Perfect Fit (Serendipity's Finest 1)

“She’s got us investigating an old cold case, and she’s just impatient,” Cara said.

Though she trusted Dare implicitly, their digging had turned up some Marsden family skeletons. It just wasn’t her story to tell.

“You want to drive?” Cara asked, tossing Dare the keys in order to distract him from the subject.

He grabbed them in midair. “Sure. But if you need help, you’ll ask?”

She knew he referred to the mayor. “You bet,” she said, grateful for Dare as her friend.

With Sam out of commission and the mayor breathing down her neck, she needed a plan. Which meant she needed her partner’s permission to bring in a replacement. She didn’t know who, but she’d have to talk to Sam.

Thankfully the rest of the day passed quickly, and at the end of their shift, Cara and Dare parted ways at the station. She didn’t mind doing paperwork and sent him home to his wife. She still couldn’t believe Dare was married, but she had to admit that Liza McKnight was the right woman for him. He’d always been Cara’s happy-go-lucky friend, but before Liza, he’d had occasional shadows in his brown eyes he thought no one noticed. Cara was glad Liza had not only forced him to confront old demons but given him a bright future as well.

A part of her filled with envy at the notion of having someone to come home to at night. But the saner part of her remembered her parents and how difficult it was to choose that right person. Unless Cara was absolutely sure of any man, she was better off alone.

She shook her head and refocused on the paperwork in front of her when she felt a large shadow looming. The back of her neck tin

gled, and she looked up to see Mike standing beside her.

“Got a minute?” he asked.

“Umm…sure.” She set her pen down on her desk and met his gaze.

“In private,” he said.

Something about his tone made her insides quiver, but she dutifully rose to her feet. “Is this about a case?” she asked as she followed him to his office.

“It’s personal.”

She missed a step and tripped, catching herself before she barreled into him.

He paused at the door and gestured for her to enter. She stepped around him and into the small room reserved for the chief of police, catching a whiff of his masculine scent as she brushed past. He wore the same cologne, and the subtle musky scent settled deep in her bones, reminding her of that night.

He shut the door behind him and braced his hands against the wooden frame, leaning back against the wall.

Just being alone with him, Cara was already at a disadvantage, and for a woman who could hold her own with any criminal, that was saying a lot. “What’s up, Chief?”

“Could you not call me that?” He visibly bristled at the title. “I can’t say what I need to if you’re putting the job between us.”

She narrowed her gaze. As far as she knew, the job was between them and had been since his return. His status as her boss as well as whatever other barriers he’d erected kept her at a distance. Cara knew how to take a hint. She also knew how to pretend his aloof treatment didn’t bother her. No man had utterly dismissed her like she’d meant nothing before. She didn’t jump into one-night stands often, and though she’d known the score and could handle sex without messy emotions, her night with Mike had been more. Even if he refused to admit to it.

Unwilling to make whatever he had to say easy for him, she waited for him to speak, and the silence stretched uncomfortably between them.

“You asked me in here,” she finally reminded him.

He exhaled hard. “When I came back and took this job, I didn’t handle things between us as well as I could have.”

His unexpected admission surprised her. “You didn’t handle it at all.”

A wry grin tugged at his lips. “Neither did you.”

He had her there.

But he spoke before she could formulate a reply. “I’m the one who came back to town. I should have at least acknowledged that something happened between us.” He looked at her with regret in his brown eyes and more than a hint of an apology in his expression.

“Something did,” she whispered, suddenly seeing the man she’d taken to bed and not the police chief who barely noticed her.

His heated gaze swept over her, and an unmistakable arc of sexual awareness shimmered between them. She melted on the spot. But she wasn’t naïve, nor would she take an apology of sorts as an opening.