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categorical, unchivalrous, and seemingly intransigent immunity to her feminine wiles.
    “Boon companions we’ll be, then,” I said. “Friendship without the onus of courtship.”
    “Yep. No entanglements, no expectations.” He crooked a brow. “As long as one doesn’t lead to the other.”
    “There’s no reason to think it might, seeing as how we have this understanding between us.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “And we aren’t attracted to each other—well, not in that way. You know, how men and women usually are—giddy and breathless and wrought-up in each other’s company.”
    Bent knuckles stroked my cheek, a caress all the more tender for his large, rough-skinned hands. “I can’t speak for you,” he’d drawled, “but as you can see, darlin’, I’m not the least bit giddy or breathless.”
    Leaning into his touch, had I been a cat, I’d have purred. “Nor am I. Which is as it should be, between…er, friends.”
    “Ummhmm.” He licked his lips, hovering inches from mine, but as I stretched upward on tiptoes, he’d pulled back. “I wouldn’t want you any other way.”
    It was then I knew that lying with a straight face was but one of many things Jack O’Shaughnessy and I had in common.
    Friendship swelled inside me as I traversed the few remaining steps to the agency’s entrance. Jack grinned and doffed his narrow-brimmed hat. Rather than his dark wool, brass-buttoned uniform, he was dressed in striped trousers, a black frock coat, starched white shirt, and a string tie. A lilt of bay rum sweetened the air.
    “Nothing dire has befallen Won Li, has it?” I asked.
    Jack lifted the law books from my arms. He gave their titles a cursory examination, then turned his sky blue eyes on me. “When I left him, he was strawbossing the youngsters he hired to rebuild the toolshed. Again.”
    A blush crawled warm up my neck. “The slightest breeze would have blown it over.”
    “Might could,” he allowed, “but blowing it to hell and gone took a crazy woman and a beaker of nitrostarch.”
    “I am not crazy. I’m a scientist.”
    Jack rested a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve already plowed this ground, darlin’. It scares the liver out of me that someday you’ll end up six feet under it.”
    “Oh, and constables are renowned for longevity?”
    He didn’t reply. Not because a half-dozen of them weren’t rattling round inside that thick skull of his. Unlike Papa, Jack knew instinctively that bellowing and blustering stiffened my backbone, whereas silence allowed guilt an opportunity to nibble at my conscience.
    I delved into my reticule for the door key. Blasting through the shed’s roof had dislodged all memory of Jack’s invitation to supper and a minstrel show. Then again, the LeBruton business had been uppermost in my mind, seconded by the McCoyne/Whitelaw conundrum, plus the sorry state of the agency’s finances.
    As I strode into the furnace the office had become in my absence, I considered excusing myself from the evening’s plans. Duty had called Jack away several times in the past, with no remonstrations from me.
    However, Dr. Thaddeus MacKenzie, a Boston psychologist of regard, hypothesized that interludes of mental leisure invigorated the brain, just as napping did the body. What better time than the present to test the veracity of his theory?
    An hour later, Jack and I were seated in the Tremont House’s dining room, tucking into platters of beefsteak and the customary trimmings. The wine he’d ordered to accompany the meal shone like liquid rubies contained in a crystal goblet. I’d read that a taste for wine was an acquired one, but never guessed an affection for such a tart, dry beverage could develop between the first, puckery sips and the second glassful.
    Jack’s fork paused between the plate and his mouth. “So, you were summoned to Shulteis’s office again, eh?” He angled his head. “Before you curse Won Li for tattletaling, the endleaves of those books you were toting had