Apache Nights. Sheri WhiteFeather
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willing to pay you,” she said.
That caught his attention. He gave the dog a subtle command, and it stopped snarling. He’d spoken in what sounded like a foreign language. Not anything Joyce recognized. Most likely, he’d trained his rotty to respond to Apache.
“Pay me for what?” he asked.
“For your sessions. Hand to hand combat. War games. Everything you offer here.”
“I don’t train cops.”
“Then I’ll be your first.”
He gave her a suspicious glare. “Why?”
“Because I’m going through a tough time, some personal issues I can’t seem to resolve.” She didn’t like revealing herself to him, but she wasn’t going to unearth every little detail. Joyce’s biological clock was ready to explode, something she couldn’t begin to understand, something that was spinning out of control. “I need to blow off some steam. Get physical. Take my mind off my problems.”
“Then go to the police range and fire your gun. Do whatever your kind do.”
“My kind?” She wanted to kick him through the fence, but she knew the rottweiler would go nuts if she staged an attack. “Quit hiding behind your dog and let me in.”
“Nice try, Detective. But I’m not macho enough to fall for that.”
Yeah, right. He was as macho as a modern-day warrior could get. “Olivia told me all about you, Kyle. Everything.”
He had the gall to grin. “So you know I’m good in bed. So what?” He paused, looked her up and down. “Is that why you’re really here, Detective? To bang my brains out?”
She roamed her gaze over him, giving him a taste of his own chauvinistic medicine. “What brains?”
He almost laughed. Almost. But not quite.
As for her, she was used to sparring with hard-edged men, with criminals, with other detectives. Being a woman in a male-dominated environment made her stronger.
But sometimes it made her lonely, too.
A second later, Kyle surprised her by unlocking the gate. “You can come in if you want to.”
She motioned to the rottweiler. “What about him?”
“Clyde won’t hurt you. Not unless I tell him to.”
Clyde. She glanced at the sturdy black and tan canine. He didn’t move a well-toned muscle. He sat like a statue at his master’s feet. She scanned the grounds for the dachshund and couldn’t help but smile. The little wiener dog was wiggling like a ballpark frank trying to escape from a bun.
“What’s that one’s name?” she asked.
Kyle’s lips quirked. “Bonnie.”
She raised her eyebrows. Bonnie and Clyde. He’d named his dogs after bank robbers.
He rattled the gate. “Are you coming in or not?”
Suddenly a voice in her head told her to go home, to stay away from Kyle Prescott. But the need to fight her way out of her problems, to train with him, kept her grounded.
Besides, he didn’t have a record. And although his activities often bordered on the suspicious, Joyce wanted to believe that when the chips were down, he could be trusted. On the day they’d met, he’d helped the LAPD apprehend a killer, a case that involved Native witchcraft. Of course, he’d only done that for Olivia, for a woman who’d fallen in love with someone else. Not that Olivia had ever been in love with Kyle. She’d claimed he was a bit too bizarre to make her feel secure.
Nonetheless, Joyce took a chance and stepped onto his property. Instantly he moved forward and snapped the padlock back into place, locking her into his domain, telling her, without words, that it was too late to turn tail and run.
As if he could scare her off. She wouldn’t dream of chickening out, even if the rational voice in her head was calling her an idiot.
When he turned away from her, she noticed the small-of-the-back holster attached to his belt. She glanced at the semiautomatic SIG and wondered if he armed himself every morning. She knew darn well that Kyle didn’t have a permit to carry a gun, open or concealed, but he was on his own property and that put him within the limits of the law.
“Expecting some bad guys to show up?” she asked.
“Just a bad girl.” He caught sight of her holstered gun, too. “But she’s already here.”
“Touché.”
“It was your idea to invade my world.” He motioned to his house. “Want some coffee?”
“As long as you don’t poison it.”
“My coffee is poison.”
And so were his pheromones, she thought. The sparks he sent flying, the sexual energy that made him seem like a predator.
She walked beside him, and Clyde fell into step. She could tell the rotty was aware of everything she did. But so was Kyle.
Refusing to give the males too much attention, she focused on Bonnie. The sweet little thing tagged along, her low-slung belly nearly dragging on the ground.
As they continued toward the house, as Bonnie skirted around salvage items that got in her way, Joyce studied the outbuildings on Kyle’s property.
“Is that where you store the rest of your merchandise?” she asked.
He followed her line of sight, then nodded. “Furniture, collectables, memorabilia. Things you’d find in trading posts and antique stores. I’ve got some nice pieces for sale.” He paused. “Do you like vintage stuff?”
“Yes.” She loved browsing in charming old stores, shopping for rare finds. “But atmosphere is important to me, too.”
He made a grand gesture. “You don’t think my place has atmosphere?”
Was he joking? She couldn’t quite tell. “Your airplane hangar has appeal.” The enormous structure sat behind everything else, taking up ten thousand square feet of space. She knew the building had been modified to support a highly sophisticated laser tag course, a compound she was anxious to see. But he still hadn’t agreed to train her.
To help her with her cause.
To battle the emotions that threatened to swallow her.
Kyle slanted the lady cop a sideways glance. He intended to grill her, to figure out if she was on the level. For all he knew, she’d heard about his upcoming mission and wanted to poke her investigator’s nose into his business.
He studied her profile, the chin-length sweep of blond hair, the simple curve of feminine eyelashes. This wasn’t a case for a homicide detective. He didn’t plan on hurting anyone—no guns, no knives, no weapons of choice. But what he intended to do was still illegal, and Joyce could easily turn him over to one of her peers.
But as far as he was concerned, his mission was sacred, a spiritual issue, something that was worth going to jail for. Even dying for, if it came down to that.
Of course, neither of those risks appealed to him. And neither did Joyce involving herself in his affairs.
Within minutes, they reached his house. After taking the weather-beaten steps, he opened the front door, gesturing for her to enter. She went inside, the dogs trailing after her.
She glanced around his living room and made a face. “Olivia warned me that you weren’t much of a housekeeper. But this looks like somebody ransacked the place.”
Typical, he thought. Females always grumbled about the clutter in which he lived, including his former bedmate, a woman who’d accused him of being the biggest slob on the planet.
But he didn’t care. He’d decorated