A Stetson On Her Pillow. Molly Liholm

the work Agent Garrow did, Laura preferred being on the street, helping ordinary people.

      Being a good cop was her only priority. No man had been able to even chisel an inch of permafrost off her carefully developed exterior.

      Until Clint Marshall.

      A red sports car pulled up in front of her building and Clint unfolded his tall form from within. She watched and waited as he smiled at her neighbor, Mrs. Schwarz, and then held open the lobby door for her. He tilted his cowboy hat to the elderly woman and Mrs. Schwarz giggled as she passed him.

      Laura’s pulse quickened as she studied him from under her eyelashes. Clint was tall, well over six feet and since she was five-nine, he’d be the perfect height to kiss. He had broad shoulders and a well-muscled chest. She knew because he’d had his shirt ripped off once during a violent arrest and he’d spent ten glorious minutes in the squad room processing the paperwork before going to the locker room to change. She’d had to take a tight hold of her desk to stop herself from running her hands over his bronzed muscles.

      Clint’s long strides had him next to her and she took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp masculine scent of Clint Marshall. She held Sweetums up to her face to mask her swirling emotions. Whenever she was around Clint, it always took a little longer for her to put on the face she showed the rest of the world.

      “What in the blazes is that?” Clint demanded as he frowned at the bundle of white fluff in her arms.

      “Her name is Sweetums.” She raised the dog to his eye level.

      Clint scowled at Sweetums. “What is it?”

      “She’s a dog.”

      “Darlin’, I’ve got cats bigger than that and with a lot less fur.”

      Laura knew perfectly well the picture she and the Lhasa apso made. She was dressed in a pale blue suit, cradling a poofy white dog that in turn wore a bow that matched the exact shade of her blue suit. The image they presented was both sweet and ridiculous and, as she planned, Clint was looking at her in puzzlement. What was most important to Laura, however, was that she did not look like a member of Chicago’s finest. Looking at Laura and her dog, people would assume she was a socialite with too much time on her hands rather than a hard-working police officer. Laura straightened the bow on her dog’s head. “Sweetums is a Lhasa apso. She’s not supposed to grow any bigger, which is a good thing, because she’s just perfect as she is.”

      “Just big enough to fit into your pocketbook?”

      She smiled sweetly and scratched Sweetums behind her ears. The dog panted and sighed. Ever since Sweetums’s first owner had passed away, the dog loved to be petted and fussed over. Clint shook his head, his lips twitching and stroked Sweetums’s head. The dog drooled. Of course, if Clint touched her like that, Laura reflected, she’d drool, too.

      “The dog is named Sweetums?” Clint asked.

      “Yes. Say hello to the nice man, Sweetums,” she cooed into the dog’s ear and waved one little doggy paw at Clint. Sweetums looked bored and yawned. “I guess she doesn’t know what to make of a cowboy.”

      “I get that reaction a lot in Chicago. Although people are generally a little more polite.”

      “Is that why you turn the Texas drawl on and off?”

      He shot her a quick look with his steel colored eyes but said nothing. He picked up her two suitcases. “Is this everything?”

      “Yes.” She patted Sweetums on the head and straightened the dog’s bow again so that she wouldn’t see Clint pick up her bags, see the rippling muscles in his arms or appreciate the view as he walked away from her. When she looked up she realized she was too late. Clint was already outside her building. She scrambled after him and caught up just as he put her two bags in the miniscule trunk of his convertible—his own bag was on the pretend excuse of a back seat—and then opened her car door.

      “Darlin’,” a mocking smile teased his lips as he gestured wide with his arm and helped her in. He touched her arm as she settled herself in, unaware that his touch marked her with greater power than any branding iron could have done.

      As he walked around the car she looked at her left arm expecting to see the imprint of his fingers.

      What was it about Clint Marshall that reduced her to a quivering mass of want? As Clint got in the car she pulled herself together—she’d spent enough evenings wasting her time thinking about Clint. She needed to establish a professional working relationship with him, that was all. But she was curious about him.

      He started the sports car and pulled out into traffic. Laura settled Sweetums on her lap and readjusted the bow, choosing her words. If she was going to spend the next four days with him, she didn’t want to offend him, but she wanted to understand him—for purely professional reasons, she told herself. She and Clint would be a team for the next number of days. “With some people the good old boy accent is so thick I can barely make sense of what you’re saying through all the y’alls and cow metaphors. But when you’re with people you like, the whole routine disappears.”

      She waited. Unlike how he behaved with most of their fellow officers, Clint always turned on the Texas routine when he spoke to her.

      “Darlin’, I just give the people what they want. They see a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots and have certain expectations—especially in a big established city like this.”

      She certainly understood his reasoning and she’d heard the other women gossiping often enough about the handsome cowboy. One of the very young and gorgeous female cops on the force had stated that she couldn’t imagine anything sexier than a cowboy in her bed. Unfortunately that image had stuck in Laura’s mind and she’d spent too much time fantasying about his Stetson on her pillow.

      She realized that she and Clint shared a common trait: she, too, gave people exactly what they expected.

      Clint passed a car and then looked at her. “Why did you bring that dog with you? Hotels have rules about not allowing pets.”

      Sweetums settled herself more comfortably on Laura’s lap, drooled, sighed and closed her eyes. Luckily Laura was familiar with this routine and had her handkerchief ready to wipe away the drool before it landed on her silk suit or the soft leather of the car seat. Most Lhasa apsos didn’t drool, but after the trauma of losing her first owner the dog had stopped barking and started slobbering. She ran a hand along the calfskin. “Nice car,” she said, avoiding his question.

      “The department loaned it to me. Garrow must have some kind of pull—or else his bosses are giving him a last chance. They figured a red sports car would suit our image as wealthy newlyweds.”

      “It’s lovely.” Her mother’s third husband, Larry, had loved cars and spent a lot of money filling a seven car garage. Laura had liked the vintage roadsters, and was quite sad when Larry and her mother had divorced and Larry had taken all the cars in the settlement. Laura missed the cars more than she’d missed Larry. As her mother was already in love with husband number four, she wasn’t sure if her mother had noticed the absence of either.

      Clint thumped the driving wheel of the red sports car. “Maybe you’re used to a useless expensive car like this but back home this car wouldn’t make it through the first pothole. You couldn’t transport anything with it.”

      “Some things are designed to look good and go fast. Period. Not to haul around outhouses or maneuver around giant potholes. Maybe you should fix the roads back in Three Mule Station,” she snapped and realized she’d lost her temper, deliberately making fun of Clint’s hometown. She never, ever, lost her temper. But then again she never behaved like herself when she was around the cowboy.

      “It’s Two Horse Junction,” Clint said without any heat. “I guess I prefer the practical to the purely decorative.”

      She knew he meant her, but she chose to ignore his comment. The knowledge that Clint Marshall didn’t like her would not bother her. She ruffled Sweetums’s bow, schooled