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How could one man feel so safe?

Her breathing calmed, her pulse no longer thundered in her ears. But she wasn’t budging. For the first time in two days, Brooke felt normal again. She wasn’t afraid. She was just…a woman.

He was hard in the places she was soft – muscled through the chest and arms, growing leaner down to his waist.

Then Atticus leaned back, easing some space between them. He stroked her jaw with the backs of his fingers. “Better?”

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Atticus Kincaid – A by-the-book cop obsessed with finding the truth about his father’s murder. But after Brooke Hansford is targeted by a sicko secret admirer, Atticus throws the rule book out the window – and starts protecting more than just his investigation.

Brooke Hansford – A shy plain-Jane who may hold the key to several murders. If only she knew what that key was and where it was hidden. As events in her life grow stranger and more dangerous, will she transform herself into an assertive, confident she-warrior who can meet the threats head on?

Penny and Louise Hansford – The aunts who raised Brooke.

Tony Fierro – The handyman.

Mirza Patel – A friend from assertiveness training class.

Kevin Grove – Homicide detective.

William Caldwell – A Kincaid family friend who may be next on a mysterious hit list.

Leo Hansford – The father Brooke never knew. He gave his life and his heart for his country.

Deputy Commissioner John Kincaid – His unsolved murder haunts his four sons.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Miller attributes her passion for writing romance to all those fairy tales she read growing up, and shyness. Encouragement from her family to write down all those feelings she couldn’t express became a love for the written word. She gets continued support from her fellow members of the Prairieland Romance Writers, where she serves as the resident “grammar goddess.” This award-winning author and teacher has published several paranormal romances. Inspired by the likes of Agatha Christie and Encyclopedia Brown, Ms Miller believes the only thing better than a good mystery is a good romance.

Born and raised in Missouri, she now lives in Nebraska with her husband, son and smiling guard dog, Maxie. Write to Julie at PO Box 5162, Grand Island, NE 68802-5162, USA.

Armed and Devastating

JULIE MILLER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgements

For Ryne Scott Miller. Congratulations on your graduation. You’ve had a stellar career in so many ways, and have a great future ahead of you. You’re funny. You have great friends. And you’re a nice guy, to boot. I’m proud of all your accomplishments in music and science and Scouts and more. But mostly, I’m just proud of the fine man you are. I love you more than you may ever know. Mushy enough for you?

Mom

Thanks to Polly Revare and her family for inviting us to stay in their gorgeous remodelled church home.

Chapter One

April…

“And I shall hear, tho’ soft you tread above me…”

Detective Atticus Kincaid pushed his white handkerchief into his mother’s icy hand and wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders.

Susan Kincaid was holding up like a rock through her husband’s funeral service and burial ceremony, but Atticus could sense a brittleness to her stoic composure. And even through the raincoat she wore, he felt a chill that he suspected had as much to do with the shock and emptiness inside as it did with the rain beating down on the green awning over their heads and misting the air around them.

“Your father loved this song,” she whispered, scarcely loud enough for him to hear. She wrung the handkerchief between her fingers, catching Atticus’s hand and holding on tight. “Holden sounds so much like him when he sings it.”

“He sure does,” Atticus agreed, sitting ramrod-straight and allowing his mother to take whatever strength she needed from him. Dutifully, he turned his attention back to his younger brother, who stood beside their father’s flag-draped casket, singing Deputy Commissioner John Kincaid’s favorite song.

“…sleep in peace until you come to me.”

Damned ironic. His father was a good cop. A great man. The best father any four sons could ask for. There was nothing peaceful about the idea of some unknown perps kidnapping and torturing him, and then shooting him at point-blank range. How could John Kincaid rest in peace when his killer was out there somewhere, not giving a damn about the pain he was causing this family? Maybe even gloating at the huge hole John Kincaid’s death left in the ranks of the Kansas City Police Department?

Was the motive personal? Professional?

Why were the clues collected from the crime scene so sketchy? Why were there no suspects in custody? Why the hell didn’t homicide already have a man behind bars for this travesty?

Atticus’s skin crawled with the need to find answers.

But for right now, he’d sit here amongst the gathering of family, friends and fellow cops, and pretend he had everything under control—for his mother’s sake.

Holden finished the song, placed his KCPD hat back on his head and raised a white-gloved hand to salute their father. Atticus pressed his own hand over the Kansas City Police Department badge clipped to the pocket of his dark-blue dress uniform, feeling the black mourning ribbon beneath his palm like the slash of a knife straight through the heart that lay beneath. But a hand over his heart was the only outward sign of grief he allowed himself to show.

He heard a noisy sniffle behind his right shoulder and glanced up to see his father’s administrative assistant, Brooke Hansford, wiping away the tears beneath her thick, owl-like glasses. Brooke had been his father’s organizational and technological savior at work. And though he’d always figured she was about his age—thirty—she looked young and fragile and completely vulnerable with her pale cheeks and red-tipped nose.

Lacking a second handkerchief to give her, Atticus waited until her puffy gaze met his and he offered her a wink. Brooke responded with a hasty smile and a loud sniff before ducking her head to dig into her oversize purse—for a tissue, no doubt.

Yeah. The bastard who’d killed John Kincaid had robbed a lot of good people of someone they loved.

The minister was saying a last few words, but checking on Brooke had already diverted Atticus’s attention to the other mourners surrounding them. He spotted his older brother, Sawyer, standing hatless in the rain, his anger and grief evident in the grim expression on a face that was normally creased with a smile. He was shifting from foot to foot, restlessly scanning the crowd as he listened to the graying man standing beside him. Though a black umbrella obscured part of his face, William Caldwell, one of their father’s oldest friends, was easily recognized by the expensive tailoring of his suit and coat and the gold fraternity ring that matched the one his father had been buried with.

A lot of people were hurting today.

Atticus absorbed each flinch of his mother’s hand as the honor guard sounded off their twenty-one-gun salute. But he barely heard the explosive pops himself as he swung his gaze around to find one more family member.

It wasn’t until his mother clasped the folded flag to her chest and he stood beside her that Atticus finally located his oldest brother, Edward, standing beneath a canopy of pine boughs and budding ash branches, some thirty yards from the main group. Edward seemed to be leaning heavily on his cane, but his chin was held high, and he looked a hell of a lot more put together than the last time Atticus had seen him.

Susan Kincaid squeezed Atticus’s arm. She’d seen her oldest child, too. “Go talk to him, will you, son? I don’t want Edward to think he’s all alone at a time like this.”

Edward had chosen to be alone for months now, but today wasn’t the day to point out that fact. “Yes, ma’am.” He nodded to Holden to take his place at their mother’s side. “Holden?”

“I’ll stick with her.” Holden drew her hand into the crook of his arm.

“You did a beautiful job, sweetie.” As Susan stretched up to kiss her youngest son’s cheek, Atticus pulled down the brim of his KCPD hat and picked up an umbrella to do her bidding.

He wasted no time cutting straight across the sloping hill. Edward might have become a pro at hiding out in a shadowy house or the bottom of a bottle, but no way could he outrun his determined brother. The master detective’s shield Edward had locked away might outrank Atticus’s own detective’s badge, but as far as he was concerned, their mom outranked them all. And if she wanted someone to bring Edward back into the family fold, then, by damn, Atticus was going to do it.

Edward’s gray eyes, one of the few things they seemed to have in common these days, scowled at Atticus’s outstretched hand.

But stubbornness was another shared trait. “Don’t tell me you don’t recognize what this means, Edward. It’s good to see you.”

His oldest brother seemed to need time to process what the gesture of man-to-man friendship might cost him. But then perhaps he remembered which brother could go the longest before saying “uncle” in one of their childhood backyard pile-on tussling matches. Atticus was relieved to feel the firmness of Edward’s grip when he finally reached out to shake his hand. “Don’t you dare try to hug me.”

Atticus’s mouth curved with half a laugh. He shifted to stand beside his brother and watch the distant pomp and grieving from his lonely perspective. Maybe the silence should have been awkward. But Edward had never been much of a talker. The soft patter of the rain on the overhanging branches was a soothing sound in the quiet, and the deep scent of the wet pine surrounding them reminded Atticus of saner, happier times when their father had taken the boys camping and fishing on weekend trips.

But the sweet memories of all they had lost began to curdle in Atticus’s stomach, and the solace of the moment passed. Since Edward hadn’t yet bolted for cover, Atticus carried out their mother’s request. “You should come say hi to Mom. She knows you’re here, but it’d mean a hell of a lot to her if you made the effort to touch base.” He glanced over at Edward, who rested both hands on the grip of his cane now. “She’s hurting. We all are.”

“I don’t hurt anymore.” The words rolled out with a dark note of finality. Maybe he’d been in pain for so long that he was done feeling anything. Was it respect alone that had made him get out of bed and trim his beard and get here this afternoon? Edward tilted his thick walnut cane and pointed toward the green awning. “But this pisses me off.”

So big brother felt something, after all.

There was more silence as the crowd began to disperse, opening umbrellas and turning up collars as they walked down the hill to the cars lining the road that twisted through Mount Washington Cemetery. Finally, Edward pulled back his shoulders and turned to Atticus with a gut-deep sigh. “I’m sure Mom has invited people over to the house, but I can’t do the small-talk thing. Just give her my love.”

“Give it to her yourself. Let me get Sawyer and Holden on this. We’ll keep everyone away and you can have a private moment with her before she leaves Mount Washington.”

Edward thought hard about the offer, then nodded.

“You know, Ed, if you ever need anything—”

“Don’t go there.” A muscle ticked beneath the scar slashing along Edward’s jaw. “I’ll meet you by her car in ten minutes.” He limped away from the crowd, pausing at the far edge of the copse of trees. He never turned back around. “Thanks, A. It’s good to see you, too.”

The gruff admission may have been the truest comfort Atticus had had since learning of their father’s murder several days earlier. But the reprieve was over. With the hardest part of his mission accomplished, Atticus easily spotted Sawyer, standing a head taller than anyone else in the crowd, and went to make the arrangements for the meeting.

He was on track to find Holden and their mother when a smooth feminine voice purred behind him. “Atticus.” Familiar white-tipped nails clutched the sleeve of his jacket, stopping him. Atticus braced as a blond-haired woman lowered her umbrella and stepped into view. Every silvery-gold strand was perfectly placed around her striking features, every word was carefully chosen. “I’m so sorry this had to happen to you—to your family.”

“Hayley.” He couldn’t help but check to see if her cameraman was trailing behind her. Despite the male escort he didn’t recognize standing back at a polite distance, she appeared to be unplugged. Say something nice. After all, those could be tears, not raindrops glistening on her cheeks. “Thanks for coming.”

“Your father was a valuable asset to the police department. He was always good about keeping the lines of communication open with the press. He raised four wonderful sons, as well. I admired him.” The nails dug in as Hayley Resnick tipped her lips up to kiss him.

Uh-uh. He couldn’t do this. Not today of all damn days. Atticus turned his head, and after the briefest of pauses, she settled for pressing a kiss to his cheek. “How’s your mother doing?”

Atticus resisted the impulse to bolt when she released him to open her umbrella again. He didn’t want the woman he’d once bought an engagement ring for to think she could still trigger that kind of emotional response in him. He’d confused her desire for an urbane escort, a willing lover—and an inside source for KCPD information—with love. He wouldn’t make that same mistake again. He could play the same pretend-I-give-a-damn game if she could. “Mom’s holding her own. Exhausted. Not eating like she should. About as well as can be expected.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Will there be a gathering at the house? I’d like to pay my respects—”

“No,” he lied. Too quickly.Keep your cool, Kincaid. “Just the immediate family and a few close friends from work. Like I said, Mom’s pretty worn out.”

His family’s grief was a private thing. He’d learned the hard way that Hayley wasn’t above using pillow talk to ferret out a story and further her career. She’d never quoted him directly, hadn’t legally broken the boundaries between free speech and police security, but there wasn’t an offhand comment that she couldn’t turn into a lead if she sensed there was a story to be had. Atticus needed to end this conversation before the reporter in her picked up on some nuance of intonation, and she detected just how close to the surface his pain and frustrations were riding.

And then he spotted the perfect excuse to walk away. Brooke Hansford, heading down to the road, slipped on the wet grass. That big hobo bag swung out, nearly dragging her to the ground before she caught herself. Wiping her wet and probably muddy hand on her coat, she glanced quickly around. Her soggy bun bounced against her neck as she checked to make sure no one had seen the gaffe. When her eyes met his, she froze for a moment. But then she pushed her glasses up on her nose, stuffed her hands into her pockets and turned away. Even at this distance, she couldn’t hide the rosy blush that stained her cheeks.

The tension eased from the clench of his jaw, due as much to Brooke’s ingenuous embarrassment as to the easy opportunity she presented. Atticus summoned the practiced smile that had carried him throughout the day. “If you’ll excuse me. I see a friend I need to catch up with. Again, thanks for coming.”

It felt good to leave with the last word for a change. Lengthening his stride, Atticus angled down the hill and quickly caught up with Brooke. He adjusted his umbrella over her head and fell into step beside her. “Need a lift to the house? Mom said you were helping with the pot luck.”

All he could see was the part in her curly, blond-brown hair as she kept her eyes glued to the path in front of her. “Um, no thanks. I have my car.”

He followed the point of her finger to the blue VW Beetle about a quarter mile down the road. “Then let me walk you there so you don’t get soaked to the skin.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Dad would have my hide if I let a lady walk that far in the rain without benefit of a hat or umbrella.” To show Brooke that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, Atticus tugged on her wrist, pulling her hand from her pocket and linking her arm through his.

Hayley had grabbed as if she still had the right. Brooke paused, looked at her mud-dappled hand where it hovered over his sleeve, and finally, with a sniffle that probably had as much to do with the mention of John Kincaid as with the chilly dampness, she lightly curled her fingers into the material and nodded. “Okay.”

Atticus was a cop as much as he was a hurting man. He’d just said his amens and put his slain father in the ground. Though he knew protocol wouldn’t allow him to work the murder investigation, something needed to be done. Besides, work was a hell of a lot easier to focus on than any grief or resentment he might feel. “What was Dad working on before he left the office last week?”

Turning the conversation to work, Brooke seemed to relax. Her hand rested more naturally on his arm and she began to talk. “Paperwork mostly. He was clearing his desk, moving from task force captain to deputy commissioner. You know—writing final reports, passing open cases on to other precincts, briefing the watch commanders. He was working on his memoirs, too. Journaling—making a record of his career highlights, I guess. He wouldn’t let me transcribe any of that—said it was personal, not police business.”

“Do you have some free time in the next few days that we could go over that stuff?”

“Sure, I’ve got the time. But homicide collected most of his files. You might have better luck talking to Detective Grove. He’s heading up the investigation. I’m not sure what I’d actually be able to access for you.”

Grove. Brooke had already provided more information on the case than he’d had a minute ago. Atticus didn’t know Kevin Grove well, other than that he’d come over from the cold case division a couple of years back and had a reputation as an experienced investigator.

Still, Atticus wasn’t ready to leave justice up to a relative stranger. “Anything might help. Are you willing to try?”

“For your dad, sure. I can’t understand why anyone would want to hurt him.”

Atticus killed the conversation with his bleak pronouncement. “He was a cop for thirty years, Brooke. The man was bound to make some enemies.”

Her grip stiffened on his sleeve and they reached the asphalt before she spoke again. “I miss your dad. The office seems so empty without his laugh or his grousing at the computer when it doesn’t do what he wants it to. John always said he just wanted to turn on the computer and have it work. He didn’t want to learn all the tricks and shortcuts, said that’s what I was for.”

Atticus ducked his head, catching a glimpse of a wistful smile before her eyes met his and widened behind her rain-spotted glasses and she glanced away. He straightened, nodded to a passing driver, and guided her across the road. “Dad always said you were his right hand at work. If he couldn’t find a file, you knew where it was. If a case had him all worked up, you let him blow off steam.”

“Your dad never yelled at me.” Brooke’s chin darted up as she defended her former boss.

Smiling at her loyalty, Atticus stopped. “What I meant was, you were always a calming influence for him.”

“I am pretty quiet.” Her chin quivered as she tried to hold his gaze, but then it dropped to the middle of his chest.

Well, hell. That wasn’t much of a condolence to say to a woman who was more like a kid sister than a coworker. He tucked a finger beneath her chin and nudged it back up, vowing to do better. “After raising four boys who ran roughshod around the house, I think Mom and Dad were both glad you came into their lives.” He swiped his thumb over the thick round lenses of her glasses, wiping away the moisture beading there. He wanted her to see the sincerity in his expression. “You were like a daughter to him.”

Her eyes were big and slightly almond-shaped. A deeper green than he remembered. They blinked rapidly to erase the sheen of tears gathering there.

Brooke squiggled her chin away from the contact and tugged ever so slightly on his arm to get them walking again. “I’d have done anything for John. He was always good to me.”

“He was a good man.”

“He was.”

They walked the rest of the way without saying a word. Atticus didn’t know if he was feeling that same calming influence his dad had always talked about, or if it was just the distance he was putting between himself and Hayley that made the fist squeezing his heart relax its grip. There was a straightforward simplicity to Brooke that was soothing on a day like this.

“Here we are,” she announced unnecessarily as they reached the dark-blue compact. She released his arm to dig through her bag for her keys. “You can go now if you want to catch up with your family. Thanks.”

“I’ll wait until you’re inside.” Atticus turned in the direction she’d nodded and spotted Sawyer, having a private word with Holden and their mother. With a yes-sir nod to Sawyer, Holden led Susan Kincaid to the black limo she’d ridden in to the service and tucked her inside. Brooke was still rummaging when Atticus turned back to her. He shifted to shield her from the rain with his body and umbrella as the search went into extra innings. “Are you one of those women who carries her life around inside her purse?”

Her chin snapped up and Atticus wondered if it was her natural shyness or just him forcing his company on her that made her so skittish this afternoon. “I like to be prepared.”

“For what? The siege of Kansas City?”

Her cheeks flushed and she quickly glanced back down to her purse. She propped one knee up like a stork and rested her bag on her thigh to get to the very bottom. “With my inheritance from my parents, my aunts and I bought a small stone church that we had gutted last fall. Now we’re remodeling the inside, shoring up the structure and modernizing the place, putting in central air—we’ve hired a contractor, of course. But it’s only partially finished inside—a bedroom for them, one for me, a bath and part of the kitchen.”

When her balance started to waver, Atticus wrapped his hand around her upper arm to steady her. “Easy.”

Her foot plopped to the ground and he released her as she kept on talking—using more words than he’d ever heard her string together at any one time. “We barely have closets and we’re living out of suitcases because there’s still so much dust from the ceiling and drywall work in the main room and the sun porch and deck they’re adding on, that I never know when things will be clean or if I can get to them, so I carry… Victory!”

The word klutzy had already come to mind by the time she fished out her ring of keys and beamed in triumph. It took another few moments to sort through all of them to find the remote and beep the lock open. There was an endearing absent-minded professor quality to Brooke that was at the far end of the spectrum of chic femininity from a polished professional like Hayley Resnick. Something about her sweet lack of artifice made him want to straighten her glasses on her nose and join the victory celebration with her.

“Allow me.” The smile that lightened Atticus’s face and mood while he opened the door for her was genuine. With a high-stress job such as his father’s, he could definitely see why he’d choose an assistant like Brooke over someone more staid, or perhaps even more experienced. She was uncomplicated. As straightforward and eager to please as she seemed awkward within her own skin. Usually quiet, as she’d said, though he might attribute her bursts of rambling to nervous energy.

And when she smiled as she had a moment ago—over something as inane as finding her keys—the words plain and frumpy seemed to disappear from Atticus’s extensive vocabulary.

“Thank you.” She tossed her bag across to the passenger seat where it landed with a thunk. She pushed the door farther open and the rain whipped inside before Atticus could adjust the umbrella. Brooke squinched up her face as the water hit her and she quickly slid behind the wheel and closed the door—leaving a good ten inches of her dark flowered skirt and khaki-green raincoat hanging out and soaking up water from the pavement.

Atticus reached for the door handle at the same time Brooke shoved it open from the inside. The steel door cracked against his knuckles, shooting a tingly flash of pain along every nerve right up his arm. “Damn.”

He shook his hand, stirring feeling back into the tips of his fingers.

“I’m sorry.”

He flexed his fingers as normal sensation quickly returned. “It’s only a minor compound fracture.”

“What?”

Her crestfallen look made him feel guilty about the joke. “Relax. It’s nothing. I’ll live.” He opened the door wide and stooped down to rescue the hem of her dress and coat.

She’d turned in her seat, her eyes following his every movement. “I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t. Sorry, that is. Not with the view he was getting. Right in front of him, stretching out for what seemed like miles and miles, was a smooth, creamy thigh. Long. Shapely. Fit.

When the hell had mousy Brooke sprouted legs like that?

Why did she hide them under long skirts and slacks?

And why the hell did he care about unflattering clothes? Or surprisingly flattering appendages?

Rationalizing the instinctive reaction to a pretty stretch of leg as the by-product of the day’s stress, Atticus pulled her dress down, covering her up to a more familiar, less distracting level.

“Atticus?” She reached out, her touch so light on his shoulder, he could barely feel the weight of it.

“I’m okay, I promise.” He tucked the wet material inside the car and stood, dismissing her touch and her concern. “I’ll see you at Mom’s.”

She nodded, waiting to make sure Atticus stepped safely aside before pulling the door shut. “See you.”

He retreated another couple of steps to allow her to pull into the procession of exiting traffic.

Masking his scrutiny with the scalloped point of his umbrella, Atticus scanned the vehicles to make sure Hayley and her male friend had gone. Good. Not a platinum blonde in the bunch. Atticus breathed a heavy sigh, cleansing his conscience. Maybe he should feel bad about using Brooke as an escape from a painful episode from his past. After all, what made his relationship with Hayley so painful was the fact that she had used him.

But right now, as he watched the little blue VW zip around a turn and head down the road toward the exit, he was glad he’d chosen to take his walk with Brooke. Not only because she knew more about his father’s work than anyone at KCPD, but also because he could use a little peace on a day like today. Might be his only respite for a while. And though Brooke could be a little dangerous to herself and others, she was on the whole, well…peaceful.

Feeling centered enough to get down to the business at hand, Atticus noted the empty copse of trees and set out to join the impromptu Kincaid family reunion.

Chapter Two

Summer…

“You’re no Audrey Hepburn.” Brooke Hansford’s deadpan critique was as plain and uninspiring as the reflection staring back at her from the plastic-wrapped mirror. So much for the new glasses working miracles.

True, the lenses were narrower and reduced the pop-bottle effect that distorted her nearsighted eyes. And the subtle design of the copper metal frames was more modern and colorful than her last pair had been. She turned her face from side to side, assessing each view.

“Maybe Katharine Hepburn?” Her breath seeped out on a wistful sigh and she reached for her hairbrush. “You wish.”

The old movies lied. Switching to contact lenses and trimming three inches off her hair hadn’t transformed her from gal Friday to femme fatale. The only male who had gone out of his way to notice her without her glasses was her opthamologist—who’d looked deep into her eyes to study the weeping red irritation of her allergic reaction to the lenses, not because he was entranced by any sudden beauty discovered there.

The UMKC extension class in assertiveness training that she’d taken the past semester had recommended emphasizing her strengths to build confidence when facing a new or difficult situation. Apparently, twenty-twenty vision would never be one of hers. So new glasses it was.

She pulled the brush through the long hair and tamed the bundle into a ponytail. The golden highlights the hairdresser had added were barely noticeable. “Maybe I should go red like Aunt Lou,” Brooke speculated, trying to envision how adding an auburn wash to her blond-brown-blah color might somehow help the long curls cooperate with the humidity that was already making the morning air sticky. She should probably take some of the money she was using to make over the small stone church that was now her half-finished home and make herself over. “I wonder what miracles cost these days.”

Brooke twisted her hair up and reached for the clip that would anchor it to the back of her head. So much for the boost of confidence the new suit and glasses were supposed to give her as she started work at the Fourth Precinct today. Not that she wasn’t excited about the transfer to newly promoted Major Mitch Taylor’s office. She was going to be administrative assistant to the man now in charge of every watch and department in the Fourth Precinct offices. She loved the challenges of her career, thrived on making her professional world run efficiently. Working with computers and data, an attention to facts and details—those were definitely strengths of hers where her confidence could truly shine.

Her appearance wasn’t the real issue this morning.

The new job wasn’t what was making her heart race and her mouth dry.

Even Major Taylor’s tough and gruff reputation as a demanding boss didn’t really worry her.

It was Atticus Kincaid. He’d be there.

Brilliant detective. Tall. Black-haired. Capable of turning her into a stuttering idiot with a direct look or teasing remark. Two weeks of working side by side with him, poring through his late father’s files—searching for a lead on John Kincaid’s murder and finding nothing useful—had taught her that embarrassing lesson. His broad shoulders and crisp style did wonders for a suit and tie—and frustrated her hormones to no end.

Not one of her smartest moves—developing a crush on a man who looked on her as a kid sister or his father’s frumpy secretary. There was a date that was never gonna happen.

Though she and Atticus wouldn’t be working in the same office, they’d be working in the same building, possibly on the same floor. No doubt she’d bump into him in the break room, or have to sit across from him at a meeting table.

How was she supposed to be competent and professional around him without getting her crowded thoughts and well-meaning words twisted up inside her throat? Chances were her new coworkers would think she was dimwitted or indifferent or just plain stuck-up before she could help them understand how thrilled and honored she was to be there and be a part of their law-enforcement team.

And the most embarrassing part of it was that Atticus would be patient and polite no matter how badly she and her shy genes fumbled around.

He was as good a son to her former boss, John Kincaid, as all the Kincaid boys had been. And, like the rest of his family, he’d been sweet enough to check on her a couple of times at John’s funeral three months ago—even though she’d repaid him with bruised knuckles and mud on his uniform. She had always been so grateful for the Kincaids’ kindness to her.

For John Kincaid’s sake, she’d bury her misguided attraction and slug her way through her social awkwardness and make a success of herself at the Fourth Precinct.

For John.

Brooke gripped the edge of the sink and held on as a wave of sadness washed over her. Oh, how she missed John and the familiarity of working in his warm, strong presence day in and day out. The grief wasn’t with her all the time now, but when she thought about the good friend she had lost—the mentor who had taken her under his wing and shown her what a father was like—the loss caused by his senseless murder made her heartsick all over again.

Yet, almost as quickly as the sadness had hit her, Brooke’s frustration with the stalled investigation spurred her out of her funk. She finished pinning up her hair and tucking in her blouse. As the closest thing to an inside man familiar with the comings and goings of John’s office, she’d promised the Kincaid family to do whatever she could to help find his killer. Homicide’s investigation might have stalled; her research with Atticus might have stalled. But no way was she giving up. Standing in front of the mirror and bemoaning her deficiencies instead of expecting success did John Kincaid’s memory a disservice.

Her former boss had seen right through her shy exterior and demanded important things from her. He’d pushed her to use every brain cell, to take chances, to be confident in all she could do. He’d recommended that assertiveness class to her in the first place, said he wanted her to see the same talented woman he saw every day, and to believe in herself. He’d set his expectations for Brooke high, and she’d risen to his challenge.

Now she’d have to do the same for herself. Becoming that self-confident, successful woman John Kincaid believed in would be the best testimonial to the man she could offer.

Any crush she might have on one of his sons—any guilt she might feel at not being able to help him—was irrelevant. She owed this to John.

So, Brooke adjusted the pretty new glasses on her unremarkable face, smoothed her palms down the front of her light-gray gabardine skirt, and silently declared herself ready for the new day ahead. She grabbed her jacket from its garment bag and headed out of the bathroom.

BROOKE HADN’T TAKEN three steps before her good intentions hit their first roadblock.

“Louise! Get down from there.” Brooke spotted the artificially strawberry-blond hair nearly two stories above her. She dropped her jacket and ran across the planks of the temporary floor to grab the base of a ladder that soared up to the peak of the nineteenth-century limestone church she and her aunts now called home. “Aunt Lou? We talked about this.”

“I’m doing a little patch work on the ceiling.”

“On a thirty-foot ladder?”

“How else am I supposed to reach it?” Smart ass. Louise Hansford—a ringer for the younger brother who’d been Brooke’s father if the old pictures in her scrapbooks were accurate—pulled a caulking gun from the hammer loop of her denim overalls and squeezed something into a vent where workers were installing a central cooling and heating system. “After all that rain this spring and the leaks we had, I’m not taking any chances on more water damage. We’ve put too much time and money into the bedrooms and bath downstairs to let problems in the unfinished areas ruin the work we’ve already done.”

“We’re paying Mr. McCarthy and his crew good money to do that type of work for us. Now come down.” Brooke shifted to the other side of the ladder, hissing through clenched teeth as Louise climbed up to a higher rung to inspect another vent. When nothing fell and no one crashed, Brooke allowed herself a normal breath. “It hasn’t rained for two weeks. And unless you count the humidity, there’s no moisture in the forecast, either.”

“My old bones say different.”

“Don’t…” Old bones, my foot. Brooke got a bug’s-eye view of her aunt stepping from the ladder onto the steel scaffolding that gave construction workers access to the aged oak panels lining the arched ceiling. “There’s not a thing wrong with your old bones.” Louise’s occasional bouts with vertigo, however, were another story. “You’re sixty-five years old.”

“And I’m in better shape than women half my age. Limber, too.” She reached through the steel framing and pushed aside the plastic tarp that captured the bulk of the dust and debris from the workmen’s sanding and drilling projects.

Oh, no. “Come down and have breakfast,” Brooke begged.

But Louise wasn’t listening. “Where do you think you get those long limbs of yours from? I’m fine.”

Brooke puffed out an irritated sigh—and not just because she was fighting a losing battle with her aunt. Brooke’s arms and legs were long and gangly and considerably lacking Louise’s spider-like grace. Maybe by the time she turned sixty-five, she might finally manage to outgrow that uncoordinated adolescent phase that was still just as embarrassing now as it had been nine years ago when she’d turned twenty and had no longer qualified as a teenager.

Or maybe she was destined to live out her days dealing with all of the Hansford family’s recessive genes. Timidity. Klutziness. Eyes that were too big and boobs that were too small.

Tamping down the inevitable frustration, Brooke moved over to check the anchors on the scaffolding that framed the skeletal stairs and second-floor landing still under construction, fearing there was little more she could do to protect her daredevil of an aunt. “This is why we hired a contractor. If you wait half an hour, Mr. McCarthy and his men will be here to do that job for you.”

“I like to keep an eye on their work,” Louise insisted. “Some men see three women living together—two of them retired—as an easy mark to take advantage of. That won’t happen on my watch. No, sir.”

“No one is taking advantage of us.” Brooke had studied the numbers meticulously and done her research into the costs of blending modernization with restoration—and who could best do the work for them. Louise was the only thing worrying her right now. Brooke cringed as her aunt tested her weight on one of the two-by-fours that framed the upstairs landing before stepping on it. “Lou?”

But the red-blond hair and overalls had already disappeared through the tarp. Only the creaking of the wooden bracings above her head told her what path Louise was taking to the opposite side of the church. Brooke followed the sounds of her aunt, wondering if she’d be able to catch her should she tumble through one of the open spaces above her.

“I know as much about building and restoring things as any man.” Louise was a disembodied voice from the rafters overhead. “I’ve got a degree in architectural history, don’t I? Truman McCarthy doesn’t have one of those.”

So that’s what had spurred this show of independence. It wasn’t really concern that the work wasn’t being done properly, but a regret that once upon a time, Louise Hansford would have been doing the work herself.

Brooke’s heart went out to the woman who’d curtailed her globetrotting adventures the day she’d received a telegram telling her of the car crash in Sarajevo that had orphaned Brooke, and had come home to help her older sister, Peggy, take care of their parentless niece. Once a woman ahead of her time, Louise’s life had become considerably more mundane, serving first as surrogate parent and in more recent years as best friend. In time, as her aunts aged, their roles would reverse, and Brooke would gladly step up to take care of the two women who were the only family she’d ever known. That was one of the reasons she was creating this spacious home, so that her aunts could live independently on the main floor, while Brooke eventually moved upstairs to a private apartment.

But the future would have to wait until she could get Louise down to a safer altitude. Hurrying back to the base of the ladder, Brooke hiked her skirt up above her knees. “I know you’re an expert.” She toed off her pumps and climbed the first rung. “But McCarthy and Sons is a reputable company. They don’t do shoddy work.”

“Now don’t you go climbin’ up there after her,” Peggy Hansford chided as she stepped out into the main room and closed the bedroom door behind her. The elder Hansford aunt picked up Brooke’s jacket from the floor and brushed it off. She motioned Brooke down as she strode past the ladder into the nearly finished kitchen area. “No sense both of you breakin’ your fool necks.”

“I can hear you up here, Peggy,” Louise hollered.

“Didn’t say anything was wrong with your ears. Just your common sense.” Peggy draped the jacket over the back of one of the stools they were using for temporary kitchen furniture and turned to pull three mugs out of the dishwasher. “Now you come on down from there. You’re worrying Brooke, and we don’t want anything to upset her this morning.”

Brooke returned to the floor and smoothed her skirt back into place, slipping into her shoes while she waited for Louise to join them. Listening to the woman-sized cat scrambling overhead, she nibbled anxiously on her bottom lip.

But Louise didn’t have any speeds except go and go faster, and she quickly popped through the tarp and headed for the ladder. “That’s right. You start your new job downtown today.” Brooke had barely shrugged into her jacket when Louise pulled up a stool beside her at the black granite counter. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“Louise Hansford.” Peggy pointed a reprimanding finger from the opposite side of the island counter.

“Well, she’s not even thirty years old yet, and she dresses more conservatively than either one of us.”

“She’s dressed professionally, Lou.” Peggy’s soft green eyes expressed a clear opinion over the rims of her glasses. “Besides, I don’t think a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt and overalls has the right to criticize anyone’s wardrobe.”

“At least my clothes have personality.” Louise plucked at the starched white collar of Brooke’s short-sleeved blouse. “Maybe just a scarf to soften things up? Or some funky jewelry to add a little pizzazz?”

“I’m wearing the gold chain you gave me for my twenty-first birthday.” Brooke pulled the necklace from her cleavage and held up the nickel-sized charm that had been left to her by her father. “You said Dad asked the nurses to pin this to my diaper in the hospital before he died. I thought it’d be good luck to wear a family heirloom today.”

“It is good luck. And very pretty, dear.” Peggy pushed the French vanilla creamer across the counter to flavor their coffee. “I wish you could have known Leo. I can’t tell you how many times he wrote me about you—even before you were born. Your daddy thought you were the most beautiful baby in the world. As beautiful as your mother, God rest her soul.”

Aunt Peggy was being too kind. According to the one family photo that had survived the automobile crash which had killed her mother outright and put her father in the hospital for the last few days of his life, Irina Zorinsky Hansford had been a Slavic beauty with curling mahogany tresses and bold, dark eyes. Brooke, only six months old at the time, had survived the fiery accident, miraculously unscathed. She would have ended up in a state-run orphanage if these two strong women hadn’t come into her life.

She’d heard the story dozens of times growing up. Her father had been feverish with burns and grief, too weak to even make arrangements for his wife’s hasty funeral, much less attend. But he’d been clear about one thing. Don’t let Brooke go with her mother, Leo Hansford had pleaded from his hospital bed. Don’t let my baby girl die.

Brooke and her aunts had never even seen Irina’s grave. It had been hard enough proving guardianship and getting out of the country where her father had worked at the American embassy. As soon as they were able, Peggy and Louise had whisked her back to the United States. They’d promised their brother they’d take her home to Kansas City where they’d grown up. Leo Hansford had wanted Brooke to live. Love. Be loved.

She was loved.

But she was a pale shadow of the woman her mother had been.

“Well, of course, we know what a beautiful girl she is.” Louise hugged Brooke around the shoulders, breaking the pensive mood. “But how is anyone else going to notice when she dresses like a nun?” Louise snapped her fingers, already turning for the bedroom she shared with Peggy as an idea hit her. “I’ll be right back. I have a brooch in my suitcase that will add a shot of color and liven things up a bit.”

Peggy tied an apron around her plump middle, shaking her head. “You know, sometimes I think we’re raising her more than she and I ever had to raise you. Thank God you have your father’s steady nature and good sense. And tact!” she shouted after her sister.

Brooke tucked the medallion with the Cyrillic letter etched in gold back inside her blouse. As much as steady nature and good sense felt like faint praise, she had to grin at Peggy’s on-the-money assessment of their family dynamic.

“You know, we’ll have to nail her shoes to the floor when we start painting the bedrooms. The fumes will go straight to her head and make her dizzy. Dizzier,” Brooke amended, eliciting a smile and reassuring Peggy that Louise’s remarks had no lasting effect on her ego. Brooke sipped her coffee and reached for one of the English muffins Peggy was toasting for breakfast. “I told her that I was going to hire someone specifically to do odd jobs like that around here. At lunch today I’m interviewing a man Mr. McCarthy recommended.” She thumbed over her shoulder toward the ceiling. “When we agreed to cut a few costs by completing the finish and landscaping work ourselves, I didn’t mean having either one of you hanging from the scaffolding or doing some other dangerous thing.”

“I’m already ahead of you, dear.” Peggy winked and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve let the weeds grow in my garden and we’ll have to turn up the soil before anyone can lay new sod, so I’ve got plenty lined up for her to do outside while you’re painting.”

Brooke winked back and reached across the island to squeeze Peggy’s hand. “You’re the real smart cookie of the bunch, aren’t you?”

Peggy turned her hand and squeezed back. “You can have Lou’s long arms and legs. My brains will get you further any day of the week.”

“I found it.” Louise beamed with the satisfaction of a fairy godmother admiring her magical handiwork when she returned. Urging Brooke to stand, she pinned a silver brooch with a lapis, turquoise and coral mosaic onto her lapel. “I got this on a trip to New Mexico when I was in college. A young gentleman classmate insisted I have it. There. That brightens things up. Smile for me.” As generous as she was honest, Louise cupped Brooke’s cheek and smiled back. “Now that, my dear, is your most beautiful asset.”

“Thanks.”

Lou twirled her finger into a tendril that curled over Brooke’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear. “Have you thought about one of those short, kicky hairstyles? Maybe some golden highlights?”

“You can’t tell I put in highlights?”

“Leave her alone,” Peggy reproved. “Brooke looks just fine.”

“Fine, sure.” Lou climbed onto the stool beside Brooke and doctored her coffee with a spoonful of sugar. “But what about sexy? Or hot? I mean, I was never drop-dead gorgeous, but I always knew how to work what I have.”

“Enough.” Blushing around her last bite of muffin, Brooke stood and checked her watch. Though she was in no danger of being late, she could only handle so much of her aunt playing Cinderella with Brooke in the title role. “Even if you dolled me up, I could never pull off hot. Besides, I’m going to work, not to some fancy ball to pick up a man.”

Lou cradled her mug between her hands, shaking her head. “All those men in uniforms and badges and she’s not trying to pick one up.”

“Lou…” Peggy warned. “Don’t put that kind of pressure on her. Brooke is just a late bloomer. When the right man comes along, he’ll see her real beauty.”

“Yes, but you know how dense men can be. It doesn’t hurt to help them find their way.”

Brooke’s blush heated her clear down to her toes now. Louise didn’t have a shy bone in her body—she’d never understood how it made Brooke’s perfectly intelligent brain seize up whenever she tried to break out of her shell and try to get a man she was attracted to to notice her.

Buying herself some time to gather her thoughts and slip her newly forged assertive armor back into place, Brooke picked up her purse from the card table that served as living-room furniture, and dug out a tube of copper-colored lip gloss. Only after she’d put her professional game face back in place did she loop her carryall bag over her shoulder and turn to Louise. “Tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you.” She pointed across the main room. “You stay off that ladder and I’ll make the effort to talk to… three…men today.”

“About something not work-related,” Lou qualified, setting down her mug and smiling with hope.

“Agreed.”

“Then you’ve got a deal.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, Lou. But I love ya.” Brooke squeezed her aunt in a hug. She traded another hug with Peggy at the back door. “Love you, too.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll keep her out of trouble. You just concentrate on the new job and have a wonderful first day.”

“I will. See you tonight.”

Brooke crossed the sundeck that had yet to have a railing added, and bopped down the stairs at the opposite end. The sun was warm on her face as she crossed the yard to where her car was parked at the curb. The tall, broken grass packed into the dry dirt where Truman McCarthy and his construction crew drove their heavy equipment and supply trucks up to the house reminded her to start pricing carports. When winter hit, it’d be a bear to have to trek through the snow or shovel a path out to the street. And the historical value of the church’s turn-of-the-century exterior wouldn’t allow her to attach a modern garage.

But the remodeling notes were only a minor diversion from the real concern at hand as Brooke dug her keys from her purse. She’d made a promise to her aunt. Now she had to keep it. Talk to a man. Pick one up, if Louise had her way. It could happen. Right. Brooke nearly snorted, squelching her ironic laughter.

Think positive. Be positive. The new and slowly improving Brooke could do this. She just needed to break the task down into smaller, less-daunting goals, and not psych herself out over the bigger challenge of transforming into the social butterfly Aunt Lou believed she could be.

Three men. She could do that. “Hi” qualified as speaking to a man, didn’t it? “I’m Major Taylor’s new administrative assistant” could be an entire conversation at a busy office.

Sure, she’d love to have a man notice her for something more than her computer skills, to have him think she was something special. But she’d pick smaller battles, savor lesser victories, instead of setting herself up for failure. She wasn’t going to let Louise’s fairy-godmother fantasies make or break her day. Or her life.

She’d have plenty of interesting things to do at the Fourth Precinct, meeting coworkers and learning new routines. Plus, there was the work here at home. She had love in her life from her aunts and friends. She didn’t need Prince Charming to make her happy or make her feel complete.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt a girl’s ego to…

A subtle, external awareness seeped into Brooke’s thoughts, short-circuiting the endless debate. The sun was already bright in the cloudless sky, yet a chill slunk down her spine and she halted beside her car.

She slowly turned, seeking the source.

It was that same odd sensation she got watching a DVD by herself late at night, when she was reminded of how Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful timing combined with her ever-churning imagination could totally spook her. Only this wasn’t something she could turn off with the remote.

She zeroed in on a dented tan pickup truck parked a block down the street. Brooke adjusted her glasses at the temple and squinted.

Who was that? She didn’t recognize the vehicle or its occupant behind the steering wheel, though she could make out little more than the man’s snow-white hair. But he wasn’t old, not if the ripples of muscle beneath his T-shirt were any indication. He was almost faceless with his head hunched down into his shoulders and his purple K-State ball cap pulled low over his eyes. Was he lost? Sleeping?

Watching her ?

He shifted in his seat and Brooke quickly turned away, avoiding any possibility of eye contact by staring down at her fingers on the door handle. “Paranoid much?”

Her nerves about starting the new job had gotten the better of her common sense, that was all. This was a regular old Monday morning in the middle of July, not a Hitchcock movie. And the Wildcat fan was nothing more than a man in a truck.

Brooke lifted her chin, determined to dispel her suspicion. She saw her aunts through the tall, narrow church windows, moving inside the house. There was a trio of boys two houses down, marking the bases for an early-morning whiffle ball game. Farther down the street, she spotted another neighbor, Mrs. Boyer, hanging on to the leash of her Labradoodle puppy as they practiced their daily walk.

All normal. All familiar.

Except…

Him.

“Stop it.” Brooke yanked open the car door and tossed her bag across the seat before she was tempted to look his way again. The man was probably one of Truman McCarthy’s construction workers, who’d shown up early for his shift and was waiting for his foreman to arrive. She was the only one who spent so much time with the thoughts inside her head that she could turn a harmless observation into a threat. No one else in the neighborhood seemed to think anything was out of place. Why should she?

Dismissing the man, the truck and the creepy sixth sense her imagination had concocted, Brooke hiked her skirt a notch and climbed inside to start the car and drive away.

But only a few minutes later, she began to wonder if her imagination had been playing tricks on her, after all. Stopped at a light before turning onto the highway which would take her into downtown Kansas City, Brooke checked her rearview mirror. Her breath hitched and she looked again.

Three vehicles behind her. Waiting to turn onto the same highway.

The stranger in the dented tan pickup truck.

Chapter Three

“I’m familiar with the program, sir.” Brooke hugged two software documentation manuals to her chest, wondering if Mitch Taylor had any idea how much space his broad shoulders and thick, barrel chest took up in her small, freshly painted but otherwise undecorated outer office. “But it’ll certainly be helpful to go through the formal training tomorrow.”

“Good.” His deep, commanding voice seemed to bounce off the safety glass on the door between their offices. “I’m competent when it comes to computers, but I’ll be counting on you to understand all the tricky stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And unless it’s the commissioner, my wife or one of my sons or daughter calling, I don’t want to talk to anyone before the morning briefing.”

“Won’t the watch commanders handle the briefing of each shift?”

“They’ll handle the briefing. But they’ll meet with me first.”

“Yes, sir.” Brooke jotted the note on the pad at her desk. Watch commander meeting—no calls but the ones that count. She set down her pen and looked up. “Any other daily routine items I should know, Major Taylor?”

“Today, just handle the phone. Get your feet under you, unpack these boxes, and we’ll figure out the rest as we go along this week.”

“Yes, sir.”

A smile softened the rugged line of his jaw. “It’s Mitch. You don’t have to use the Mister or Major or sir when it’s just us talking.” He extended his long arm across her desk. “Welcome to the Fourth, Brooke.”

She reached out to shake his hand, “Thank you, sir—” Her shaky smile relaxed into the real deal. “Thanks, Mitch.”

“That’s better.” He seemed to approve of her effort to blur the line between efficiency and informality. Pulling back the front of his jacket, he propped his hands at his waist, subconsciously emphasizing the badge clipped to his belt, and giving her a glimpse of the gun and holster he wore beneath his right arm. Mitch Taylor was clearly a man who led men, but he seemed to have a little more teddy bear in him than his grizzly reputation had led her to believe. He surveyed her office, stopping when he spotted the plants she’d set on one of the empty bookshelves. “I see you have a fan club.”

Way to impress the boss, Hansford. He’d left flowers on her desk for when she arrived that morning, and she hadn’t said boo about them. Brooke set the stack of manuals on the corner of her desk and crossed to the shelf, fingering the delicate white petals and reading the attached card that welcomed her and wished her luck.

“Thank you for the daisies. They’re…” A lovely gesture. A bright addition to the office. One of my favorite flowers. “They’re nice.”

Nice? With her back to her boss, Brooke rolled her eyes. A dozen eloquent thank-yous had run through her head, and all that came out of her mouth was They’re nice? No wonder Louise worried about her ability to carry on a personal conversation with a man.

“Glad you like them. Though, I will confess, my wife, Casey, thought of them.”

“She has good taste,” Brooke stumbled on, fighting to get her thoughts ahead of her words. She turned to face him. “Tell her thank you, too.”

“I will.” Including his wife seemed to please him, which pleased Brooke. “We’d better get to work then, hadn’t we?”

“Yes, sir.” He held up a cautionary finger, and Brooke almost laughed. “Right, Mitch,” she corrected herself.

With a wink, he opened the adjoining door between their offices and left her to get acquainted with bookshelves and file drawers, a state-of-the-art computer system and boxes of supplies that needed to find a home.

That was one. Louise better not be climbing that ladder. Brooke had only two more conversations to go.

Standing a little straighter and smiling more easily, Brooke opened the blinds covering the windows of her outer office, spying on the stream of uniformed and plain-clothes officers outside. The shift must be changing for there to be so much traffic leading from the bank of elevators to the sergeant’s desk and main room beyond. From her hallway, cubicle walls blocked her view of the detectives’ desks and interview rooms. And she already knew the conference and break rooms were around the corner down another hall. Mitch Taylor’s quick tour this morning had already familiarized her with the layout of the Fourth’s headquarters building, if not with all the people on the other side of that glass.

Turning away before her confidence wavered, Brooke took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. She resumed organizing file cabinets and her desk in a way that would be most efficient for her. After depositing an armload of paper onto the bottom bookshelf, she paused to stretch and admire her flowers.

She didn’t get gifts delivered to her very often, but this morning she had three plants to brighten her office—the daisies from Major Taylor and his wife, a pot of draping English ivy from her aunts and a pink carnation with a hand-scrawled note from the pseudo big brother she didn’t have a crush on, Sawyer Kincaid. Do great, kiddo! You’ll rock the Fourth. Love ya, Sawyer.

“I love ya, too, big guy.” Atticus’s older brother Sawyer was easy to like, easy to talk to—maybe because he was so crazy in love with his new wife and stepson that Brooke knew there’d never be another woman in his life, so she never felt any pressure to fill any other role besides sister. Equally likely was that Sawyer, unlike his enigmatic brother, was always out there with his emotions. He spoke what he thought—whether he was angry or being goofy or falling in love. There were no secrets or second-guessing with him.

“Ah.” Revelation. Maybe it was her love for puzzles and the challenge of solving mysteries that fueled her crush on Atticus Kincaid.

And maybe it was the safety of knowing he was a mystery she was never going to crack that only made her think she had a thing for him. If he was unattainable, she could pine away without ever having to put her fragile sense of self out there.

And she’d called Aunt Louise a hopeless romantic.

“Too much thinking,” Brooke chided. Her overly analytical brain was great for computers, but it could wreak havoc on a gal’s love life.

Knowing that focusing on something outside herself was the best way to curtail the sabotaging train of thought, she picked up Sawyer’s gift and moved the bloom to her desk where she could enjoy it as she dove back into her work. The number of times she answered the phone and transferred or took messages over the next two hours gave her a pretty good idea of just how busy she was going to be in this new position—and how much she was going to love it.

Brooke was more than ready to take a break at eleven-thirty. She pulled a bottle of water from her bag, kicked off her pumps beneath her desk and sat back to wiggle her toes and admire her handiwork. The layout of her computer and desktop now made the best use of light and workspace. Her shelves were pleasingly arranged and gave her easy access to the items she’d need most. And her chin-high file cabinets had been alphabetized and organized within an inch of their lives.

Really, all that was left were the personal touches that would make the new surroundings feel like her own place. The flowers helped for now, but she’d bring a couple of reading books to keep on the shelves for her lunch break, maybe frame some of the photographs of the reconstruction project at home and hang them on the wall above the file cabinets.

“Ooh, my pictures.” The thought reminded her of the photos of Peggy and Lou that she liked to keep on her desk. Spinning her chair around, she picked up the box from beside the desk and pulled it up onto her lap. Smiling as she removed the lid and fingered through the precious items inside, Brooke sorted through sentimental knickknacks, framed certificates and diplomas and pulled out the two photographs. “There you are, ladies.”

Brooke propped the box on the corner of the desk as she stood, arranging the pictures at the top of her desk calendar blotter. Reenergized by the familiar memories, she continued to unpack and decorate, padding around the office in her stocking feet, finding just the right spot for everything.

But as she reached into the bottom of the box, her heart seized up. “Oh, John,” she whispered reverently. “You found it.”

She sank into her chair as she pulled out the worn leather journal where she’d kept a log about the highs and lows of her life at work. She had several similar journals locked up in a trunk at home. She’d kept many such books in the years of her life since adolescence, when a visit to the counselor over her near inability to talk at school—and the resulting ulcers and hives that were sure indicators of stress—had led to the advice that she express her thoughts and emotions in whatever way she could. She’d punched pillows and squeezed worry dolls. Shouted and cussed in the privacy of her aunts’ basement. And if she was too shy to talk, she could write things down—her dreams, her fears, her anger and compassion, who she liked at school, why her aunts were being too strict, what she and her friends had done together that was particularly exciting and more. The adolescent therapy had evolved into a personal history of sorts over the years.

This particular journal, in which she’d first conceived the idea of finding an historic structure in a quiet suburb to remake into the perfect blend of rich character and modern amenities, had gone missing a couple of months before her boss’s death. For a few awful days, Brooke thought she’d sent it out with a package of evidence reports to the state lab. She’d turned her desk and purse and file cabinets inside out, searching for the lost journal, and had even called a friend in the KCPD archives, asking her to check through the boxed-up files that had been shipped from the deputy commissioner’s office. In the end, Brooke had accepted that she’d set the book down at a lunch table or park bench and had walked away without it. It would have been thrown out by the time she went back to look for it.

But John had found it, bless his heart. A sticky note on the front read For Brooke in his slanted, distinctive scrawl. Even after he was gone, he was, “Still looking out for me, aren’t you?”

Brooke opened the book and found a second sticky note inside the front cover. Forgive me this one said. “For what?” she mused, frowning. She’d forgive him anything. “Did you stick this in your briefcase by mistake? Read a couple of pages?” She talked to the book as though the man who’d snuck it back into her personal belongings could hear her. “Trust me. The content of this book is tame compared to what I’ve got at home.” No mention of how good-looking his sons were, or how grateful she was to be accepted as part of his family. Just business stuff. Just things she didn’t mind sharing at work. She hoped.

Oh, Lordy. What if some of those really personal things had found their way in here? Like a page of curse words over a particularly frustrating day, or something equally embarrassing?

Thumbing through the pages, Brooke figuratively held her breath and reminisced. There was the day she’d first started in John’s office, replacing his retiring assistant. She’d been so nervous. John had seemed so commanding, so busy that morning. She half suspected he hadn’t even noticed that she’d arrived. He’d been in the middle of a task force investigation and something on the case had broken. After he’d snapped an order for her to get online and find out everything she could about Wolfe International’s accounts in London and the Cayman Islands, Brooke had slid behind her desk and gone right to work with little more than an exchange of names. He’d seemed pleased—even impressed—when she set the printouts on his table in the briefing room that afternoon. He’d called her into the office at the end of the day, apologized and informed her that he’d be taking her to breakfast the next morning—if she could stand to spend time with an old grouch like him.

Brooke rolled her eyes at the smiley face she’d drawn at the end of that entry. “I decided I liked you, after all.”

When she turned the page to read how much more smoothly day two had gone, Brooke gasped. There, in the margin, next to her own neat writing was a scrawled comment from John.

“I knew I liked you that first day, too,” it read.

He had read the journal. “Oh, please don’t tell me I wrote anything stupid in this one.”

Sitting up straight, Brooke read through the journal page by page. She found another comment about how it creeped him out at first to have this quiet stranger predict his needs—sometimes before he knew them—as well as keep him on schedule. Brooke smiled when she found the note about how crazy he thought she was to buy the old stone church. “Waste of an inheritance,” it said. “Too big a money pit for a sweet thing like you.” Then, a page later, he wrote a lengthy missive about his fascination with the history of the church after she’d given him a tour and described her plans for the conversion. He’d gotten caught up in the building’s history and how it related to the settlement of the city and how he’d love to tackle a similar restoration project when he retired. He was impressed with Brooke’s businesslike approach and her determination to maintain the integrity of the historic design when it came to the remodel. He called her a “damn lucky girl to be able to pursue a dream like that.”

Tears, both told-you-so happy and I-miss-you-so regret, filled her eyes and blurred her vision until she had to reach up beneath her glasses and wipe them away. She turned the page to discover a boxy sketch with letters that didn’t form words, and symbols that made no sense.

“This isn’t mine.” She shook her head at the curious creative expression John had drawn in her journal. “And you said I was crazy.”

The phone rang, startling Brooke from the trip down memory lane. The journal fell to the floor when she jumped. “Good grief.” Pressing a hand to her racing heart, she took a deep breath and picked up the receiver and her pen. “KCPD, Fourth Precinct, this is Major Taylor’s office.”

“Miss Hansford?”

“Yes?”

“This is the front desk downstairs. There’s a Tony Fierro here to see you. He says you’re expecting him?”

“Oh. Um…” The job interview for the handyman. Was there a problem? “Do I need to go down there to see him, or can he come upstairs?”

“It’s up to you, ma’am. I can give him a visitor’s pass.”

Just a security protocol. Nothing to worry about. She needed to end her trip down memory lane and start looking to the future again. “Then, as soon as he clears security, go ahead and send him up, please.”

“Will do, ma’am.”

Once the call ended, Brooke squatted to get her shoes. But her sleeve caught the corner of the box and pulled it down to the floor beside her, spilling its contents. “Attack of the Killer Klutz strikes again,” she muttered, shifting onto her hands and knees to right the box and retrieve papers, books and some wayward pencils. Her necklace and charm swung out like a pendulum from the front of her blouse, and she paused to catch it and tuck it back in. In the midst of crawling and tucking, something caught her eye. She squeezed the charm in her fist as she studied the image beneath her. “Is that my house?”

Hovering over the open pages, Brooke peered down at the now-sideways drawing. “What were you up to, John?”

There were dots and arrows and scribbled phrases marking the picture. Apparently, he’d thought he had a better plan as to how she should redesign the stone church’s interior. From this angle, what she’d excused as a meaningless doodle now looked like a crude architectural drawing.

No. Like a map.

But to what?

Brooke’s heart beat a little faster and new brain cells awoke.

“That is my house.” She traced the lines with her fingertip, identifying the original altar area of the church that had since been lined with windows and converted into a sun porch. “Three,” she read aloud. Had he wanted to add more rooms? “It’s a supporting exterior wall, John. You can’t budge rock like that. Three plug-ins? Three windows? Three…what?” More scribbles took shape. “B6N-NR.” An arrow pointed to an archway.

“B. 6. N. Basement? Brick? Board? North…Room?” Brooke squinted and rotated the drawing, as though better vision or a different angle would help the jumbled characters make sense. “There is no north room.”

No basement, either. Just a crawl space.

“Lose something?”

A deep, familiar voice, laced with amusement, greeted her from the doorway.

Atticus.

Brooke snapped the journal shut and jerked her head up. He leaned against the door frame, one hand behind his back, looking as perfectly at home in that tailored suit as he did wearing the gun and badge at his belt.

Meanwhile, she was shoeless, scattered and practically sprawled on the floor.

Every self-conscious cell in her body flooded her brain, blocking rational thought as words automatically popped out. “Mitch isn’t here. He’s gone to lunch.”

He chuckled, low in his throat. “Hi to you, too. I stopped by to see how you were settling in.”

The masculine pitch of his laughter danced across her eardrums and did funny things to her pulse rate, tying up her thoughts into even more of a knot.

“Sorry. Hi. Fine.” Brilliant conversation, Sherlock. Ah, yes, this was that moment of babbling stupidity that had plagued her nerves this morning. Aunt Lou had been right to worry. Breathing deeply, Brooke clutched the journal to her chest and ducked her head, buying herself a few moments to reassert control over her instinctive reactions by collecting a handful of pencils and dropping them into the box.

Black oxford shoes and charcoal slacks crossed the room until the gun and badge filled her peripheral vision. “Need some help?”

“I can get it.” But it had been a rhetorical question. She heard a clunk on her desktop just before miles of wide shoulders and charcoal jacket descended to her level.

Despite her insistence, Atticus knelt beside her to help pick up her mess. He wasn’t a man who wore cologne, but there was a clean maleness clinging to his clothes that made her want to turn her cheek into his starchy white shirt and silk tie. Maybe she’d unbutton that shirt to see if the warm skin underneath smelled even better.

Alarmed at the boldness of her thoughts, Brooke scooted after a folder of motivational quotes from her assertiveness class and straightened the scattered pages. She stole a glance at Atticus’s sharp jaw and gunmetal eyes, double-checking to see that she hadn’t revealed anything more embarrassing than her lack of coordination. Being attracted to the man was one thing—being attracted to the man and having him know she had these crazy impulses when she was around him was something else entirely.

No-nonsense hands that were strong and agile quickly scooped up the last of the items and lifted the box onto her desk. She stared at one of those hands as it reached out to help her up. Brooke lightly touched her fingers to his, but he wrapped his palm around hers for a firmer grip and pulled her to her feet. “Up you go.”

As practical and impersonal as the helping hand had been, Brooke was still feeling flushed with heat as she stood and spotted the clear vase filled with a half-dozen red roses sitting on the far corner of her desk.

“You brought me flowers” came out before “Thank you.” She reached out to stroke the velvety soft petals. When had any man given her such a gorgeous, dramatic arrangement?

Her incredulity was short-lived. Atticus tucked his hands casually into the pockets of his slacks and shrugged. “Sorry, they’re not from me.”

She curled her fingers into her palm and tried not to feel disappointed. “Oh.”

Brooke searched for a tag while he explained. “I’m just the deliveryman. I’ve been meaning to drop by all morning but I had to make an appearance in court, and then I had some calls to follow up on with a case and, well, the sarge caught me walking past her desk and handed them off. Gave me a good excuse to stop what I was doing and come see you.”

He’d waited until someone asked him to stop by? The nick at her ego was eased by the knowledge that he didn’t seem at all aware of the awkward affection she felt for him.

Before embarrassing herself any further, Brooke turned her attention back to the anonymous bouquet. Sergeant Maggie Wheeler had been the first officer to greet Brooke that morning and introduce herself. Though tall and imposing, she’d been friendly enough. Was this another welcome-to-the-precinct gift? “Did Sergeant Wheeler say who they were from?”

“No. She just apologized for being too busy to get them to you sooner.” He must have recognized the increasing consternation of her search for a nonexistent card. “Sarge told me the delivery guy said you’d know who they were from.”

Brooke frowned. “Really?”

“Got a secret admirer I don’t know about?”

Did she? Brooke’s single chuckle lacked humor. Sparing him a quick glance that didn’t quite meet his gaze, she turned the vase from side to side and worked her bottom lip between her tongue and teeth. Thoughts of the tan pickup that had followed her all the way downtown, never leaving her rearview mirror until she’d turned into the Fourth Precinct parking lot and he drove on past, came to mind. Were the roses another unexplained coincidence? She liked a good mystery, but she preferred to read them rather than be caught up in the middle of one herself.

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