She watched to make sure he didn't plant any more bugs or pull a revolver out of his boot and shoot someone. She watched the strain of his biceps beneath his T-shirt as he removed heavy glass shelving, and she watched his broad, muscular shoulders as he carried it to the back room. He'd slung his tool belt low on his hips like a gunfighter, and his hand slid smoothly into the front pouch, depositing wood screws.

Even when Gabrielle wasn't watching him, she knew when he walked from the room and when he entered it again. She could feel him like the invisible pull of a black hole. When she wasn't helping customers, she busied herself with the never-ending chore of dusting, and she avoided talking to him as much as possible, answering only his direct questions.

By ten o'clock, tension tightened the base of her skull, and at eleven-thirty, she developed a tic in the outside corner of her right eye. Finally, at a quarter to twelve, she grabbed her small leather backpack and walked out of the stress-filled shop into the bright sunshine, feeling like she'd just been granted parole after a ten-year stint.

She met the Silver Winds representative at a restaurant in the heart of downtown, and they sat outside on the balcony and discussed dainty silver necklaces and earrings. A slight breeze fluttered the green umbrellas overhead as traffic passed on the street below. She ordered her favorite chicken stir-fry and a glass of iced tea and waited for the morning's tension to leave her skull.

The tic in her eye went away, but she couldn't seem to completely relax. No matter how she tried, she couldn't find her center or reharmonize her spirit. No matter how she fought it, her mind returned to Joe Shanahan, and the many ways the detective might trick an erroneous confession from Kevin while she was away. She didn't believe there was a subtle bone in Detective Joseph Shanahan's big muscular body, and she half expected to return and find poor Kevin cuffed to a chair.

What greeted her when she reentered her shop two hours later was about the last thing she expected. Laughter. Kevin's laughter mixed with Mara's as they both stood next to a ladder, grinning up at Joe Shanahan as if they were all great buddies.

Her business partner was laughing it up with the cop determined to put him in prison. And Gabrielle knew Kevin would hate prison more than most men. He'd hate the clothes and the haircuts and not having a cellphone.

Her gaze moved from poor Kevin's smiling face to the eight new mounting standards that ran from floor to ceiling on the back wall. Joe stood at the top of the ladder with a drill in one hand, a level in the other, and a tape measure attached to the back of his tool belt.

She hadn't really expected him to know enough about carpentry to do the job right, but the metal shelving system looked straight to her; so he apparently knew more than she'd thought. Mara knelt next to the wall and held the bottom of the last standard. The expression in her big brown eyes was a little too awestruck as she gazed up at the detective. Mara was inexperienced and, Gabrielle supposed, susceptible to the musky pheromones Joe exuded.

The three of them hadn't noticed Gabrielle, or the customer looking at a display of porcelain vases.

"It's not that easy," Kevin said to the detective above him. "You have to have an informed eye and natural instincts to make money dealing in antiques."

Conversation stopped as Joe drilled two screws into the top of the metal standard. "Well, I know next to squat about antiques," he confessed as he climbed down from the ladder. "My mother is a garage sale fanatic, and all that stuff looks the same to me." He knelt beside Mara and drilled two remaining screws. "Thanks for the help," he said before standing once again.

"No problem. What else can I do for you?" Mara asked, looking as if she wanted to take a bite out of crime.

"I'm about finished." He braced his feet and drilled several more screws.

"Some people find antiques at garage sales," Kevin said when it was quiet once more. "But serious dealers usually only go to estate sales and auctions. That's how I met Gabrielle. We were both bidding on the same watercolor. It was a pastoral scene by a local artist."

"I don't know much about art either," Joe confessed and rested his forearm on a ladder rung, the drill still gripped in his hand like a.45 magnum. "If I wanted to buy a painting, I'd have to ask somebody who knows about that sort of thing."

"You'd be real smart to do that, too. Most people don't know what's really valuable and can't tell if their art is legitimate. You'd be surprised at how many fakes hang in prestigious galleries. There was a break-in at…"

"It was mourning art," Gabrielle interrupted before Kevin could incriminate himself further. "We were bidding on mourning pictures."

Kevin shook his head as she walked toward him. "I don't think so. Mourning pictures give me the creeps."

Joe looked at her over his shoulder. His gaze met hers as he said slowly, "Morning as in sunrise?" He wasn't fooled. He knew what she was doing.

"No." She didn't really care what he knew. "Mourning as in pictures made from the hair of the dearly departed. They were popular in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and there is still a small market for hair art. Not everyone has an aversion to pictures made with great-great-great-grandmother's hair. Some of it is quite beautiful."

"Sounds morbid to me." Joe turned and used the orange cord to lower the drill to the floor.

Mara's nose wrinkled. "I agree with Joe. Morbid and disgusting."

Gabrielle loved hair art. She'd always found it fascinating, and no matter how irrational, Mara's opinion felt like a defection. "You need to help the customer looking at vases," she told her employee, the tone in her voice much harsher than she intended. Confusion furrowed Mara's brow as she walked across the store. The tic in Gabrielle's eye came back, and she pressed her fingers to it. Her life was falling apart, and the reason stood in front of her in tight jeans and a T-shirt, looking like one of those construction workers in a Diet Coke commercial.

"Are you feeling okay?" Kevin asked, his obvious concern making her feel worse.

"No, my head aches a little and my stomach feels queasy."

Joe reached across the short distance that separated them and pushed her hair behind her ear. He touched her as if he had the right, as if he cared about her. But of course he didn't. It was all an act to deceive Kevin.

"What did you eat for lunch?" he asked.

"Lunch didn't make me sick." She stared into his brown eyes and answered truthfully, "It started this morning." The funny little flutter in the pit of her stomach had started with a kiss. A kiss from an emotionally barren cop who disliked her as much as she disliked him. He patted her cheek with his warm palm as if to tell her to toughen up.

"It? Ah, cramps," Kevin deduced as if her behavior suddenly made perfect sense to him. "I thought you concocted an herbal remedy for those mood swings."

The corners of Joe's lips curved into an amused smile, and he lowered his hand and hooked his thumbs in his tool belt.

It was true. She'd created an essential oil that seemed to help her friend Francis with her PMS. But Gabrielle didn't need it. She didn't have PMS and she was always extremely nice to everyone-damnit. "I don't have mood swings." She crossed her arms under her breasts and tried not to glare. "I'm perfectly pleasant all the time. Ask anyone!"

The two men looked at her as if they were afraid to say another word. Kevin had clearly turned traitor on her. He'd defected to the enemy camp-his enemy.

"Maybe you should take the rest of the day off," Kevin suggested, but she couldn't. She had to stay and save him from Joe and from himself. "I used to have a girlfriend who laid around with a heating pad and ate chocolate. She said it was the only thing that seemed to help with those cramps and mood swings."

"I'm not having cramps or mood swings!" Weren't men supposed to hate talking about this sort of thing? Wasn't it supposed to freak them out? But neither man looked embarrassed; in fact, Joe looked as if he was trying not to laugh.

"Maybe you should take some Midol," Joe added through his smile, even though he knew perfectly well that what ailed her couldn't be cured with Midol.

Kevin nodded. Gabrielle's headache moved to her temples, and she no longer cared to save Kevin from Joe Shanahan or from prison. If he ended up as some iron-pumping convict's special buddy, her conscience was clear. Gabrielle raised her hands to the sides of her head as if to keep it from splitting.

"I've never seen her look this mad," Kevin said as if she weren't standing right in front of him.

Joe tilted his head to one side and pretended to study her. "I had a girlfriend who reminded me of a praying mantis once a month. If you said the wrong thing, she'd bite your head off. The rest of the time she was real sweet, though."

Gabrielle curled her nonviolent hands into fists and dropped them to her sides. She wanted to punch someone. Someone solid with dark hair and eyes. He was forcing her to have evil thoughts. Forcing her to create bad karma. "Which girlfriend was that? The one who dumped you after a whole two months?"

"She didn't dump me. I broke up with her." Joe reached for Gabrielle and wrapped his arm around her waist. He hauled her up against his side and caressed her skin through the thin nylon of her shirt. "God, I love it when you're jealous," he whispered in a low, sensual voice just above her ear. "You get all squinty-eyed and sexy."

His breath warmed her scalp, and if she turned her head just a little, his lips would brush her cheek. The wonderful smell of his skin enveloped her head, and she wondered how such an evil man could smell so heavenly. "You look normal," she said, "but you are really a demon from hell." She stuck her elbow in his ribs. Hard. The air whooshed from his lungs and she stepped out of his embrace.