CHAPTER ONE

      THE WOMAN WAS too damned gorgeous for his good. When he was with her, he couldn’t focus on anything else. Including the reasons why he, Columbus Police Detective Ryan Mercedes—one of the city’s youngest and newest special victim detectives—was not going to get romantically involved with anyone anytime in the near future.

      Most particularly, he was mesmerized by her laughter—had been since he’d first met her six months before at the adoption of an incest victim he’d rescued. The young girl had been Audrey’s client.

      “What?” Audrey Lincoln asked, glancing over at him in the small living room of his one-bedroom loft condominium.

      On the TV Bruce—Jim Carrey—had just been endowed with God’s powers and had single-handedly taken on the gang of thugs who’d earlier beaten him up. The scene involved a birth-worthy monkey and cracked Ryan up every time he saw it.

      “Nothing,” he said, maintaining eye contact with the woman sitting next to him. They’d started hanging out a few months ago. Catching an occasional movie or meeting for a cup of coffee.

      “I thought you liked this movie.”

      Bruce Almighty. He’d seen it so many times the lines randomly popped into his head. “I do.”

      “You said it was your favorite.”

      “It is.”

      “Then why aren’t you watching it?”

      Good question.

      “I am.”

      Her brown eyes narrowed in a way that made him hungry. She stared at him a second longer, then turned back to the large screen television across from them.

      They weren’t dating. Weren’t on a date. They were just friends. Watching a movie on a Saturday night.

      So what if, the week before, they’d moved their watching from a generic theater to his home?

      This was where the old movies were.

      They’d watched her favorite movie, The Mirror Has Two Faces, the previous week. She’d said she related to the main character, Barbra Streisand’s version of a university sociology professor. The woman had struggled with being ugly. Undesirable.

      Audrey Lincoln had no such worries.

      “What?” She was looking at him again.

      Sorry, Jim, Ryan silently apologized to the actor who’d given him more hours of hilarious entertainment mixed with just a bit of life lesson than he could count. “You thirsty?” he asked his guest.

      “A little.”

      He stood. Delilah, the cat, opened one eye from her perch on the back of the recliner. “Wine, beer or diet soda?”

      “A glass of wine would be great.”

      He thought so, too. It meant she’d have to stay around a while. Or he’d be forced to arrest her for DUI, and they certainly couldn’t have that.

      AUDREY COULDN’T remember ever laughing so hard. And she’d seen most of Jim Carrey’s movies more than once. Was familiar with his brand of humor. Enjoyed it. Just never this much.

      Or perhaps—she glanced over at the handsome detective sitting on the other end of the couch finishing off his glass of wine—it was