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“You’re very tall,” she remarked.
“I’m not. You’re very short,” he replied.
She moved closer to him. “This is nice. I haven’t gone walking in a long time.”
“Neither have I.”
“How’s your investigation coming?” she asked.
“Well. In fact, I may wrap it up in the next few days.”
There was a long silence on her part. She was thinking that he’d solve his case, go back to Chicago, and she’d never see him again. It would be the worst day of her life. The very worst. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she was in love with him.
He stopped walking and turned to her. His dark eyes were puzzled as he looked down into her drawn, pale face. “You don’t want me to go,” he said very quietly.
She took a deep breath. “No. I don’t. But you have a life in Chicago and a job you do that gives you purpose,” she said, her pale eyes meeting his reluctantly. “It’s like my job. We’re both involved in careers that help other people.” She forced a smile. “But I’ll never forget you,” she added with a forced smile.
“I’ll never forget you, either,” he replied. His fingers tangled with hers. “I’m too old for you, and I do a job that requires a gun.” He smiled sadly. “Two different worlds, Annalisa.”
It was the first time he’d spoken her name. She loved the way it sounded in his deep, soft voice. She flushed.
He drew in a long breath of his own and his fingers tightened on hers. “Maybe we should keep walking,” he suggested, when it was the last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to take her back to her house and spend an hour just holding her. Odd, he thought to himself as they walked. All his life it had been a strictly physical thing, with women. But this woman made him hungry for more than just physical contact. Sex with her would be all fireworks, he knew that already. And it would be a commitment that he couldn’t push to one side and forget about. He thought about Annalisa with a baby in her arms, and he went hot all over. He wondered which one of them it would look like. His dark eyes glanced to one side and studied her unobtrusively. She was pretty. Her child might be blond, like her, with his dark eyes. Or dark-headed, like him, with her pale silver eyes.
He recalled that she loved children. He smiled to himself. Maybe a family wouldn’t be the terror he’d once thought.
* * *
They went back to her house after the brisk walk and after answering a phone call, which he did by going outside when he saw the caller ID, he helped her assemble the tall artificial tree. He set it up in the living room while she turned on the gas logs in the fireplace and put on Christmas music on one of the satellite stations on her television.
“Just to help get you in the Christmas spirit,” she teased, smiling up at him. She was wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater with her jeans, and her feet were clad only in fuzzy blue socks. He was wearing a sweater, too, a V-necked red one with a white shirt under it and brown slacks.
“You look nice,” he commented to her as he placed the angel ornament on the very top of the tree.
She laughed. “So do you.” She glanced at him. “But you’re . . . I don’t know. Subdued?”
“They found Billy Turner dead in his hospital bed this morning.”
“Billy? How? Were his injuries that bad?” she wanted to know.
He smiled. “They’ll all know at the hospital, so it’s no secret. I think he was poisoned. They’re running a panel to . . .”
His cell phone rang. He’d given the number to the doctor who was on Billy’s case. “Jones,” he said. He nodded. “Yes, that’s what I suspected. I’ll pick it up myself and notify the appropriate people. Thanks.” He hung up, smiling. “Poison. Just what I suspected.”
“Poison? In a hospital?” Annalisa exclaimed. “In my hospital?”
He nodded. “And that takes a disturbed person, let me tell you. I think Billy knew something that another person was afraid he might spill to someone.”
“Like, for instance, who killed Julie?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“You think May did it,” she murmured.
“I think May was the mastermind behind the kidnapping,” he replied. “And that’s privileged communication.”
She just smiled. “You know me,” she said simply.
He paused with an ornament in his big hand and stood just staring at her until she flushed under the intensity of his gaze. “I do know you,” he said, very softly. He put the ornament on a tree branch, turned and picked her up in his arms. “I know you to your very bones. And it’s going to be like pulling teeth to go home.”
