“For starters…?” All at once she was breathlessly alert, as if she’d heard that cra-ack, too. “You mean…because we…”

The tension inside him was unbelievable. “Because of what happened in the truck…yes.” There was so much emotion in him, his jaws had locked tight, so the rest was a thickened mumble. “We’ve never…addressed that.”

“Addressed what?” In the glaring bathroom light, her eyes seemed to shine and shimmer like sapphires. “We made love. That’s it. What’s there to talk about? You think just because we made love, that automatically changes everything? That it gives you the right-” And suddenly her jewel-like eyes had turned to liquid; tears sparkled like tiny pearls on her cheeks.

That was it. He felt it like a gunshot inside his head-the ice cracking under him, the tension snapping, his self-control giving way. With a groan of anguish he reached for her, felt her flesh beneath his fingers, felt her mouth, her lips warm and wet and salty from her tears. Sinking…drowning…he moved his mouth over hers, felt the moisture slick on his lips, and the salt-taste sweet on his tongue. He felt her mouth open under his, and heard-no, felt-her sigh.

He made a sound, then, deep in his throat, an animal sound of hunger and need that stunned him, shocked him to the depths of his soul. Helpless to stop himself, no longer even wanting to, he drove his tongue deep into her mouth. And when he felt her give way, yet whimper and open to him, hungry for more, he brought his hand up to the back of her head to steady it. With her head cradled in his hand, he drew back just long enough to nip at her lips and glaze them with his own moisture, until she gave a tiny, gasping cry and lifted to him, blind and trembling.

Her response and her helplessness touched him unbelievably, and when he plunged his tongue between her lips again, it was no longer a plundering, but a giving. He took nothing from her, exerted no dominance, extracted no surrender, but instead poured into her all the hunger and need he’d stored away deep inside himself during the years of his self-denial, and the loneliness and vulnerability he hadn’t even known was there inside him, too. He let it flow from the depths of his soul in trembling, shuddering waves of emotion that should have appalled him, but instead came as unbelievably sweet relief.

At last, drained and fragile, he tore his mouth from hers and with his arms around her, held her as though she were the only thing keeping him upright and anchored to the ground. “Not because I made love with you,” he whispered with his cheek against her hair. “Because I’m probably in love with you.”

He wrenched himself from her, suddenly high on the overdose of his own emotions and finding it impossible to keep still. Unable to pace in that tiny room, he turned jerkily, driving a hand through the wreckage of his hair. “Which is without any doubt the most insane thing I have ever done.” He whirled back to her. “Do you have any idea how insane this is? Do you? You’re involved in a case I’m working on-not just any case, probably the most important of my career. So all of a sudden my judgment is impaired, my objectivity shot to hell-do you have any idea what my superiors would say about this if they knew? I’d be off this case so fast, it’d make your head swim.”

“Would that be so bad?” she whispered, so faintly he almost didn’t hear her. Then she closed her eyes and touched her lips with her fingertips, gave her head a quick, hard shake and mumbled, “I know…I know. I’m sorry. I just wish…”

“You wish…what?” But she looked away and didn’t answer. “You said that once before,” he reminded her as he laid his hand along the side of her face and touched her lips with his thumb. “This time… I think you’re gonna have to tell me.”

Her eyes drifted closed and her breath flowed warmly over his hand. “Maybe…my judgment’s not all that great, either,” she finally said in a low and shaken whisper. “It’s so complicated… all mixed-up together-this case, how we feel. I think…you’d be happy if you could just somehow separate me and my family from the case completely-put us away someplace safe and out of the way so you could go on and do your job the way you’ve always done it. But-” and she quickly put her fingers against his lips to forestall any possible interruption “-what I want, is for the case to be over. Not just for me and my family, but for you, for everybody.” She was gazing at him now, and her eyes were the somber slate-blue of winter. “Because until it is, I don’t think it matters much what we feel. The case is always going to get in the way. Do you understand?”

Jake said nothing, because he was afraid he did understand. Heartsick and cold, he stared at her, while she searched his face, then sadly closed her eyes.

“You’re thinking it’s like your wife all over again. That’s not what it is-I don’t know how to explain it, or what I can say to convince you, but it’s not. It’s not your job, it’s not even the case itself-not really. It’s like…somehow over the years you’ve let this case get all tangled up with who you are, how you think of yourself. Everything-the breakup of your marriage, your past, your present, your future-it’s all about this case. It’s all about getting Sonny. It’s like a cancer. It’s taken over your life. Call me selfish-everybody does-but I want you whole and healthy, Jake. I have too much to give. I don’t want it wasted.” A tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek, and his fingers moved automatically to wipe it away.

Standing close, almost touching him, she sniffed and then whispered, “That’s why I won’t pull out of this-not until it’s finished. One way or the other.” She closed her eyes and gave a watery and distressed laugh. “Like I said, maybe my judgment’s not so hot, either.”

Jake cleared his throat, to absolutely no effect. After a while he said, “So, I guess we all know where we stand. Right? You want this over with. God knows I do, especially since it doesn’t look like I’m going to get you out of it any other way.” He paused, holding her by both arms, realizing that he’d begun to gently stroke them. His heartbeat thundered in his chest, and he felt its distant echo in his loins. “This Christmas operation at your sister’s looks like it may be the best hope for accomplishing both our goals.” He took one more breath, and with his lips close to her ear, softly growled, “Come on, Waskowitz. Are you with me on this?”

This time, when he lowered his mouth over hers, it wasn’t emotions that governed him. Heat boiled through his veins; he felt pumped full to bursting with life force and energy. With the emotional battle won, more or less, and he the triumphant, if slightly bloodied victor, the surge of desire that followed felt completely natural to him-almost a biological imperative.

This time, his arms held her tightly, not for his own need and comfort, but with deliberate masculine assertiveness, to make her feel the heat and power of his body, and to brace her to receive the force of his thrusts. This time, when her lips opened under the demand of his mouth and his tongue drove deep into hers, it was a claiming pure and simple, and as graphic and unmistakable as any in nature.

And she knew the difference. Rocked by his primal rhythms, within seconds he felt her panting and gasping, raking at his clothes in a passion as compelling as his own, oblivious to surroundings and circumstances, and to the impossibilities…

But he wasn’t oblivious-not quite. Somewhere, in a miniscule corner of his mind, he knew that they were standing in a hospital bathroom, that he had Eve pressed against the sink, and that her legs had wrapped themselves around his hips. And that, no matter how much he wanted to, they could not-must not-continue with what they were doing. Not here, not now.

The adolescent male part of him wanted to argue. We could! I could take her here-standing up…sitting down… I want to!

But the forty-something-year-old federal law officer part knew that there were other considerations. People-sisters-just beyond that door. And plans to be made, a bad guy to catch.

“We…can‘t-” he gasped. It took every ounce of willpower and strength he possessed to tear himself from her and hold her at half an arm’s length. There they stood, gripping each other’s arms for reassurance and support, shaking and panting like marathon runners, trying to regain their footing in a universe that had just come within an eyelash of spinning out of control.

“Are you okay?” Jake asked in a croaking whisper.

Staring at the middle of his chest, Eve replied in the same voice, “Yes, fine.” Silently and ruefully she began to laugh.

So he gathered her once more into his arms and held her, rocking her as they laughed together in the giddy, shaken way people do when they’ve just managed to escape disaster.

Presently, feeling stronger, he kissed the top of her head and murmured, “Ready? Need another minute?”

She shook her head, pulled back from him and combed her fingers through her hair. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” A residual bubble of laughter burst from her like a hiccup. “What do you suppose they’re thinking?”

“Those two?” Jake snorted and reached for the doorknob as Eve gathered up the two halves of her collar. “I’ve got news for you, Waskowitz. They don’t think. They already know.”


Early on Christmas Eve, Summer Grogan stood in the middle of her beautiful formal living room and gazed critically at the tree that soared almost to the top of the twelve-foot ceiling.

“Not bad,” she murmured in glorious understatement.

Though not as large as the one in Rockefeller Center, her tree, she was sure, was every bit as magnificent. Festooned with tiny twinkling lights, silver garlands, red bows, glass balls and dozens of ornaments ranging from those the children had made from bread dough and macaroni and popcorn to the most elegant handblown crystal, then topped with a gauzy white angel, it shimmered and sparkled from every view. Evergreen garlands looped across every mantelpiece, window and doorway in the house and twined around the banister of the curving staircase. Candles and holly adorned every tabletop; red poinsettias flanked the stairs and brightened every corner. Outside, thousands of tiny white lights winked in the trees and shrubbery and cascaded from the eaves. No house, she was sure, had ever looked more beautiful, more warm and welcoming.