Serving Up Trouble

She knew this, and didn’t plan on wasting it. She’d been reminded-violently-how fast it could all end. And she wasn’t ready for an end, not by a long shot.

In light of that, she pulled out the local junior college application she’d received in the mail last month. Classes were due to start this week, a coincidence she’d take as another sign. She might love painting, but she couldn’t support herself that way. Time to find some thing she could do with her love of the arts that she could make a living at.

Without giving herself a chance to talk herself out of it, she filled in the required forms, wrote a check for late registration and stuffed them into her pocket to drop off on her way to work.

It felt…in credible. And she didn’t understand why it had taken her so long to do it, why she hadn’t seen what she’d needed to do a long time ago.

The phone rang again, and Angie answered with an indulgent laugh, feeling better, wondering which of her friends had felt the need to check up on her this time.

“Angie Rivers?”

The laugh backed up in her throat. She instantly recognized that low, deep, slightly husky voice. She had a feeling a hundred years could go by and she’d still recognize it.

That voice had been the first she’d heard after her terrifying ordeal yesterday. That voice had gone along with warm, strong arms and eyes filled with rage and concern, for her, in a way a man’s never had before.

That voice liquefied her bones.

With her spare glasses perched on her nose, she glanced at the front page of the news pa per sitting on her table, a page on which both she and Sam O’Brien-deco rated, revered, respected detective-were splashed across.

“Yes, this is Angie,” she said, having to sit down because suddenly she was made of Jell-O, with no bones in her entire body.

“This is Sam O’Brien, from yesterday-”

“I know.” She was still looking at the picture of the two of them on the floor of the bank in the after math of the at tempted robbery. She’d already inhaled every little tidbit about what had happened.

About Sam.

The news pa per didn’t say he was tall, with wheat-colored, sun-bleached hair cut short to his head, which only emphasized his sharp, light brown eyes. It also failed to mention he was built with a rugged, athletic physique that revved her hormones, but then again, the reporter hadn’t been held in his warm, strong, wonderful arms.

Angie had.

She sighed, then shook her head. She had a plan, and a man did not fit into it. Never had, in fact, though she’d tried. She just didn’t seem to have what it took to please one-not the drive, not the easy sensuality so many other women had.

So she’d given up.

Until yesterday, that is, when she’d come far too close to death. Now she knew she would never give up on anything, not ever again.

Life had to be lived, mistakes and all.

“We need you to come down to the station,” he said. “We have some more questions. Do you need a car sent for you?”

A ride in a squad car down to the station. An adventure she could really do without, if she had a choice. “That’s not necessary. I’ll…stop by.”

“Okay, then.”

He was going to hang up now. And though she couldn’t explain it, she wasn’t ready to let go, to stop hearing him. She’d like to be able to attribute it to lingering shock or fear, but she knew better.

Nothing about his voice reminded her of shock or fear. Instead it invoked visions of things she’d never shared with anyone but had always fantasized about; lying in bed on a Sunday morning sharing the funny section of the paper, late-night forays into the freezer for a tub of ice cream that they’d feed to each other with one spoon, or better yet just eat off their bodies, phone calls during the day just to hear each other… “Are you the investigating officer then?” she asked. Subtle, Ang.

“No, that would be Detective Owens. He’ll be questioning you.”

But Sam had called her himself. Maybe he was dreaming of the comics and ice cream, too. Maybe he yearned and ached and burned for things he couldn’t quite put into words but knew he wanted.

With her.

“Owens asked me to call,” he clarified.

Which pretty much dispelled both the fantasy and any lingering hope that somehow this strange, inexplicable attraction was two-sided.

“Some times,” he continued, “in traumatic events like this, a familiar voice helps.”

Was that what all this emotion crowding her chest was about? Because he was familiar? Because he’d been her hero in a terrible incident?

That was pathetic.

Even more so because he clearly felt none of what she’d allowed herself to feel. “I see,” she said, grateful that at least he couldn’t see her. “Well…thank you.”

“No problem.”

Wait. She wanted to tell him how much his actions yesterday had meant. How much she’d learned about herself since. How-

Click.

Dial tone.

With a little sigh, Angie had to laugh. She set the phone down and decided to stick with reality. Her reality.

Which at the moment, she thought, glancing at her clock, meant work.

But later, she promised the new easel standing in her living room, later she’d paint. Just because she could.

Sam spent the morning chasing dead ends, trying to crack the identity-theft ring that had already spent over a million dollars in stolen credit in the past calendar year alone.

Back in his office, he collapsed in frustration at his desk before a commotion outside the door caught his attention. He tried to ignore it, but wasn’t lucky enough for that.

A shadow crossed his desk. “Well, if it isn’t our local hero.”

Sam glanced up at his partner, who until a second ago had also been his best friend, and scowled. Most people went running from that fierce, foreboding glare, or at least walked quickly away.

Not Luke Sorrintino. He was dark-haired, darker-skinned and full-blooded Italian, and he didn’t scare easily. While he was only medium build to Sam’s tall, broader one, he was probably the toughest man Sam knew, and he rarely smiled.

But he was smiling now, broadly.

“What do you want?” Sam asked, already wary.

“Two things. First…” He tossed down the morning paper.

Front page, dead center. Sam on his knees on the floor of the bank, with a beautiful, disheveled woman in his arms, staring up at him with huge, grateful eyes.

Angie.

God, she looked so small, so defenseless. So absolutely, heart-wrenchingly vulnerable. Her sweater hung off one shoulder, revealing soft skin, which according to the color photo, had already started to bruise from her captor’s cruel grip.

Sam’s jaw went tight. A headache kicked in. She’d gotten hurt after all.

“You seem pretty…involved,” Luke noted.

Sam’s eyes honed in on his face in the picture. Sure enough, he wasn’t just holding her, he was holding her, cradling her against his chest, one hand spread over her exposed throat. His expression was intense to say the least, and zeroed in one-hundred percent on Angie’s upturned face.

It looked startlingly intimate, and if he didn’t know that he’d been concerned only with making sure she hadn’t been cut by the punk’s knife, that she was looking at him like that only because she could hardly see…damn. Take