Read Online To Die For by Linda Howard - Free Book Online Page B

Bloodsworth.” I kept calling him that instead of
Wyatt
because I knew it irritated the hell out of him. “In your job, that could be a real problem.”
    “What’s between us is definitely personal,” he retorted as he gave my bag back to me.
    “Nope. Not interested. Sorry. May I go home, please?” Maybe if I said it often enough, he’d get tired of hearing it. A big yawn punctuated the end of my sentence, and I swear I didn’t fake it. I covered it with my hand, but it was one of those jaw-cracker yawns that just took over and seemed to go on forever. My eyes were watering when it finally ended. “I’m sorry,” I said again, and rubbed my eyes.
    Damn his eyes, he grinned. “Just keep saying you aren’t interested often enough, and maybe by the time you’re ninety you’ll believe it. Come on, I’ll take you home before you collapse,” he said before I could respond to his first statement, putting his hand on my waist and urging me toward the door.
    Finally!
I was so glad to be making progress toward home that I didn’t pay proper attention to where his hand was or how it looked. He leaned forward and opened the door for me, and as I stepped through it, what seemed like a hundred pairs of eyes turned toward us. Patrol officers in uniform, detectives in street clothes, a few people who were obviously there under protest—the department was a beehive of activity despite the lateness of the hour. If I’d been paying attention, I’d have noticed the hum of voices and ringing of telephones outside that closed door, but I’d been focused on my battle with Wyatt.
    I saw a multitude of expressions: curiosity, amusement, prurient interest. The one expression I didn’t see, I realized, was surprise. I spotted Detective MacInnes hiding a grin as he looked back down at the paperwork on his desk.
    Well, what had I expected? Not only had they witnessed our very public disagreement that ended with him putting me in his car—only the public part had ended, not our disagreement—but now I realized Wyatt must have said something that indicated we had a personal relationship. The sneaky rat was trying an end run around my objections, but more important, he had made certain none of his people would interfere in our argument.
    “You think you’re so smart,” I muttered as we stepped into the elevator.
    “I must not be, or I’d stay the hell away from you,” he replied calmly as he punched the button for the bottom floor.
    “Then why don’t you up your IQ and go after someone who wants you?”
    “Oh, you want me, all right. You don’t like it, but you want me.”
    “Want
ed.
Past tense. As in, not now. You had your chance.”
    “I still have it. All we did was take a breather.”
    My mouth was open in astonishment as I stared up at him. “You call two years a
breather
? I’ve got news for you, big boy: your chance was over by the end of our last date.”
    The elevator stopped and the doors slid open—it doesn’t take long to travel three floors—and Wyatt did the hand-on-my-waist thing again, ushering me out of a small foyer and into the parking lot. The rain had stopped, thank goodness, though the trees and power lines still dripped. His white Crown Vic was parked in the fourth slot down, where a sign saying, “Lt. Bloodsworth,” was posted. The parking lot was fenced and gated, so there weren’t any reporters waiting outside that entrance. Not that there would be a lot, anyway; our town had one daily newspaper and one weekly, four radio stations, and one ABC affiliate television station. Even if every station and newspaper sent a reporter, which they wouldn’t, that was a grand total of seven.
    Just to be a smart-ass, I reached for the back door handle. Wyatt growled and pulled me forward as he opened the front passenger door. “You’re a pain, you know that?”
    “In what way?” I seated myself and buckled the seat belt.
    “You don’t know when to stop pushing.” He closed the door with a