It Must Be Love

'I'd rather not talk about Kevin right now anyway.' He raised the water and squirted a stream into his mouth. When he was finished he sucked a bead of water off his lower lip and said, 'I have a few important questions I want to ask you.'

She should have suspected he'd been nice to her because he wanted something. 'What?'

'Where did you get that Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeannie, outfit?'

She glanced downward at her little blouse and bare middle. 'That's one of your important questions?'

'No, I was just curious.'

Since his gaze was directed at her stomach, she couldn't tell what he was thinking. 'You don't like it?'

'I didn't say that.' He looked into her face, his cop's eyes carefully blank, and she still couldn't tell what he thought. 'After you left the store yesterday,' he continued, 'what did you tell your mother and aunt about me?'

'I told them the truth.' She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and watched him show his displeasure the usual way. He scowled at her.

'You told them about me being an undercover cop?'

'Yep, but they won't say anything to anyone,' she assured him. 'They promised, and besides, they believe fate brought us together. They don't mess with fate.' She'd tried to tell Claire that Joe wasn't the dark passionate lover of her psychic vision, that he was really just a bad-tempered detective. But the more she'd explained, the more her mother had become convinced that fate had indeed played a role in Gabrielle's love life. After all, Claire had reasoned, getting tailed, tackled, and forced to play girlfriend to a macho undercover police officer like Joe just wasn't a normal event, not even in the universal course of cosmic coincidence. 'Anything else you want to know?' she asked.

'Yeah. How did you know I was following you last week? And don't give me a bunch of crap about feeling my vibes.'

'I don't feel vibes. What if I told you it was your black aura?' she asked, although truthfully, she hadn't noticed his aura until after he'd arrested her.

From within the shadow of his cap, his eyes narrowed, and Gabrielle decided to let him off the hook. 'It was easy. You smoke. I don't know of any joggers who have a nice healthy cigarette before they set off on a run. Wheat grass, yes. A Marlboro, no.'

'I'll be damned.'

'The first time I noticed you, you were standing under a tree, smoke surrounding your head like a mushroom cloud.'

Joe crossed his arms over his chest, and his mouth settled into a grim line. 'Do me a favor, will you? If anyone asks how you detected your surveillance, stick to that black aura thing.'

'Why? Don't you want the other cops to know a cigarette blew your cover?'

'Not if I can help it.'

She tilted her head to one side and gave him a smile she hoped made him nervous. 'Okay, I'll help you out, but you owe me.'

'What do you want?'

'I don't know yet. I'll think about it and get back to you.'

'My other informants always knew what they wanted.'

'What did they want?'

'Usually something illegal.' His eyes stared into hers as he said, 'Like for me to make their criminal record disappear or look the other way while they smoked a doobie.'

'You'd do that?'

'No, but you can ask. It would give me a reason to frisk you.' Now it was his turn to smile. And he did. A lazy turn of his lips that made her stomach flutter. He lowered his gaze to her mouth, then let it slide right on down the front of her blouse. 'Maybe even force me to strip-search you.'

The breath caught in her lungs. 'You wouldn't do that.'

'Of course I would.' His gaze slipped down the row of buttons, lingered on her navel, then lowered to her skirt and the split riding up her left thigh. 'I took a solemn oath. I've a sworn duty to protect and serve and strip-search. It's my job.'

The flutter in her stomach turned hot. She'd never been a good flirt, but she couldn't help asking, 'And are you good at your job?'

'Very.'

'You sound pretty confident.'

'Let's just say I stay at it until business is taken care of.'

She could feel herself melt, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside the booth. 'What business?'

He leaned toward her and said in a low voice that poured across her skin and raised her tern-perature a few more degrees, 'Whatever blows your hair back, honey.'

She quickly stood and smoothed the crinkles in her skirt. 'I have to…' She pointed to the front of her booth, confused. Her body was at war with her mind and spirit. Her physical desire was fighting for dominance over reason. Anarchy. 'I'll just-' She moved to a table of massage oil and straightened a neat little row of blue bottles. She didn't want anarchy. One emotion ruling the others wasn't good. No, it was bad. Real bad. She didn't want to feel her skin tingle, her stomach flutter, and her breath catch. Not now. Not in the middle of the park. Not with him.

Several college-aged girls approached the table and asked Gabrielle questions about her oils. She answered and explained and tried to pretend she didn't feel Joe's presence as strongly as if he were touching her. She sold two bottles of jasmine and felt, rather than saw, him come to stand behind her.'Do you want me to leave your cheesecake?'

She shook her head.

'I'll put it in the refrigerator at your shop.'

She thought he would leave then, but he didn't. Instead, he slid one hand around her waist to her bare stomach and pulled her back against his chest. Gabrielle froze.

He turned his face into her hair and spoke next to her ear. 'See that guy in the red tank top and green shorts?'

She glanced across the walkway to Mother Soul's booth. The man in question looked like a lot of the other men at the festival. Clean. Normal. 'Yes.'

'That's Ray Klotz. He has a pawn shop off Main. I arrested him last year for receiving and selling stolen VCRs.' He spread his fingers wide over her abdomen, and his thumb brushed the knot in her blouse just below her breasts. 'Ray and I go back a long way, and it might be better if he doesn't see me with you.'

She tried to think past the brush of his fingers on her bare flesh but found it difficult. 'Why? Do you think he knows Kevin?'

'Probably.'

She turned, and without her shoes, the top of her head fit just beneath the bill of his cap. His arms slid to her back and held her so close that his nose touched hers and her breasts brushed his chest. 'Are you sure he'd remember you?'

His free hand slipped up her arm to just past her elbow. 'When I worked narcotics, I popped him on a drug charge. I had to shove my fingers down his throat and make him puke up the cocaine-filled condoms he'd swallowed,' he said, his fingers brushing up and down her spine.

'Oh,' she whispered. 'That's disgusting.'

'It was evidence,' he spoke just above her mouth. 'Couldn't let a guy get away with my evidence.'

Standing so close to him, smelling his skin, the rich timbre of his voice filling her head, he sounded so reasonable, like making a guy throw up was normal. Like his hot palm on her bare skin had no effect on him. 'Is he gone?'

'No.'

She stared into his eyes and asked, 'What are you going to do?'

Instead of answering, he took a few steps backward into the shadow of the booth, pulling her with him. He raised his gaze to her hair. 'What am I going to do about what?'