One Good Man. Julie Miller

scent of the man underneath. The nubby texture of his tweed jacket brushed her cheek in a rough caress. And she could hear the steady staccato of his heartbeat beneath her ear.

      Gradually, she became aware of her own body’s reaction to the embrace. Her cheek, breasts, arm and thighs tingled wherever they touched him. Her own heartbeat jumped in a quicker rhythm.

      Suddenly, Mitch wasn’t comforting to her. He wasn’t her bodyguard or even a kind officer doing his duty. He was a man. And she was a woman. She was…

      She wasn’t ready for this.

      Casey pushed away. The abrupt motion stirred the papers at her feet and reminded her with merciless speed of the reason she had sought safety in Mitch’s arms.

      “Who was on the phone? I called from the back door. Did you think I was him?”

      His quick return to the questioning detective gave her an odd feeling of normalcy. It was less complicated to think of him in this role than as a man who made her want and feel things she had no right to. If he could dismiss the heat that had sizzled between them so easily, then she could, too. If he wanted to be the cop, then she would be his cool and proper princess.

      She answered the easiest question first.

      “I tried to call Jimmy. But all I got was his assistant.” With the tip of her cane, she pushed aside the papers on the floor and pointed to the cruelly skewed nursery rhyme. “That came in the mail this afternoon.”

      He knelt down in front of her, studying the creased white paper and its computer-generated type without touching it. “From Raines?”

      “I think. It was in with a card from a local bank.”

      Mitch read the phrase to himself. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and placed the letter inside before standing. “That’s not how the rhyme goes, is it?”

      “No. But my father’s name is Jack.” She looked at the paper herself again, and wondered if he could see the same stain of hatred on it she did. “Don’t you think that could be a threat?”

      “Anything’s possible. I’ll run it through the crime lab. See if they can pick up any prints. Do you still have the envelope it came in?”