He waited for half a cup to improve her mood before he spoke again. “Only heathens sleep late on Sundays. You should have been at church, repenting for the cruel way you treated me yesterday.”
She finished the rest of her coffee and poured herself some more. He held out his cup and she refilled it for him. It always took at least one shot of caffeine to jolt her awake in the morning. Today that job had been completed by the sight of him on her bed. The coffee calmed her nerves, which his presence had brought instantly, jangling awake. Dreaming about him, then seeing the object of her dream as soon as she had opened her eyes, was enough to send her senses spinning. Especially since she dimly recalled that the most recent dream had not been the only one in which he’d starred last night.
She drank deeply from the second cup and it was another moment before she responded to his remark. “I didn’t have a guilty conscience, so there was no need for me to pray for forgiveness.”
His look was reproachful. “You should have felt very guilty. My blood pressure was at a dangerous level by the time you screeched to a stop out front yesterday.” But it hadn’t been as high as it had risen in the minute he’d spent beside her on the bed. Sixty seconds was such a short time, but it had been long enough for him to imagine stretching out beside her. To think about awakening her in the slowest, sweetest way possible. To pull her beneath him, and… He reined in the erotic thoughts firmly.
“Let’s hear about this fantastic idea of yours. And it had better be good.” They rose to go.
“All my ideas are good,” he answered smugly as he followed her out of the apartment. “And this one is excellent.”
Madeline looked about curiously when they pulled to a stop in front of a small brick home. It was located on a street with others just like it; the houses were rather close together, and some were a little run-down. But the one they approached as they went up the walk appeared well tended. The lawn was neatly mowed and the trim looked freshly painted.
“I’m not going one more step unless you tell me what we’re doing here,” she said, stopping in the middle of the walk. He had steadfastly refused to answer all her questions on the trip over, choosing instead to comment on what he’d thought of her sleeping attire. The banter hadn’t done her temper a bit of good, and even knowing he was getting even with her for the bet she’d won yesterday didn’t improve her mood. “I can’t believe we’re going to find evidence of a gun supplier in this neighborhood.”
“Why not?” he countered. “This place isn’t nearly as nice as where we found Cantoney yesterday.” He managed to guide her up the steps of the porch, and raised a finger to his lips to hush her when her mouth opened again. “Be ready for anything, Madeline, and I do mean anything. I’m going to need you to back me up.” He reached out to pound on the door, shouting, “Police! Open up.”
Her eyes widened. Of all the stupid, dangerous things to do! Wait until they got out of this! How could he let her walk into a situation without briefing her beforehand? The door flew open and Cruz strode through it, Madeline closely following him. Both of them were unarmed. If they got out of this alive, she was really, really going to kill him this time!
“Hey, look! It’s the big, bad police detective,” someone said in the next room.
“Come here, Mr. Detective, and give me a kiss,” a woman’s voice called.
Cruz stopped suddenly in the hallway and Madeline ran into his back. Her confused brain took a few instants to recognize just what kind of situation he had led her into. “Martinez!” she hissed. “This is your parents’ home!”
He slanted a grin at her. “You’re very astute, Madeline. That’s what I admire most about you. That and your legs.” He didn’t allow her to respond before grabbing her hand and pulling her along with him into the kitchen.
She stood awkwardly aside as Cruz was hugged by someone she assumed was his mother. She felt even more ill at ease when the woman released him and drew back to study Madeline.
Cruz bore little physical resemblance to Mrs. Martinez. They both had dark hair, but she was a brunette several shades lighter than he. Visible threads of gray traced through her hair, which she wore in short waves around her face. Her eyes were a shocking shade of blue, and she came up only to her son’s broad shoulders.
“This is Madeline Casey, Mom, the partner I was telling you about.” He lowered his voice to an undertone meant to be overheard. “I had to kidnap her. The only way to get her out of her apartment was to pretend we would be working today. She thinks she’s here to arrest a dangerous criminal.”
His mother tapped him on the chest. “Cruz, you are so bad,” she scolded him. And then she smiled at Madeline, and revealed all the charm that her son must have inherited from her. “Welcome, Madeline. I apologize for my son. You have all my sympathy, having to work with him all day. Me, I can’t stand to have him around for more than an hour or two. Such a tease.”
“Mom,” he complained in an aggrieved tone, reaching past her to snatch a cookie from the counter. “You’ll ruin her image of me. Madeline thinks I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
“You’re a little confused,” Madeline informed him saccharinely. “Although I’d like to see you sliced
“It’s my fault,” his mother said apologetically. “He’s been so busy lately, and I told him to bring you by. I thought he had the manners to issue an invitation, but obviously I was wrong. Stay and enjoy yourself anyway,” she urged. “I could easily be persuaded to show you some very embarrassing pictures of him when he was a child.”
“You’ve got a deal.” Madeline smiled, in spite of her desire to do Cruz some serious physical damage.
“Don’t show her the one of me naked on the rug,” Cruz advised his mother as he took Madeline’s arm and guided her into the next room. “I have to work with her. I want her to still respect me, not to be constantly undressing me with her eyes.”
The room they entered next was packed with people, some sitting, others standing, and still others sprawled on the floor. Children were running shrieking through the room and out into the hallway. The television was on, but no one appeared to be watching it. It seemed to Madeline as if twenty different conversations halted when they entered.
The silence seemed to stretch interminably, but probably lasted only a few seconds. Then the voices started again at once.
“Cruz! Glad you made it. There’s something I need to talk to you about…” A young, handsome man in his early twenties stepped forward.
“Unca Cwuz! Unca Cwuz! See what I can do! Watch me, Unca Cwuz!” A chubby toddler with dimples did a lumbersome somersault, landing neatly on Cruz’s toes.
“Big brother! Give me a hug!” This from the young woman Madeline remembered seeing on the street the second day she’d worked with Cruz.
“You owe me ten from that bet last week, buddy. When are you going to learn never to bet against the Phillies?” called one of the men sitting near the TV.
Cruz was engulfed by his relatives, all anxious to greet him. He kissed the women, clapped the men on the shoulders and swung the children in the air. Finally he reached down for the acrobatic toddler still lying across his boots. As he situated the little boy on his hip, the toddler frowned and pointed a chubby finger at Madeline.
“Unca Cwuz, who’s dat?”
It seemed to Madeline as if every eye in the room was trained on her, and she experienced a fierce desire to be somewhere,
“This,” Cruz said, drawing Madeline toward him and then turning her gently toward the group, “is my partner, Madeline Casey.” He proceeded to introduce each of his brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces and nephews one by one. He said solemnly to the nephew in his arms, “Madeline wanted to learn to be a great detective, so she’s working with me for a while.”
Hoots and catcalls met his pronouncement.
“She could probably learn
“When I ran into them on the street a couple of weeks ago, it looked as though Madeline was teaching Cruz something!” his sister Maureen told the family.
Madeline froze, waiting for her to reveal how engrossed they’d seemed in each other. But the girl went blithely on, “She got Cruz to eat a hot dog, can you believe it?”
“No way!”
