Josh scowled at her for at least a full minute, then snarled, “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Of course, anything you say.” Maggie’s mind whispered the word master, but she couldn’t let herself say it out loud. That would be going too far.
It did tickle her, though, that she’d grated on Josh’s nerves, and she rode back to district headquarters with a little half smile on her face.
Josh thought he saw her smiling when they passed under a bright streetlight, but he squelched the impulse to ask her what was funny and said instead, “It could be a signet ring.”
“What? Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”
“I was referring to the attacker’s ring. It could be a signet ring, one of those huge sports rings or a fraternity ring, or maybe just a college class ring. Some are really big, especially if it’s in a large size because the killer has large hands.”
“Sounds as though you’re ruling out women in this homicide.”
“Some women have large hands,” Josh said as they reached his car.
“Few women wear college class rings. Fewer still own a sport ring, and I really have never personally known a woman who possessed a fraternity ring.”
“Oh, really? How about the ones that are given frat rings from their boyfriends?”
“You mean our killer is a coed today? Now that theory surprises me.”
Josh fell silent as he started the car’s engine, then said quietly, “You know what surprises me, Maggie? You do. What do you want from me?”
Maggie couldn’t believe her ears. Her pulse ran wild and she wished she could backtrack and steer this conversation in another direction. But it was too late. All she could do now was stand up for herself and show Josh Benton that he didn’t scare her.
“I could ask you the same question,” she said brazenly. “But I fear I’d hear a different answer at any given time of the day. Take this morning. I think we both know what you wanted from me this morning, although I do admit to not having a clue at the moment. Guess I’m not a mind reader after all. Maybe I was wrong about this morning, too.”
“You weren’t wrong.”
“Pardon? What did you say?”
“You heard me. I said you weren’t wrong.”
“Prove it,” Maggie said before she could stop herself.
Josh had had enough. He wove through traffic and made a sharp right turn into a dark alley. Slamming on the brakes, he put the shifting gear in park, unhooked his seat belt and then slid as close to her as he could get, considering the elaborate console on the seat between them.
Maggie was staring at him wide-eyed, trying to make out his eyes in the dim dash lights. “Wha-what’re you doing?” she stammered.
“Proving it,” he growled, and unhooked her seat belt. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her toward him, close enough that he easily found her lips with his. His kiss was hot and hard, and she felt herself breaking apart, piece by piece.
When she could no longer breathe through her nose, she jerked her face to the side and whispered hoarsely, “No more. You proved your point.”
“Not entirely.” He took her hand and brought it to his lap.
She wanted to leave it there. She wanted to unzip his pants and feel the heat of his arousal on the palm of her hand. Instead, she drew it back slowly and waited to see what he would do next.
He finally did it. “Is that what you want?” he asked harshly. “I didn’t want to hurt Tim by messing with you, but I’m losing ground on that noble concept. If you want sex with me, I think I’m ready to crumble. But you have to remember something. The reason I’m not married is because I don’t like the statistics. Everyone I know…practically everyone…has been married and divorced at least once. I won’t live my life like that. There are usually kids, and they’re the ones who really suffer, but so does at least one person in every destroyed marriage.
“Maggie, if you and I sleep together that’s all it will ever be. Can you live with that? If you can, we’ll go to my place right now and make love all night.” He stopped talking and waited. “Don’t you have an answer?”
“Not tonight I don’t,” she whispered, shaken to her very soul. “Please, let’s go.”
“Are you going to have an answer tomorrow?”
“I…don’t know.”
“I already know your answer, you don’t have to say a word. You want marriage and kids, the same as everybody else does.”
“Everybody but you.”
Josh slid back behind the wheel. “Could be. I won’t argue about it. I’m who and what I am, and it’s take me as I am or not at all.”
“I have the picture, loud and clear. You don’t have to belabor the point.” She fought tears all the way back to the Bureau and her car, but she also did a lot of deep thinking. And just before getting out of Josh’s vehicle, she let him have it with both barrels. “I will never believe you haven’t married and plan to remain a bachelor for life because of divorce statistics. You’re conning yourself and I think you know it. Just don’t insult me again by using that line of drivel with me!”
Chapter 4
M aggie’s current workweeks ran Mondays through Fridays. In a few more weeks that would change, as everyone in the Detective Bureau, even forensic specialists, had to rotate their days off so that no one had a lock on the traditional weekend. It was an equitable arrangement, Maggie felt, fair to everyone. She willingly worked her weekends when necessary, but as she began work on Friday she actually prayed that no one heading up a case would request her services on Saturday or Sunday. She needed some time off, and two days away from Josh Benton should help her down-in-the-mouth mood immensely.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the things he’d said to her.
What she’d said to him had been richly deserved, she told herself, and maybe she should have said more. Any woman stupid enough to get mixed up with a man of Josh’s sentiments and outlook on the only things that really mattered in this grueling life-love, marriage, children-deserved all the pain she would suffer. That life wasn’t for her, Maggie thought again and again, and if it were possible to rip every shred of feeling from her body until she truly got over the arrogant jerk, she would do it in a New York minute.
But that was where she was stymied. Her feelings were their own master, apparently, and uncontrollable. Her heart thumped much too frenetically whenever she caught sight of Benton, and when he talked to her about the Gardner case and she had to look him in the eye, she got weak in the knees and felt like a pot of molten lava was boiling her insides. It made her almost ill to acknowledge such a weak-willed thing about herself, but how could she deny something so obvious? She could tell herself a million times that she hated Josh, but it wasn’t true. She had always considered herself so sane and sensible, but where was her sensibility now? It’s probably hiding behind your incredibly stupid heart that’s just begging to be smashed to smithereens!
Trying almost desperately to not drown in self-pity and not completely succeeding, Maggie studied photos for most of the day, those that Jack had snapped at the scene, those she had taken at the morgue. Especially provocative were the shots-both Jack’s and hers-of the victim’s facial bruises. A major step in the process for Maggie was booting up her computer, pulling up the photographic analysis program and then inserting the tiny digital disk from her camera.
For hours she studied the images on the monitor, enlarged pertinent areas of the photographs and used different screening and shading techniques to enhance vague features of the photos. Zooming in on the characteristics of one particularly harsh bruise, Maggie frowned and narrowed her eyes at the screen. There was a design of sorts in that bruise, but it still wasn’t clear enough to identify.