On Pins and Needles. Victoria Pade

men had left before sundown but the other two officers had stayed as long as Josh.

      Megan could see them through the living room window, talking beside the patrol car. She wondered if they were all just going to leave or if at least one of them would allow her the courtesy of a goodbye.

      She didn’t have long to wonder, though. After a while Josh shook both men’s hands and watched them get in their car.

      But he didn’t follow suit. Instead he stayed staring after them until they’d driven out of sight.

      Then he retraced his steps back to the house and came in without so much as a knock on the front door that opened into the living room.

      Still, he didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say anything. He merely leaned a nonchalant shoulder against the door he’d closed behind himself and gave Megan the once-over.

      “Time for my strip search?” she said facetiously before she realized what she was actually saying.

      Josh cracked a smile—the first since he’d shown up at her office that afternoon—and raised a charmingly lascivious eyebrow at her. “Are you offering?”

      Megan could feel her face heat and knew it was turning cherry-red—a hazard of having such a fair complexion. “I just meant that that seems like the only thing you haven’t done here, so I’m wondering if that’s what I’m in store for since you didn’t leave with the rest of them.”

      She was only making it worse and she knew it, so she finally stopped talking.

      Josh’s smile remained, as if he were still enjoying her blunder and the blush it had induced. “As a matter of fact, I’m off the clock now and I thought I’d help get everything back in place.”

      “Oh,” she said for lack of a better response as his big hands began to roll up the cuffs of his uniform shirt, exposing thick wrists and hair-spattered forearms.

      Helping to put everything back in place was a nice thing for him to do but it left Megan in a melee of mixed feelings.

      She was mad at him for this whole thing. For suspecting her parents. For searching her home.

      But at the same time, here she was feeling pleased by his offer to pitch in with the cleanup and admiring the sight of oh-so-masculine hands and wrists and arms, of all things.

      Of course it had been that way all afternoon and evening. Even in the midst of invading her privacy not a detail about him had escaped her notice.

      She’d taken in every scuff on his cowboy boots, and the snug caress of blue jeans that fitted his to-die for derriere like kid gloves. She’d studied his uniform shirt—a tan color with darker brown epaulets and flaps on the breast pockets. She’d surreptitiously read the lettering on the sheriff’s department insignias that rode each of the sleeves where his biceps stretched them to their limit. She’d memorized the number on the badge emblazoned on a chest that appeared to be made up of massive pectorals. And all in all she couldn’t help but be aware of how incredibly appealing he looked. Despite the fact that he was tossing her home as if she were a common criminal.

      “So what do you say? Let’s put this place back in order.”

      For a moment more Megan just stared at him. He’d been freshly shaved when he’d shown up at her office and she could still smell the faint scent of a sea breeze-like after shave wafting to her from where he stood.

      Tell him no thanks, she ordered herself. Tell him that if his business is finished he should get out, that he isn’t welcome here.

      But the trouble was, as much as she knew she should say exactly that, she couldn’t quite do it.

      Instead, another voice some where in her head said, He was the one who made the mess, he should be the one to clean it up….

      And somehow that seemed perfectly reasonable.

      “Where would you like to start?” she heard herself say suddenly.

      “How about in the same order I messed things up? You can put your things back in the bathroom and the dresser drawers while I get the beds and bureaus against the walls again.”

      Megan was about to agree when her stomach rumbled quietly and reminded her how hungry she was.

      “Or you could go to work on the furniture and I could make us a couple of sandwiches,” she suggested.

      “Better yet. It’s way past sup per time and I’m starving.”

      And wasn’t this all amiable and companionable? Megan thought, feeling disloyal.

      But again there was emotional confusion because she was also feeling a twinge of excitement at the prospect of the two of them sharing a light, impromptu supper alone together.

      This was really crazy, she decided, wondering if she should rescind her own offer of sandwiches, reject his offer of help putting the house in order, and call it a night after all.

      Only once more she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.

      It would be rude, she rationalized. Not to mention that being on the good side of the sheriff seemed wiser than alienating him any more than she already had.

      It didn’t mean she was any less resentful of his suspicions of her parents or any less on their side. It was just good public relations, she assured herself.

      “Sandwiches,” she repeated as if to remind herself.

      “Furniture,” Josh said the same way.

      Then he pushed off the door and spun around to the stair case.

      And only when his eyes slid away from her then did she realize he’d been watching her very intently. So intently that it was almost as if she’d been under a heat lamp. A heat lamp that had just been turned off.

      It was a strange sensation. Especially since it was ac companied by the slight wave of disappointment she was experiencing, as well as the desire to regain the warmth of that midnight-blue gaze in whatever way she could.

      Crazy. Definitely crazy.

      “Food,” Megan whispered to herself, again in reminder.

      Maybe she hadn’t gone crazy, she thought then. Maybe hunger had made her go haywire. Maybe as soon as she got some thing in her stomach she’d be more resist ant to Josh Brimley’s effects.

      And it was with the hope that that was true that she forced herself into motion and went to the kitchen.

      It took nearly forty-five minutes for Megan to get the sandwiches ready. The search had left her kitchen in as much disarray as the rest of the house and she had to clear space among the dishes, pots and pans, utensils, and even food stuffs that had been left out of cup boards, drawers and pantry to litter the counter tops and kitchen table.

      But even after making room to prepare their food there still wasn’t anywhere to eat it so, when she finished, she decided they’d have to dine picnic-style in the living room, around the coffee table.

      With that in mind, she piled everything on a tray and pushed through the swinging door that connected the kitchen to the living room.

      Josh was already in the living room, pushing the sofa against the wall facing the front door and the picture window. It was the last of the furniture to be put back where it had been and once it was he took a quick scan of the room.

      “All done,” he announced just as Megan set the tray on the coffee table. “Upstairs and down. I think I have pretty much everything in order again. Except the books in that case in the upper hall. I thought you’d probably rather put them in whatever order they were in before and I didn’t know what that was.”

      “I’ll do it later, when I put things back in the drawers and clean the kitchen,” Megan said. Then, glancing at the tray full of food, she added, “I thought we could eat in here.”

      “A picnic,” he said as if he’d read