In The Arms Of The Law

“Please,” she sobbed.

“Where do you want it?” He stroked it along her folds. “Here?”

She filled her hands with her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes, there. Please. There.”

He pressed his erection against her opening. “Here?”

She arched high, straining. “Yes!” she sobbed. “Oh, please. Give it to me. Now!”

He drove deep and she opened her mouth to cry out her pleasure, but he clamped a hand over her lips, smothering the sound.

“Shh,” he soothed. “You don’t want your neighbors to hear, do you?”

Her eyes wild and fixed on his, she shook her head.

Smiling, he dragged his hand from her mouth and closed it over her breast. “I didn’t think you did.” He caught her nipple between finger and thumb, and she closed her eyes again, moaning low in her throat as he pinched them together.

Nobody understood her the way he did, she thought as pain and pleasure lanced her womb.

Nobody.

Andi unlocked the back door of her house and pushed it open, eager to change her clothes and get back outside and to work. If she hustled, she figured she had enough time to scrape the paint off at least half the rear of her house before the sun set. Maybe all of it, if the light held out long enough. She’d originally planned to tackle the job on Saturday, but the chief had thrown a wrench into her plans with his insistence that she and Gabe go to the charity ball.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now, she told herself, feeling the irritation rising. If she did, it would put her in a bad mood.

Mentally listing the tools she’d need, she quickly stripped out of her clothes and tugged on a pair of old shorts and a T-shirt. As she retraced her steps to the kitchen, she wrapped a bandana around her head to keep paint chips from matting in her hair, then stopped to check the messages on her answering machine.

“Hi, this is Melissa from Dr. Andrews’s office calling to remind you of your dental appointment tomorrow morning at nine. If you’re unable to make the appointment, please call our office and reschedule.”

She shuddered at the reminder of her annual dental exam, then deleted the message and waited for the next one to play. But no voice came through the speaker. Only the hum of recorded silence, then a click. Frowning, she hit the back button and checked the caller ID. Unknown. Her frown deepening, she punched the delete button. That was the third hang-up she’d received that week. One a month was rare.

When she’d moved into her house, she’d requested an unlisted telephone number, a precaution that most officers on the force took to protect their privacy, as well as their safety. There were a select few with whom she had entrusted her number. The dispatcher at the station, her dentist, her doctor, a couple of friends, a few distant relatives. So why so many hang-ups? she asked herself.

“Probably an overzealous telemarketer,” she told herself and headed out the door.

Once in the backyard, she dragged the ladder from the patio, propped it against the side of the house and plugged in the electric sander. Armed with a paint scraper to use on the tight spots the sander couldn’t reach and a pair of safety goggles, she climbed the ladder and set to work. Paint chips flew around her face and speckled her arms and legs. She slowly made her way down the ladder, moving the sander over the wood. When she reached the bottom, she repositioned the ladder, then set to work again.

Not that she considered this work.

To her, the improvements she made on her home, whether they were made weeding her flower beds or re-finishing the old wood flooring inside, were nothing but true pleasure. She’d purchased the house two years prior and had spent every spare moment since remodeling and redecorating it, both inside and out. The bonus she’d discovered was that it was the perfect way to relieve the stress associated with her job.

She was level with her bedroom window when she noticed the scratches along the lower edge of the screen. She quickly switched off the sander and shifted on the ladder in order to examine them more closely. Judging by the depth of the cuts along the aluminum frame, it appeared someone had attempted to pry off the screen. Whoever it was had failed in his mission, since the screen was still securely latched.

Most women would’ve panicked at the thought of a prowler trying to break into their house and would’ve run for the nearest phone to call the police. Not Andi. She was the police. Her only emotion at the moment was anger, and it was a toss-up as to what made her more mad: the damage done to her screen or the fact that someone had attempted to break into her house.

With her mouth set in an angry line, she climbed down from the ladder and set aside the sander. Sinking to a knee, she examined the ground beneath the window. The mulch spread around the shrubs and flowers in the bed that lined the back wall was over three inches thick and well packed, which negated any chance of finding a clear footprint.

Frustrated, she stood, bracing her hands on her hips as she looked around, trying to figure out how the prowler might have gained entry. The privacy fence that enclosed her backyard on three sides was covered in flowering vines she’d planted during the two years she’d owned the home, which made scaling the fence difficult, if not impossible.

Beyond the fence were her neighbors—the Huckabees at the rear, whom she knew only in passing; Mr. and Mrs. Brown on the right, a dear, elderly couple with whom she enjoyed visiting when she was out working in her yard or on her house; and Richard Givens on the left, a fiftysomething divorcé, who considered himself God’s gift to women.

She shuddered in revulsion at the thought of Richard, with his bleached-blond hair, fake-bake tan and thick gold rope chain he wore around his neck, a throw-back from the disco era, no doubt. He’d made more passes at her than a professional quarterback and continued to do so even after she’d repeatedly told him she wasn’t interested. But the man had an ego the size of Dallas and a hide as thick as a rhinoceros, which obviously made him impervious to her refusals.

Frowning, she peered at the iron gate that opened from the side yard that ran between her house and Richard’s, the only other means of gaining entry to her backyard. She kept the gate locked at all times, unless she was outside. But she supposed a person could climb over it, if they wanted to badly enough. Richard was certainly physically capable of scaling the gate, but she couldn’t imagine why he would want to get inside her house.

She heard the familiar squeal of tires on the driveway next door and groaned, knowing it was Richard arriving home. A red Corvette braked to a stop in front of his garage. Yesterday he’d been driving a BMW coupe. An unending supply of cars to choose from was one of the many perks he enjoyed as the owner of a used-car lot.

Hoping to escape before he saw her, she grabbed her sander and started up the ladder.

“Hi, Andrea! Working on the house again?”

Stifling another groan, she stopped and forced a polite smile. “Yeah. I’m trying to get the rear wall scraped before it gets too dark to see.”

He wagged a stern finger. “All work and no play makes Andrea a dull girl.” Grinning, he motioned for her to join him. “Come on over and I’ll mix us up a batch of martinis.”

“Sorry, but I’ll have to take a rain check.” She hefted the sander for him to see. “Duty calls.”

“Ah, come on,” he wheedled. “Surely you’ve got time for one of my famous dry martinis.”

She set her jaw to keep from screaming her frustration. “No, Richard, I really don’t.”

His smile slipped a bit at her refusal, then he shrugged and turned away. “Your loss.”

Staring, she choked a laugh. My loss? Shaking her head, she started up the ladder again. The guy was crazy. Certifiably insane. She stopped, her smile fading as she remembered the attempted break-in. No, she told herself, and resumed her climbing. Richard was a nuisance, but he wasn’t a criminal.

Or at least she didn’t think he was.

Shaking off the thought, she flipped on the sander. At the same moment, her cell phone rang. Muttering a curse, she shut off the machine and tugged the phone from the clip at her waist. “Matthews,” she snapped into the receiver.

“We’ve got a stabbing out on Maynor Road. Pete’s Place.”

She frowned, surprised to hear Gabe’s voice and not that of the dispatcher on duty. “Why are you calling me and not Joe?”

“Because I’m at the station and Joe has his hands full.”

She glanced at her wristwatch, gauging the time. “I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

“It’ll be faster if I swing by and pick you up.”

“No, I—” Before she could tell him she preferred to drive herself, there was a click and then the dial tone.

Furious that he’d hung up on her, she shoved the phone back onto its clip at her waist and stomped her way down the ladder.

She showered and changed clothes in record time and was locking her front door when Gabe pulled up in front of her house.

With her mouth set in a hard line, she climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “I don’t need a chauffeur,” she informed him tersely, “and if you hadn’t hung up on me, I could’ve told you that on the phone.”

He spared her a glance. “Are you this bitchy with everybody or do you reserve all your anger for me?”