"Beezer!" She scooped up the cat and held her against her breasts. "You better leave the detective alone or he'll slam you to the ground and arrest you. I know from experience."

"I never slammed you to the ground," Joe said as the steam cleared. "If anyone was slammed, it was me."

"Oh, yeah." She smiled at the memory of him lying on the ground with his lashes stuck together. "I got the jump on you."

He looked across his shoulder at her and shook the colander. A slight smile curved a corner of his mouth, and the humidity curled the hair about his temple. "But who ended up on top, Miss Bad Ass?" His gaze slipped over her from the braid in her hair to her bare feet, then back up again. "Pasta's done."

"Go ahead and dump it in with the stroganoff."

"What are you going to do?"

"Feed Beezer or she'll never leave you alone. She knows you're making dinner, and she's food obsessed." Gabrielle walked to a cabinet by the back door and retrieved a package of Tender Vittles. "After I feed her, I'll make the salad," she said as she ripped off the top. She dumped the food in a porcelain saucer, and once Beezer began to eat, she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bag of chopped-up salad.

"That figures."

Gabrielle looked over at Joe, who stood in front of the stove stirring the pasta into the sauce with a wooden spoon. The shadow of his beard darkened his tan cheeks and emphasized the sensual lines of his mouth. "What?"

"That your lettuce is precut. You know, this is the first time I've ever been invited to dinner, then been asked to cook it myself."

She hadn't really thought of him as a guest, more like unavoidable company. "How odd."

"Yeah. Odd." He pointed the spoon at the breakfast nook in the corner of the room. "What is all that?"

"Essential oils for the Coeur Festival," she explained as she dumped lettuce into two bowls. "I make my own aromatherapies and healing oils. Today is the first free day I've had to test a sunscreen oil I made out of sesame, wheat germ, and lavender. That's what I was doing in the pool."

"Does it work?"

She pulled down the neck of her T-shirt and studied the stark white bikini line against her tan chest. "I didn't burn." She glanced at him, but he wasn't looking at her face or her tan line. He stared at her bare stomach; his gaze so hot and intent heat flushed her skin. "What kind of dressing do you like on your salad?" she managed.

Then he shrugged one shoulder and focused his attention on the pot of stroganoff, making her wonder if she'd imagined the way he'd looked at her. "Ranch."

"Oh…" She turned to the refrigerator to hide her confusion. "Well I only have Italian and fat-free Italian."

"Why did you ask like I had a choice?"

"You do." If he could pretend that nothing had passed between them, so could she, but she had a feeling he was a better actor. "You can have Italian or fat-free Italian."

"Italian."

"Great." She dressed the salad, then carried the bowls into the dining room and set them on the cluttered table. She didn't have dinner company often and had to shove her catalogs and oil recipes into the built-in china hutch. Once the table was clear, she placed a short beeswax candle in the center of the pedestal table and lit it. She brought out her linen place mats and matching napkins, a pair of silver napkin rings, and the antique silver flatware she'd inherited from her grandmother. She grabbed two Ville-roy & Boch plates painted with red poppies and told herself she wasn't trying to impress the detective. She wanted to use her "good stuff" because she hardly ever got the chance. There was no other reason.

With her finest china in her hands she walked back into the kitchen. He stood where she'd left him, his back to her. She paused in the doorway, her eyes taking in his dark hair and the back of his neck, his broad shoulders and back. She let her gaze move to the back pockets of his Levi's and down his long legs. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a good-looking guy to dinner. Her last two boyfriends didn't count because they hadn't been all that great in the looks department. Harold had been brilliant, and she'd loved listening to him talk about spiritual enlightenment. He hadn't been preachy or too far out, but Francis had been right, Harold had been too old for her.

Before Harold, she'd dated Rick Hattaway, a nice, average-looking man who made Zen alarm clocks for a living. Neither man had made her pulse race or her stomach flutter, or made her skin flush from the heat of his gaze. Her attraction to both Harold and Rick hadn't been sexual, and neither relationship had progressed beyond kissing.

It had been years since she'd judged a man by his looks and not the quality of his soul. It had been before her conservationist conversion, when she'd hated washing dishes so much she'd only used paper plates. The guys she'd dated in those days probably wouldn't have even noticed the difference between Wedgwood and Chinet. At that time in her life she'd considered herself a serious artist, and she'd chosen men for purely aesthetic reasons. None of them had been enlightened, some hadn't been very smart, but really, intellect hadn't been the point. Muscles. Muscles and tight buns and stamina had been the point.

Gabrielle's gaze moved up Joe's spine, and she begrudgingly admitted that she'd missed looking across a dinner table at a handsome, hormone-enriched he-man. Joe certainly didn't seem concerned with his own enlightenment, but he did seem more intelligent than the average muscle neck. Then he raised his arm, bent his head, and sniffed his pit.

Gabrielle looked at the plates in her hands. She should have used paper.

Chapter Seven

Gabrielle was surprised at his table manners. Surprised he didn't chew with his mouth open, scratch himself, or belch like a frat boy with a sixer of Old Milwaukee. He'd actually placed his napkin on his lap and was entertaining her with outrageous stories about his parrot, Sam. If she didn't know better, she might think he was trying to charm her or that perhaps he had a decent soul buried somewhere deep within that solid body.

"Sam has a weight problem," he told her in between bites of stroganoff. "He loves pizza and Cheetos."

"You feed your bird pizza and Cheetos?"

"Not so much anymore. I had to build him a gym. Now I make him work out when I do."

Gabrielle didn't know whether to believe him or not. "How do you make a bird work out? Won't he just fly away?"

"I trick him into thinking he's having fun." Joe broke off a piece of bread and ate it. "I put the gym next to my weight bench," he continued after he'd swallowed. "And as long as I stay in the room with him, he'll climb his ladders and chains."

Gabrielle took a bite of her own bread and watched him over the top of the beeswax candle. Muted light from the dining room windows poured through the sheer curtains, bathing the room and Detective Joe Shanahan in soft light. His strong, masculine features appeared relaxed and subdued. Gabrielle figured it had to be a trick of the light, because despite his present charm, she knew from very recent experience that there was nothing subdued about the man across from her. Nothing soft, but she supposed that a man who loved his bird couldn't be totally without redeeming qualities. "How long have you had Sam?"

"Not quite a year now, but it seems like I've always had him. My sister Debby bought him for me."

"You have a sister?"

"I have four."

"Wow." Growing up, Gabrielle had always wanted a sister or brother. "Are you the oldest?"

"Youngest."

"The baby," she said, although she couldn't envision Joe as anything other than a grown man. He had too much testosterone for her to think of him as a nice little boy with shiny cheeks. "I bet growing up with four big sisters was fun."

"Mostly it was hell." He twirled a bite of pasta onto his fork.

"Why?"

He shoved the noodles into his mouth and watched her as he chewed. He didn't look like he would answer, but then he swallowed and confessed, "They made me wear their clothes and pretend I was the fifth sister."

She tried not to laugh, but her bottom lip trembled.

"It's not funny. They wouldn't even let me pretend to be the dog. Tanya always got to be the dog."

She did laugh this time and even thought about reaching out to pat his hand and telling him he would be okay, but she didn't. "Sounds like your sister made up for it. She bought you a bird for your birthday."

"Debby gave me Sam when I was laid up at home for a while. She thought a bird would keep me company until I was back on my feet and would be less trouble than a puppy." He smiled now. "She was wrong about that."

"Why were you laid up at home?"

His smile fell, and he shrugged his big shoulders. "I was shot in a drug bust that went wrong from the very beginning."

"You were shot?" Gabrielle felt her brows raise up her forehead. "Where?"

"In my right thigh," he said and abruptly changed the subject. "I met your friend when I knocked on your door earlier."

Gabrielle would have loved to know the details of the shooting, but he obviously wanted the subject dropped. "Francis?"

"She didn't give me her name, but she did say you told her I was your boyfriend. What else did you tell her?" he asked before he stuck the last bite of pasta in his mouth.

"That's about it," Gabrielle prevaricated as she reached for her iced tea. "She knew I thought a stalker was following me, so she asked me about it today. I told her we're dating now."

He swallowed slowly, and his gaze studied her across the slight distance that separated them. "You told her you're dating the guy you thought was stalking you?"