Marrying Mike...Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

lips, curling up in one corner as if he was sharing a friendly joke. Dark, gleaming eyes framed by ungodly thick lashes and deeply etched laugh lines. The face of a man who smiled easily and often.
    His black hair was beginning to gray at the temples. She hadn’t realized that before and waited for it to make him look old. It didn’t. His dark eyes were still bright, his body powerful and strong. Age would be kind to Mike Rawlins. She suddenly wanted to cup his face with her hand, to see if he would turn his lips against her palm the way he used to, and it shamed her.
    Four years was such a long time. Why did it suddenly seem not long enough?
    Sandra took a deep breath. Then she said, “Thank you for coming, Detective. Please have a seat.”
    “Detective, huh?” Mike raised a brow as he strode into the room. “I suppose I’ve been called worse.”
    She managed a smile. “I know you have.”
    He chuckled, taking the lone wooden chair, turning it around and straddling the seat. Then he met her gaze as if debriefing with his ex-wife was something he did every day. She appreciated his professionalism, but then Mike’s job had always been the one thing he’d taken seriously.
    “I imagine Koontz will join us shortly?”
    “Uh…well, you see, he had something come up.”
    “Something come up?” It was her turn to raise a brow.
    “And what, pray tell, could be more important than meeting with his boss?”
    “Well, pray tell, I don’t know.”
    Sandra planted her hands on her desk, no longer amused. “He’s boycotting this meeting on purpose, isn’t he, Mike?”
    “I’m just his partner, ma chère, not his baby-sitter. Koontz is a big boy and can speak for himself.”
    She’d opened her mouth for a sharp retort, when she caught herself and gritted her teeth. The Koontz argument was old. And bitter. And something she and Mike wouldn’t resolve in the next five minutes, let alone the next five years.
    She said more levelly, “Fine. I’ll debrief with you now and you can inform your partner of our discussion. Please pass along as well that I’m sorry he couldn’t be with us this morning—and if he makes me any sorrier, he’ll be spending the rest of his days writing parking tickets.”
    “He’ll be delighted to hear it,” Mike assured her.
    “Rusty responds well to authority, you know.”
    “Trust me, I know. Let’s get down to business. I have a case for you and Koontz that I’d like you to make top priority.”
    Mike looked mildly surprised. “Someone’s died and I haven’t heard about it?”
    “No one’s died. That’s the point of this case. I want you to keep it that way. I want you to find the boy who wrote the letter to the paper. This Vee.”
    “Huh?”
    Mike was genuinely startled. She’d expected that. He and Koontz were homicide detectives; they only got involved with kids like Vee when one turned up dead. But the Gang Task Force had a lot on its plate right now. And the Gang Task Force contained the majority of the men Internal Affairs was about to begin investigating for police brutality. Not that Sandra could tell Mike that.
    “Hey, ma chère— ”
    “Chief. Chief Aikens. Not ma chère. ”
    “Hey, Chief, maybe I should explain the different departments to you. Homicide, Vice, White Collar, Gang—”
    “Mike, I know the departments. Listen to me. You were at the meeting this morning, you know the mood around here. We have tensions between blacks and whites, tensions between civilians and policemen, tensions between the haves and the have-nots. And now we have a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the middle of this storm. He’s angry, he’s resentful, and he’s disenfranchised. According to you, he’s also experienced. So what do you think will happen if he makes good on this threat?”
    Mike conceded her point with a nod. “War. A big war. Which I suppose would then be homicide. Lots of homicides.”
    Sandra gave them both a minute to absorb that thought. Then she said