Sexy, restless feet that shuffled, tapped, flexed, before she stopped and crossed them. Nerves looked strange on Kathleen. He'd never seen her wired before. Fired up, yes. But wired, never.
They couldn't work together with this kind of tension. Time to make the peace and set their eyes on work.
"I've been thinking." Tanner barreled ahead, unwilling to watch her twitch for another minute. "You were right about using this time to work on the case. We can take the 'night owl' out Friday. The rehearsal isn't until Saturday morning anyway, since that's all the time the crew could get off given the mess overseas. Lucky for Cutter, he was already set to rotate out. Meanwhile that gives us two full days to work through reports."
"You want to work with me."
"Yes."
"Let me help?"
He nodded. As long as he was spotting her if she pulled any lone-ranger stunts, he could live with that, not that Kathleen left him any choice.
She smiled, just a regular smile that shouldn't have the power to rob him of the ability to breathe. But it did.
Her eyes sparkled like a sky full of northern lights right outside his windscreen. Awesome, unexpected and rife with the power to distract him from his job until he crashed and burned.
Tanner pivoted away to refill his coffee. "Why did you want me to wait for you?"
"Oh! Right. I have something for you."
"For me?" he said over his shoulder, replacing the pot.
"Turnabout's fair play. Now close your eyes."
Nothing else left to do, he faced her again. "Gonna hit me with that fence spike?"
"How did you know?" She slipped a hand into her shoulder bag. "Now close 'em and take it like a man."
God, her smart mouth plucked at him as much as those eyes. He shut his before they soaked up any more images of Kathleen.
"Hold out your hand."
Mirroring his presentation from the night before, she inched closer, closer still until the minty fragrance of her shampoo encircled him. The flutter of her shirt across his wrist almost sent him over the edge. Even that whisper of cottony fabric held her warmth, a warmth he'd spent a whole night holding against him. His arms itched to close around her now.
"Ready?"
"Yeah." He pushed the word through his tight throat.
A jingling sounded just before his hand closed around…
Keys.
He opened his eyes and stared at the keys peeking from his fist.
"I took care of getting us another car. But I thought you might like to drive for awhile."
Guilt pinched him. Hard. He knew how difficult it had to be for her to pass over the reins, but she'd done it in the interest of peace. She'd made a real effort toward compromise, and he'd been plotting how to maneuver her so the investigation went his way.
Except, he couldn't escape the niggling fear that something would happen to her. He could almost hear her earlier accusations in his brain.
Stuffing down rogue twinges of guilt, he said, "Thanks."
"No problem." Her smile reached her eyes, reached to him.
Neither of them spoke. The switchboard rang at least twice. A parade commentator droned from the television. The coffeepot hissed. And Tanner simply stared, took in every curve of her face, the faint sprinkling of freckles across her nose while she stared back.
Did her redhead complexion spread freckles in other places? He burned to stroke aside the neckline of her shirt and find out.