The Guardian. Linda Winstead Jones
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wife of an assistant district attorney—as mayor. She wore conservative suits that never felt quite right and fashionable shoes that too often pinched her toes. It came with the job, she told herself.
“Not at all. It’s cute.” Patty looked Sara up and down in that way only a good friend could, and her smile faded. “You didn’t sleep well last night.”
Sara sighed. “No, I didn’t.”
“I warned you being mayor wouldn’t be a bed of roses.”
“Many times,” Sara said with a smile as she took a sip of her coffee. She sighed in delight. The coffee from Bubba’s Quick Stop was so much better than the sludge her secretary made every morning. Patty sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk, and Sara relaxed. This would likely be the most pleasant part of her day, so she might as well enjoy it. “It wasn’t exactly city business that kept me up half the night,” she confessed.
Something in her voice grabbed Patty’s attention. The woman’s eyes sparkled. Aah, yes, there was that hint of the wild child. Her spine straightened. Her lips curved into a smile. “What’s going on?”
Being very careful with her words, Sara told her friend about everything that had happened yesterday. She tried not to make Dante sound too interesting, or even to make him a too-important part of the story. He was ancillary, a necessary evil, no different than any other officer who might’ve been investigating her case. Patty had moved to Tillman her senior year of high school, months after the fiasco with Dante had ended, and there had been no reason to tell her—or anyone else—what had happened. So Sara told the story as if she’d never seen Dante before yesterday.
She did, however, have to end the telling with her looking out of her bedroom window late at night and seeing his car sitting on the street, and she also had to admit that she’d felt comforted at the sight.
“And you didn’t call me?” Patty asked, incensed.
“It was too late.”
“You could’ve called me long before you saw the car on the street. Someone delivers replacement undies, very nice stuff to hear you tell it, to your house and you don’t even call?”
“You have supper at your in-laws every Tuesday,” Sara argued.
“And I’m always happy to be interrupted,” Patty replied. Her eyes narrowed. “There’s more. There’s something you’re not telling me. This Dante Mangino.” She leaned back in her chair and took a sip of coffee.
“Tell me about him.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” Sara said. “He’s Chief Edwards’s cousin. Apparently he has a lot of experience and has agreed to stay on for a while and help with training and investigations.”
“So why is he sitting outside your window late at night? Was it creepy?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, do you think he’s the underwear thief?”
“No!”
“If this was a movie, he’d be the one,” Patty argued.
“He’s new in town, there’s the underwear theft, sexy stuff is delivered while he’s there, you see him watching your house late at night…”
“If it’s Dante, then who left the box and rang the doorbell while he was standing in my foyer?”
Patty grimaced. “A small detail easily explained away. Somehow.”
“Dante is just…he worries too much, I suppose.” Sara gave a nonchalant wave of her hand, doing her best to dismiss the man in every way. “He sees a shadow and he believes there’s a danger in it. He sees the worst possible scenario in everything he runs across. A couple of unhappy letters and a panty thief, and he’s got me under surveillance.” If not for him, she wouldn’t even be worried about the letters or the underwear. A little bothered, maybe, but not really worried.
Patty cocked her head. “You’re already calling this Mangino character by his first name. That’s rather interesting, knowing you and the way your brain works. Hmm. You also very quickly and decisively dismissed him as a suspect. What does he look like? Is he as hot as his cousin?”
Hotter. “I suppose some women would think he’s attractive, in a…different sort of way from Jesse Edwards.”
“Different how?” Patty could be very persistent.
“Just different.”
Patty smiled. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I do not.”
“You do. You’ve got that little twitch to your lips. It’s a dead giveaway. I haven’t seen that twitch since college!” Patty’s grin was insanely wide. “When do I get to meet him?”
Never, if I have anything to say about it. “I’m sure you’ll run into him eventually,” Sara said, cursing the ease with which her old friend could read her. A twitch? Why hadn’t anyone ever told her she had a twitch? “He’s going to be around until I can come up with more money for payroll and Chief Edwards hires more qualified men.”
Patty ignored the subject change to city business. “How serious is it? Are we talking love at first sight?”
Sara sighed and drank more coffee. It was a nice little stall but didn’t last long enough. Finally she said, “There’s nothing at all serious going on here, and even if there were, I don’t believe in love at first sight and you know it.”
“Lust at first sight?” Patty asked without pause.
Again, Sara hesitated. She didn’t believe in that, either, not for a woman thirty-five years old. Not for a woman who’d had her heart broken, first by desertion by choice and later by desertion by death. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe I was just having an off day.” Maybe, even though she did her best to dismiss it as unimportant, the theft and anonymous gift had rattled her more than she’d realized, and a capable man, any capable man, was a comfort.
Maybe she’d simply been alone too long.
Natalie Douglas, Sara’s secretary and maker of terrible coffee, knocked briefly and then opened the door. The young woman was truly beautiful, with pale blond hair stylishly cut, cool gray eyes and a figure any woman would kill for. She was also a more than capable assistant and a whiz with computers. If they could just get past the bad coffee thing…
“There’s a Sergeant Mangino here to see you. Should I tell him to wait?”
“No!” Patty said with a smile. “Bring him to us immediately.”
Natalie ignored Patty’s enthusiastic direction and looked to her boss for an answer, and after a moment Sara nodded her head. “Send him in.”
Patty’s smile widened, and Natalie cast a furtive and blatantly interested glance over her shoulder. Did Dante have this effect on every woman he met? Probably. She should consider that fair warning where he was concerned.
Natalie opened the office door wider, and Dante stepped inside. He glared down at the cup of coffee he had foolishly poured himself in the outer office. “Good God, you could tar a roof with this.”
Whenever Sara had carefully and kindly mentioned that perhaps Natalie could make the coffee less strong, the woman had been insulted. Now she took the cup from Dante’s hand and promised, in a heartfelt, apologetic voice, to pour it all out and make a better pot. When he added a “Thanks, darlin’,” Natalie actually blushed and bit her lower lip in a coy manner.
Sara was momentarily ashamed of her own gender.
Dante nodded to Patty, who all but dropped her jaw at the sight of him. Yes, he was studly, but really…get a grip.
“Do you have those letters?” he asked without preamble, his attention entirely focused on Sara.
“I gathered them together first thing.” She handed over the thin stack, certain