Love at First Sight

He reached into the car and came back out with the spot remover. He motioned for her to unassume the position. She straightened and crossed her arms, trying to hide just how ill at ease and chilled she was.

She thought he might apologize. For frisking her. For thinking she had a dress in her car covered with blood—someone else’s. For even suspecting she’d pepper spray a man of the law.

He tossed the dress and the spot remover back into the car, seemingly as upset as if the wine had been blood and the spot remover pepper spray. His gaze met hers. His look said he was still a cop. And she was still a speeder.

She waited for him to give her a ticket.

Instead he gave her a smile.

Without her consent, her heart did a little pitter-patter and her knees went soft. She really needed to get out more.

“I’ve heard that brand of spot remover’s pretty good stuff,” he said after a moment. “So, want to tell me again why you were speeding?”

She opened her mouth to argue, then thought better of it. He was offering her a chance to bare her soul. She’d already bared nearly everything else for him. And she did need to talk to a police officer about Liz. Why not a cop she’d been almost intimate with?

She let out a long sigh and glanced toward the strip mall. “Is there any chance we could talk about this over coffee? Maybe a doughnut?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jack watched her bite into a lemon-filled jelly doughnut, enthralled. He’d never seen a woman who enjoyed food this much. He couldn’t help smiling as she licked lemon from her lips in almost orgasmic delight.

He got her another doughnut.

Between bites, Karen Sutton began to tell him about Liz Jones, washing her statement and the doughnuts down with large amounts of black coffee.

If what she was saying was true, she really had been chasing the man she thought to be Liz Jones’s killer. Being a cop had left Jack as skeptical as he was cynical and suspicious. But even he had to admit, he’d over-reacted earlier. The woman had knocked him off-kilter, like a load of laundry thrown to one side of the washing-machine tub.

He knew he should be more concerned about that, but as he watched her stare deeply into her coffee cup, her hair framing her face, the sunlight streaming in the window, making her freckles glow like gold dust, he realized this woman was definitely a new experience, one he was rather enjoying.

True, her story was unbelievable. Maybe that’s why he tended to believe it. Or maybe he just wanted to believe it because of the woman telling it.

“Didn’t it seem odd that a classmate you hadn’t even seen in sixteen years would be so anxious to tell you her most intimate secrets?” he asked.

Karen shook her head. “I think she just needed someone to confide in, someone she thought she’d never see again.”

“But you said you exchanged phone numbers,” he pointed out. He still had the once balled-up napkin in the Jeep.

“It was just the polite thing to do at the time,” she said between bites of doughnut. “I really never expected to hear from her again.”

Jack studied his Girl Next Door. No longer appearing nervous or angry or frightened or suspicious, she seemed only too happy to tell him everything she knew about Liz Jones. She even seemed to forget for the moment that she wasn’t wearing a bra. When they’d first sat down, she’d kept pulling the body-hugging fabric away from her skin, never letting either of them forget her recent frisking.

There was something so appealing about her candor, so appealing about her, he found it hard to concentrate. “Did she say how she met this guy?” He handed Karen a napkin and pointed to a spot on her cheek. “Powdered sugar.”

She eyed him a little oddly for a moment before taking the napkin and dabbing at her cheek. “That’s the weird part. They met through a newspaper ad. She’d put something in the ‘I Saw You’ column after seeing a man on a street corner.”

Jack had seen the personals column in the local newspaper and had always thought only college students placed those kinds of ads.

“Our eyes met on the bus Friday. I wore a blue coat. You wore a smile. Want to get the rest of us together?”

“I spilled my coffee on you Saturday at Hooked on Java. Call me embarrassed. Or just call me.”

Liz Jones must have been a woman who liked taking risks. He wondered about the woman sitting across the table from him, then reminded himself that thirty minutes ago she’d been chasing down a man she thought was a killer.

“Let me get this straight,” he said carefully. “The man who answered her ad was a total stranger. But Liz started a relationship with him, not even knowing his name or who he was. Don’t you find that a little…bizarre?”

Karen looked thoughtful for a moment. “Even when we know each others’ names, how well do we really know each other?” she said philosophically.

He stared at her, dumbstruck. Could he have been that wrong about this woman?

She laughed at his shocked expression. “All right, I found the entire thing really bizarre. But Liz seemed fine with it. At first. I think something had happened that worried her and that was one reason she needed someone to talk to.”

“So, how did you end up at the Hotel Carlton?”

She grimaced. “Blind date.”

“I’ve had a few of those myself,” he said with a chuckle. “Only I’m usually the one who spills the wine rather than wears it.”

She looked up, her eyes met his. Angry, her eyes had been electric blue. Now though, they reminded him of the waters of a high mountain lake filled with summer reflections. She smiled. Killer smile when she wasn’t trying to look innocent. Something hot arced across the table between them. Or maybe it was just the spring sunshine and her smile. She had a kind of sex appeal beyond the cute lightly freckled face, the perky full breasts, the shapely butt, the muscled legs. This was not your typical Girl Next Door. He had a feeling she wasn’t your typical anything.

She continued her story right up to the scene in the hotel hallway between the mystery man and Liz Jones.

“What did he look like?” Jack asked, excited that he’d have something to give to Denny. Not that Detective Kirkpatrick deserved anything after the trick he’d played on Jack that morning, getting him out of bed at daybreak.

“Average height, brown hair, medium build,” Karen said. “His face was shaded by a baseball cap.”

“You just described half the guys in the United States.”

“I know,” she groaned. “I just saw him for a second. Then later in silhouette.”

Jack took another shot at it. “What about the way he was dressed?”

“Blue jeans, jean jacket, baseball cap.”

Dressed like that, he’d be Joe Blow Invisible in Montana.

Jack tried not to let his disappointment show. She seemed so anxious to help. “Anything about him strike you as odd or unusual?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “There must have been something or I wouldn’t have recognized him again this morning.”

Jack wished he could be sure about that. But he couldn’t even be sure she’d been chasing the right guy. There were always mug-shot books. Or a police artist. But he doubted either would be productive. She couldn’t provide enough for a good composite, let alone pick him out strictly from a more than likely outdated mug shot.

“You believe he was her secret lover?” Jack asked. “The one from the personals?”

Karen nodded. “I’d put money on it.”

A betting woman. Wouldn’t Denny love her? He clamped his jaw down on the thought.

“Why?” he asked, curious, since he suspected she didn’t take her bets lightly.