Clandestine Christmas. Elle James

It took all of his restraint not to curve his arms around her waist and pull her against him, just as he used to do, back before—

      He took a step backward, barely aware of putting distance between them. Her closeness reminded him of times he had no right remembering. He watched Schindler offer Hannah a manila folder to put the fax in. Her hands shook as she put the flimsy paper into the file folder. Apparently she was as aware of their closeness as he was.

      “It’s a start.” Chad concentrated on something other than the shadow of fear in her wide blue eyes. “Mug shots, charges….” He reached around her, turning the top of the folder open, careful not to touch her as he did so.

      Hannah moved farther away from him. He dammed the groundswell of emotion her rejection aroused.

      “I’ve…I’ve got to make a phone call.” She hurried away from him and toward Schindler’s desk a few feet away.

      “Be my guest,” Danny offered. “You need anything else, give me a yell. Oh, and I think that it goes without saying, but this little…transaction stays between us, okay? The last thing I need is Marconi coming down on me.” He grinned. “I think that’s the last thing you need, too.”

      “You can say that again.” The records clerk disappeared between the towering metal shelves. Chad turned his attention back to Hannah. She tugged the slip of paper Blackstone had given her from her pocket and started dialing a number. Chad rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension bunched there. Who had left her a message at Elliott’s office?

      “Hi, it’s Hannah,” she said into the receiver, turning away from where he looked on.

      The familiarity of her tone didn’t sit well with Chad.

      Had she become involved with someone else since their breakup? He stiffened, something similar to jealousy burning through him. He wanted to take the receiver from her pretty little hand and hang up on whoever was on the other side of the line. Instead, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.

      “I see,” Hannah said into the phone. Chad slowly stepped around the other side of the desk, watching her brows draw together. What? Trouble in paradise? Good.

      She caught him watching her and turned quickly away. “Okay. I can be there in a couple hours. Is that all right? Good, I’ll see you then.”

      We’ll see about that, Chad thought, his jaw so tight he couldn’t say a word if he wanted to.

      “Who’s Marconi?” Chad asked as they left the precinct.

      Hannah vaguely noted the sun had set, but the air showed no sign of cooling. Not unlike her skin, which still tingled from Chad’s nearness in the records room.

      It wasn’t fair that she should still be so attuned to Chad’s emotions, feel so much for him. But if there was one thing she learned very early on—a point proved time and again since—it was that life wasn’t always fair.

      “He’s the precinct captain.” She glanced back at the plain, stone building. She had once wanted nothing more than to follow in her father’s policeman’s footsteps and become a cop. What she hadn’t counted on was Victor Marconi being just as determined to see her off the force.

      It was easy to remember Uncle Vic’s face when he’d told her, “Your father and I went back to Hell’s Kitchen, Hannah. He was more than my partner, he was my best friend. You were your daddy’s little girl, and you’ll remain so in my eyes.”

      “I am not a girl, Victor. I’m a woman.”

      Mickey D. McGee was the only person who remained untarnished and uncorrupted in Hannah’s heart and memory, unlike the other men in her life. His strength had been equaled only by his faith in a Catholic God that had comforted him after his wife’s death following the birth of their only child. A God she hadn’t been able to turn to when her father was shot and killed in the line of duty when she was only eighteen.

      “Your father turned in his grave the day you showed up here for recruitment, Hannah,” Uncle Vic had told her.

      “My father trained me to be a police officer from the time I could walk. Far from turning in his grave, I bet he would have been proud.”

      Now Hannah forced her gaze away from the precinct doors and the uniformed officers going in and out. It had taken Uncle Vic years to do what he promised mere weeks after he was promoted from commanding sergeant to captain: He’d made her quit.

      Victor Marconi, whom she hadn’t talked to since leaving the force, was just another ghost from the past she’d just as soon avoid right now. She looked at the other. Chad Hogan openly returned her gaze.

      She opened the car door and slipped behind the wheel. “I think it’s a good idea for you to catch a cab from here, Chad.”

      “You want to talk about something?”

      He got into the car after her and she started it. “About what?”

      “About what you were thinking just now.”

      Puzzled, she sat concentrating strictly on her breathing for a scant moment. “Victor Marconi is more than the captain of the precinct. He was…um, my father’s partner. Up until the night Dad was killed in the line of duty.” She handed him the manila folder.

      Chad took the data and put the file aside without opening it. “You told me your father died, but left out that it was in the line of duty.”

      She swept her hair back from her forehead. There were a lot of things she’d left out. And one of them was across the river now, waiting to be picked up. “Despite the history between Marconi and me, or maybe because of it, he won’t hesitate to have us both arrested if he finds—”

      “You didn’t respond to my comment, Hannah.”

      She pulled away from the curb. “Maybe because there isn’t a response.” She looked at him. “When we were together we were either working, arguing or…making love. There wasn’t much time for anything else.” She turned her head away from him to gauge the traffic.

      The silence in the car was strained until Hannah pulled up to the Ugly Duckling rental agency that owned the rust bucket they sat in. Which was just as well because it took Hannah as long to regain control over her emotions. In the back corner of the lot, the red Alfa’s waxed hood shone under a security light.

      “She looks good,” Chad murmured.

      She led the way up to the small shack where she traded keys with Frank, a skinny punk rocker wearing untied combat boots and a chain connected from nose to ear. Within moments she and Chad stood on either side of the gleaming Alfa Romeo. He stared at the For Sale signs in the back windows.

      “You’re selling her?”

      “Uh…yes.” Hannah felt as if she had betrayed him in some way with her answer. Despite the car’s role in their breakup—she’d wanted a ring, he’d bought her a car—she had grown attached to the Alfa. In an odd way it served as a concrete reminder that Chad had cared about her in his own way, even if it wasn’t the way she needed him to care about her. She avoided his probing gaze. He didn’t have to know that with the money she would get from Elliott for this trace, she’d be able to afford to keep it and pay the sky-high insurance premiums.

      She disarmed the alarm and slid into the driver’s seat, not objecting when Chad tossed his duffel into the back and entered the other side. She pressed a button and the canvas top folded back. She stared up at the ribbon of star-filled sky visible between the towering buildings.

      “I used to pass this car every day on the way to Blackstone’s before I…” His voice drifted off. “It had your name written all over it, Hannah. It still does.”

      Hannah sensed his gaze on her profile and slowly looked at his finely etched face, features she had once memorized with her hands and mouth. She wondered at the changes there. They were harder somehow. More skeptical. Her gaze flicked over his thick brows and his eyes. Gray eyes that hinted