When Night Falls by Jenna Mills

wondered how long it would take you to get around to her.”
    “Get around to her?”
    “After what you walked in on yesterday, I knew sooner or later my inquisitive little detective would want to know more.”
    My. “You two were an item for a while, yes?”
    He turned toward the wet bar, poured two fingers of mineral water, threw it back. “My involvement with you, detective, pertains to my daughter. Not my love life.”
    His choice of words scraped. She recognized the defense mechanism but refused to yield.
    “My job is gathering facts,” she said tersely. “Stringing them together.” She wanted a drink of that water herself. Either that or an ice cube down her blouse. “Since you only tell me what you want me to know, I have to look where I can.”
    He poured another finger of water and threw it back. “Not anymore.”
    “I’ll believe that—”
    “I’ve got a call into Commander McKnight. I want you off the case.”
    Jess went very still. “You what?”
    “I want a different team of detectives on the case. I want someone who can be objective.”
    Shock winded her. Disbelief and something dangerously close to regret spurred her closer to the edge. “So you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot,” she said softly. Sadly. “Guess Dad was right about you, after all. Too bad he’s not alive to see the day.”
    He didn’t move a muscle, didn’t flinch. “A man doesn’t crawl from the gutter to high-rises by shooting himself in the foot, Detective. But he does learn to cut his losses.”
    “What are you so afraid of?” she asked, because for some reason, she had to. “Don’t you realize I’m your best chance?”
    “Best chance for what?” He stepped toward her, so close he had to look down to meet her eyes. “Counseling me why my relationships never work? Why I run through women faster than a jet tears through the sky?”
    “Damn it,” she said, grabbing his forearm, “you’ve got some kind of nerve—”
    His eyes sparked. “Playing by Daddy’s double standard, Detective?”
    She felt his muscles bunch beneath her fingertips. “Excuse me?”
    “You can touch me, but I can’t touch you?”
    Jess wasn’t quite sure why, but she laughed. “Good try, but I know what you’re doing.”
    “Oh? Why don’t you tell me then?”
    She didn’t release her grip on his arm, noticed that he didn’t pull away, either. A crazy energy buzzed around them. “I’d rather tell you what I’m doing,” she told him bluntly. “My job. A job I take seriously.” She paused when she felt her beeper begin to vibrate, but didn’t check it. “I’m exploring every angle because I want to help you. I want your daughter back. I want to see you hold her again. It’s obvious how much you love her. A blind man could see it.”
    Those hard, cobalt eyes of his bore down on her. “Just last night you told me she probably ran away.”
    “The two aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes love can be suffocating. Just because you love your daughter doesn’t mean she agrees with how you show it. I sure didn’t.”
    “Just what’s wrong with how I show my love, Detective?” The words were silky, the way he lifted a hand to cup her cheek shockingly intimate. “I didn’t realize you’d seen it.”
    Jess’s heart beat so hard and deep she could barely breathe. She abruptly released his arm and backed away from his touch. “I was talking about my own father.”
    “Ah,” he said. “Then you need to learn to be more specific.”
    “And you need to learn to pay attention.”
    He laughed. “So that’s why you ran away?”
    She lifted her chin. “My father was a good man,” she said, tired of the cat and mouse game. “But he was also a hard man. Focused. He defined himself through police work—”
    “Runs in the blood, huh?”
    “He loved his family but didn’t know how to show us. He thought by working hard, climbing the ranks, making a good living, he would be filling his role as husband and