Night Whispers Read online

  “You weren’t!”

  “Yes, I was. However, during mass, my attention constantly wandered to a girl I liked who always sat in the third pew at ten o’clock mass. It made me feel like a letch.”

  “How did you handle that?”

  “First, I tried to impress her by genuflecting deeper and appearing more skillful and adept than any of the other servers.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Not the way I wanted it to work. I was so good I had to serve two masses instead of one all that year, but Mary Sue Bonner continued to ignore me.”

  “It’s hard to imagine a girl ignoring you, even then.”

  “I found it a little unsettling, myself.”

  “Oh, well, win some, lose some, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted Mary Sue Bonner.”

  He almost never talked about his past, and Sloan was intrigued by this unprecedented glimpse of him as an uncertain adolescent.

  He lifted his brows. “Since piety and religious fervor didn’t impress her, I caught up with her after ten o’clock mass and persuaded her to go to Sander’s ice cream shop with me. She had a chocolate ice cream cone. I had strawberry shortcake . . .”

  He was waiting for her to ask what happened after that, and Sloan was helpless to resist the temptation to hazard a guess. “And then I suppose you had Mary Sue?”

  “No, actually, I didn’t. I tried for the next two years, but she was immune to me. Just like you.”

  He was so damned handsome and so uncharacteristically disgruntled that Sloan felt a little flattered without knowing why.

  “Speaking of you,” he said abruptly, “I don’t suppose you’d consider going to Pete’s party with me tomorrow night?”

  “I’m on duty, but I plan to go there later.”

  “And if you weren’t on duty, would you go with me?”

  “No,” said Sloan with a jaunty smile to take the sting out of her answer, though she doubted he was stung at all. “In the first place, as I already explained, we work together.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t you watch television? Cops are supposed to become romantically involved.”

  “In the second place,” she finished lightly, ignoring that, “as I also told you before, I have a rule that I do not go out with any man who is a hundred times more attractive than I am. It’s just too hard on my fragile ego.” He accepted her refusal with the same unaffected good humor he had before, thus proving he didn’t really care one way or the other.

  “In that case,” he said, “I might as well go and have lunch.”

  “This time, don’t let the girls fight over who gets to buy it for you,” Sloan teased as she began tidying up the table. “It’s a terrible thing to watch.”

  “Speaking of admirers,” he said, “Sara has evidently acquired a new one. He was hanging around, talking to her earlier; then she brought him by here and introduced him to me. His name’s Jonathan. Poor bastard,” Jess added. “If he doesn’t have a few million dollars in the bank, he’s wasting his time. Sara’s a flirt.” He stepped over the ropes that secured the tent to the stakes in the ground. “I think I’ll give some of that chili you recommended a try.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Sloan warned, breaking into a mischievous grin.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I heard that it’s so bad that the first aid trailer is dispensing prescriptions for a number of unpleasant stomach ailments.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She slowly nodded, her smile widening. “Completely serious.”

  Jess gave a shout of laughter and headed off across the grass in the opposite direction from the chili stand, toward the booths where pizza and hot dogs were available. He paused to say hello to Sara, who was still engrossed in conversation with Mrs. Peale and was holding one of Mrs. Peale’s cats while they chatted.

  Afterward, he stopped to talk to a group of children. He crouched down so that he’d be closer to their height, and whatever he said to them made them laugh. Sloan watched him, wishing a little wistfully that she could simply go out with him and not worry about the outcome.

  In view of Jess’s preference for tall, gorgeous women, Sloan had been stunned when he asked her out to dinner a few weeks ago and even more shocked when he asked her out again. It was so tempting to say yes. She liked him immensely, and he possessed nearly all the qualities that she wanted in a man, but Jess Jessup was simply too good-looking for comfort. Unlike Sara, who wanted glamour and excitement in her marriage and who was determined to find a man who had it all—looks, charm, and money— Sloan wanted almost the opposite. She wanted “Normal.”

  She wanted a man who was kind, affectionate, intelligent, and dependable. In short, she wanted a life that was different from the one she’d known and yet similar enough to be comfortable—a simple life in Bell Harbor like the one she’d had, but with children and a husband who would be a loving, faithful, and reliable father. She wanted her children to be able to depend on their father’s love and support. She wanted to be able to depend on that herself—for a lifetime.

  Jess Jessup would have been perfect in so many ways, except that he attracted women like a human magnet, and in Sloan’s opinion, that did not make him a good lifetime marriage prospect. The fact that he possessed all her other criteria in abundance made him too tempting and too risky, so she regretfully decided to avoid any sort of personal relationship with him, and that included dinner dates.

  Besides, any sort of serious relationship with Jess or another police officer would surely become a distraction at work, and Sloan didn’t want anything to compromise her performance. She loved her job and she liked working with the ninety law enforcement officers who made up Bell Harbor’s police force. Like Jess, they were friendly and supportive, and she knew they genuinely liked her.

  • • •

  By four in the afternoon, Sloan was more than ready to go home. Caruso and Ingersoll had both gone home shortly after lunch, complaining of intestinal “flu,” which meant Jess and Sloan were stuck there until dispatch could send over replacements.

  She’d been on duty since eight o’clock that morning, and she was looking forward to a leisurely bath, a light dinner, and then finishing the book she was reading in bed. Sara had left an hour ago, after stopping by to tell Sloan that Mrs. Peale had invited her over Tuesday night to see her house and talk about redecorating the first floor. For some reason, the elderly woman wanted Sloan to be there, too, and after securing Sloan’s agreement, Sara had dashed off to get ready for a date with the promising lawyer she’d recently met, whose name, she said, was Jonathan.

  The approach of the dinner hour had temporarily emptied out most of the park, and Sloan was sitting beside Jess, her elbows propped on the table, her face cupped in her palms.

  “You look like a forlorn little girl,” Jess chided, leaning back in his metal chair and watching the people moving slowly toward the parking lot. “Are you tired or just bored?”

  “I’m feeling guilty about Ingersoll and Caruso,” she admitted.

  “I’m not,” Jess said, and chuckled to prove it. “You’ll be a heroine again when the guys find out.”

  “Do not say anything,” Sloan warned. “There are no secrets in Bell Harbor, not in our department.”

  “Relax, Detective Reynolds. I was only joking.” His voice took on a warm, somber tone Sloan had never heard him use before. “For your information, I would probably go to amazing lengths to protect you from harm; I would not purposely cause you any.”

  Sloan’s hands fell away, and she turned to him, her eyes searching his handsome, smiling face, her expression one of comic disbelief. “Jess, are you flirting with me?”

  He looked past her. “Here come our replacements.” He stood up and looked around for anything he might be leaving behind. “What are your plans for tonight?” he asked conversationally as Reagan and Burnby strolled toward them.

  “I’m going to bed with a good book. What abo