Jill Shalvis - Serving Up Trouble

When the dial tone sounded in his ear, he swore and tossed the phone aside.

“Angie?” Luke asked.

“Yeah.”

“Trouble?”

“Yeah.” Sam sped them toward the café and tried not to panic over all the possible scenarios Angie was creating at that very moment. “Big trouble.”

“Isn’t that just like a woman.”

Twenty minutes later, Sam had searched the alley, the closed book store, the café, the parking lot in back…every where. He’d showed pictures of their suspect to the few people he found on the street, but no one, not a single soul, had seen him.

Other than Angie.

Luke came back from the alley, which he’d walked yet again, shaking his head. “No sign of life back there anywhere.”

Sam sighed, rubbed his aching temples and turned toward Angie. She stood in the opened doorway of the café, apron on, hair haphazardly piled on top of her head. Half in shadow, half in sunlight, her body was clearly outlined. Legs, nice and toned. Softly curved hips. Perfectly rounded breasts straining the front of her blouse. And for a moment, his brain assimilated her not as a victim, not a responsibility, but as a woman. All woman.

A woman who was looking at him hope fully.

Slowly he shook his head.

She turned away, as if she was disappointed in him, of all things. As if it was his fault she was crazy.

“Angie.”

“I have customers,” she said over her shoulder. “Sorry to have bothered you again.” And then she shut the door.

“Like I said,” Luke offered. “Just like a woman.”

Luke waited until they were nearly back at the station to speculate. “She’s awfully sweet. Sort of whimsical, I think. And strong as hell, given what she went through at the bank.”

Sam would have said tenacious. Stubborn. “How about pain in the ass.”

Luke arched a brow.

“And annoying,” Sam added, getting into it. Damn, why had she given him that look of disappointment? Was he doomed to get that look from every single female in his life? Not that she was in his life. Nope. No way. “And really irritating.”

“Annoying and irritating are the same thing,” Luke pointed out. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. She drives me crazy.”

“You’re being kind of tough on her, aren’t you?”

She’d only barged into his life unannounced, unexpected and unwanted. And had stayed there. “I’m tough on everyone.”

“Yes.” Luke nodded thought fully. “And most can’t hack it.”

Which was why Sam had never remarried after his one short, disastrous union with Kim. It was why his own mother was so disappointed in him. “So?”

“So,” Luke said in a patient voice that made Sam want to slug him. “I don’t think Angie fits into the ‘most’ category.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’re not going to scare her off with the bad-cop thing. That despite the fact she’s young, and maybe even a touch naive, she looks pretty tough to me. Not only that, she’s…”

“What?”

Luke smiled. “Hot. Very hot.”

“Luke?”

Luke turned toward him. “Let me guess. Shut up?”

“Please.”

College started. Angie had decided on several general education classes after talking to a college advisor who’d suggested a teaching career.

Teaching art…it appealed in a way she hadn’t imagined. She could use her passion and still make a living. On her first night of class, she nearly burst with pride as she picked a seat among the students and soaked up the next hour.

She loved it. Loved everything about it: the smell of the room, the desk that made her bottom numb, the thirst for knowledge all around her.

Okay, it was only her thirst. All the other students were younger, more hip…and bored.

Which made no sense to her at all. Nothing about it bored her, not when she was finally there. Which probably explained why she’d grinned like an idiot all the way through the English lecture that put just about every other student in the room to sleep.

The self-pride sustained her all the way home, in her 1974 VW Bug that had seen better days. It wasn’t the lack of money in her check book that kept her loyal to the ancient clunker, though that was why she hadn’t gotten the pale blue Bug the paint job it long ago deserved.

She simply loved the car. It’d been her first, bought with hard-earned money she’d saved from her various assortment of jobs over the years, and she saw no reason to change it.

Her entire life was changing. In light of that, keeping the old Bug was a sort of security blanket. Her one allowed weakness from the past.

She could live with that.

Her phone was ringing when she pulled into the carport next to her apartment. The place had been built in the early 1920s, and was a bit run-down since its last renovation in the early 70s, but she loved it, too. The wrap around porch, the myriad little windows and turrets…the place had charm and personality and never failed to warm her heart when she came home.

Though it sat on prime land in South Pasadena, and by rights should have been far out of her rent bracket, she got the place for practically nothing. Mostly because she kept up the yard, and also because she always had time to chat with Mrs. Penrow, who’d owned the place for more than fifty years.

As Angie hustled through the small, cozy and comfortably over grown yard, with the grass she needed to cut this weekend, and the daisies just beginning to take over the ground at the rosebushes’ roots, her phone continued to ring.

The hour was late, which meant, darn it, it wouldn’t be Ed McMahon saying she’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweep stakes.

“What are you doing up this late?” her mother demanded when Angie finally answered just as her machine picked up.

Given the heavy breathing accompanying her mother’s voice, her father was on the extension as well. “How do you know I’m still up?” Angie asked, her good mood holding. For the moment. “Maybe you woke me.”

“Oh!” Her mother sounded horrified and apologetic. “Did I?”

“No.” Angie smiled because she was still so thrilled with how her night had gone. She should have done this long ago, so very long ago. Why hadn’t she? Why had it taken a near tragedy? Didn’t matter, she decided. And though she knew her parents would misunderstand, she had to tell them. “Mom. Dad.” She took a deep breath. “I took my first college course tonight.”

“Oh my God!” Her mother squealed with shock and delight. “You’re going to be a doctor after all! My daughter, the doctor.”

“No, Mom-”

“This is wonderful! Why didn’t you tell us you’d enrolled in medical school?”

Some of Angie’s glow started to recede. “Mom, you have to get a bachelor’s degree before you can go to medical school.”

“So you’ll get a bachelor’s degree. How long will it take?”

“But I never wanted to be a doctor. I want-”

“Sure you did. When you were a little girl, you used to love to carry that little toy medical kit around and fix up all your stuffed animals.”

A headache started between Angie’s eyes as her newfound determination warred with her age-old need to please them.

“And then all through high school we talked about you getting scholarships-”

“I never had the grades for that, Mom. And we both know, being a doctor was never for me. It was for you.”

Utter silence. Even her father didn’t have a comment. At first.

“I’m sorry to speak so bluntly,” she said. “You’ve never wanted to hear this. You probably don’t want to hear it now, but…well, things have changed for me.”

“Because of the holdup.” Her mother’s voice softened. “You’re still in shock, you-”

“I’m not in shock. But I did get a wake-up call. I mean I could have d-”

“Don’t say it,” her mother interrupted fiercely.

“But it’s the truth. I could have died, without ever really having lived my life. I don’t want that to happen, Mom. Can’t you try to understand that? I want to go after some thing from my own heart.”

“I thought Tony was your heart. What a wonderful man. And a lawyer! You could try to get him back.”

They knew nothing of what had split the two of them up, and yet they assumed Tony had left her. Not a surprise, Angie supposed, but just once she would have liked the benefit of the doubt.

Tony had been a prime example of bad judgment. A serious lapse. He was everything her parents had ever wanted in a son-in-law. Educated, smart, independently wealthy.

And he’d never ever really known Angie, or even tried to. The pressure had been similar to what her parents had put on her to be someone she wasn’t, and she’d nearly suffocated. To combat it, she’d done nothing with herself. She’d stagnated. “Tony wasn’t the one for me.”

“You say that because he left. But how could a perfect man not be the one?”

“Tony and I wouldn’t have made a happy couple. Being a doctor wouldn’t have made me happy either. But,” she said quickly before she could get interrupted again, “college does.”

“Oh.” Her mother sighed. “Well, it’s a nice start. Frank, maybe you can talk to her about a medical degree-”

“No. Look, I’m nearly twenty-six years old.” Angie talked as she flipped through her mail. “I’m going to do this my way, okay?” She realized that the “okay” part of the sentence left room for debate. “I’ll let you know how it goes,” she said more firmly.

Then she saw the package that had come for her, and she smiled again. “I have to go. Got the early shift in the morning.”

“After college, you’ll be able to get a real job.”

Her mother never gave up. “I gotta go. Love you, bye.” Then she hung up quickly so she couldn’t hear any more disappointment or doubt. She didn’t need that right now, the extra tug on her emotions that might cause her to give up.

No more giving up. Ever.

With that in mind, she tore into the package she’d been waiting for. She’d ordered it after the holdup, when she’d realized her life had nearly been extinguished before she’d ever even lived it, when she’d realized there was more out there for her than waking up and going to sleep.

When she’d realized Sam made her heart quiver.

Of course that was also before she’d realized he was not so different from the others in her world. Condescending. Unaccepting.

But she was human. And as a very human female, she did know, no matter what he thought, that she could help him with his case. She had seen his witness and she knew she’d see him again.

Pulling the fingerprinting kit free of its wrapping, she reached for the directions and began to read.

It was three days before Angie saw the suspect again. Three days in which she was aware of every hour, every moment. She absorbed another class. She took a long walk every morning and concentrated on the beauty around her. She read voraciously.

She lived. And as a result, she felt unbelievably…alive.

Yet she still avoided the bank. Strong as she told herself she was, she wasn’t quite that strong. But by the end of the coming week, she knew she’d have to get over that particular fear, as she’d simply have to get money into her account.

A worry for Friday, she told herself. Besides, maybe her newly ordered ATM card would come.

She went to work thinking that this very moment was the first day of the rest of her life. From now on, every day was the first day of the rest of her life.

It felt good. It put a little bounce in her step as she went up the steps to the café. Reaching for the door, she glanced over her shoulder and noticed a car pulling into the alley.

Many cars went down the alley every day: for deliveries, for workers going in and out the back of their buildings, for people looking for a shortcut through traffic, so why she noticed this non de script color and model, she didn’t know.

But things were different these days. She paid attention to everything. She’d even put on mascara and lip gloss this morning. The woman in the reflection of her mirror had looked…happy.

Oh, yes, she was proud of herself, and liked it. She hadn’t even had a single night mare last night, not about bank drawers or knives or threats…not a one.

Then some thing warm slithered around her calf and she leaped into the air.

“Meow.”

“Saber.” Josephine’s cat. Angie let out a gasping laugh and put a hand to her racing heart before she hunkered down to pet the twenty-two-pound tabby. The cat sprawled shamelessly on her back, a loud purr rumbling. “No scraps yet this morning,” Angie said, amused. “Though by the looks of you, you don’t need any.” She came to her feet.

Now there were two men standing by the car in the alley. The first man, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, moved out of sight, but before he did, Angie jerked with recognition.