He’d spent a long time—his whole career, really—studying the baser aspects of humanity. Police work opened people’s lives to him, but by its very nature the job offered glimpses of people at their worst. Here in this small town, the chief of police didn’t sit in a glass-enclosed office issuing orders. More often than not, he found himself out in the field, where inevitably he came up against the seamy side of life. Avalon had corruption and violence, not like a big city, but the elements were there. Even though this was a small town, it was still a place where men got drunk and beat their wives and hit their kids, where punks cooked up crystal meth in their grandmothers’ basements, where schoolgirls shop-lifted and football players dared each other to dangle from the train-trestle bridge and spray paint Knights Rule in bright orange on the water tower. There was plenty of drama to keep Rourke busy—but all that drama, all the things he saw on the job, tended to make him jaded. It made him wonder why people bothered to give their hearts to one another, because most of the time, they ended up breaking them.
Now that Jenny was back, though, he understood.
Just as she’d promised, she phoned him every day to check in. And just as he’d anticipated, it wasn’t enough. He didn’t know if she was calling him out of a sense of duty, or if it was simply to keep him from carrying out his threat to show up every day to make sure she was all right.
He paged through several pink slips with messages on his desk. Things were slow because it was a snow day. Department offices were manned by a reduced staff. One of his father’s assistants had called to invite him to the senator’s annual Presidents’ Day luncheon—euphemism for $500-a-plate fund-raiser. This was followed by a message from his mother, dutifully reiterating the invitation. Rourke saw his parents only on rare occasions; the wounds of childhood had never completely healed. He crumpled both messages and slam-dunked them into the circular file. There were also messages from two women—Mindy and Sierra—both of whom he’d dated a while back.
No—not dated. Each woman he’d encountered in a bar, hooked up with them over the course of a weekend and then put them on a train back to the city. Technically, that was probably a date. He didn’t recall giving either woman his phone number, but the persistent ones always managed to track him down. He added the pink slips to the circular file. He didn’t do second dates.
And—this was where he got really pathetic—ever since Jenny had broken open his heart, he didn’t even do first dates. He was as celibate as a monk these days, a painful state of being. But not as painful as meaningless sex. He used to imagine that it satisfied him, but these days, he couldn’t even pretend anymore.
Just ask her out, he told himself.
He’d already tried that, and she’d said no.
Ask her again.
That was damn humiliating. Did he care about that? Was he willing to face rejection again?
Before he answered his own question, he picked up the phone. She answered by the third ring. “Hello,” she said in a warble of good cheer.
“It’s me,” he said, turning his back so the people in the outer office couldn’t see his face through the glass. He liked to think he had a poker face, but when it came to Jenny, he wasn’t so sure. Then he held his breath, wondering if it was presumptuous to assume she knew who “me” was.
“Oh…hi, Rourke.”
Okay, so it wasn’t presumptuous. Yet her voice changed from its eager chirp to a note of caution. “Sorry to rain on your parade,” he said.
She laughed. “I’m expecting a call from Mr. Greer. My agent. God, can you believe I have a literary agent? Or will, if I can get this book together.”
“Sure, I can believe it.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that?”
“I don’t know what the big deal is. You’re going to write a great book and it’ll be a bestseller. You told me so when you were, what, eleven years old?”
“And you still believe that?” Her voice softened. “Oh, Rourke.”
Her oh, Rourke made him physically unfit for mixed company. He sat down behind his desk and swiveled his chair toward the wall. “Listen, I was just wondering…” Damn, why was this so hard? Would you like to have dinner at the Apple Tree Inn? One stupid little question.
“Wondering what?” she prompted.
“If, uh, everything’s okay up there.”
“Sure,” she said. “Everything’s perfect. I can’t imagine a better day to work on my project.”
His heart managed to skip a beat and sink at the same time. She seemed genuinely happy to be away from him. It must’ve been torture for her staying at his place. “It’s a snow day,” he told her. “I wanted to make sure you’ve got everything you need.”
“Every day is a snow day up here,” she said. “That’s what’s so great about this place.” She sighed into the phone, and her voice turned wistful. “I’m alone with myself, and I find myself remembering things about the past…”
About us? he wondered, but didn’t ask.
There was a knock at the door, and Rourke swiveled around in his chair. Nina Romano came in without waiting for an invitation. He took one look at her face—taut, edged by panic—and said to Jenny, “I need to go. I’ll call you back.”
Thank you, Nina, he thought. He’d managed to get off the phone before making a total idiot of himself.
She spared him only a quick glance. “Jenny?” she inquired, nodding toward the phone.
Damn, was he that obvious? “What’s up?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“I know where the money’s going. It’s being stolen by Matthew Alger.”
It took Rourke for a moment to catch up with her thinking. “The city finances,” he said.
She nodded and slapped a printed spreadsheet on
