You Only Love Once

He’s just as much a victim in this as I am, she reminded herself. But for some reason his undisguised disbelief when they were introduced irritated her. Shock, she expected. Disbelief? Suddenly agitated, she shifted. She told herself to give him the benefit of the doubt. That there was a good chance he wasn’t like eighty percent of the other males she’d worked with who thought her completely incapable of her job as a police officer. Okay, maybe not a good chance. But there was a chance. And after last night, she, um, owed him at least that much consideration.

He moved. She forced herself to look at him. His mouth was moving, but no words made it past his impossibly wicked lips. She swallowed, reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to notice what a great mouth he had…or remember all the naughty places that mouth had been mere hours earlier.

His attempts at speech continued, nudging up her impatience level. Finally, she said, “Look, I didn’t expect this anymore than you did, David…um, McCoy.” Stick to last names. Maybe that would afford her the distance she so desperately needed right now.

His crack at imitating a wide-mouth bass out of water stopped and he seemed to relax. “Actually, Hatfield,” he said, stressing her last name. “That’s not entirely true. Last night you knew you were going to be reporting to work at this station and that you would be assigned a new partner. That’s a helluva lot more than I was privy to.”

She sighed and stared at the ceiling of the car. Okay, she’d give him that. Still… “Come on, David, we met at a cop bar. Surely you had to know there was some connection.”

“All right. Sure. Maybe. But as someone’s daughter. Or sister. Or…”

She raised a brow, daring him to say “cop groupie.”

He cursed under his breath. “I didn’t expect you to be a blasted police officer.”

She stared out the windshield as a couple of uniforms walked by, openly curious about the couple in the squad car a few feet away. “Don’t you think we should get going?”

“Huh?” He followed her line of vision. His long-suffering sigh told her he’d somewhat snapped out of his momentary trance.

“Look, David, when I came in this morning, this was the last thing I expected.” She hated that she noticed his eyes were an even more vibrant blue in the light of day. “I say we do this. Go on about our business for now and pretend last night never happened.”

He blinked as if the effort took every ounce of his concentration. “Are you crazy?” he said, startling her with his intensity. “I have the best friggin’ sex of my life and you tell me to forget about it? Act like it never happened?”

Heat spread quickly through Kelli’s veins, making her remember just how incredible last night had been for her, too. But last night was last night. And, oh boy, did the guy who sang “What a Difference a Day Makes” ever know what he was talking about.

David started the cruiser and began to back out. “Ain’t a chance in hell I’m going to forget about last night, Kelli.” He looked at her. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you forget either.”

THEY ARRIVED on the scene to find the street glutted with blue-and-whites. David spotted the scene commander and within moments he and Kelli were next to him. A brisk December breeze brought her scent to him. Damn, but she smelled good. Like ripe peaches picked fresh from the tree.

He grimaced. Yeah, she was a peach all right. A peach with a gun.

“Glad you could join us, McCoy,” Sutherland said dryly.

An officer David recognized as being at the bar the night before chuckled as he elbowed his partner.

“Look, loverboy has himself a new partner.”

“Can it, Jennings,” David told him. His gaze rested on Kelli’s face to find bright spots of red high on her cheeks. But whether her flush was a result of the cold, or the obvious gossiping going on, he couldn’t tell. Her shoulder-length toffee-colored hair was caught back in a neat French braid, her skin nearly flawless where the gray morning light caught it.

She looked at him. He immediately looked back at the commander. “Why don’t you bring me…us up to speed on what’s going on?”

Sutherland did, covering much the same ground O’Leary had at the station. Except his details were more specific. The perp was on the third floor. Door was open, but there wasn’t a clean shot. He pointed to where the perpetrator’s estranged wife stood shivering next to a nearby patrol car, then to a fire escape on the side of the building. Across the way on the roof of a neighboring building a couple of sharpshooters were setting up shop.

“The perp demands to talk to his wife before he’ll give up the three-year-old girl.”

“The perp is the child’s father?”

“He ceased being a father the minute he took his own child hostage, McCoy.”

David stepped backward until the fire escape was in sight, ignoring the red-and-white flashes of light against the brick building.

“What is it?” Kelli asked, coming to stand next to him.

He looked at her again. Damn, but just looking at her did all sorts of funny things to his stomach. “Just that the guy couldn’t have picked a worse time to do this, that’s all. You’ve got the tired third shifters exhausted and pumped up on caffeine, their trigger fingers itchy as hell. Then there are the first shift guys barely awake and pissed as hell that their coffee-and-donut run was interrupted.” He grimaced. “Really bad timing.”

Her gaze swept him from forehead to mouth. Was she remembering last night as vividly as he was? Was she thinking about how great it had felt to be joined together, far, far away from this mess? She looked quickly away and this time he was sure the color of her cheeks wasn’t due to the cold. “Any ideas on how to end it?” she asked.

He mulled over her words. “Yeah. I think what I just said makes a lot of sense.”

“What, let SWAT take him out?”

“No. The donuts part. If the father’s just coming off third shift he probably hasn’t had breakfast yet. A guy can get awful hungry after putting in a full one.”

“Are you saying we should feed the perp?” she asked, a suspicious shadow darkening her green eyes.

“The father, Hatfield. The guy is the kid’s father.” He grinned. “And yeah, I think we should try feeding him.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

He scanned the street. At the corner was a small donut shop. He thrust five dollars at her. “Here. Get a half dozen and a couple of coffees.”

Kelli frowned. “But—”

“Do it, Hatfield.”

Her eyes flashed, but she started toward the shop—though not without looking back a couple of times first.

The instant she was out of sight, David grabbed a bullet-proof vest from the back of a riot wagon, then strode toward the fire escape. He pulled down the ladder even as he shrugged into the vest. He pulled his weight up on the first rung, then methodically climbed until he reached the third floor landing. Ducking off to the side, he peeked in through the window. The father was sitting on a couch out of view of the front door and of the sharpshooters across the street, grasping his little girl in one hand, a twelve-gauge shotgun in his other. The little girl looked unharmed. More than that, the toddler didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that things were out of control as she giggled and toyed with the buttons down the front of her father’s work shirt.

David ducked back out of sight and took a deep breath. He figured out the scenario in his mind. The father had just knocked off work at a nearby factory, had stopped by to see his daughter, his soon-to-be ex refused to allow him to, and he’d taken matters into his own hands.

Any way you cut it, what had begun as a harmless domestic squabble had spiraled out of control until you had the situation he now faced.

“I’ve got a clean shot,” a sharpshooter’s voice crackled over the radio fastened to David’s gun belt.

“Be at the ready,” scene commander Sutherland’s voice responded.

Shaking his head, David reached over and tested the old wood-frame window. Unlocked. Hoping the bit of luck would stay with him, he pushed the window up before the guy inside, and the commander outside, had time to react.

“Whoa, there, cowboy,” David said, swinging his feet over the sill and sitting with his hands up. “My name’s McCoy and I’m here to make sure no one gets hurt.” He grinned. “Especially me.”

OFFICERS, uniformed and otherwise swarmed the small, neat apartment, talking into radios, issuing orders and generally making a mess out of things. In the middle of the chaos, Kelli finished reading the perp his Miranda rights, then cuffed him. Distractedly, her gaze trailed over to where David stood near the door holding the little girl. She clung to him like a young chimp. He leaned in and whispered something into her ear, then chucked her under her dimpled chin. She twirled her blond, sleep-tousled hair around her chubby index finger, then giggled shyly. Somehow, David had not only skillfully managed to keep the girl from seeing her father being arrested, he had made her laugh. Kelli couldn’t help noticing how…right he looked holding the little cherub.

Testing the cuffs, she forced the unwanted thought aside and concentrated instead on her total lack of amusement only moments before. David’s sending her off on some two-bit, phony errand so that he could play maverick hero set her blood to simmering.

“This way,” she said, grasping the perp’s elbow, then angling him toward the door.

He hesitated. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I just wanted my face to be one of the first she saw this morning, that’s all,” he told her. “It’s her birthday, you know. All I wanted was five minutes to give her a hug and her present. I would never have hurt my little girl.”

Kelli took in his aggrieved expression. “I hope not. But that’s for a judge to decide, isn’t it?”

David handed the child off to another female officer who would likely take the toddler to her mother and Kelli passed the handcuffed perp off to the first officer on the scene.

“That was a stupid stunt you pulled, David,” Kelli muttered as they walked out of the apartment together.

“Just so long as it’s over and no one got hurt.” He acknowledged a hearty slap on the back from one of their colleagues with a nod. He flashed a loaded grin at her. “I didn’t know you were so concerned about my backside.”

“I’m your partner,” she said, her breath catching at the teasing expression on his face. “I’m supposed to be concerned about your backside. But that’s not what I was talking about. I didn’t much care for your little diversionary tactic, David. Do you even know the definition of the word partn—”

“McCoy! Get your ass over here now, boy,” Sutherland’s voice boomed up the stairwell.

“Speaking of backsides…” David groaned. “I’d better go see what he wants.”

Kelli opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. She got the impression that whatever she had to say wouldn’t make one iota of difference anyway.

She stopped and let him pass in front of her. “Go ahead. I just might enjoy watching the scene commander take a piece out of you.”

David’s grimace was altogether too cute. “Be careful what you wish for, Hatfield. At this rate, I won’t have any behind left to risk.” He waggled his brows.

Sutherland was at the bottom of the steps and was apparently ready to do just as David forecasted. Even so, Kelli couldn’t help eyeing the backside in question. The clinging, unattractive material and bulky weapons belt was unable to hide the fact that David McCoy’s behind was the stuff of which fantasies were made. She started to push wisps of hair from her forehead only to find her hand shaking. She greeted an officer, then outside on the street away from the crowd she took a deep, calming breath.

Why did she get the feeling that everything in her life had just been turned upside down? And why was it that she suspected that a certain precinct Casanova named David McCoy was solely to blame?

3

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Kelli caught herself daydreaming as she stood in front of the toaster. She’d been thinking about David in a way that had nothing to do with the way he’d treated her yesterday, nothing to do with her plans to nab a detective’s shield, and everything to do with hot flesh and cool sheets.

Sighing in a mixture of wistfulness and frustration, she pushed her run-dampened hair from her cheek, then stuck half an onion bagel smothered with grape jelly between her teeth. Ignoring the dirty dishes stacked in the sink, and the empty carton of orange juice on the counter, she clutched her full coffee cup, then elbowed open the kitchen door. She had forty-five minutes before roll call. Plenty of time to peel off her sweats, catch a shower and get down to the district three station to have that little talk she and David had never really gotten around to yesterday.

The tension she had just spent a half an hour and three miles running off settled solidly back between her shoulder blades.

After the hostage case and Sutherland, there had been the press to deal with. She remembered how David’s easy grin and easygoing personality had transferred well over all forms of media and felt her stomach tighten along with her shoulders. Reporters, especially female—although she’d noticed a couple of males responding to David’s charming, daredevil ways—were all over him. When they’d finally gotten back to their squad car, it seemed a quarter of D.C.’s population had a crisis of some sort that needed attention. She and David had spent the day on back-to-back runs ranging from the simple—helping find an elderly woman’s “stolen” social security check in a neighbor’s mailbox—to the complicated—an obvious gang member who would probably lose an eye but would never give up the names of his homies or the opposing gang.

Still, no matter how many calls came in, how much paperwork they had to fill out, a thread of awareness had bound her and David together. It was a connection not even her sharpest retort could hope to cut.

Yeah, well, today she planned to take a machete to work. She’d get a handle on her runaway hormones if it was the last thing she ever did.

Kelli wove her way through the maze that was currently her apartment into the dining area of her living room. She dodged precariously stacked, half-unpacked boxes, a hundred pound bag of diet dog food and her treadmill. Finally she nudged a manila folder aside with her mug, then put her coffee on the cluttered dining room table. Her attention catching on a pink message slip, she freed the bagel from between her teeth and took an absent bite. The message must have slipped from one of the files, the blue ink nearly faded. She leaned closer to see the date. March 25, 1982. The day her mother was murdered. The day she’d decided she wanted to be a homicide detective.

A sharp bark made her jump.

“Yikes, Kojak, you just about gave me a coronary.” Frowning down at the drooling blond boxer she’d rescued from a New York animal shelter, she considered the disgusting concoction that served as her breakfast then held it out to him. He sniffed, licked, then whined and walked away.

Kelli stared at the now inedible bagel half. “Thanks a lot.” She tossed it into a nearby bag she hoped was empty, then switched on the television across the room with the remote. The local news broadcaster’s voice filled the apartment reminding her again how David had charmed the reporters. His too handsome mug had been plastered all over the news last night, every hour on the hour, if not on the news itself, then in the news previews. “You don’t want to miss our story of the day as local man in blue David McCoy saves the day….”

It was enough to make a person ill.

Kelli plucked up the remote again, moving to switch off the television before the news could launch into another “local hero” bit featuring her partner the sexist cad, when a completely different scene stopped her. “We’re on the outskirts of Georgetown where a woman was found dead in her apartment, earlier this morning. Eyewitnesses tell us the murder of this quiet, private school teacher bears all the markings of the work of the man dubbed the D.C. Degenerate.” The female spot reporter looked over her shoulder.

Kelli wryly nodded. “Zoom in on the standard body shot,” she said under her breath.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “If so, then I, for one, think we need to upgrade his name to D.C. Executioner. Because it appears he’s just lost interest in playing out sick sexual fantasies and has just graduated to full-fledged killer.”

Kelli pressed the mute button, the case too similar to another for her comfort. She picked up the message slip lying on the table in front of her, wondering how much detectives knew about this latest guy. And if they would do any better catching him than they had her mother’s killer.

It had been awhile since she’d reviewed the contents of the folders strewn out before her. Three years, in fact. Ever since transferring to New York where doing any footwork on the case would have been impossible. She sat down and curled her right leg under her. Now that she was back home, though…

The telephone chirped. Propping a file open with one hand, she reached for the cordless with her other.

“Yeah?”

“Jaysus, Kelli, is that the way you answer the phone?” her father asked with obvious exasperation.

Kelli closed the file and reached for another. “I don’t know, Dad, you’d be the better one to answer that question since you are the one who’s calling me every five minutes since I got back in town.”

She winced the moment the words were out of her mouth. Not because she shouldn’t have said such a thing to her own father, but because of what it would ultimately lead to.

She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable speech.

“Yes, well, I wouldn’t have to call you if you were staying here, now would I?”

“No, Dad, you wouldn’t,” she said almost by rote.

“You know I have more than enough room for you. There’s no sense in your going off and getting an apartment.”

“Yes, Dad, I know.”

The sound of crumpling paper caught her attention. She turned to find Kojak nosing around in the bag for the uneaten bagel.

“Have you watched the news lately? It isn’t safe for a woman to be living on her own in this city.”

Kelli nodded. “Not safe.”

“And that damn mutt of yours is no kind of security either, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s nothing but an overgrown cat.”

“Cat…”

“Kelli Marie, are you even paying attention to what I’m saying, girl?”

“Sure, Dad. Though I really don’t have to because you’ve said it so often it’s etched in my brain.” She pulled another file in front of her and flipped it open. “Was there a specific reason you called, Dad? Or is this just another of your check-ins?”

Silence, then, “Can’t a dad simply want to talk to his daughter?”

Kelli slowly spread her hand out palm down on the table. She should have seen that one coming as well but stepped right through the open barn door all the same. Her voice was decidedly more subdued when she said, “Of course you can, Dad.” She leaned back in her chair. Sometimes it seemed it had always been just her and her father. “You and me against the world,” he’d said when he’d found her crying in her mother’s closet after the funeral. Words he’d repeated time and again after she’d gotten knocked down over and over while proving to everyone and to herself that she was just as good as the guys. “It’s just you and me against the world, kid.”

She curled the fingers of her free hand into a loose fist. “Dad…I know it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it…and Lord knows I’ve avoided bringing the topic up enough times…but I have to know.” She took a deep breath that did nothing to calm her. “Does it ever bother you that Mom’s killer was never caught?”

She regretted the question the instant it was out. The silence that wafted over the line was as palpable as her own unsteady heartbeat. “You know I don’t like talking about the past, Kelli.”

“I know, but—”

“What’s done is done. Nothing can change it.”

I can change it. “But don’t you think sometimes that it can be changed? That by—”

“No.”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from asking anymore questions, no matter how much she wanted to. She knew from experience that she would only upset her father more. And the more upset he got, the more he clammed up, locking himself away even from her. She didn’t want to make that happen. Not in her first few days back home, no matter how desperately she needed answers.

“Okay, Dad. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

She switched the phone to her other ear, focusing her entire attention on lightening the conversation, coaxing it back to safer ground. “So tell me, big bad police chief…did you go for the Café Vienna or the French Vanilla this morning?”

For the next ten minutes she and her father talked about everything and nothing, with Kelli carefully redirecting the conversation whenever it moved too near career territory…too close to family issues that might include mention of her mother. It was altogether easier for both of them to forget that she was a police officer. Um, edit that. It was infinitely easier to make her father forget she was a police officer, much less why she had chosen the career to begin with. She wasn’t sure what he told everyone about her time in New York, but if she knew Garth Hatfield, and she did, it probably had something to do with art school.

Of course that explanation would not only raise some brows now that she was back in town, it would call into question his mental capacity.

Kelli glanced at her watch. “I gotta run, Dad.”

“Oh. Sure. Okay.”

She methodically closed each of the files in front of her and piled them back up, chucking any idea she had of going through them this morning. “I’ll talk to you later, then?”

“Later.”

“Goodbye.” She started to get up and nearly tripped over where Kojak was licking a jelly stain from the wood floor.

“Hold up a second, Kell.” Her father’s voice stopped her from hitting the disconnect button. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

She absently watched the muted images slide across the television screen. Stories of murder and corruption, all against the background of the most powerful capital of the world. Never a dull moment. “What is it?”

“How did it go yesterday?”

Kelli paused, wondering at the neutral sound of her father’s voice. She decided to play it as vaguely as he was. “It went well. Really well.” Liar. Although she was sure her dad would approve of her trouble with David even less than the idea of her putting on a uniform every morning.

“You meet your new partner yet?” he asked.

She slowly reached out and switched the television off. “Yes.”

“Are you getting on well?”

Kelli crossed her free arm over her chest. “Yes.”

Her father’s sigh burst over the line. “Come on, girl, this isn’t an official interrogation. You can give more than a yes or no answer. Do you like the guy or don’t you? Do you want me to have you assigned somewhere else? Another district station, maybe?”

“Like out in Arlington where the most serious crime is loitering? No, Dad, but thanks just the same.” She rubbed her forehead. So much for avoidance measures. “And my partner’s name’s McCoy. He’s a pigheaded, male chauvinist who needs an ego adjustment, but I can handle him.” At least she hoped she could.

There was a heartbeat of a pause. Kelli fought the desire to ask him if he was still there.

“McCoy?” he finally said gruffly.

“Yeah. David. Do you know him?”

“Of him. I know his father.”

“That’s nice, Dad. Maybe you and he can get together and plot how to scare your kids off the force over a beer sometime. Look, I’ve—”

“If Sean McCoy and I ever end up in the same room together where there’s beer, I’d just as soon crack a bottle over his head,” her father said vehemently.