It Must Be Love Read online

  "I'm not stupid. I haven't fallen for that trick since high school."

  "Oh for God's sake." He struggled to control his temper and barely won. "Do you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?"

  "Give me a break," she answered. "You're not a cop; you're a stalker! I wish there was a cop around here, because I'd have you arrested for following me around this past week. There's a law in this state against stalking, you know." She sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I bet you have a record for some sort of deviant behavior. You're probably one of those psychos who makes obscene phone calls and breathes really heavy. I bet you're on parole for harassing women." She took a few more deep breaths and tossed the hair spray. "I think you'd better give me your wallet after all."

  Never in his fifteen-year career had he ever been so careless as to let a suspect-let alone a female-get the jump on him.

  His temples pounded and his thigh ached. His eyes stung and his lashes were stuck together. "You're crazy, lady," he said in a relatively calm voice as he reached into his pocket.

  "Really? From where I'm standing, you look like the crazy one." Her gaze never left his as she reached for the wallet. "I'll need your name and address to give to the police, but I bet they already know who you are."

  She didn't know how right she was, but Joe didn't waste any more time talking. The second she flipped open the wallet and glanced at the badge inside, his legs scissored around her calves. She hit the ground, and he lunged on top of her, pinning her with his weight. She twisted one way, then the other, pushing at his shoulders, bringing the derringer dangerously close to his left ear. He grabbed her wrists and forced them above her head, using the full length of his body to pin her to the earth.

  He lay stretched out on top of her, her full breasts pressed into his chest, her hips pressed into his. He secured her hands above her head and her struggles weakened, yet she refused to give up completely. His face was barely an inch above hers, and her nose bumped his twice. Her parted lips sucked air into her lungs, and her green eyes stared into his, huge and filled with panic and fear as she fought to free her wrists. Her long, smooth legs tangled with his own, and the bottom of his sweatshirt was up around his armpits. Against his stomach he felt the soft warm skin of her lower abdomen and the flat nylon of her fanny pack.

  "You really are a cop!" Her breasts rose and fell as she struggled to catch her breath.

  He'd get up as soon as he secured her derringer. "That's right, and you're under arrest for carrying a concealed weapon and aggravated assault."

  "Oh, thank God!" She took a deep breath, and he could feel her relax, feel her turn all soft and pliant beneath him. "I'm so relieved. I thought you were a perverted psychopath."

  A brilliant smile lit her face as she looked up at him. He'd just placed her under arrest, and she actually seemed happy about it. Not the kind of blissful happy he usually put on a woman's face when he found himself in this same position, more like a kind of deluded happy. She was not only a thief, she was ten-ninety six-definitely crazy. "You have the right to remain silent," he said as he pried the derringer from her fingers. "You have the right…"

  "You're not serious are you? You aren't really going to arrest me, are you?"

  "… to an attorney," he continued, one hand still pinning hers above her head as he tossed the handgun several feet away.

  "But it isn't really a gun. I mean it is, but it isn't. It's a nineteenth-century derringer. It's an antique, and so I don't think it qualifies as a real gun. And besides, it's not loaded, and even if it was, it wouldn't make a very big hole anyway. I was only carrying it because I was so frightened, and you've been following me." She stopped, and her brows scrunched together. "Why have you been following me?"

  Instead of answering, he finished reading her her rights, then rolled off to his side. He scooped up the small pistol and rose carefully to his feet. He wasn't going to answer her questions. Not when he didn't know what he was going to do with her now. Not when she'd accused him of being a pervert, and a psychopath, and tried to make him a soprano. He didn't trust himself to talk to her more than was absolutely necessary. "Are you carrying any more weapons on you?"

  "No."

  "Slowly hand me your fanny pack, then turn your pockets inside out."

  "I only have my car keys," she muttered while doing as he requested. With her keys held high, she dropped them into his palm. His hand closed, and he shoved them in his front pocket. He took the little pack from her and turned it inside out. It was empty.

  "Place your hands on the wall."

  "Are you going to frisk me?"

  "That's right," he answered and motioned toward the brick building.

  "like this?" she asked over her shoulder.

  As his gaze moved from her rounded behind and down the length of her long legs, he slid the small handgun into the waistband of his shorts. "That's right," he repeated and placed his palms on her shoulders. Now that he saw her this close, he realized that she wasn't five feet ten inches tall. Joe was six foot, and her eyes met his. He moved his palms down her sides, across the small of her back, and around to her abdomen. He slipped his hand beneath the bottom of her shirt and felt the waistband of her shorts. He felt her soft skin and the cool metal of her belly ring. Then he slid one hand up between the mounds of her breasts.

  "Hey, watch your hands!"

  "Don't get excited," he warned. "I'm not." Next, he patted down her behind, then knelt to check the tops of her socks. He didn't bother to feel for anything hidden between her thighs. Not that he trusted her, he just didn't think she would have been able to jog with a weapon in her panties.

  "Once we get to jail, do I pay a fine and then go home?"

  "When the judge sets bail you can go home." She tried to turn and face him, but his grasp on her hips prevented it.

  "I've never been arrested before."

  He already knew that.

  "I'm not really being arrested like with fingerprints and mug shots, am I?"

  Joe patted the waistband of her shorts one last time. "Yes, ma'am, with fingerprints and mug shots."

  Turning, her eyes narrowed, and she glared at him. "Until this very minute I didn't think you were serious. I thought you were trying to get even with me for kneeing you in your… your private area."

  "You missed," he informed her dryly.

  "Are you sure?"

  Joe straightened, reached into the back of his shorts, and brought out the handcuffs. "There's no mistaking something like that."

  "Oh." She sounded real disappointed. "Well, I still can't believe you're really doing this to me. If you had an ounce of decency you'd admit this is all your fault." She paused and took a deep breath. "You are creating very bad karma for yourself, and I'm sure you're going to be very sorry."

  Joe looked into her eyes and slapped the cuffs on her wrists. He was sorry all right. He was sorry he'd been knocked on his ass by a suspected felon, and he was real sorry he'd blown his cover. And he knew his troubles were just beginning.

  The first fat raindrop struck his cheek, and he glanced up at the storm cloud hanging over his head. Three more drops hit his forehead and chin. He laughed without humor. "Fan-fucking-tastic."

  Chapter Two

  For some reason, whenever Gabrielle had thought of a police interrogation, she'd always envisioned Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. She'd always pictured a dark room, spotlight, and a crazed Nazi war criminal with a dentist drill.

  The room she found herself in wasn't like that. The walls were stark white, without windows to let in the June sunshine. Metal chairs surrounded a table with a fake wooden top. A telephone sat on it at one end. A single poster, warning against the dangers of drugs, hung on the closed door.

  A video camera stood in one corner, its red light glowing, indicating it was in use. She'd given her consent to let them record her debriefing. What did she care? She was innocent. She figured if she cooperated, they'd hurry and finish and she could go home. She was tired an
d hungry. Besides, Sundays and Mondays were her only days off, and she still had a lot to get done before the Coeur Festival that weekend.

  Gabrielle took several deep breaths, controlling the amount of oxygen she took in for fear she might pass out or hyperventilate. Breathe away the tension, she told herself. You are calm. She raised her hand and raked her fingers through her hair. She didn't feel calm and knew she wouldn't until she was released to go home. Only then could she find her quiet center and tune out the static in her head.

  Traces of black ink stained the pads of her fingers, and she could still feel the pressure of the handcuffs she no longer wore around her wrists. Detective Shanahan had made her walk all through the park in the rain cuffed like a criminal, and her only consolation was that he hadn't enjoyed the walk any more than she had.

  Neither of them had said a word, but she had noticed that he'd massaged his right thigh several times. She assumed she was responsible for his injury, and she supposed she should feel sorry-but she didn't. She was scared and confused and her clothes were still damp. And it was all his fault. The least he could do was suffer along with her.

  After being booked for aggravated assault on a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, she'd been led into the small interrogation room. Now across the table from Gabrielle sat Shanahan and Captain Luchetti. Both men wanted to know about stolen antiques. Their dark heads were bent over a black note-book, and they were in deep discussion. She didn't know what stolen antiques had to do with aggravated assault. They seemed to think the two were related, yet neither of them seemed in a hurry to explain anything to her.

  Worse than her confusion was the knowledge that she couldn't just get up and leave. She was at the mercy of Detective Shanahan. She'd known him a little over an hour, but she knew him well enough to know he had no mercy.

  The first time she'd seen him a week ago, he'd been standing beneath a tree in Ann Morrison Park. She'd jogged past him and might not have noticed him at all if it hadn't been for the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding his head. She probably wouldn't have given him another thought if she hadn't seen him the next day at Albertson's buying a frozen pot pie. That time she'd noticed the way his muscular thighs filled out his hacked-off sweatpants, and the way his hair curled up like small c’s around the edge of his baseball cap. His eyes were dark, and the intense way he'd watched her had sent an alarming shiver of pleasure up her spine.

  She'd sworn off gorgeous men years ago- they caused heartbreak and chaos in the continuum of body, mind, and spirit. They were like Snickers bars-they looked and tasted good, but they could never pass for a well-balanced meal. Once in a while she still got cravings, but these days she was much more interested in a man's soul than in his gluteus. An enlightened mind turned her on.

  A few days later, she'd spotted him sitting in a car outside the post office, then again parked down the street from Anomaly, her curio shop. At first she'd told herself she was imagining things. Why would a dark, handsome man follow her? But as the week wore on, she spotted him several more times, never close enough to approach, but never far away either.

  Still, she tried to dismiss it as her creative imagination working overtime-until yesterday when she'd seen him at Barnes and Noble. She'd been in the store buying more books on essential oils when she'd looked up and noticed him lurking in the women's health section. With his dark, brooding looks and T-shirt-straining muscles, he just hadn't seemed like the kind of guy sympathetic to the anguish of PMS. That's when she finally accepted that he'd been stalking her like a serial psycho. She'd called the police and had been told that she could come in and fill out a complaint against the "unknown smoking jogger," but since he hadn't done anything, there wasn't a lot she could do. The police had been no help, and she hadn't even bothered to leave her name.

  She'd slept very little the night before. Mostly she'd lain awake carefully devising her plan. At the time her strategy had seemed good. She'd lure him into a very public place. The chunk of the park next to the playground, in front of the zoo, and a few hundred yards from the Tootin' Tater train station. She'd take the stalker down and scream like crazy for help. She still thought it was a good plan, but unfortunately she hadn't foreseen two very important details. The weather had closed everything down, and, of course, her stalker wasn't a stalker. He was a cop.

  When she'd first seen him standing beneath that tree, it had been like staring at her friend Francie's Hunk Of Burnin' Love calendar. Now as she looked across the table at him, she wondered how she'd ever confused him for a hunk of the month. In the sloppy sweatshirt he still wore and with that red bandanna tied around his head, he looked more like some hell-bound biker.

  "I don't know what you want from me," Gabrielle stated, switching her gaze from Shanahan to the other man. "I thought I was brought here because of what happened in the park earlier."

  "Have you ever seen this before today?" Shanahan asked as he slid a new photograph toward her.

  Gabrielle had seen the same photo in the local newspaper. She'd read about the theft of the Hillard Monet and heard about it on the local and national news.

  "You recognize it?"

  "I recognize a Monet when I see it." She smiled ruefully and pushed the pictures back across the table. "I've also read about it in the Statesman. That's the painting that was stolen from Mr. Hillard."

  "What can you tell me about it?" Shanahan stared at her through his cop's eyes as if he could see the answer to his question written on her brain.

  Gabrielle tried not to feel intimidated, but she couldn't help it. She was intimidated. He was such a big man, and she was stuck in such a small room with him. "Only what everyone else has read or heard about the theft." Which was quite a bit, since it was such a hot story. The mayor had publicly stated his outrage. The owner of the painting was beside himself, and the Boise police department had been portrayed as a bunch of backward hicks on the national network news. Which she supposed was an improvement over how Idaho was usually portrayed to the rest of the country, as a state filled with potato-loving, white supremacist gun nuts. The real facts were that not everyone loved potatoes, and ninety-nine percent of the population wasn't associated with the Aryan Nation or affiliated groups. And of those people who were members, most weren't natives of the state anyway.

  The gun nut part was probably true, though.

  "Do you have an interest in art?" he asked, his deep voice seeming to fill every corner of the room.

  "Of course, I'm an artist myself." Well, she was more a person who painted than an actual artist. While she could paint a reasonable likeness, she'd never mastered the intricacies of hands and feet. But she loved it, and that was all that really counted.

  "Then you can understand Mr. Hillard is quite anxious to get it back," he said and set the photo to one side.

  "I would imagine so." She still didn't understand what any of this had to do with her. At one time Norris Hillard had been a friend of her family, but that had been a long time ago.

  "Have you ever seen or met this man?" Shanahan asked as he slid another photograph toward her. "His name is Sal Katzinger."

  Gabrielle looked at the photo and shook her head. Not only did this man have the thickest pair of glasses she'd ever seen but his face also appeared sallow and rather sickly. Of course, she might have met the man before and just not recognized him from his photo. It hadn't been taken under the best of circumstances. Her own mug shots were probably just as atrocious.

  "No. I don't think I've ever met him," she answered and pushed the mug shot back across the table.

  "Have you ever heard his name mentioned by your business partner, Kevin Carter?" the other man in the room asked her.

  Gabrielle turned her gaze to the older man with graying black hair. The name on his plastic ID card read Captain Luchetti. She'd seen enough movies and watched enough television to know he was playing the "good cop" to Shanahan's "bad cop"-not that it was that much of a stretch for Shanahan. But of the two, Captain Luchett
i seemed genuinely nicer. He kind of reminded her of her uncle Judd, and his aura was less hostile than the detective's. "Kevin? What does Kevin have to do with the man in the picture?"

  "Mr. Katzinger is a professional thief. He's very good and steals only the best. A little over a week ago he was arrested for the theft of over twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of stolen antiques. While in custody, he indicated that he might know who has Mr. Hillard's painting," Captain Luchetti informed her as he waved a hand at a pile of photographs. "He told us that he'd been offered the job of stealing the Monet, but he turned it down."

  Gabrielle crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sat back. "Why are you talking to me about this? It sounds like you should talk to him." She pointed to the mug shot across the table.

  "We have, and during his confession he turned over on his fence." Luchetti paused, looking at her as if he expected some sort of reaction.

  She supposed he meant a fence as in a person who received and sold stolen property, as opposed to someone rolling around on chain-link. But she didn't know what that had to do with her. "Perhaps you should tell me exactly what you mean." She nodded in Shanahan's direction. "And why have I been followed by the archangel of doom for the past few days?"

  Shanahan's scowl remained embedded in his forehead, while the captain's face remained impassive. "According to Mr. Katzinger, your partner knowingly buys and sells stolen antiques." Captain Luchetti paused before he added, "He is also suspected of being the middleman in the Hillard theft. That makes him guilty of a lot of things, including grand theft."

  She gasped. "Kevin? No way. That Mr. Katzinger person is lying!"

  "Now, why would he do that?" Luchetti asked. "He's been promised leniency in exchange for his cooperation."

  "Kevin would never do anything like that," she assured them. Her heart pounded, and no amount of deep breathing calmed her spirit or cleared her mind.

  "How do you know?"

  "I just do. I know he would never become involved in anything illegal."