He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

though it wasn’t necessary.”
    “You shouldn’t try to haul something that heavy. Why don’t you have a can with wheels?”
    “Never thought about it, I guess.” It was hard not to smile when she’d thought the same thing a few minutes earlier.
    He reached for his jacket but she held it away from him. “Uh, uh. Not until you wash your hands.”
    He looked at his hands, holding them out to inspect them. “They look okay to me.”
    “You’re still not touching this nice jacket until you soap up your hands. Besides, I don’t think you drove all the way over here to haul out my trash.” She headed up the driveway toward the house.
    “It’s not that long a drive here from the police station.”
    She glanced at him, saw him make some kind of signal back toward the street, then quickly drop his arm when he saw her looking.
    “I thought about offering them lunch earlier,” she said, referring to the white Crown Victoria parked a block down from her house. “But I didn’t know how they’d feel about me blowing their cover.”
    “You knew they were police officers?” He had a surprised look on his face.
    “It’s a small neighborhood. This is a dead end street. I knew that car didn’t belong, so I watched it for awhile through my kitchen window and figured it out. Besides, no one could sit in a car around here for more than twenty minutes without Mrs. Fogelman interrogating them. She’d have called the cops long ago if the men in that car weren’t policemen.”
    “You aren’t angry?” He walked with her up the driveway toward her house.
    “I was, at first. After all, I refused police protection, yet, here they are. But . . .” She held up her hand to stop him when he looked like he was going to interrupt. “I do feel safer knowing they’re here, as long as they don’t show up in a marked police car.”
    When they reached her kitchen door, Logan reached past her and opened it, then waited for her to precede him into the house. Murmuring her thanks, she stepped inside and bent down to get a fresh dish towel from the cabinet beneath the sink. She placed it on the counter alongside the liquid soap.
    When she turned around, he was standing with his back against the door, staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face. He slowly crossed the kitchen floor, reminding her of a powerful panther. Her eyes widened at the heated look in his eyes and she moved out of the way.
    As he washed his hands, he said, “Who’s Mrs. Fogelman?”
    “The self-appointed neighborhood-watch lady. I’d be willing to bet she already knows your men’s names, badge numbers, and the names of their wives and kids.”
    He finished drying his hands and refolded the dishtowel, leaving it exactly where she’d placed it. “If she got all that information, I’ll fire them. They should be able to give her a cover story to get her to leave them alone without revealing they’re cops.”
    “I hope you give them decent severance pay,” she smirked.
    He rolled his eyes and leaned back against the sink, his long legs braced out in front of him and his palms resting on the countertop edge.
    She laid his jacket over the back of a kitchen chair and smoothed an imaginary wrinkle out of the material, enjoying the clean masculine scent that clung to the fabric.
    The silence grew and she looked up, surprised to see him frowning at her.
    “You’ve been crying,” he said.
    She wiped her eyes self-consciously. After hanging up on her sister, she’d given in to her emotions. “Nice of you to say so,” she grumbled.
    “Why were you crying?” he pressed.
    “Why are you so nosy?”
    A slow grin spread across his face. “You’re a real smart ass, aren’t you?”
    The comment should have annoyed her, but the way he said it with that slow, sexy grin made it sound like a compliment. “Excuse me if I don’t kowtow to you like your men do. Sorry if that bothers you.”
    “I didn’t say it bothered me.” His grin widened.
    Unable to hold that intense stare for long, she looked away and pulled more hair over her right shoulder to better cover her scar.
    “Why do you do that?”
    She froze, her fingers still tangled in her hair. “Why do I do what?”
    “You’re a beautiful woman. You don’t need to hide behind your hair.”
    Beautiful? If anyone else had said that, she’d think they were making fun of her. But Richards didn’t strike her as a cruel man. The way he was looking at her was the way men used to look at