Blazing Star. Suzanne Ellison

      Brick made no effort to cloak his grief, and Karen knew he couldn’t have done so, anyway. She knew what it meant to lose a partner. Rob Laney had once come perilously close to death. The bullet scar on her left shoulder was a permanent reminder of how she’d saved his life.

      “Oh, Bauer, I know how that hurts,” Karen sympathetically confessed. “When my partner was shot, I—”

      “You froze on him, too?”

      Karen pulled back, angry and hurt all over again. “Isn’t it remotely possible that I did my part? My God, officers go down all the time when they’re teamed with men! Nobody jumps at the chance to cast blame in those cases!”

      “Maybe you did your part and maybe you didn’t,” Brick growled. “Maybe your partner was too busy worrying about you to cover his own back. All I know is that Mark McVey was my partner, dammit, and I know that if I’d been beside him, he’d still be alive!”

      “Then blame yourself for leaving him behind when you got promoted, Bauer! Don’t blame me and don’t blame every female cop!”

      He jerked back as though she’d hit him. “You don’t think I feel guilty for moving on and leaving him? You don’t think I feel the weight of it bearing down on me at night like a tombstone on my chest?”

      The anguish that filled his eyes made Karen ashamed she’d added to his pain. In hindsight she realized that Bauer wasn’t trying to attack her. He was only wrestling with his own despair.

      “Bauer, I’m sorry.” Instinctively she gripped his arm. “I had no right to say that. This is a terrible business. People die in any war. Your partner’s death was tragic, but it’s not your fault.”

      Through his regulation jacket, Karen could feel the masculine strength of his corded biceps. His tense breathing seemed to match her own, heightening her keen awareness of his powerful warmth. She didn’t want to be touched by his humanity, his maleness, the vulnerable corners of his heart. It was so much easier to see him as the enemy. So much easier to keep a hostile distance.

      Brick turned away from her sharply, breaking her hold on his arm. While Karen swallowed her hurt, he stared out the window for a long, quiet moment, then confessed, “Captain, I’ve got a lot of reasons to resent you. Deep in my heart, I know that most of them don’t have a lot to do with you as a person. I’m sorry I’ve been so damn hard to work with.”

      To her surprise, Karen said, “I’m sorry, too.”

      He managed a thin smile. His dimples barely winked. “When I said most of them didn’t have a lot to do with you, I didn’t mean I like the way you’re running the station. You can be a bear. I just meant that...if I’m going to hate you, I ought to hate you for the right reasons. All this other baggage—my promotion, Mark’s death—well, that’s not playing fair.”

      Karen had to admire Brick’s ethics. Even when he was angry, he seemed like a man she could trust. He’d come a long way in the past two days, and she didn’t want to push him. Still, she had to ask, “I don’t suppose you could consider not hating me at all? The men will take their cue from you. I’d rather not spend the next few years on the outside looking in.”

      Brick studied her for a long, thoughtful moment. “You’ve spent most of your career that way, haven’t you, Captain?” he perceptively observed. “On the outside looking in.”

      Reluctantly she nodded. It was too obvious to deny. “I’m a woman doing a man’s job in a man’s world, Bauer. I’m always staring at somebody’s back.” She paused a moment, then went on to say, “I am who I am, Lieutenant. I can’t be anybody else.”

      “No,” he quietly agreed, his blue eyes finally showing a glimmer of warmth. “I guess you can’t. And frankly...I don’t think you should have to be. I’m sorry if I made you feel that...well, that the real Karen Keppler wasn’t welcome here.”

      Karen had no idea how to reply to that, but fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything. Brick abruptly ended their heart-to-heart talk by opening his door and hopping out of the car. He didn’t open Karen’s door for her—some policemen actually had tried to—but he did keep the diner door from slamming in her face as she followed him inside.

      Blocked by his impressive height and broad shoulders, Karen couldn’t see around Brick to get a good look at the place, but she could certainly smell the pepperoni and hear the cheery repartee. The instant he set foot inside, half a dozen people raised a hand or called out, “Hey, Brick!” while Brick himself gave the group one of those dazzling grins that felled Karen every time it was cast in her direction.

      One grizzled old farmer called out, “I hear that new she-bear is blistering your backside, boy! How can we help you get rid of her?”

      The fellow next to him joshed, “Oh, Brick don’t need no help. Just you wait. He’ll have that filly on the run in no time. Everybody knows that captain’s chair is Brick’s rightful place.”

      “Ain’t it the truth,” said a woman behind the counter in a pink uniform, an old-fashioned beehive and nurse’s shoes. The name tag said Marge, and the tone of her voice announced quite clearly that she was proud to own the place. She snapped a dish towel at Brick, smacking him sharply on his badge as she grinned at him.

      Brick stepped aside so Karen could see everybody in the restaurant better, and so everybody could see her. Marge swallowed a small gasp as she read the name on Karen’s badge, and gave an embarrassed grin.

      “Marge, this is Captain Karen Keppler,” Brick declared with more dignity than Karen thought she could have managed in the same situation. And then, as the room went from jovially cheerful to starkly silent, he said, “I imagine if you serve the captain one of your corned beef sandwiches, you’ll have a friend for life.”

      Under the circumstances, it was a gift...far more than Karen had expected from Brick Bauer. “Nice to meet you, Marge,” she said cordially.

      “Nice to meet you, uh, Captain.”

      Karen was about to feign an enthusiastic comment about corned beef—even though she hated it—when Brick started ushering her toward a booth in the back. As he sat down, her eyes met his with open gratitude, and he looked back with a curious blend of pleasure and discomfort.

      Suddenly she felt ashamed of how crusty she’d been with him ever since she’d arrived in Tyler. He was a man, and her promotion had certainly stripped him of his pride before his friends. How many men would have treated her with warmth under the circumstances?

      Yet abruptly, to Karen’s astonishment, Brick smiled. It didn’t seem like an accident this time; it didn’t seem artificial or strained. He looked like a man who was happy to stop for lunch with a friend or a colleague. Who was maybe even proud to be seen with a beautiful woman. Who might be pleased to know that the woman in question secretly thought he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.

      Unable to stop herself, Karen found herself grinning back, thrilled to see those blue eyes sparkle, thrilled to share even the briefest moment of camaraderie with Brick. Her happiness grew as she heard him say to Marge with deceptive nonchalance, “The captain says it’s her treat today, so you better start running her a tab.”

      Karen swallowed hard as she realized that Brick had just handed Marge Peterson—and everybody else within earshot—his personal letter of recommendation. He could have let this crowd assume that he was stuck with her today because he couldn’t refuse to eat lunch with his captain. Instead he’d found a way to say, “I’ll vouch for Karen Keppler.”

      It was nickels and dimes, but it was a start.

CHAPTER FOUR

      BY THE END of Karen’s first week on the job, Brick had resigned himself to accepting her captaincy. They were certainly on much better terms than they’d been the first time