• Between the Covers
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Between the Covers

• The original book cover (right) from when Obsessed was first released in October 1993.

  It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I’ve belonged to the same gym for over a decade, and way back in the early ’90s, I used to chat between workouts with a woman named Cricket. She was always sort of cagey about what she did for a living, but putting bits and pieces together, I decided she was a meter maid. It wasn’t until she read my book SHADOW DANCE and liked the way I’d handled the gun part that I discovered she was a cop.

  One day in the women’s locker room, the conversation turned to the book I’d just started writing. It had a villain who was a serial rapist and I was struggling to make my cop hero’s job come across as authentic when I frankly didn’t know beans about that division of law enforcement. Cricket, it turned out, had a friend in the Special Assault Unit, and she called her to arrange for us to get together for an interview.

  I owe the authenticity of OBSESSED to Detective Chris Lyons. She was absolutely wonderful, and I loosely based the character of Suse McGill on her. Keep in mind that this book was first published in 1993, so some of the procedures/settings, etc may have changed since then, and any mistakes, of course, are strictly my own.

  Chris has since married and moved to another state. Cricket moved to another part of town, and I lost touch with her, too, although I continued to see her for years on television as the police department spokeswoman. I remember both women fondly, however, and owe them my heartfelt appreciation.

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Awards + Kudos

• WOW! OBSESSED debuted at #4 on the Waldenbooks list for week ending December 1, 2001, stayed there for week ending December 8, 2001, and stayed in the top ten for the following week, too. As of 12-22-01, OBSESSED was still on the list! Have you read it yet? Check out an excerpt.

• “I’m a Susan Andersen fan!” ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

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• Between the Covers
• Read an Excerpt
• Awards & Kudos
• Order This Book

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Ivy Pennington was becoming upwardly mobile today and several of her cousins had turned out to lend their assistance getting her moved. They arrived with the dawn at her old apartment above Aunt Babe and Uncle Mack’s garage.

Ivy had packed her coffee maker the night before and much to everyone’s disgust couldn’t remember into which box it had been stuffed. Yawning and bleary eyed, her helpers stumbled up and down the exterior staircase in the early morning chill as they emptied out her apartment, loading her possessions into Sam’s truck, Terry’s van and Ivy’s car. When the last swear word had faded, the last stray item had been tucked into a free corner in one of the vehicles, they formed a convoy and pulled out of Babe and Mack’s driveway. Their only stop was at a drive-through window at McDonald’s for coffee, and by the time they reached her new apartment, everyone had finally started to come alive.

Ivy, Sherry and Jaz unloaded labeled boxes, the lighter pieces of furniture, arm-loads of hangered clothing, and the one plant Ivy had managed not to kill. Sam, Davis, Terry, and

Sherry’s husband Ben handled the heavier furniture. They had to make several trips from the vehicles to the apartment and high spirits rapidly began to replace the sleepiness with which they’d begun the day. As was usual when they got together, their conversation rapidly degenerated into a lot of noisy, good-natured squabbling and boisterous laughter.

Ivy’s belongings were banged around with careless abandon, bounced like so many bumper cars off walls and doorways. Her pride and joy, however, her brand new, tapestry-upholstered hide-a-bed couch, they treated with kid gloves. Everyone knew how long Ivy’d had to save to buy it.

She stroked its rich fabric affectionately and directed Davis and Terry in its placement, making them move it three times in her search for the perfect spot to display it to its best advantage. The men set it down in the third location with an air of finality, and exchanging a glance, flopped down on its cushions. Ivy stood back and eyed the couch’s position critically, undecided if it looked better where it was or against the wall where they’d tried it a moment ago. She opened her mouth, but Terry correctly read her intention and forstalled her.

“Forget it, Ivy,” he advised her with calm finality. “We aren’t moving it again. Sucker weighs a ton and it looks just fine right here.”

Ivy gave him a look she had patented when she was about twelve years old. Terry all but yawned, plainly unaffected, so she transferred it to Davis. He’d always been an easier touch anyway.

He shifted uneasily. “Don’t look at me like that. I hate it when you do that.”

Terry grinned. “It’s her I’m-the-cutest-puppy-in-the-pound-and-they’re-gonna-gas-me-any-minute look.” He made his voice a high falsetto. “Save me, Davis. Save me!”

Ivy wanted to laugh, but she knew she had Davis on the ropes, so she intensified the soulfulness of her expression instead.

Now if only she could dredge up a tear or two…

“Knock it off, Ive,” Davis demanded. “I mean it. It’s not gonna work; I quit fallin’ for that big-eyed look when I was about fourteen.” He sounded, however, somewhat less than convinced.

Sam strolled in from the kitchen clutching a pair of long-necked beer bottles in each hand. Passing them around, he directed a smile of brotherly maliciousness at Davis. “Wasn’t that the year you decided you were gonna marry Ivy when you both grew up?” He flopped onto the couch between his brother and cousin, and Ivy knew she could kiss goodbye to any hope of having them move it for her again. There had been a slim chance she might have swayed Davis, in which case Terry might have agreed to go along with it, but Sam and Terry combined…? Not a prayer.

“Yes,” Davis replied, giving his brother a sour look. “It was; thanks for reminding me. You broke my heart that year when you told me first cousins couldn’t marry because their babies would all turn out to be drooling idiots.”

“Sam, you didn’t!” Ivy sank cross-legged to the floor in front of them. She took a sip of her beer and gave her cousin a wry, one-sided smile. A strange expression on Terry’s face

momentarily caught her attention, but Sam’s reply recaptured it before she could pin down or interpret its meaning.

“Hey, I had it on the best authority,” he said with a shrug. “In-breeding weakens the genes. Besides, the way I remember it, Davis, your heart didn’t remain broken for long. You consoled yourself within the week with little Judy What’shername.”

“Helman,” Davis clarified. “Judy Helman.”

“Hey, I remember her!” Jaz exclaimed, walking into the room. She handed Ivy a pillow and tossed one down on the hardwood floor for herself. Ivy rolled up on one hip and slid the pillow beneath her buttocks while Jaz settled onto her own beside her. “She was the first girl in the fifth grade to wear a bra. God, how I envied her.”

“At my school that would have been Beth Johnson,” Ivy said. “Big Boobs Beth, we called her. At least the girls did. I think the boys called her for dates— or whatever the fifth grade equivalent is.”

“Hey, what’s going on in here?” Sherry and Ben came out of the bedroom and walked down the short hallway. “You lazy bums! Are Ben and me the only ones still working?” She stopped in the living room entrance and stared down at her cousins, her hands propped on her plumply rounded hips. “And you’re drinking beer? Good God, you guys, it’s barely noon.” Then she shrugged. “Oh, what the hell, gimme one too. We have been working our tails off since daybreak.”

“They’re on the door in the fridge,” Sam informed her. “Grab one for Ben while you’re at it.”

“Get me one too,” Jaz demanded.

“Sammy and Ben set up your bed, Ivy,” Sherry called from the kitchen. “I made it up with the sheets and a blanket I found in one of the boxes.” The beer bottles on the refrigerator door rattled as she slammed it closed. “I couldn’t find your comforter, though.”

“Thanks, Sherry,” Ivy replied and smiled up at her cousin as she rejoined the group in the living room. “It’s got to be around here somewhere; it’ll surface once I get everything unpacked.”

Sherry handed a sweating bottle of beer to her husband and one to Jaz, then took a seat in Ivy’s overstuffed chair. “This is gettin’ kinda shabby, babe,” she informed her cousin as she ran a hand over the worn fabric. “I never noticed that before.” She looked up from the thinning material and gave Ivy a crooked smile. “I suppose it’s the comparison to your brand new couch.”

“It’s pretty ratty,” Ivy agreed gloomily. “But for the time being it’s just going to have to do. It’ll be six months at least before I can afford a new one.”

“And you haven’t rushed right out to charge one anyway?” Ben marveled with ironic incredulousness. “Are you positive you and Sherry are related?”

His wife nudged him with her toe. “Funny, Ben. Extremely droll.”

“I have student loans that will take me a good five years yet to pay off,” Ivy told Ben. “And payments for my new car, not to mention higher insurance rates now that I’m no longer driving a thirteen-year-old rust bucket.” She waved her hand, indicating the apartment. “And malpractice insurance and higher rent. Just the thought of another debt makes me break out in a cold sweat.”

“Could you afford seven or eight yards of material?” Terry inquired. “I could probably reupholster it for you. I did a fairly decent job on the seats in my van.”

“Oh, Terry, would you?” Ivy’s smile was radiant. “That’d be so great. I love the lines of the chair and I think the structure is sound enough; it’s just the fabric that’s a mess. You’d really do that for me?”

“Sure. Consider it my housewarming present.” He grinned. “After all, we can’t have the family’s only doctor living in Early Shabby Squalor, can we?”

Davis snapped his fingers. “Hey, speaking of housewarming presents…” He hopped up and left the room. Ben immediately crawled up off the floor to steal his seat. Ivy’s eyes lit up as she glanced around at her cousins. “You guys bought me a present?”

Sam and Terry smirked. Sherry groaned theatrically. “I swear to God, Ivy,” she earnestly assured her cousin, “I tried my damndest to talk them out of this.”

Jaz grinned like a cat in the creamery and butted her shoulder against Sherry’s calves. “C’mon, Sher, don’t be such a prude,” she said. “You know it’s a great present.”

“Uh-oh,” Ivy murmured. Anyone familiar with Sherry knew she was far from prudish. It therefore stood to reason that if whatever this gift was had given her second thoughts…

“No, really, Ive,” Jaz assured her. “You’re gonna love it. Trust me.” She stared at Ivy with large, guileless eyes. “It’s exactlywhat you’ve been needing— and I got that straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“Trust me, she says.” Ivy eyed her cousin suspiciously. “Why is it whenever I hear those words, trust is the very last thing I have the urge to do?”

Jaz merely grinned. “Beats me.”

Davis returned to the living room and extended a package to Ivy. “Here you go, Doc.” he said. “Happy Housewarming, from all of us.”

She thought for a moment they’d bought her a bowling ball, which would be odd, since she’d only been bowling perhaps three times in her life. But as it turned out the shape and size were misleading, for her gift was much lighter than it appeared. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Ivy rested the present between her spread thighs and simply admired its wrappings for a moment. It was festively done up in irridescent tissue, which had been

gathered at the top and secured by a beribboned bow with flowing streamers. Glancing up at her cousins’s attentive faces, she smiled and then picked the bow apart. She set it aside and unfurled the gathered tissue.

At first her eyes refused to believe what they were seeing. Then a choked laugh escaped her. “Oh…my…gawwd.”

She removed a round crystal vase from the wrappings. That was where the conventionalness of the gift stopped and her cousins’ sense of humor took over. They had filled it to the brim with condoms of every conceivable brand, color, and style. Looking up,

her eyes caught Jaz’s. “Horse’s mouth, my ass. When I said I might finally have time for a relationship now, Jasmine, I was thinking more along the lines of one man, not the entire fifth fleet.”

She silently cursed the heated color she could feel climbing her throat. She was more amused than embarrassed by her cousins’ gift and God knew that after everything she’d ever seen in med school and on the work lanes at the trauma unit, one would reasonably expect she’d have lost the power to blush by now. But no such luck, dammit— she still turned color at the drop of a hat, a hated legacy passed down by generations of thin-skinned ancestral redheads. And naturally her cousins could be counted upon not to let the fact pass without comment… not when pointing out each other’s inadequacies was such a popular family pasttime.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind then Sam commented on her high color to the group at large. They heckled her mercilessly.

Fanning her hot cheeks, she gave them a lopsided smile.

“Trust you guys to pass on the toaster oven.” She held out the vase. “Party favor, anyone? Please. Help yourselves to a handful.”

They were all laughing and talking at the same time when Davis started tapping out a tempo on the hardwood floor. He looked up at Ivy. “I know the real reason you picked this

apartment,” he said. “And it wasn’t just for its good looks, was it? You rented it for the acoustics.” He began to sing an old fifties Motown tune and one by one everyone except Ben joined in, immediately falling into their accustomed harmonies.

Ben was content to lounge back on the couch and watch them with wry amusement as their voices soared in the high-ceilinged, hardwood-floored room. Damn, this is a strange family I’ve married into, he decided without regret. Then he smiled to himself as he listened. Actually, this was fairly par for the course whenever they got together and he shook his head in rueful admiration, knowing they were just getting warmed up. Once they

broke out the harmonies, it was hard stopping them. Sherry told him they’d been singing together, mostly a cappella, for as long as she could remember and he had to admit they were damn good at it. It was entertaining— that was guaranteed.

But it sure as hell could be disconcerting to have a roomful of people just spontaneously burst into song around you.

***

Singing? Now they were singing? Vincent D’Ambruzzi tossed back his tangled bedcovers and stormed to his feet. That did it.

For the past two hours he’d been growing progressively tenser as he’d listened to the thumps and thuds emanating from the apartment next door. More annoying still had been the loud bursts of raucous laughter echoing both out in the hallway and through the adjoining apartment walls. He’d put up with it, holding onto his temper, but enough was enough. Just when he’d thought they were finally beginning to settle down, they’d managed to come up with something to push him right past the threshold of his tolerance. He’d had less than four stinking hours of sleep this morning and was in no mood for this shit.

Pulling on the first thing his hand encountered, a pair of skimpy red nylon running shorts, Vincent winced as he bent over to tug them up his long legs. There was a pressure building behind his eyes, which he knew from experience was the precurser to a royal pounder of a headache. Sleep would make it go away, but sleep seemed to be the one remedy the rowdy crew next door was determined to deny him.

Well, he’d see about that.

It wasn’t until he’d already pounded with irrevocable, thunderous hostility on the neighbor’s door that he was struck with second thoughts. Oh, shit, why hadn’t he simply pulled the pillow over his ears? It probably wasn’t even all that early— he hadn’t thought to consult a clock. And the singing wasn’t actually all that loud; it had merely been the final straw to the increasingly annoying pandemonium preceding it, a racket which had left him twisting and turning in a futile search for a few hours of undisturbed rest. Vincent rammed his long fingers through his hair and started to turn away. But it was too late; the door behind him opened.

“Yes?”

He sucked in a deep breath and turned back, his fingers still snarled in the thick hair above his nape, his elbow jutting ceilingward.

Ivy felt herself gaping and had to make a conscious effort to close her mouth. When the pounding on the door had commenced, she had automatically surged to her feet to answer its commanding summons. She had not thought to visualize the caller in advance of opening the door, and as she stared at the man on her doorstep she dazedly imagined that was probably just as well. For even if the idea had occurred to her, her imagination certainly never could’ve conjured up anything remotely resembling this hostile-eyed, dark-complexed, nearly naked man.

He was taller than she by three or four inches, something of a rarity in itself as she was just shy of six feet tall and thus tended to stand eyeball to eyeball with the majority of the men she met. And he was dark— very dark. It was his coloring, she thought, that most arrested her attention— putting aside, of course, the shock of being confronted at her own front door by an obviously irate, scantily clad man.

She was momentarily mesmerized by the sleek tangle of black hair in his armpit; the inky thickness of the hair on his head; his thick black brows. His eyes, too, were black and he had ebony eyelashes so dense they tangled in the outer corners. His jaw had what appeared to be a permanent dark shadow beneath the skin, his arms were feathered with black hair from elbows to wrists, and there was a thick cloud of hair on his chest that started at his collarbones and ended at the bottom of his pectorals, tapering to a silky stripe that bisected his abdomen and swirled around his navel before it disappeared beneath the waistband of those tiny red shorts. And then there was the swarthiness of his skin… all that exposed, dark skin.

She gave herself a small mental shake. Good grief, Ivy, it’s summertime— deep tans aren’t exactly unheard of this time of year. But she instinctively felt this man’s coloring wasn’t a product of hours spent at the beach. It might be slightly enhanced at the moment by the summer sun, but she’d lay odds his natural skin tones were a deep olive in origin. There was a rather Mediterranean look about him overall, with that large, beaky nose, which was curiously flattened at the bridge, those angular cheekbones, that full mouth.

He possessed one of those bodies that probably looked on the skinny side when it was clothed… but unclothed? Whew. There was certainly nothing weak or soft looking about it now. God knew, the little red shorts didn’t disguise a whole hell of a lot and

in the few seconds that she stood there dumbstruck, simply staring at him, Ivy got an eyeful. Of the flat, ridged stomach; the nice chest and powerfully developed long thighs; of the solid mass of calf and bicep; the wide shoulders. And every blessed inch of it looked as hard as aged madronna.

Ivy shook her head slightly as if to clear it of the man’s overpowering effect. All and all, he was quite a shock to the system, but he certainly hadn’t stopped by just so she could admire his coloring and his well-knit body. He appeared to have some sort of a problem. Ivy, being a neighborly woman by nature, gave him a warm, friendly smile. “May I help you?”

Vincent tried to smooth out the scowl he felt pulling his eyebrows together above the bridge of his nose. He gripped the knotted muscles in his neck between his fingers and thumb, massaged fiercely for a moment, and then dropped his hand to his side. God Almighty. Why hadn’t he stayed in bed? Somehow, she wasn’t at all what he had expected when he’d stormed from his apartment. “Uh, listen,” he said. “I’m your next door neighbor—”

Ivy immediately swung the door wide and her smile grew even warmer as she shifted the bowl she held to her hip and stepped back in welcome. “Hello!” she exclaimed. “How nice of you to stop by. Please. Come in.”

Vincent took an involuntary step forward in response to her cordiality before he caught himself and halted. Oh, hell, nice, she says. He stared at her helplessly. It wasn’t an emotion he was accustomed to feeling and he didn’t particularly appreciate experiencing it now. On the other hand, he was at a bit of a loss how to proceed. The pressure behind his eyes grew stronger.

Why the hell had he acted so impulsively? It wasn’t at all like him, and now that it was too late he remembered why. Impulses tended to land him in a world of hurt; they always had. He’d come storming over here to reacquaint his new neighbor with a few basic courtesies she and her friends had apparently forgotten, and what had happened instead? He’d been greeted at the door by big, green, friendly eyes, by a pretty, welcoming

smile, and now he hesitated to give offense.

This tall, amiable woman inviting him into her home projected an impression of warmth overall, due perhaps to the warm tones of her coloring. She had straight, swingy red hair that ended in a blunt cut at her collarbones; rubicund color in her cheeks and lips; and a smattering of rosy freckles that scattered across the bridge of her nose and her cheekbones and sprinkled the exposed portion of her chest. Her eyes and smile made her seem very friendly, very approachable. And standing this close, he couldn’t help but notice that she also smelled extremely… female.

It came out of the blue and caught him off guard— the shaft of sexual craving that speared straight to his groin. He was an abstentious man ordinarily; it had been a very long time since he’d last been even remotely attracted to a woman in a carnal sense. He stiffened with automatic defensiveness, unwilling to feel any sexual awareness now. Yet he was unable to prevent his eyes from a swift, visual survey down her body. And he liked what he saw; he liked it very much… right up until the moment his eyes stopped dead at the crystal bowl brimming with condoms that she hugged against her hip in the crook of her arm.

Oh, Christ. He stared at the jumble of condoms and nearly choked on the ice-cold rage that exploded in his chest as visions of The Bitch filled his mind. Get a grip, he fiercely demanded of himself, blinking away the memories. This isn’t LaDonna, Vince— get that through your head. Hell, you don’t even know this woman, so what’s it to you what a complete stranger chooses to do with her private life? And it didn’t matter. It didn’t. Only… what was wrong with him that the only women to physically attract him always turned out to be sluts?

Every last vestige of sexual desire departed as swiftly as it had appeared.

Ivy had drawn enough male attention in her life to be aware of her neighbor’s interest and of the thawing of hostility in those jet-black eyes. She experienced a reciprocal flush of

awareness and the first small pulse of a sexual excitement of her own. She even felt a little surge of gratitude toward him, for it was difficult to remember the last time she’d been cognizant of her own sexuality. She couldn’t help but appreciate the person reminding her of it now. This was beginning to appear most promising: a new home, and an attractive new neighbor.

It was therefore a shock when his eyes suddenly snapped up to meet hers again. His dawning interest had disappeared as thoroughly as though it had never existed outside the bounds of her own imagination. His eyes were dark and cold again, containing even more animosity than they’d originally displayed. He appeared to regard her, in fact, with the same distaste he might have shown a none-too-cute pet who’d had a particularly disgusting accident at his feet. Considering she hadn’t slapped eyes on the man until two minutes ago, Ivy was stunned by the depths of deflation she experienced. It seemed absurdly disproportionate to the circumstances.

“I won’t come in, thanks,” he said coolly. His eyes dropped to the round crystal container of condoms, briefly flashed to Ivy’s cousins in the living room, then returned to meet hers once again. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt the group activities.”

She glanced at her cousins herself and then down at the gift they had given her, wishing she’d had the sense to set it down. It had still been in her lap when the pounding on the door had commenced and she’d automatically carried it with her when she’d arisen to answer it. She could scarcely believe she correctly understood what he seemed to be implying, but when she looked back at her new neighbor her own eyes had nevertheless lost their warmth.

“I beg your pardon?” she said in tones of frosty civility. One eyebrow arched disdainfully. “Perhaps you’d care to define what it is you assume those activities to be?”

“Listen, lady, I think your little bowl there says it all. What you do in the privacy of your own apartment is your business—”

“I’m thrilled you realize it.”

“—I’m just not interested in coming in and joining the games, okay?” Vincent stepped back out into the hallway and Ivy, dropping all pretense of politeness, took an incensed step after him.

“I think you’ve got things a little backwards here, Slick,” she snapped and then pointed out frigidly, “I’m not the one who showed up on your doorstep wearing nothing but my underwear.” What a self-righteous, tight-assed, presumptuous prig! She could dispell his erroneous assumption with a few brief words, of course, but she wasn’t in the least inclined— she didn’t owe this jerk any explanations. Who on earth was he, anyway, the moral arbiter of the fourth floor? “Frankly, buster,” she said with a spurious calm she was far from feeling, “I find you delusional beyond belief. Nevertheless, let me give you a little friendly advice.” She looked him up and down pointedly. “The next time you get the urge to preach to someone, put your clothes on first. It will make the sermon much more effective.” Vincent held onto his temper with an effort, which was unaccountably much more difficult than it should have been. “I came by to ask you to hold it down,” he said with stiff formality. “I worked late last night and you’ve made sleep all but impossible this morning with all the racket you’ve been making.”

Then he lost it. “And if you don’t like what I wear, don’t roust me out of bed and you won’t have to see it!” He rubbed at the headache pounding in earnest now behind his eyebrows and tried to get a grip on his anger. He’d been a cop long enough to know it was the least productive emotion in a confrontation. It was also, he discovered when he caught her looking him over as if he were a paticularly repellent slug, not that easily dispelled. Thoroughly out of sorts, he snapped, “From now on, why don’t you and your little friends do everyone a favor. Go practice your damn singing in whichever bar it is that pays your salary.” Without awaiting a reply, Vincent turned on his heel and walked away.

A high-pitched squeal of rage escaping through her teeth, Ivy slammed the door behind him. Breathing as rapidly as if she’d just run an uphill 10K, she turned to find her cousins had all fallen silent. They were staring at her with varying degrees of shock, incredulousness, anger, or amusement, depending on their particular personalities. “Do you believe that jerk?” she demanded

“Um,” someone murmured.

“Real friendly individual, wasn’t he?” murmured someone else.

Long after her cousins had left, Ivy was still repeatedly re-living that bizarre confrontation with her neighbor. Her undiminished indignation kept her moving full speed around her apartment, unpacking box after box, finding new places for her possessions and arranging the small pieces of furniture that had been carried in earlier and set in the middle of whichever room it had been deemed they would most likely belong. An unexpected bonus of all that leftover ire was that she set her new home to rights in record time.

When she finally began to calm down, she felt a little ridiculous for letting him get to her that way. She had her share of temperament; it had been inherited right along with the red in her hair. But years of med school, an internship, and a two year residency in the city’s busiest Level One trauma center had knocked most of her quick temper out of her. She would have never made it past third year medical school if she hadn’t learned long ago to control most of her emotional reactions. And it had been years since she’d allowed herself to care about the opinion of a total stranger. She didn’t know why her new neighbor’s obnoxious presumption had rubbed her so raw. Ordinarily, it simply would have made her laugh before she shrugged it off.

Well, all right, she admitted as she organized the bathroom, she did know. She knew perfectly well. That horse’s ass had managed to awaken her long-slumbering sexuality and now it was screaming for attention with no relief in sight. Damn him! He’d started her libido humming only to turn around and— figuratively speaking— slit its damn throat.

She’d had her sex-drive in mothballs for a long time now, and this was the year she’d planned to finally take it out of storage. Naturally, she hadn’t expected it to happen overnight, but neither had she expected to be kicked in the teeth and accused of God knows what perversions the first time she felt a spark of interest.

Dammit, it had been ages since a man had caught her attention. And no one, she admitted with resentful honesty, had ever sparked in her such immediate sexual chemistry as that dark-skinned, dark-haired jerk had managed to do. She’d had a couple relationships in college, but nothing in the long run that could compete with her ambition to become a doctor. Once she’d begun med school, it had been even harder to sustain a serious attachment, for sooner or later the men she saw expressed jealous displeasure over the time and energy she poured into the development of her career. They expected her to be equally— or better yet, more— devoted to their needs. As soon as that particular argument reared its ugly head (“If you’d put as much effort into us as you do to your damn medicine!”) Ivy always knew it was the beginning of the end. For she had wanted to be a doctor since she was fifteen years old, and if the man with whom she was involved knew her so little as to suggest she relinquish her long-held heart’s desire simply to cater to his comfort and aspirations, then he obviously wasn’t right for her in the first place.

So she’d repressed her sexuality, and if the truth were known for the past few years it hadn’t been all that difficult to do. Internship had been one long, sleep-deprived stretch in which she’d managed maybe three casual dates in twelve months; and her residency hadn’t been appreciably better. Working twenty-four hours on and twenty-four off, she’d generally considered herself lucky to squeeze in time for an occasional lunch or dinner with one of her cousins before she stumbled home to bed. The few nights that she’d both had off and could manage to keep her eyes open, her social life had consisted primarily of joining various relatives at Uncle Mack’s bar for a beer and a sing-along.

So, big deal, she was ripe for a relationship. That probably explained the uncharacteristic lust she’d experienced for the idiot next door. But it sure as hell didn’t give him leave to pique her sexuality with one hand, only to squash it with the other. There was no excuse for the things he’d said; as far as she was concerned, his attack on her had been unprovoked.

She would, however, grant him one extenuating circumstance— the innate mouthiness of her family.

She had grown up in the bosom of a close-knit extended family in which there were precious few secrets. Nobody, with the possible exception of Terry, seemed able to keep anything to themselves for any length of time. Most of the time that wasn’t a problem, for her family was warmly interested in the happenings of others. Never were they malicious, and their inbred curiosity did promote a sense of intimacy and belonging that was hard to deny. There were times, however, when it could be a downright interfering curse.

Not for a moment did she doubt that it was the conversation she’d had with Jaz a few weeks back that had given birth to her cousins’ off-beat housewarming gift. She had been rhapsodizing over finally being able to establish a work routine with regular hours— or as regular as it ever got when it came to trauma care. She’d further ventured to express that, maybe, for the first time in what seemed like forever, there was even an eventual chance as well of actually developing a steady relationship with a man— a relationship to which she’d finally have time to devote a little effort. And that, she’d told Jaz, was bound to have better odds for success than anything she’d managed so far.

If she’d had any sense, she would have stopped right there. Instead, she’d set herself up with her very next words. “And sex!” she’d said. “My God, Jaz, do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve participated in even the most innocent of sexual activity?”

Jaz had probably mentioned it to Sherry, who had probably mentioned it to her brother Terry, who probably hadn’tmentioned it to anyone, but then Sherry wasn’t known to keep things to herself and was sure to have mentioned it to someone else, who had probably mentioned it to… well, the list went on. And before you knew it, ergo: a lifetime supply of condoms.

Much as she hated to concede anything, she would admit that it might have been disconcerting for her neighbor to be greeted at the door by a woman gripping a container filled with enough protection to render the entire personnel of the USS Constitution safe. Had their roles been reversed, she, too, probably would have been taken aback. She was even prepared to find it understandable if he had concluded that she therefore must lead a busier sex life than most.

What she didn’t understand was how he could have taken such a wild leap beyond that conclusion. How many people would see a bowl of condoms, look into a room of fully clothed people, in an apartment obviously just being moved into, and immediately assume they were gearing up for an orgy? An orgy, for God’s sake! If you asked her, his sex life must be a hell of lot more interesting than hers, unfortunately, had ever been.

Somehow, though, she doubted it. Not that he wasn’t loaded with latent sexuality— she didn’t even attempt to fool herself into believing otherwise, for she’d felt it too strongly. But

even if she could set aside the prejudice he’d managed to instill with his oh-so-obvious disdain, there was just something too disapproving and rigid about the man. As if he kept himself on a very short leash.

And did the guy have a problem with contemporary sexual mores, or what? She hadn’t been mistaken about his interest in her— it might have been fleeting but it had been real. What had killed it stone dead, without a doubt, was the implied promiscuity he’d read into the sheer number of condoms in her possession. Well, perhaps, since he didn’t know her, he could be forgiven that assumption. But if he expected to find a thirty year old virgin in this day and age, she was afraid he was doomed to disappointment. And more to the point, even if she had been the worse sort of slut that he so clearly assumed her to be, she’d been in her own apartment, with the doors closed, minding her own business. So, really, what the hell business was it of his?

***

Vincent spent the next couple of weeks asking himself the very same question. It took him that long to concede that maybe he had made an ass of himself by jumping to all the wrong

conclusions during his encounter with the woman next door the day she’d moved in.

His continuing curiosity about his new neighbor irritated him no end. It was not at all like him. He shouldn’t, for example, give a damn what her name was, yet he’d gone out of his way to discover from her mail slot that it was Pennington.

Okay, that was perhaps understandable.

What was not was the extent to which he’d forsaken his professionalism when he’d run that damn computer check on her the day after they’d ridden the elevator together. He knew damn well she wasn’t a prostitute. That hadn’t stopped him from checking for an arrest record.

To top it off— as if that hadn’t been cretinous enough— he’d gotten caught at it.

He knew he was acting like an idiot even as he scanned the computer screen. He was a detective in the Special Assaults Unit of the Seattle Police Department, and this was not an acceptable use of his time or the department’s resources. But in his mind’s eye he kept seeing that smile of hers in the elevator early this morning, and it prodded him to continue the search he’d begun.

He hadn’t even noticed her when he’d first stepped onto the elevator. It had been a long, frustrating night and he’d been exhausted, desiring nothing so much as a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep and knowing there was no way in hell he was going to get it. He’d entered the elevator and reached out to punch the fourth floor button… only to notice it was already illuminated. Rubbing his bleary eyes, he’d turned his head, and there she’d been. Leaning against the opposite wall, wearing a short skirt and modest-heeled pumps, her long legs crossed at the ankle. She’d stared at him with unblinking, green-eyed solemnity.

He’d wanted to ignore her altogether, but his eyes had kept returning to her legs. He couldn’t seem to help it; they were exceptionally fine and in that short skirt they’d been damn hard to ignore. She’d caught him dead to rights looking at them. He had glanced at her face following a brief survey of the shapeliness of her ankles, calves, knees, and thighs, only to find her steadily observing him.

That was when she’d given him that smile and just the memory of it was enough to make his teeth clench. It had been so damned knowledgeable, that smile, so carnal. As if she’d looked right inside of him and said, ‘You may think you’re mighty righteous because you’ve been celibate for a few years, but you don’t fool me for a minute. I know exactly what you’d like.’ She had then looked him up and down with one brief sweep of her eyes; then her lashes had dropped closed, and her lips still curled upward in that knowing smirk, she’d ignored him until the elevator had come to a stop on their floor. She’d pushed herself upright, swept past him without a word, and disappeared into her apartment.

“Hookers?” Vincent’s friend, Keith Graham, stopped behind him. He leaned down to read over Vincent’s shoulder. “What are you working on that involves hookers?”

“Nothing.” An intrinsically honest man, Vincent didn’t even consider lying. He pushed back from the terminal and swiveled around to face his fellow detective. Feeling like an ass, he told Keith what he’d been doing …and why.

“Jesus, Vince,” Keith muttered when he’d finished. Leaning against an adjacent desk, he crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know whether to congratulate your hormones for finally clawing their way out of that cage you’ve had them in… or get realistic here and start worrying that you’ve had them boxed up so long they’re starting to short-circuited your brain.”

“She said I was delusional.”

“Well, Jesus, son, I don’t wonder. Put yourself in the woman’s position for a moment. Sounds to me as if she had some friends helping her move in and you jumped to some pretty hasty conclusions just because she was cuddling a coupla condoms.”

“Couple, hell! There must have been a gross of ’em!”

Keith squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, eyeing his friend in puzzlement. “People collect all sorts of weird shit, Vincent. You know it; I know it. Even if she planned to use them all in an evening, it’s still a considerable leap from being an over-sexed amateur to a pro for hire.”

“Yeah, okay, I know. She doesn’t have a rap sheet, and I guess I didn’t really expect to find her in the files anyway.” Vincent smiled up at the pretty blonde detective who appeared at

his side to ask if he was finished with the computer. He set the screen back to the main menu, pushed the chair back from the terminal and arose, offering it to her. Moving over to his desk, he said in a low voice, “I think I’d like her to be a hooker, though, Keith. Then I could write her off. She has this way of looking at me that messes with all my convictions.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Keith replied and considered his friend thoughtfully. “Not all women are like The Bitch, Vincent.”

“Oh, please.” Vincent struggled to tamp down his rising irritation. He did not want to talk about his ex-wife. “I know that, okay? I see the victims just as often as you do.”

“You know it intellectually, maybe.”

Oh, great, now he had to suffer through Keith’s psycho—babble? Vincent’s black eyes were suddenly cold and impenetrable as he stared at the man he considered his closest friend.

“Meaning?” he demanded, sure he wasn’t going to like this.

He was right.

“Meaning,” Keith stated bluntly, “LaDonna Baxter D’Ambruzzi Whatever-the-hell-she’s-calling-herself-these-days did a damn fine job of stunting your emotional growth, son.” He hesitated a moment, then decided to say what was on his mind. “She didn’t just sleep with half your friends, Vincent. She fucked with your mind.”

End of Excerpt.
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