Once a Hero. Lisa Childs

she stammered, heat rushing to her face with shame and annoyance that she had let him rattle her.

      “You don’t want to ask me about me?” he asked, his gray eyes glinting with amusement.

      “You don’t answer my questions, Sergeant,” she reminded him.

      “Because they’re not pertinent.”

      “That’s not for you to decide,” she pointed out.

      “That you’re impertinent?”

      She bit her lip to hold in a reaction to his insult. She couldn’t let him get to her anymore; he was already much too arrogant. “It’s not for you to decide what the public needs to know.”

      “The public?” He arched a blond brow. “I don’t think the public cares how I came by my cushy job.” He stepped closer. “Why do you care, Ms. Powell?”

      Despite the adrenaline causing her legs to tremble, Erin refused to back away. “I’m a reporter, Sergeant.”

      “You don’t need to remind me of that.” Kent wasn’t likely to forget, when all she’d ever done was fire questions at him. But sometimes, noticing how her eyes sparkled and her skin flushed when she argued with him, he forgot that she was a reporter who seemed to hate his guts, and he saw her as an exciting woman.

      “Being a reporter, I have certain instincts,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “which are screaming at me that there’s a story behind your made-up position in the department.”

      “Made-up?”

      “Public information officer?” she scoffed. “That hardly sounds like a real job.”

      He stepped closer, until his badge brushed her shoulder. She was tall, even without the low heels she wore, and slender, in black pants and a lightweight red sweater. Pitching his voice low, he asked, “What do you know about positions, Ms. Powell?”

      Her eyes widening, Erin stumbled back. “Sergeant!”

      “Positions within the department,” he explained, as if he hadn’t baited her, as if he didn’t enjoy rattling her cage. Hell, that was the most exciting part of his cushy job. Although she was a pain in the ass, she wasn’t boring. “What did you think I meant?”

      “I’m never sure,” she admitted. “You talk out of both sides of your mouth.”

      He grinned at her insult. “Then I guess I’m good at my made-up position.”

      “So you admit it was?”

      Kent swallowed a groan. He probably shouldn’t have talked to her at all, let alone dragged her into an empty room. “And you wonder why I don’t answer your questions….”

      “Since you’re not going to, let me out of here.” Erin pushed past him to open the door and step into the hall. Beyond the conference room, in the atrium, the elevator dinged. She watched the doors close on most of the CPA participants, on their way to the ground floor.

      “Look what you made me do,” she declared. “I missed the last part of the class.”

      “Just tonight’s,” he reminded her. “You have fourteen more to go.”

      “You’re not going to get me kicked out of the program?”

      After what he’d heard her asking the chief, he admitted, “I’d love to.”

      “I’m sure you would. But you said you’re not in charge of the academy, remember?” she taunted.

      No one had ever antagonized him as she did, not even some of the belligerent drunks he’d pulled over during his years as a patrol officer. All he had to do to get her tossed from the program was tell Paddy he’d changed his mind. And Kent was damn tempted to do just that.

      “So what are you in charge of, as public information officer?” she asked. “Damage control?”

      “You.”

      “You’re only here to muzzle me? Did you purposely keep me from the second half of the program? Is there something you didn’t want me to hear?” She fired the questions in her usual manner, without giving him time to answer one before she moved to the next.

      He couldn’t get her thrown out of the program. She would never let up on the department—or him—if he did. But he hadn’t approved her application because he feared what she would print. He wanted to change her opinion of the department. The chief and his fellow officers worked hard for the community; they didn’t deserve the bad press she’d been giving them.

      “You can find out what you’ve missed. I’ll take you where they’ve all probably gone,” he offered.

      “Home,” she scoffed.

      “No. There’s another place.” Where officers went before or after their shifts, to eat, relax and just hang out with people who understood the complexities of doing their job. They wouldn’t appreciate his bringing her there. “Just don’t make me regret this….”

      “YOU BROUGHT ME TO A BAR? This lighthouse is a tavern?” she asked as she passed through the door he held open for her. While all conversation didn’t cease as it had at the police department earlier, some people stopped talking and turned toward her and the sergeant. But the jukebox continued to play, over the sounds of several conversations and raucous laughter.

      “It’s the Lighthouse Bar and Grille,” he replied, probably thinking she hadn’t seen the sign when they’d pulled into the parking lot in their respective cars.

      The mingled aromas of burgers, steaks and salty fries filled the air. Peanut shells crunched beneath her feet as she followed Kent across the room toward a long table near the game area. Several members of the Citizen’s Police Academy sat together. She glanced around and noticed that except for those civilian patrons, the rest of the faces were familiar from law enforcement.

      “How have I never known about this place?” she wondered aloud. She’d been living here a year. How had she not known that the Lakewood PD hung out at a lighthouse on the Lake Michigan shore? She’d asked around if there was any place the officers frequented, but no one had told her about this place. Out of loyalty to Terlecki?

      “You don’t exactly inspire confidences,” Kent pointed out.

      “So why did you bring me here?” she asked.

      His lips lifted in a slight grin. “Where did you think I was leading you? Off the pier?”

      “Of course. Right into the lake.” She had considered that might be what he’d had in mind. “Don’t tell me you weren’t tempted.”

      “Trying to put words in my mouth again, Ms. Powell?”

      “There isn’t room for me to put words,” she insisted. “Not with your foot there most of the time.”

      He shook his head and laughed. “Nice try, but you’re not going to get to me.”

      “We both know I get to you,” she said, “but then I don’t expect you to admit that.” She had to find some other way to extract the truth from him, because she had a horrible feeling he’d covered his tracks too well for her to get the evidence she needed. And if she didn’t find proof, she couldn’t help the man who mattered most to her.

      “Erin,” Kent began, but he wasn’t the only one calling her name.

      She ignored him, leaving his side to join the other members of the CPA. An older couple who had admitted joining the program for thrills waved at her. “Look,” the woman, Bernie, said. “We’re just like the police officers.”

      Most of Erin’s classmates sat around the table, except for two teachers, the youth minister and the saleswoman who’d, thankfully, taken the chair between Erin and the college girl before class started. The participants all beamed as if they felt