Double Take. Leslie Kelly

school where she’d begin teaching on Monday. Right now, though, she just wanted to locate her new home, unpack and lie down to get rid of the lingering seasickness.

      Lindsey glanced down at the sheet of paper on which she’d written the landlady’s verbal directions, trying to make sense of her own scrawled writing. She was coming to a split in the road, and couldn’t tell whether her directions indicated to go right or left.....

      “Should’ve paid attention in Mrs. Dickey’s second grade penmanship class,” she could hear Callie whispering.

      This island wasn’t that big. Even if she took a wrong turn, somebody would be able to point her in the correct direction. From what Mike had said, every resident here knew she was coming and where she would be living. Besides, she didn’t have a penis; she was capable of stopping and asking for directions.

      Praying she wasn’t making a mistake, she swung to the left at the fork, looking back down at the paper for the name of her next turn. Apparently, though, she spent too much time staring down, because, before she’d even realized anyone was behind her, she heard the quick blurp-blurp of a siren.

      “Hell,” she mumbled, hoping it wasn’t a cop and that she wasn’t the one being blurped at.

      Looking in the rearview mirror, she saw a big, dark vehicle. She noted the spinning dome light on the dash and sighed. Definitely a cop. And right behind her. Blurping.

      Wow, her luck was so great lately, she ought to go out and buy a lottery ticket.

      Pulling over onto the side of the narrow, unlined road, hoping no big trucks would come by to cream her, she plucked her driver’s license out of her wallet, lowered the window and waited.

      “What a fantastic way to start my new life,” she muttered, rubbing at her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “Can this day get any worse?”

      “That depends on how your day’s been going so far.”

      She jerked her hand away from her face, swinging her head to stare at the man standing right beside her car.

      The familiar man.

      The one who had just kept her from falling overboard into the choppy lake.

      The one she’d just been comparing to a heavenly angel and a sexy devil.

      Mike. Who was, if the lights and siren on his vehicle were to be believed, an officer of the law.

      “You have got to be kidding me.”

      “We meet again.”

      “Please tell me that’s a fake light and you’re not a real cop.”

      “Would serial-killer-posing-as-cop-to-lure-unsuspecting-victim work better for you?”

      “So not funny.”

      “Sorry.”

      She leaned out to gaze up at him, as she wasn’t comfortable with the view directly out the driver’s-side window. She’d never been more aware of the height of her Prius before now, when she was face-to-crotch with a superhot guy wearing khakis that hugged some of her favorite boy-parts.

      “You really are a cop?”

      “Chief Mike Santori of the Wild Boar Island P.D., at your service.”

      Santori. So her Italian speculation had been dead-on. She’d always had such a thing for Italian men. All that dark hair, energy, handsomeness and machismo. Potent.

      Of course, she rarely got involved with the macho type. Few of them were willing to let a woman call the shots in a relationship. And Lindsey wasn’t about to give that up for a well-hung dude with pecs.

      There was a second strike against Mike—his niceness. She didn’t get involved with men who would expect trust and emotion from her. That way, she wouldn’t expect anything like that from them. Safer that way.

      He might be worth it.

      Perhaps. And if it had just been his sex appeal that attracted her, and she hadn’t come here to help a friend, she might have given some serious thought to getting to know him better.

      She had, however, come here to do a job—and to hide out. There was no room in her plan for any man, especially one so unlike the sexy-and-forgettable type she usually went for. Protective, heroic, fun and witty guys weren’t the kind of men you could sleep with and forget. Since those were the only men Lindsey would allow herself to get involved with, Mike was definitely off-limits.

      Maybe if she kept telling herself that, she’d start to believe it. And maybe she’d stop wondering what it would be like to be touched by those big, strong hands and kissed by that incredible mouth.

      Just get through this and drive away.

      “Here,” she said. Without him asking for it, she thrust her driver’s license toward him.

      “Lindsey Smith,” he said, reading the card aloud, then handing her back the license, barely glancing at anything else. “I don’t think I’ll need this.”

      Hmm. That made it sound as if this wasn’t a legitimate traffic stop. Despite her instinctive reaction to him—that he was one of the good guys—annoyance flared within her. Hot and sexy or not, she didn’t appreciate people who threw their authority around for their own purposes. But she would give him the benefit of the doubt until she found out what he was really after.

      “Were you following me?”

      “Not intentionally,” he said. “I was told there was an emergency—a missing child—which was why I hurried away from the landing so quickly.”

      “What happened?”

      “It turns out the kid had broken a window playing ball this morning, and was afraid he’d get in trouble. So he was hiding in his own backyard tree house. His mom found him safe and sound right after she called it in.”

      “That’s the best outcome.”

      “Not for the kid. He’s probably going to lose his video games for a month.”

      Lindsey was glad Mike’s mind had gone right to that consequence instead of corporal punishment, which was sort of a hot button for her. Probably not surprising, given her field—she’d certainly dealt with a lot of people traumatized by physical abuse. Still, Mike’s comment added to the picture of the kind of person he was. A good one. She already knew that much.

      Damn, why couldn’t she just keep thinking of him as hot? Speculating that he was nice, decent or trustworthy was useless. Though it would almost certainly prevent her from even considering giving in to the attraction she felt for him, despite her protestations.

      “Anyway, I got the call that he’d been found before I even got to town.”

      “So were you coming back to the ferry to make sure I hadn’t fallen overboard coming down the gangplank?”

      “Nope. It was just a coincidence that I spotted this yellow monstrosity in my rearview. I had to remind myself that Big Bird doesn’t live here.”

      She patted her steering wheel. “Don’t make fun of her.”

      “I recognized it, obviously. When I saw which way you were going, I turned around and came after you so I could pull you over.”

      “Are you allowed to pull me over when you’re off duty?”

      “What makes you think I’m off duty?”

      “You’re not in uniform.”

      A wry grin lifting one corner of his mouth, he slowly unzipped the front of his heavy-duty windbreaker, revealing a buttoned-up, khaki uniform shirt beneath it, complete with a badge on the breast pocket.

      “That’s not fair. You were practically undercover.”

      “Were you doing something illegal on the ferry that I missed? Are you a secret Twinkie smuggler or something?”