The Truth About Comfort Cove
“There’s no motive here at all,” Lucy said, half an hour after the food was gone.
Getting up from the table, she gathered the dishes and moved to his sink.
Ramsey followed her. “I’ll get those.”
“Like hell you will, Detective,” she said, grinning at him. “You cooked, I’ll clean up.”
Mostly because his body was all out of whack again, due to the saucy grin she sent him and the way she’d said detective, Ramsey leaned back against the cupboard and let her do her thing.
T hey worked for an hour after breakfast. Going over reports again, looking at different angles. Making calls to check on updates from Lori Givens at the Cincinnati lab, to the Boston DNA lab that had Claire’s box of evidence and Jack’s DNA sample. To the Comfort Cove lab to see if there were any answers back yet on the storm-sewer water sample. To Ramsey’s office to see if anyone had called in any reports on Jack Colton’s location.
And then it was just the two of them at Ramsey’s diningroom table with reports they’d been over numerous times. And a whole day stretched in front of them.
Lucy felt like a schoolgirl on her first date.
But she wasn’t on a date.
And she hadn’t been a schoolgirl in a long time. What she was was a grown woman who was tired of being
out of sync. Of not feeling or acting like herself. She’d been thumbing through Colton’s phone records, looking for Ohio and Indiana phone exchanges—any connection that might lead them to Gladys Buckley. Ramsey was leaning over her, to check on a local number.
And she couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Look, I have to be honest here.”
He stood back, his hands on his waist. “Okay.” “I’m… Do you ever think about…us…you know…
personally?”
His eyes narrowed. “Personally, how?”
“Man and woman.”
He glanced away. And she had him. When he glanced back,
he knew she’d made him. “Obviously, the answer to that question is yes. I’m a man. We have thoughts. It would be pretty much impossible for me to spend time alone with a woman as gorgeous and sexy as you are and not have thoughts.”
He thought she was gorgeous and sexy? He’d had thoughts? She was a cop. A detective with a mission. Sandy’s daughter. She wasn’t free. As long as her mother was alive she wouldn’t be free…?.
“You have nothing to worry about with me, Lucy. I swear to you. I’m in complete control here. I won’t ever act inappropriately where you’re concerned.”
“What makes you think I’m worried?”
“That look in your eyes.”
“I was thinking about the fact that even if I wanted to start
something with someone, I can’t because my first obligation is to my mother. Not that I want to. I’d never be good at a relationship. I can’t keep my mind off the job long enough to remember to pick up my own laundry. Can you imagine how I’d be taking care of someone else?”
“You take care of Sandy. And always have.”
He had her there. Still…
“You said you wouldn’t ever act inappropriately.” “That’s right. I can’t deny having…urges. But I assure you
that I can control them. Always.” Allie was dead. The two dimensions in her life were feeling Allie’s void. And the man standing two feet from her brought a third dimension that she needed. Just to get her over the hump.
“What if I wanted you to behave inappropriately?” He didn’t move noticeably. But the change in him was obvious to her. “Do you?”