medication—that’s what it was—taking away the restraints, the walls. Her judgment. Her mind fuzzy, she searched for something plausible to use as an excuse. “I kiss, Hawk. I kiss a lot. Don’t look so uneasy. A kiss isn’t always a prelude to sex—”
“I wasn’t uneasy,” he snapped. The next moment, he got himself under control. It was a lie. He was uneasy and he had no idea why he was uneasy, why his nerves felt as if they were being pulled apart, which just made the situation that much more irritating. “And before you and I have sex, hell will be selling overcoats.”
“Charmingly put,” she said. He probably had no idea that if she hadn’t had a healthy self-esteem, that would have gone a long way toward destroying it. “Have I told you how great you are for my ego?”
Hawk snorted. She was the last person who needed to be treated with verbal kid gloves. “You don’t need me for your ego. You’ve got other guys for that, hanging around like mindless flies.”
She shook her head, then regretted it. The inside of the car spun a little. “Honey, pure honey on that tongue of yours.” And then she smiled. Well, well, well, he was aware of other men looking at her. Interesting. “So you do notice things sometimes.”
“I’m a detective. I’m supposed to notice things.”
“You don’t notice the women drooling after you.”
There she went, exaggerating again. “Nobody’s drooling,” he heard himself snap.
Damn it, Cavanaugh was doing it to him again, making him lose his cool, his control. How did she manage to do that when he usually could keep such tight rein on what was happening inside of him? And why did he have to be partnered with her in the first place?
He realized that she still hadn’t answered his question to his satisfaction. “Why did you kiss me?”
His profile was rigid. It was the kind of profile, she caught herself thinking, that could have easily been chiseled in rock. No soft edges, no curves, just planes and angles. A born tough guy. “Just the facts, ma’am,’ right?”
“What?”
“Joe Friday. Dragnet,” she said.
She could see that the names of the program and its chief character meant nothing to Hawk. The man needed color in his life. Broad strokes. She had a feeling his life was done in fine-point pencil.
He sure didn’t kiss that way, a small voice from the inside of her ebbed delirium whispered.
Teri made the only assumption she could. “I take it you weren’t raised on police dramas the way I was.”
A great many of the programs had come via cable channels that featured old series from bygone eras. She could remember watching them, sitting on the floor in front of her father’s chair. Once in a while, when police work allowed, he was even in the chair, explaining things to her. Her desire to be a police detective had come just as much from those programs as it had from wanting to emulate her father, to give her something in common with him.
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