Bachelor Cop. Carolyn McSparren

breath comes up.” Suddenly she pushed off her back foot and shoved. He stumbled backward again. “See?”

      Streak stared at her with something akin to awe. “How did you do that? He helped you, didn’t he?”

      “Try it.”

      Randy could tell she didn’t want to touch him at all, much less gently, the way Sarah Beth had. He watched Streak clench her fists. She was wishing he’d turn into that heavy bag, so she could let fly at him with all her strength, without being hit back. She had a real need to lash out. Maybe she’d had a bad experience with a cop. No, her anger went deeper than that. She resented his very maleness.

      Maybe the ex-husband had mistreated her and still threatened her. A man, possibly more than one, had hurt her badly. Throughout his career, Randy had seen that victims of violence tended to gravitate from one such relationship to the next, so maybe hubby had come after an abusive family and abusive boyfriends.

      He couldn’t fix damaged goods in one self-defense class. It would be nice if he could, but people seldom changed without time and hard work. He’d tried hard enough to change himself, without a lot of success.

      If she’d finally decided to fight back against her demons, he had to teach her that the only chance she had lay in skill, not strength.

      She unclenched her fists, but didn’t meet his gaze as she reached out and laid her palms carefully against his chest.

      Uh-oh. He caught his breath. She opened her eyes very wide, whispered, “Oh!” and shoved.

      For a second he thought he’d wind up on his ass.

      Francine caught him and righted him. “You go, girl.” She tried to give Helena a high five, but her classmate didn’t see it.

      She still had her hands in front of her, her mouth open. She held his gaze too long, then spun away with her arms crossed over her chest. She’d felt it, too.

      Until this minute he’d never believed in that old saw about electricity jumping between a man and a woman. He knew she was blushing and her pupils were dilated. His own ears felt hot and probably blazed like stop-lights. He blessed his jockstrap. It felt damned uncomfortable, but kept his erection from becoming obvious. Sweatpants without a fly were pretty revealing.

      For the duration of the class he paired her with Sarah Beth, who was not only a natural at self-defense, but a natural teacher, as well. They were all still going strong when Jessica stuck her head in the door. “Closing time, people.”

      Amanda checked her fancy watch. He’d be willing to bet the diamonds were real. “I can’t believe it. We’ve been here over two hours.”

      “See, Streak?” he said. “Told you I’d make up the time.”

      She barely glanced at him as she hurried out. He called after her, “Jessica will phone you about meeting at the shooting range on Thursday.”

      When he left the building, Streak’s car was already gone. If she’d waited for him to walk her out, he might have tried to kiss her. Plenty stupid that he actually wanted to kiss her, without getting his head handed to him for trying.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “THIS IS INSANE,” Helena said, and struck her steering wheel. She slammed on her brakes as the light in front of her turned red. She hadn’t noticed the yellow. She had to slow down. The whole of Germantown was one big speed trap. She couldn’t afford a traffic ticket, and the cops were always stopping cars like her old BMW. She looked as though she was flying even when she was driving twenty.

      Mickey had resented the car, although she’d bought it used, with money she’d saved waitressing in the Grand Tetons as a grad student. “That car screams rich bitch,” he’d said. “Now, if you’d been driving my old Ford…”

      She could fill in the rest. She’d been raped because she drove a used BMW.

      She loved her car and nobody could force her to sell it. She wouldn’t sell the duplex, either. She’d kept the title in her name alone, just as she’d established her own credit from the first days of her marriage. Her parents had drummed into her head that a woman had to control her own money, because men died or divorced you. She hadn’t often said no to Mickey when they’d been married, but she’d held out on handling their finances. Good thing. Otherwise she and the children might be living under a bridge.

      She noticed a squad car parked in the bushes beside the road. Thank heaven she hadn’t run the stoplight.

      Her stomach tightened as she remembered the feel of Randy’s chest. Damn her hormones, anyway. The first sweaty male she touched, and boom, fireworks. She wriggled in her seat. It was a miracle she hadn’t tossed his skinny rear end all the way through the picture window between the workout room and the gym from sheer surprise.

      Without warning, she saw that face in its black mask. She screamed and the car swerved. She righted it, put on her brakes, coasted into the Presbyterian Church’s deserted parking lot and cut off her lights.

      And shook. The memories always hit her without warning, never left her time to prepare, to control her feelings. As long as he lived, he’d hold power over her.

      She got her .38 out of the center console and set it on the seat beside her, then took a dozen deep breaths to keep from throwing up inside the car. She’d never get the stink out of the upholstery.

      In her rearview mirror, she saw the lights of the squad car cruising closer. She prayed it wouldn’t stop. If the cops shone a flashlight inside and saw her gun, they might not give her time to reach for her carry permit before they dragged her out of the car. She willed them to drive by.

      When they had turned the corner and disappeared, she started the engine and drove out of the parking lot, although she was still shaking. Her mouth felt dry, but her throat burned.

      Later, as she pulled into her garage and lowered the door with the electric control, she giggled. She refused to allow herself a full-blown attack of hysterics. She’d made a new discovery. All she needed to quiet her raging hormones was a rip-snorting anxiety attack from the memory of the last time she’d been touched by a man.

      EVEN WHEN HE WENT TO BED alone, Randy nearly always slept like a log. Not tonight, however. Staring up at the lights from the Memphis-Arkansas bridge reflected on the ceiling of his converted warehouse loft, he considered getting up and turning on his laptop to check the file that served as his little black book. He checked the lit dial of his bedside alarm clock. Past three o’clock.

      He couldn’t call anybody at three in the morning. Besides, he was lonely and restless, not horny—or no more than usual, anyway.

      Streak was screwing up his life. Randy usually knew within a couple of hours of meeting someone if he wanted to sleep with her. It had taken him longer to make up his mind about his student.

      He definitely wanted her, but he doubted she was into sex with no strings attached. He couldn’t handle anything else.

      A damaged woman with two kids, no less. An ex-husband who’d probably beat her. Somebody sure had. He wanted to hold her in his arms and assure her that so long as he was around, nobody would ever hurt her again. He wanted to heal her.

      Yeah, but how long would he be around? And then what? Would she go back to being a victim?

      He gave up on sleep. Climbing out of bed, he showered and dressed. Then he stopped by an all-night café for sausage biscuits and the largest cappuccino they made.

      He walked into work at four in the morning, ground fresh beans and brewed the day’s first pot of coffee. Unlike most squad rooms, the Cold Cases facility had excellent coffee that all the other teams tried to steal. With only himself, Liz Slaughter, who’d be on maternity leave in another few months, Jack Samuels, close to retirement age, and Lieutenant Gavigan, they could afford designer beans and a top-of-the-line coffeemaker.

      Added to his king-size cappuccino, the squad’s caffeine should keep Randy