The Cop, the Puppy and Me. Cara Colter

thing go down the river, raging with spring runoff, instead of jumping in after it.

      He thought of it wriggling against him as he lay on the shore of the river afterward, gasping for breath. The puppy, soaked, another layer of freezing on top of his own freezing, had curled up on his exposed skin, right on top of his heart, whimpering and licking him.

      Sullivan knew he didn’t really wish that he hadn’t gone in after it. He just wished that he wished it. And that a person with the cell phone had not recorded his leap into the swollen Kettle River and then posted it on the internet where it seemed the whole world had seen it.

      “How is the dog?” she asked.

      “Still at the vet,” he answered, “but he’s going to be fine.”

      “Has anyone claimed him yet”?”

      “No.”

      “Well, I’m sure there will be a long lineup of people who want to adopt him if his owner doesn’t show up.”

      “Oh, yeah,” he agreed.

      Because of the video, the Kettle Bend Police Department was fielding a dozen calls a day about that dog.

      Sullivan followed the narrow concrete path where it curved around the side of the house and then led him down a passageway between houses. Then the path opened into a long, narrow backyard.

      There was no word for it.

      Except perhaps enchanting.

      For a moment he stood, breathing it all in: waxy leaves; mature trees; curving flower beds whose dark mounding loam met the crisp edge of freshly cut grass.

      There was a sense of having entered a grotto, deeply private.

      Sacred.

      Sullivan snorted at himself, but a little uneasily this time.

      He saw her then.

      Crouched beside a fence lined with rows of vigorously growing, elephant-eared plants.

      She was totally engrossed in what she was doing, yanking at the thin red stalks of the huge-leafed plants.

      It must be the rhubarb her neighbor had mentioned.

      She already had a stack of it beside her. Her face was hidden in the shade of a broad-brimmed hat, the light catching her mouth, where her tongue was caught between her teeth in concentration.

      She was wearing a shapeless flowered tank top and white shorts, smudged with dirt, but the long line of strong legs, already beginning to tan, took his breath away.

      As he watched, she tugged vigorously on one of the plants. When the stalk parted with the ground, she nearly catapulted over backward. When she righted herself, she went very still, as if she knew, suddenly, she was not alone.

      Without getting up, she pivoted slowly on the heels of her feet and looked at him, her head tilted quizzically, possibly aggrieved that he had caught her in a wrestling match with the plant.

      Sarah McDougall, if this was her, was certainly not middle-aged. Or frizzy-haired. She was wearing no makeup at all. The feeling of his breath being taken away was complete.

      Corkscrew auburn curls escaped from under the brim of her hat and framed an elfin face. A light scattering of freckles danced across a daintily snubbed nose. Her cheekbones and her chin mirrored that image of delicacy.

      But it was her eyes that threatened to undo him. He was good at this: at reading eyes. It was harder than people thought. A liar could look you straight in the face without blinking. A murderer could have eyes that looked as soft as suede, as gentle as a fawn’s.

      But eleven years working one of the toughest homicide squads in the world had honed Sullivan’s skills to a point that his sister called him, not without a hint of admiration, scary in his ability to detect what was real about a person.

      This woman’s eyes were huge and hazel, and stunningly, slayingly gorgeous.

      She was, obviously, the all-American girl. Wholesome. Sweet. Probably ridiculously naive.

      Case in point: she left her door unlocked and wanted to make him a hero!

      But instead of that fueling his annoyance at her, instead of remembering his fury that she had called his boss, Sullivan felt a surge of foolish protectiveness.

      “You should lock your front door when you work back here,” he told her gruffly. Part of him wanted to leave it at that, to turn his back and walk away from her. Because obviously what a girl like that needed to be protected from most was a guy like him.

      Who had seen so much darkness it felt as if it had taken up residence inside of him. Darkness that could snuff out the radiance that surrounded her like a halo.

      Still, if he left without giving her an opportunity to see that in him, she might pester him, or his boss, endlessly.

      So he forced himself to cross the yard until he stood above her, until his shadow passed over the wideness of those eyes.

      He rarely shook hands. Keep the barriers up. Establish authority. Don’t invite familiarity. Keep your distance.

      So it startled him when he wanted to extend a hand to her.

      “Sarah McDougall?” he asked, and at her wide-eyed nod, “I’m Sullivan.”

      The aggrieved look faded from her face. She actually looked thrilled! He was glad he had shoved his hand in his pocket instead of holding it out to her.

      “Mr. Sullivan,” she said, and scrambled to her feet. “I’m so glad you came. May I call you Oliver?”

      “No, you may not. No one calls me Oliver. And it’s not Mister,” he said, his voice deliberately cold. “It’s Officer.”

      A touch of wariness tinged her gaze. Hadn’t she been able to tell from her unanswered pleas that he was a man who deserved her wariness?

      “No one calls you Oliver?”

      What was she asking that question for? Hadn’t he made it eminently clear there was going to be nothing personal between them, not even an invitation to use first names?

      “No.” His voice had a bit of a snap to it.

      Which she clearly did not recognize, or she would have had the sense to back away from the subject.

      “Not even your mother?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow. Her looking skeptical was faintly comical, like a budgie bird trying to look aggressive.

      “Dead,” he snapped. He could see sympathy crowding her eyes, and there was no way he was allowing all that softness to spill out and touch him. His mother had died when he was seventeen years old.

      And his father.

      Seventeen years ago was a place he did not revisit.

      There was no sense her misconstruing his reasons for being here, and there was only one way to approach a person like this.

      Brutal bluntness.

      “Don’t call me anymore,” he said, holding her gaze, his voice deliberately low and flat. “I’m not helping you. Not if you call six million times. I’m not any kind of hero. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to save your town. And don’t call my boss again, either. Because you don’t want me to be your enemy.”

      Sullivan saw, astonished at his failure, that his legendary people-reading skills were slightly off-kilter. Because he had thought she would be easily intimidated, that he could make her back down, just like that.

      Instead he saw that cute little mouth reset itself in a line that was unmistakably stubborn and that could mean only one thing for him.

      Trouble.

      Sarah stared up at her unexpected visitor, caught off balance, not just by her tug-of-war with her rhubarb, but also by the fact she’d had a witness to it!