Page 54 of Bachelor Cop Finally Caught? (Hot off the Press! 2)

“Of course.”

“Good. I want to know everything the kid said to you.”

She lifted her eyebrows as they moved onto the porch. “Some of what he said was in confidence.”

“You’re not his attorney. Confidence rules don’t apply here.”

“A reporter does not have to divulge information given off the record,” she replied, familiar obstinacy in the set of her chin.

“I’m not asking just any reporter, damn it,” he snapped, stopping beside the driver’s door of his truck. “I’m asking you to tell me what he said.”

That stubborn chin of hers rose even higher. “My personal relationship with you will get you some things, Chief, but it won’t get you inside information concerning my work.”

He recognized the pointed paraphrasing of the words he’d said to her that Saturday in her kitchen, when he’d fixed her leaky faucet but refused to share information about the arson investigation. He had to keep a firm hold on his temper.

“I’ll see you at the station,” he said, jerking open the driver’s door of his truck. “And if Eddie said anything to you that is relevant to my investigation, you’ll tell me even if I have to get a judge to order you to cooperate!”

“Reporters go to jail before they betray their sources,” she reminded him, her own temper evident from the flush on her cheeks.

“Don’t tempt me.” He climbed into the truck and slammed the door.

He didn’t know if he was ready for the rollercoaster ride that a relationship with Lindsey would keep him on. Just in the past few hours, his emotions toward her had ranged from passion to terror to exasperation.

Maybe his personal life had become routine and predictable during the past couple of years, but at least it had been relatively peaceful and comfortable. He had no doubt that Lindsey would change all that, turning his comfortable routines upside down. She already had, for that matter.

He simply didn’t know if he was ready for this—or if Lindsey would be content for long with a man who preferred his personal life to be as unexciting as possible in contrast to his demanding career.

Fortunately it wasn’t necessary for Dan to have to subpoena Lindsey for information. Eddie repeated every word he’d told Lindsey—first to Serena and then to Dan. He admitted setting the fires around Edstown, but he fervently denied having anything to do with the one in which Truman Kellogg had

died. Nor, he insisted, had he been responsible for the fire that had destroyed the insurance company earlier that week.

“Do you believe him?” Lindsey asked Dan over coffee in his trailer later that day. It was just past noon—several hours after Eddie had been taken to the police station where he was still being held pending a bail hearing the next day. She and Dan had both been busy during those hours, only now having a chance to relax and have something to eat.

“I don’t know.” Dan gazed into the coffee mug cradled between his hands as if he could find an answer there. “We know he set most of the fires. It’s a bit suspicious that the ones he denies are the ones with the most serious consequences. All he’s claiming are the old, long-vacant buildings.”

She remembered the desperation with which Eddie had repeatedly assured her that he would not have risked having anyone hurt by the fires he’d set. “I know it sounds hard to believe—but he seemed so sincere, Dan. He gave so many details about the fires he did claim, but he knew nothing about the others.”

“Not that he admitted, anyway. While there’s still some doubt about the cause of the fire at Kellogg’s fishing cabin, we know the insurance company was deliberately torched. Don’t you find it hard to believe we’ve got two arsonists operating in Edstown?”

“Well, sure,” she admitted. “But it could be a copycat, couldn’t it? One of Eddie’s friends, maybe, who wanted to prove he was just as dangerous. Maybe?”

Dan shrugged. “I guess it’s a possibility.”

He didn’t sound convinced. Lindsey wasn’t sure she was, either. She wanted to believe Eddie’s fire-setting spree had been a symbolic cry for emotional help, that he’d been careful no one was harmed by what might have seemed to him like victimless crimes. But she was as skeptical as Dan that there were suddenly two serial arsonists in a town that had never even seen one before this.

Dan refilled his coffee mug, then returned to his seat. His thoughts were obviously still on his work, giving her a chance to study him across the table.

Because they’d been roused out of bed so early and so abruptly, neither of them had had a chance to shower. Dan’s jaw was covered with a two-day growth of beard that she found very attractive—but then she found almost everything about Dan appealing. He’d run his hands through his dark-brown hair so much that it was wildly tousled—reminding her of the way it had looked after she’d run her hands through it. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up the forearms, a pair of jeans and his battered boots. A casual and infinitely masculine look that was incredibly sexy in her admittedly biased opinion.

She gave a fleeting thought to her own appearance. She hadn’t had a chance to do more than run a brush through her hair, leaving it in the somewhat spiky style she’d favored before her makeover. There’d been no time for makeup, and she wore the same striped sweater and jeans she’d had on yesterday. Sometime during the morning she’d removed the bandage from her forehead. It had become annoying to her, and the shallow wound beneath it had healed enough that she didn’t think the bandage was necessary any longer. So here she sat, rumpled, bruised and unadorned—hardly at her best.

No wonder Dan’s attention was wholly focused on work at the moment.

Remembering the flash of tempers between them as they’d left Opal Stamps’s house earlier, she wondered if he was still annoyed by the exchange. She hadn’t given it much thought until now, since they’d always clashed quite vocally when it came to their jobs. She didn’t expect that to change just because she and Dan had become lovers. Surely he didn’t expect her to perform her work any less conscientiously just to please him.

“Dan?”

“Mmm?”

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