rhododendrons. Denko stood quietly while the officer opened the car door and put one hand on top of his head to guide him into the back seat.

Faye began to shake. We’ll be in touch.

Apprehension formed a knot in her stomach. She could hardly wait.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Police chief Jarek Denko’s voice was quiet and cold as a night in January. “This is my town. It’s not your personal sandbox that you can come make a mess in when you’re tired of stinking up Chicago.”

Aleksy Denko clamped his jaw. He knew he was out of line, damn it. But he didn’t allow anybody to talk to him that way. Not even his big brother.

“I was on a case,” he said.

Jarek narrowed his eyes. “A case you didn’t choose to explain to my patrol officer. A case you didn’t bother to run by me. Damn it, Alex, you know the rules of jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly acting officially,” Aleksy muttered. “I thought it was better if you didn’t know.”

“Let me get this straight. You kept me in the dark to protect me?”

Jarek sounded as if he couldn’t believe it. Hell, Aleksy didn’t believe it himself. Before his brother gave up the streets to play Andy Griffith in Eden, Jarek Denko—the Ice Man—had been a legend among the homicide cops of Chicago’s Area 3.

“You want to tell me what this is all about?” Jarek invited quietly.

Aleksy sighed and dropped into the chair facing the chief’s desk. “You know about the shootout on the west side, five, six weeks ago?”

“I read about it in the paper. One officer down, I remember.”

Aleksy remembered, too. He choked off the fresh wave of anger and guilt that rose with the memory. “Yeah, well, what wasn’t in the paper was that it was a joint op. Some scum is running guns from Atlanta through Chicago to Canada. The Toronto police want him. The FBI wants him. The ATF wants him. And we got him. Set up a nice little sting to net the whole operation. Only everybody’s tangoing so hard that somebody missteps. The scum figures it’s a setup and gets away. We’re left with nothing but a couple of mopes who aren’t talking and one dead detective.”

“How do you come into it? Was it your operation?”

“I don’t like it when one of our own goes down. Maybe after the shooting, I pushed a little too hard on the investigation.”

“No ‘maybe’ about it,” Jarek murmured.

Aleksy grinned sharply. “Anyway, some fed got his toes stepped on and pushed back. Next thing I know, my boss is calling me into his office telling me I need an extended vacation.”

“Here in Eden?” Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Not exactly Cancún, little brother.”

“Could be I figured you needed some help planning your wedding.”

A month or so back, Jarek had gotten himself engaged to a local babe. A reporter, Tess DeLucca. Aleksy had had some doubts about the match, but his brother seemed happy, and the wedding was set for September.

Jarek shook his head. “Which still doesn’t explain what you were doing on Eileen Harper’s dock with binoculars and a gun.”

“The detective who was killed…” Aleksy hesitated and then shrugged. He had to give Jarek something, or he wouldn’t get his gun back. “I knew her. Karen Vasquez.”

Jarek straightened behind his big metal desk. “Your partner?”

“Former partner,” Aleksy corrected. “We stopped working together nine months ago. Before your move. Remember?”

“That’s right. She put in for a transfer.”

“Yeah.”

“For personal reasons.”

Aleksy tried not to squirm. “Yeah.”

“How personal, hotshot?”

“Look, we were close. We got closer. Her idea, my mistake. Okay?”

“Not okay, if she couldn’t work with you afterward,” Jarek stated.

“I told you, it was a mistake. Anyway, she got reassigned. Coming from Area 3 she got handed this big case. Gunrunning across the border. She was excited. Called me up to tell me about it.”

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

“She thought I might have an interest.”

“And what would that be? Aside from letting you know she was moving on to bigger and better things?”

“She said something about my brother finding himself in the middle of things. So when she—” Died. Hell. “Anyway, afterward, I figured that was a lead up here.”

“But why—” Jarek’s eyes narrowed as he answered his own question. “Richard Freer. Liberty Guns and Ammo. His place is opposite the Harper dock.”

Aleksy nodded. “I tried to rent the cottage but the owner had already promised it to her niece.”

The big-eyed pixie in the flowered skirt who had called the cops.

Jarek tapped a pencil against his desk. “Okay. I’ll give you that Dick Freer is a pompous son of a bitch. But as far as I know, he’s legit. And he’s got a lot of pull in this community. Hell, he was on the search committee that hired me.”

“Whoever our gunrunner is, he’s got good cover. Or the feds would have caught him by now.”

“And what makes you think you can succeed where they’ve failed?”

“I have to,” Aleksy said.

Jarek’s gaze sharpened. His voice softened. “It’s not your job. It’s not your case. You need to stay out of it.”

“I can’t.”

“Alex—”

But Aleksy cut him off. He appreciated his brother’s concern, but he didn’t need it. He didn’t want it. Some things were too painful to get into, and way too personal to share. “Are you going to stop me?”

His brother hesitated. “I can’t let my department get mixed up in your personal vendetta.”

“I know that. That’s why I didn’t spill the details to what’s his name. Larsen. I just need you to leave me alone.”

“That’s it?”

“Well…you could give me my gun back.”

Jarek opened a drawer in his desk and hefted Aleksy’s snub-nose Smith and Wesson .38. “You carrying the ‘chief’s special’ now?”

“You always did.”

Jarek peered along the blue steel barrel. “Yeah, but yours is longer than mine.”

“Barrel envy, big brother?”

Jarek’s teeth glinted in a smile. “Yeah. What is yours, three inches?”

Aleksy laughed. “At least mine feels like a real gun instead of a kiddie toy.”

Jarek raised his eyebrows, but he laid the gun flat on his desk without comment.

Aleksy slid it into the clip at his back. Some cops liked an ankle holster off duty, but he’d never been able to stand walking with one. “Thanks.”

“You need a place to stay?”

Aleksy dropped his jacket over the gun to hide it. “No, I’m good. We’re only an hour or so out of Chicago. I can get home occasionally to shower and change. Besides, the fewer people who associate you with me—or me with the police—the better.”

“As long as you understand I expect to be apprised of your activity while you’re in my jurisdiction.”

Aleksy nodded to show he’d received the warning. “Understood.”

“And, Alex…yell for help if you need it.”

Aleksy grinned at his big brother. “Haven’t I always?”

“Not always,” Jarek said. “You let Tommy Dolan whip your butt in fifth grade.”

Aleksy shrugged. “Fine. You want to help?” He did a mental playback of Faye Harper’s wide eyes and unexpected spunk. “Fix things with the cream puff.”

“—can only apologize and hope you’re willing to forget about the matter,” the police chief’s cool, smooth voice said over the telephone line.

Faye’s hand tightened on the receiver. He was talking down to her. A lot of people talked down to her. Too bad for the Denkos she was getting tired of it. “Most women would have difficulty forgetting an armed intruder.”

The police chief coughed. “Actually, unless you previously communicated your desire for him to leave the property—if the yard were fenced, for example, or if signs were posted—he wouldn’t be guilty of criminal trespass. Of course, I understand your—”

“He had a gun,” Faye said.

The line was still for a moment. “A gun he was legally authorized to carry.”

She knew it was futile to argue. But still. “Your officer said only sworn law enforcement officers could carry concealed firearms.”

“Yes,” the chief said, adding very gently, “My brother Alex is a detective with the Chicago PD.”

The fight leaked out of Faye like air from a pricked balloon. What was the point of protesting? What was right was never as important as what was expedient. She should have learned that by now.

But the mocking memory of her trespasser’s hard, dark eyes dared her to say, “And what was a detective from Chicago doing on my dock?”

Another pause. “I can’t say.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

Jarek Denko was silent.

Don’t get involved, Faye told herself. You don’t want to know. She tucked the receiver under her jaw and used her left hand to massage her right wrist. Without the support of the cast, it ached when she used it too long.

“Never mind,” she said. “I won’t press charges or—or whatever it is. I don’t have time, anyway. I’m here to work.”

“Really?” the chief asked politely. Well, now that he had what he wanted—her cooperation—she supposed he felt compelled to be polite. “What kind of work do you do, Miss Harper?”

Once she would have told him with pride that she was a teacher. Now she stammered. “I, um…not work, exactly. I should have said I paint.”

“Lots of pretty scenery up here,” the chief said, still politely.

She made an agreeable noise—it seemed the fastest way to get him to leave her alone—and hoped he wouldn’t start to tell her what views she ought to paint while she was here or about his aunt/sister/cousin who used to model clay/draw her own Christmas cards/do decoupage.

He didn’t. He thanked her again formally and got off the line.

Faye drew a shaky breath and looked around her aunt’s living room, now serving as her temporary studio. Brushes stood in mayonnaise jars. Paint dried in plastic trays. Photographs—a bright sailboat slicing the horizon, a flock of birds above an inlet, a skyscape at midday—spilled across the table. The metallic strip board she’d hauled from her Chicago apartment propped against one wall, her most recent work held in place with small round magnets.

I paint.

Beautiful scenes. Bright scenes. Safe scenes.

She bit her lip, aware of a faint dissatisfaction. Maybe they did lack a little of the energy and edge that characterized her earlier work, but they were pretty. Soothing.

Lame, Jamal would have said, with a shake of his head and his wide, white grin…

The tight control she’d held over her thoughts fissured, and through the gap, bitter self-accusation swept in a flood. Don’t go there, she told herself. Do not. Go there. Don’t.

She picked up one of the trays and headed to the kitchen to rinse out the old paints in the sink. She was scrubbing burnt umber from the palette’s crevice when the doorbell rang.

Her heart began to thump. She turned off the water. She wasn’t expecting visitors. She didn’t know anyone in town, not really, and while she had left a forwarding address at the school, no one in Chicago cared where she’d gone. Mail delivery came around three and her aunt’s cottage was too far off the beaten path to attract many salesmen.