Free Marrying Mike...Again by Alicia Scott Page B

What the hell.
    He found Sandra sitting on her pale, L-shaped sofa. She’d dumped her blazer over the back of the sofa, kicked off her black leather heels and finally yanked out her hair clip. Now she sat with one leg curled beneath her and her head resting on her braced arm. Her chestnut hair was loose and curly, the way he liked it. Her white silk shirt was unbuttoned down to the top of her brocade vest, revealing tantalizing glimpses of satiny skin and a lace edged bra. Her stockinged feet were tiny and somehow vulnerable. He used to rub those feet. He used to paint those toenails.
    His throat closed up on him. His body went rock hard. He handed Sandra her drink and made it a point to sit several feet away. Apparently, some things didn’t change, including Sandra Aikens’s impact on his libido.
    “Nice,” she murmured after a moment, taking a first sip of the Manhattan and getting some badly needed color in her cheeks. “You remembered.”
    “Making a Manhattan is like riding a bike,” he assured her, and was rewarded by a wan smile and even more color in her cheeks. He tried his own drink and welcomed the slow burn sliding down his throat.
    “Mike, what was going on tonight? What was all that talk of ricochet?”
    “Not too smooth, huh?”
    “No, not smooth at all.” She was frowning at him. Worse, she was looking genuinely hurt and he never could stand to see her hurt. “I don’t get it. I honestly want to help Officers Fletcher and Johnson. I feel for what they went through tonight. I can’t imagine anything worse. And yet…and yet I was treated as the enemy,. Things were going on they obviously had no intention of telling me about. How am I supposed to help them if they won’t talk to me?”
    “You are the outsider, ma chère. You come from the wrong side of the blue wall. Cops, by nature, aren’t supposed to trust.”
    “So how do I get over it? You tell me that forcing my way into their world will only alienate me further. Tonight I tried being supportive and understanding, but that got me nowhere. So what do I do?”
    “It takes time, ma chère. You’ll learn as you go, and one day you’ll realize you’re no longer studying cops, but actually thinking like one. You’ll use too much lingo, talk in code. You’ll find yourself looking down at outsiders, thinking they don’t have a clue about how the world really works, and then you’ll know you’re a cop.”
    “And I’ll know about ricochet?”
    “Lower leg injuries, Sandy. You’ll know about lower leg injuries.”
    She frowned harder, not getting it, and then suddenly—her eyes opened wide. “He shot himself! Good God, Fletcher shot himself! Trying to unholster his gun, right? Oh, my God, I need to do something about that.”
    “No Sandy, you need to do nothing about that.”
    “Mike, we can’t have officers running around shooting themselves in firefights. Obviously we need more training, or better equipment. I’ve been reading articles on holsters that are easier to unsnap. Plus there’s the whole issue of trigger weight. Maybe he had his gun set too light. I was reading that officers should have heavier triggers so they have to consciously and forcibly squeeze off the first shot—”
    Mike set down his Manhattan. He looked his ex-wife in the eyes, and as close as he ever came to reprimanding her, he said levelly, “You say one word on the subject, Sandra, and no man on the force will ever take your order again. And I’ll have to be one of them.”
    She drew up short, looking genuinely startled. “Mike?”
    He sighed. Lord, she was killing him. He wished she’d never taken this cockamamy job, never forced his worlds to collide. It was confusing the hell out of him. It was giving him a headache.
    “Koontz said something today, and God knows I hate to give anything he says too much credit, but maybe he was right. Koontz said the difference between men and women is that men let each other be, while women gotta run around