High Noon

she once loved him and made a child with him. Not for his own sins, but because she met him one night at a party, and let herself love.
    So she’d find the answers. She’d search until she found them.
    After drying her face, shoving her dampened hair away from it, she started toward her office. She’d go home—Dave was right about that. But she’d take some files with her. The odds of getting any real sleep were slim, so she could work off the hours, and maybe find some answers.
    She didn’t see Duncan until he was pushing to his feet and walking toward her.
    “You should’ve gone home.”
    “Don’t even start that crap with me, okay?”
    “What?”
    “Goddamn it, Phoebe.” He took her arms. Then he just jerked her against him. “Okay, fight later. Let’s just do this for a minute.”
    “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
    “Yeah, me, too, and back at you.” He eased her back to take a good study of her face. Her eyes were reddened, shadowed, exhausted. “I’ll take you on home now.”
    No car, she remembered. She didn’t have her car. “I have to get a few things out of my office first.”
    “I’ll wait.”
    “Duncan—” She broke off when she saw Phin coming toward them, clicking his cell phone closed.
    “Carly.”
    “She’s fine. She’s fine.” Phin kept walking, opened his arms and took Phoebe in. “She’s sound asleep. Got a patrol car out in front of the house, another couple cops out the back, and my fierce wife and lovely dog inside.”
    It surprised a muffled laugh out of her. “Thank you. I should go by and get her, bring her home.”
    “Honey, it’s four in the morning. Since it was damn near midnight before the giggling stopped, I bet those girls are going to be sleeping a few hours yet. Why don’t Loo and I bring her home after she’s up and around? We’ll call you first, then bring her home. How’s that?”
    “Good. That’s good. No point in waking her up to…No point. I’m grateful, Phin, grateful to you and Loo, and I’m sorry.”
    “No need to be either about this.”
    “I need to get a few things. I’ll only be a minute.”
    Phin watched her go. “She holds up pretty good.”
    “She’s got that strong spine. Something that appealed to me right off. Everything okay on the home front?”
    “Taken care of. I’m going to go on. You get some sleep, you hear. We’ll talk about all this later.”
    Duncan gave him a bump on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
    When Phoebe came back, Duncan stepped over to take her overloaded briefcase. “Good idea. You’re going to work from home for a while.”
    “Not instead of, in addition to.”
    “Only so many hours in the day, Phoebe.”
    “So I need to make good use of as many as I can. This is police business, Duncan.”
    “Oh, don’t pull that crap on me either.”
    She remained silent a moment, ordered herself not to respond. But her willpower snapped when they stepped off the elevator. “I seem to be pulling quite a bit of crap on you tonight.”
    “Yeah, and I can’t say I care for it.”
    “Then you ought to just go on. I can get my own way home.”
    “In about one more minute, I’m going to take this shovel I’m using to pitch away this crap and hit you over the head with it. I’ve had a bad night, too, Phoebe, so watch where you push.”
    “I told you to go home, didn’t I? I said—”
    She didn’t say a thing more as the breath whooshed right out of her when he whipped her around and pushed her back against his car. She’d seen him irked a time or two, even seen him on the edge of nasty temper. But this was the first time she saw the full-blown affair.
    His eyes had the hard, hot look of a man who could and would kick any number of asses, then gesture for more to come on.
    “We found out I like aggressive women—thanks for that. I like strong women, and smart women. I like women who can handle themselves. I like, apparently, a woman who knows where the hell she’s going and how she wants to get there. You getting this?”
    “You’re hurting my arms, Duncan.”
    He eased his hold a fraction. “What I don’t like is being told what to do, or how I should feel or what I should think. I don’t like being fucking dismissed when—”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    “Shut up, Phoebe. I’m not finished. I don’t like being dismissed when a smart, strong, knows-how-to-handle-herself woman figures she doesn’t need me anymore. I don’t like, and I won’t tolerate, being