Free Deception by Christiane Heggan Page A

perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
    As she talked, her scent enveloped him like a seductive cloud, toying with his senses and causing him to take longer with the tire than he needed to. While he slowly unscrewed each bolt, he had learned that she was studying to become an architect, like her father, and someday hoped to design skyscrapers all over the world.
    She had great legs, he noticed. Even more seductive was the way she flipped those glorious red waves over one shoulder.
    Ten minutes later Dan was finished and she was asking him for his phone number. “I want to thank you properly,” she explained.
    Dan wasn’t quite prepared for what she meant by that. The following morning, after a personal thank-you from Simon Bennett himself, Jill stopped by the station and with the eyes of every officer in the squad room upon her, she walked up to Dan and invited him to lunch, her eyes gleaming with adoration.
    It didn’t take a genius to realize the kid had a major crush on him, a condition he had no intention of encouraging. Especially now that he knew about the vast disparity in their backgrounds.
    Because she was young, vulnerable and very sweet, he had let her down gently, explaining she didn’t owe him a thing. As a police officer, it was his duty to help citizens in distress And, so there would be no misunderstanding, he had also explained that between his job and his part-time studies at NYU, he had no time whatsoever for a social life.
    Far from being discouraged, Jill continued to call him every day. In fact, his excuses had become such a standard joke around the squad room that each morning, his colleagues hung around to hear the latest one.
    Then, one day, tired of the teasing, Dan finally gave in and took Jill out to lunch—not to one of her fancy uptown eateries but to Mama Rosa, a tiny restaurant in Little Italy where the pasta primavera simply melted in your mouth.
    As Jill devoured her meal and confessed her fondness for Italian food’ Dan, captivated by her charm and absolute candor, fell under a spell he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried.
    Soon, the waiters, delighted by her enthusiasm for the food, brought her samples of other dishes. Even the cook came out to see who was the enchantress everyone was raving about.
    Two months later, Dan and Jill were married, but not until Jill had agreed to one condition. They would live on his salary alone, without any help from her family—her trust fund.
    At first, they were blissfully happy. They loved their loft and Greenwich Village, which they explored together whenever their schedules would allow. And Jill, a child at heart, never tired of watching him perform some of the magic tricks he had learned from his uncle Guido.
    But little by little, problems began to surface. Their most serious disagreement occurred when Dan gave up his courses at NYU and took a second job—tutoring college students-so he could pay for Jill’s tuition.
    “But that’s silly,” she argued. “My tuition has nothing to do with you. It’s a commitment I made before I met you. Therefore, it’s my responsibility and should come out of my trust fund.” Hoping to end the argument, she added, “Besides, my money is your money now and being hardheaded about it isn’t going to change a thing.”
    Dan’s immense pride wouldn’t allow him to accept Jill’s rationalization. No man in his family had ever taken one single penny from a woman and neither would he.
    He wasn’t sure when the real trouble began. It was too subtle at first for either of them to detect it. But as the weeks and months passed, Jill became more and more restless. She complained that he was working too much and that she was beginning to feel more like a widow than a newlywed.
    “It’ll be different once I make detective,” Dan kept telling her. “Be patient, Jill.”
    The arguments kept erupting, virtual shouting matches that almost always ended in bitter accusations and slammed