Page 23 of Bachelor Cop Finally Caught? (Hot off the Press! 2)

Another burst of laughter announced the arrival of Serena and a couple of her friends. They came into the kitchen talking and reaching for the food, which they carried into the dining room for serving. There wasn’t another chance for Lindsey and Marjorie to talk in private. Lindsey wasn’t sure if she was more relieved or unnerved by that fact. There were a few more things she would have liked to discuss with Marjorie.

Dan looked up from his desk early Monday afternoon to find Lindsey standing in his office doorway. “How did you get past Hazel?” he asked with idle curiosity, very casually sliding the notebook he’d been reading into a desk drawer.

“She’s tied up on the phone. I walked past her. She’ll give me hell when she catches up to me, of course, but I’m used to that.”

Dan shrugged. “She knows I’d escort you out if I didn’t have time to talk to you.”

“But you won’t.” Without waiting for an invitation, Lindsey came into the office and took a seat on the other side of his desk. “What’s going on with Polly?”

Taken by surprise at the mention of his niece’s name, he scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a rumor going around that Polly’s in some sort of trouble.”

Dan muttered a curse, wondering how the hell Lindsey had gotten wind of this. “Where did you hear that?”

“Someone saw Polly come to your place Saturday afternoon, and then you rushed to her house later that night while her parents were out for the evening. Apparently, she was talking on the phone with her friend Jenny and she got another call that freaked her out. She brushed her friend off rather abruptly and only a few minutes later you showed up at her front door.”

The pencil Dan had been holding snapped in two as his grip tightened in frustration. “Damn it. Who’s been watching my niece? And how did you come by this information?”

“It’s a long story.”

He tossed the broken pencil on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “I suddenly have some extra time,” he said, his voice grim.

Shrugging, she mimicked his pose, crossing her arms over her chest. “I stopped by the beauty shop this morning to return a book I’d borrowed from my hairstylist. While I was there, Jane Pulaski said she saw you rush into Polly’s house late Saturday evening—she lives just across the street, you know. She said it wasn’t long after that when Tina and Ron came home and ran inside. She said she called Tina yesterday to find out if everything was all right, and she got the distinct impression that Tina was keeping something from her.”

“Maybe because it was none of her business.”

Lindsey ignored Dan’s muttered comment. “Anyway, your neighbor Mrs. Sturdivant was getting a perm, and she said she saw Polly come to your place earlier Saturday afternoon. She’s Jenny’s grandmother, you know, and she said Jenny worried about Polly all weekend. Jenny said Polly had been acting distracted and a bit nervous about something.”

“Hell, I don’t need untrained investigators on my payroll,” Dan grumbled. “I might as well just talk about all my cases in the beauty parlor and let the women there ferret out the facts.”

What might have been a faint flicker of amusement crossed Lindsey’s face but was gone before Dan could be sure. “I’ve done a little speculation of my own. You came to my house right after Polly visited you. I guessed then that you’d learned something new about the arson investigation. As unlikely as it seems, the obvious conclusion is that Polly somehow stumbled onto a clue.”

While he had to admire her reasoning, Dan was still disgusted that his and his family’s movements were so closely monitored by the local gossips. That was one drawback to small-town life—trading a certain amount of privacy for a sense of community. “Surely you know I wouldn’t confirm that even if it were true.”

“I know you wouldn’t do anything that would put Polly in an awkward situation or jeopardize your investigation. I’m just wondering if there’s something I can do to help stop the rumors that are going around. If I have something factual and low-key to report in this evening’s paper, it could put an end to some of the wilder speculation.”

Dan might have suspected some other reporter of trying to use his feelings for his niece to manipulate him into leaking information. But, as committed to her job as he knew Lindsey to be, he was certain she would never exploit Polly for a story. Her offer to help him dispel the rumors was sincere.

“Off the record,” he said abruptly, “Polly found something that might be linked to the arsons. I don’t want that printed in the paper yet because we’ve just started investigating the clue and I don’t want to jump the gun.”

Lindsey studied his face for a moment in silence before asking, “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

“There wasn’t any reason to tell you then,” he answered simply. “I didn’t know that Polly’s name had come up around town.”

“I see.” She seemed to withdraw a bit more into herself, her expression completely closed to him—as it had been so often lately.

Dan wondered somberly how it could be that the longer he knew Lindsey, the more time he spent with her, the more she seemed to be a stranger to him. It was becoming harder for him to think of her as the little girl who’d tagged at his and B.J.’s heels all those years ago. That red-pigtailed urchin had been replaced by someone new—and somehow he’d missed the transformation until it had already been accomplished.

He supposed he’d been too caught up in his own life—his job, his slow-healing emotional wounds, his badly bruised pride. He’d thought of Lindsey as his pal’s kid sister, his own long-time friend, his professional nemesis—but he was only now beginning to see her as a complex, mercurial, enigmatic woman.

He could even see her now as an attractive and decidedly alluring woman. Damn it.

He was dealing with a lot of emotions about her at the moment, but it seemed easiest to concentrate on the vague sense of guilt that he’d obviously hurt her feelings Saturday. “Look, no matter what I said the other day, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I just didn’t want Polly’s name to come out. I didn’t even tell my own sister about it until I had no other choice. So it wasn’t anything against you personally—as a friend or a reporter.”

“You were doing your job and protecting your niece. I wouldn’t expect anything different from you.”

Somehow her understanding words and her expression didn’t quite match up. But he nodded, deciding not to challenge her about it.

---