A Stetson On Her Pillow

It hadn’t taken long for the rumors about her to spread. Clint didn’t believe every story he heard, but there were so many of them about Laura Carter—and her relationship with her last boss—that he had wondered. She had been transferred out of Boston to Chicago very quickly—and under a cloud of secrecy. He knew how much paperwork was involved in switching from one city to another. It had taken him over a year to get himself approved for the move from Dallas to Chicago and that was only after he’d received a hero’s thank-you for rescuing a kidnapped baby.

Clearly Little Miss Society had been sent to Chicago because of her misdeeds. He had seen her having dinner with the police superintendent just last week, probably thanking him for her job. Having dinner with the highest-ranked police officer in Chicago certainly didn’t hurt her career. None of the other officers in their department had ever had such an honor, yet there she’d been, only a couple of months after joining the Chicago force.

He’d been having dinner with his own date, and unfortunately had become bored with her too quickly. He found that happening a lot recently. Probably because he missed home and was looking forward to finding himself a sweet Texas gal. A woman who appreciated a man like him.

The SFI agent took the center of the room. “The wedding of two of Chicago’s most established families will be playing into Peter Monroe’s psyche. It’s the perfect opportunity for Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, the personification of his ultimate fantasy, to become his new best friends.”

Laura frowned. “What you’re saying makes a certain kind of logic, but once Clint and I worm our way into Monroe’s circle then what? He’s not about to confess his well-thought out criminal activities to us.”

“The psychologists think he just might.” Garrow shrugged. “I admit, the plan is kind of crazy, but it’s our last chance. You can have all the paperwork on the profile, but our psychologist suggests that if Clint and Peter could become friends and then enter a one-upmanship contest—which Clint must win—Peter might show his own hand. At the very least he may be more careless than usual at the wedding when he meets with Vasili. This is the first time that we’ll be able to prove that these two men have even been in the same room together. I need you two to be there and take advantage of whatever the situation may offer.” Vincent ran a hand through his hair, “I realize this sounds desperate and—well it is. Basically you’re going to have to improvise—including how to get Peter Monroe to show his hand.”

Laura stood. “We’ll do it.”

When had she turned so sympathetic? Clint stood as well. “Well Captain, I’m honored to have the opportunity to work with an officer as fine as Ms. Carter. Plus, as my dear mother always says, the sooner we get started the sooner we’ll be finished.”

Laura glared at him.

“The most important thing is to convince Peter Monroe that you two are madly in love,” the captain said.

“I’ve usually found the fillies do fall madly in love with me,” Clint said in his very best Texas drawl.

Laura harrumphed. Clint slid an arm around her, hugging her to him. “Now, honey, was that any way to show enthusiasm for this project?”

She stiffened against him. He felt her take a deep breath and he counted to five before she disengaged herself and moved away from him slightly. It figured Laura didn’t have to count to ten like a regular person; she regained her composure in five. “Cowboy, there’s nothing I would like better than to be married to you for the weekend.” She smiled sweetly and he felt incredible pain—and realized she’d ground one heel of her pump into his boot.

Determined to show her he wasn’t the hick she thought he was, and wondering why he wanted to prove otherwise, he limped to the office door and opened it. She swept past him, her chin up in the air and her back ramrod straight as she marched away. He let his gaze fall to her buttocks which nicely filled out the tailored navy skirt but there was no seductive sway of her hips.

Damn, he had to admit she was beautiful, especially when she was mad at him, but she was not the kind of woman he was attracted to.

Laura Carter might be gorgeous but she was also a royal pain in the butt.

She kept going past his desk to the women’s bathroom while he picked up his messages. His brother Ben had called, as had Amber, a working girl who sometimes had good tips. Naturally she hadn’t left a number for him to return her call, but he knew that if it was important she’d find him.

Stan Lesky stopped at his desk and grinned. “Score man. You got assigned to Carter.”

“Only for this assignment. There’s nothing permanent about us as a team.” In his year with the Chicago P.D. he’d had three different partners. Willy and he had partnered up for six months before Willy’s retirement. Contrary to popular cop movies, they’d thrown a nice goodbye party and Willy had retired to the suburbs to annoy his wife. Then Clint had partnered with whoever was available, most often with Lucy Wong, a veteran of fifteen years in the department, and with Jeff Knight on his first rotation as a plainclothes officer. Despite the fact that Jeff Knight had grown up in Chicago, Clint knew he had never been as young or enthusiastic as Jeff.

It wasn’t only the big city that had hard lessons to teach. Anyone looking at Jeff and Clint side by side at age twenty-two would assume Clint was the sophisticated, cynical man from the big city and optimistic Jeff the bumpkin from Two Horse Junction, Texas, population five hundred and eighty-seven.

Every year the population of Two Horse fluctuated by five to ten. Some years it decreased as the young people left; then it would swell again as some disillusioned souls came back home. Clint planned to increase the number by one very soon—his brothers needed him, and more importantly he needed to be back home. And once he was back he planned to find a nice local girl to marry—he knew his mother had a list of suitable single women—and to increase the population of his hometown even further with a houseful of kids. A sweet and loving wife he would treasure, look after and never leave. And he would be sheriff.

Sheriff in a small town was much better than being a detective in Chicago. Both jobs were important, he acknowledged, but back home he would know the people in his town. He’d be able to help in a real way—and be able to stop trouble before it grew out of hand. A small-town sheriff was a law enforcer, the first administrator of justice, a social worker, marriage counselor and role model.

Unlike his father he wanted the respect of his town. He loved his hometown but he needed its respect even more. When Sheriff O’Conner retired next year and Clint was offered the job, he wanted everyone in town to say that he was the best man for it. If he succeeded with this case—made some kind of breakthrough that the SFI had not—if he joined the homicide squad, then no one in Two Horse Junction could doubt that a full-fledged Chicago detective hadn’t earned the position of sheriff.

Lesky grinned even wider, showing off his big shiny white teeth. The man could be found in the men’s room flossing several times a day and recently he’d even bleached his teeth. “Carter is a fine piece of woman.”

“More like an iceberg.”

“Sometimes melting an iceberg can be appealing. All that fresh, untapped water.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“You’re forgetting what happened to the Titanic. I, however, remember my history. My only interest in Laura Carter is whether or not she’s a good cop.”

“I’ll bet she’s good all right—at least that’s what her old captain believed.”

“That’s a rumor,” Clint replied, feeling a twinge of guilt at his own hypocrisy. “We’re cops and are supposed to follow the facts, not gossip.”

Lesky grabbed a chair and straddled it. “Fact number one, Laura Carter is a very beautiful woman. Fact number two, she moved up the chain of command faster than usual—faster than either you or me. Fact number three, she had a very close relationship with her captain in Boston.”

Clint put his phone messages into his desk drawer. Lesky was tiresome. “That’s pure speculation. The captain may simply have been her mentor.”

“You’ll be the one to judge how good she is…at police work.” Lesky loved the sound of his own voice, and a small crowd was gathering around Clint’s desk. The only way to stop Lesky was to let him finish.

Lesky looked around at his fellow officers. “Back to the facts. Fact number four, most of her unit believed she was having an affair with the captain, apparently including his wife. Fact number five, his wife began divorce proceedings and fact number six, because of Laura’s family connections, she was transferred to us. How long did it take the paperwork to get you from Dallas to here?”

“A year.”

“It took Laura two weeks.”

Lesky had a valid argument but Clint never believed all the stories told about a person. Stories could be vicious and mean, even when they were based on truth.

He knew all about living with a reputation. “The facts could also indicate that she was—is—a damn fine cop.”

“But that body. She’s got great legs and—” he cupped a pair of imaginary breasts. “I’d love to lose myself in her body for a few hours.”

“That’s where we’re different. I don’t believe every rumor.” Clint stood. “And trust me, the last thing I want to do is get my hands on Ms. Carter’s body. Us Texas boys don’t like frostbite.” He pretended to shiver but saw that Lewsky wasn’t smiling. He took a deep breath and turned around.

Clint reminded himself that his mama had taught him better. If you spoke your mind you had to accept the consequences. Laura stood in front of him, looking like she always did.

Her face wasn’t flushed with anger, she didn’t sweep her gaze disdainfully over him or even turn on her heel and stalk out.

Instead she looked cool and imperial. When she opened her mouth he braced himself for her cutting remarks. “What time do you want to pick me up tomorrow? It will make our cover story more believable if we arrive in one car.”

He thought about apologizing, but she didn’t look like she cared about what her colleagues thought of her. “Does noon work?” he asked instead.

“Can you make it a little later, say one-thirty? I have to organize a lot of clothes to play my part.”

“Sure, that’s okay.” He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

She took a pen and piece of paper from his desk and wrote something on it. “My address. I’ll be in the lobby at one-thirty.” She handed the paper over to him and their fingers brushed. For a moment she eyed Lesky, then walked away.

This time Clint wanted to shiver for real. Laura Carter was even colder than he’d imagined.

No matter what the next few days held at the society wedding, it would be no honeymoon.

2

AT EXACTLY 1:25 p.m. of what she was sure was about to be the first of the worst four days of her life, Laura placed her two suitcases on the floor of the lobby of her building and looked out the front window. No cowboy on a white stallion.

She let out a pent-up breath, angry at herself. “You are a complete idiot and a juvenile one at that. You weren’t even this bad when you had a crush on Kevin Beckins in seventh grade!” If she’d thought talking to herself would fix her unreasonable and unwanted crush on Clint Marshall, it didn’t work. She’d never been so humiliated in her entire life. She had a crush on the cowboy. A crush!

Deliberately she replayed his words in her mind: Trust me, the last thing I want to do is get my hands on Ms. Carter’s body. Us Texas boys don’t like frostbite.

He hadn’t even used her first name. He probably thought his tongue would freeze if he said her name out loud. He clearly considered her a stiff, prissy socialite.

She softly kicked one of her expensive suitcases with her even more expensive shoes. Sweetums whimpered in disagreement. “Baby, did I scare you? I’m sorry. Mummy was thinking about that nasty man we’re being forced to spend a very long weekend with and I was trying to work out my frustration.” She scooped the bundle of white fluff into her arms and adjusted the blue bow tied to the tiny dog’s collar. “How’s my little Sweetums?”

The dog squinted at her from under her long blond bangs and blinked. Laura kissed the top of the dog’s head, amazed she’d come to care as much as she did for the ridiculous dog. She scratched Sweetums behind her ears and continued her running monologue. Sweetums liked to hear the sound of human voices. “If you were a real dog you’d bark. Or growl, or make some kind of loud noise—anything more than those little whiny noises you make when you sleep. Try barking for Mummy. Bark,” Laura coaxed and then demonstrated by making a loud woofing sound. Sweetums looked at Laura curiously, opened her mouth and licked Laura’s face.

“Well at least somebody likes me,” she said ruefully and wished the cowboy’s words hadn’t hurt so much. Normally she liked her ice-princess routine. After all, she had spent years refining the image. She was very good at it. Because of it most men stayed far away.

Romantic involvements only confused most women’s lives. At present count her mother had been married five times and each husband had had his own horrible qualities. Her mother continued to sail blithely across extremely dangerous seas from man to man, never noticing how much of her fortune each husband cost her or even more importantly how they destroyed her emotionally.

But Laura had noticed. And when she caught herself repeating her mother’s pattern—completely changing herself to fit into her ex-fiancé’s life—she’d stopped. Brian Simpson had almost been the biggest mistake of her life, but she’d gotten smart. Like her mother, men were her weakness so she’d stopped dating. Joined the police force. Concentrated on her career. Exclusively.

She liked being a cop and she was good at it. She loved the challenge of figuring out a case: following obscure leads, interviewing witnesses until something clicked and she knew who had broken the law. She sympathized with Garrow’s frustration; he knew that Monroe Investments laundered Russian Mafia money but he didn’t have the evidence he needed to arrest Peter Monroe. When she’d first made detective, she and her partner had kept a case open for three years, working on it whenever they could squeeze in the time, until they’d finally made an arrest.

Once she’d proven she wasn’t just playing at being a police officer, her colleagues had assumed that she would request a transfer to a unit like Special Financial Investigations. But while she appreciated the work Agent Garrow did, Laura preferred being on the street, helping ordinary people.

Being a good cop was her only priority. No man had been able to even chisel an inch of permafrost off her carefully developed exterior.

Until Clint Marshall.

A red sports car pulled up in front of her building and Clint unfolded his tall form from within. She watched and waited as he smiled at her neighbor, Mrs. Schwarz, and then held open the lobby door for her. He tilted his cowboy hat to the elderly woman and Mrs. Schwarz giggled as she passed him.

Laura’s pulse quickened as she studied him from under her eyelashes. Clint was tall, well over six feet and since she was five-nine, he’d be the perfect height to kiss. He had broad shoulders and a well-muscled chest. She knew because he’d had his shirt ripped off once during a violent arrest and he’d spent ten glorious minutes in the squad room processing the paperwork before going to the locker room to change. She’d had to take a tight hold of her desk to stop herself from running her hands over his bronzed muscles.

Clint’s long strides had him next to her and she took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp masculine scent of Clint Marshall. She held Sweetums up to her face to mask her swirling emotions. Whenever she was around Clint, it always took a little longer for her to put on the face she showed the rest of the world.

“What in the blazes is that?” Clint demanded as he frowned at the bundle of white fluff in her arms.

“Her name is Sweetums.” She raised the dog to his eye level.

Clint scowled at Sweetums. “What is it?”

“She’s a dog.”

“Darlin’, I’ve got cats bigger than that and with a lot less fur.”

Laura knew perfectly well the picture she and the Lhasa apso made. She was dressed in a pale blue suit, cradling a poofy white dog that in turn wore a bow that matched the exact shade of her blue suit. The image they presented was both sweet and ridiculous and, as she planned, Clint was looking at her in puzzlement. What was most important to Laura, however, was that she did not look like a member of Chicago’s finest. Looking at Laura and her dog, people would assume she was a socialite with too much time on her hands rather than a hard-working police officer. Laura straightened the bow on her dog’s head. “Sweetums is a Lhasa apso. She’s not supposed to grow any bigger, which is a good thing, because she’s just perfect as she is.”

“Just big enough to fit into your pocketbook?”

She smiled sweetly and scratched Sweetums behind her ears. The dog panted and sighed. Ever since Sweetums’s first owner had passed away, the dog loved to be petted and fussed over. Clint shook his head, his lips twitching and stroked Sweetums’s head. The dog drooled. Of course, if Clint touched her like that, Laura reflected, she’d drool, too.

“The dog is named Sweetums?” Clint asked.

“Yes. Say hello to the nice man, Sweetums,” she cooed into the dog’s ear and waved one little doggy paw at Clint. Sweetums looked bored and yawned. “I guess she doesn’t know what to make of a cowboy.”

“I get that reaction a lot in Chicago. Although people are generally a little more polite.”

“Is that why you turn the Texas drawl on and off?”

He shot her a quick look with his steel colored eyes but said nothing. He picked up her two suitcases. “Is this everything?”

“Yes.” She patted Sweetums on the head and straightened the dog’s bow again so that she wouldn’t see Clint pick up her bags, see the rippling muscles in his arms or appreciate the view as he walked away from her. When she looked up she realized she was too late. Clint was already outside her building. She scrambled after him and caught up just as he put her two bags in the miniscule trunk of his convertible—his own bag was on the pretend excuse of a back seat—and then opened her car door.

“Darlin’,” a mocking smile teased his lips as he gestured wide with his arm and helped her in. He touched her arm as she settled herself in, unaware that his touch marked her with greater power than any branding iron could have done.

As he walked around the car she looked at her left arm expecting to see the imprint of his fingers.

What was it about Clint Marshall that reduced her to a quivering mass of want? As Clint got in the car she pulled herself together—she’d spent enough evenings wasting her time thinking about Clint. She needed to establish a professional working relationship with him, that was all. But she was curious about him.

He started the sports car and pulled out into traffic. Laura settled Sweetums on her lap and readjusted the bow, choosing her words. If she was going to spend the next four days with him, she didn’t want to offend him, but she wanted to understand him—for purely professional reasons, she told herself. She and Clint would be a team for the next number of days. “With some people the good old boy accent is so thick I can barely make sense of what you’re saying through all the y’alls and cow metaphors. But when you’re with people you like, the whole routine disappears.”

She waited. Unlike how he behaved with most of their fellow officers, Clint always turned on the Texas routine when he spoke to her.

“Darlin’, I just give the people what they want. They see a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots and have certain expectations—especially in a big established city like this.”

She certainly understood his reasoning and she’d heard the other women gossiping often enough about the handsome cowboy. One of the very young and gorgeous female cops on the force had stated that she couldn’t imagine anything sexier than a cowboy in her bed. Unfortunately that image had stuck in Laura’s mind and she’d spent too much time fantasying about his Stetson on her pillow.

She realized that she and Clint shared a common trait: she, too, gave people exactly what they expected.

Clint passed a car and then looked at her. “Why did you bring that dog with you? Hotels have rules about not allowing pets.”

Sweetums settled herself more comfortably on Laura’s lap, drooled, sighed and closed her eyes. Luckily Laura was familiar with this routine and had her handkerchief ready to wipe away the drool before it landed on her silk suit or the soft leather of the car seat. Most Lhasa apsos didn’t drool, but after the trauma of losing her first owner the dog had stopped barking and started slobbering. She ran a hand along the calfskin. “Nice car,” she said, avoiding his question.

“The department loaned it to me. Garrow must have some kind of pull—or else his bosses are giving him a last chance. They figured a red sports car would suit our image as wealthy newlyweds.”

“It’s lovely.” Her mother’s third husband, Larry, had loved cars and spent a lot of money filling a seven car garage. Laura had liked the vintage roadsters, and was quite sad when Larry and her mother had divorced and Larry had taken all the cars in the settlement. Laura missed the cars more than she’d missed Larry. As her mother was already in love with husband number four, she wasn’t sure if her mother had noticed the absence of either.

Clint thumped the driving wheel of the red sports car. “Maybe you’re used to a useless expensive car like this but back home this car wouldn’t make it through the first pothole. You couldn’t transport anything with it.”

“Some things are designed to look good and go fast. Period. Not to haul around outhouses or maneuver around giant potholes. Maybe you should fix the roads back in Three Mule Station,” she snapped and realized she’d lost her temper, deliberately making fun of Clint’s hometown. She never, ever, lost her temper. But then again she never behaved like herself when she was around the cowboy.

“It’s Two Horse Junction,” Clint said without any heat. “I guess I prefer the practical to the purely decorative.”

She knew he meant her, but she chose to ignore his comment. The knowledge that Clint Marshall didn’t like her would not bother her. She ruffled Sweetums’s bow, schooled her face not to reveal any emotion and pretended she didn’t understand his real meaning. “Sweetums is a completely useful dog.”

“Ha! She probably couldn’t bark loud enough to call for help if someone was trying to break into your apartment.”

“I have a doorman for that,” she replied, but in truth she had been trying to teach Sweetums to bark for the past three months, ever since her neighbor, Mrs. Novak, had passed away. Laura had been the first person to enter Mrs. Novak’s apartment, alerted by Sweetums’s whining and scratching to find the elderly woman in her bed. The coroner had diagnosed heart failure. As Mrs. Novak hadn’t had any relatives, or even many friends, Laura had handled the funeral arrangements. And, unable to turn the dog over to the city pound and an uncertain future, she had taken Sweetums home to live with her.

Laura had never had a dog, or a desire to saddle herself with a fluffy white useless creature that didn’t even bark, but neither could she abandon the defenseless creature. So Laura took Sweetums home and tried to make her feel safe.

But after a month of silence, a month of the only sound of Sweetums making being an occasional pathetic whimper along with the excess drooling, Laura had taken the pooch to an animal psychologist. The therapist, after several expensive sessions, assured her that Sweetums just needed time to grieve for the loss of her mistress and to adjust to Laura. Sweetums would bark again, the doggie therapist had assured her and offered further counseling.