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tough.”
    “I think I can hold my own,” John said.
    Wainwright didn’t look too sure. “While you’re here, you may as well take a look at the locks on her apartment, too. She lives upstairs.”
    “Why don’t you just move him into the storage room across the hall?” Julia said dryly.
    “Not a bad idea,” Wainwright said.
    She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding, Dad.”
    John might have smiled if he didn’t have a stake in this. But he did. On too many levels, if he wanted to be honest about it. First and foremost there was the very real possibility that Julia could be in some kind of danger from whatever wacko was sending her threatening letters. Second, he owed Benjamin Wainwright. Twenty years ago, the man had been chaplain with the NOPD. He’d gone above and beyond after John’s father was killed in the line of duty. That wasn’t the kind of thing a man forgot.
    John’s capitulation, he assured himself, didn’t have a damn thing to do with the way that skirt swept over those curvy hips of hers.
    Wainwright kissed the top of her head, then looked at John and winked conspiratorially. “Let me know what you think about those letters, will you?”
    John watched him exit, feeling as if he’d just been neatly manipulated, though he wasn’t sure by whom. As he turned back to the counter, he suddenly had the sinking feeling he wasn’t going to make it to the cabin tomorrow.

THREE
    Julia couldn’t believe her father had hired John Merrick. Of all the cops he could have turned to from the days he’d been a chaplain with the NOPD, why did it have to be John? Why couldn’t he have hired some retired cop with gray hair, a spare tire around his middle, and a wife and five kids instead of this dangerous-looking ex-cop who’d once been the object of her most forbidden teenaged fantasies?
    She tried not to think about that as she watched him prowl her shop, his cop’s eyes taking in every detail. The eighteen-year-old bad boy she’d known a lifetime ago had been replaced by a brooding man with troubled eyes and danger written all over his six-foot-plus frame. The man who stood before her now looked as if he’d earned every one of his thirty-five years—the hard way.
    He wore a black leather jacket and gray slacks. His dark brown hair looked as if it had gone quite some time without a cut, and he swept it straight back from a face that was as lean and uncompromising as his body. His eyes were the gray color of a Louisiana storm. The kind that was chock full of thunder and lightning and maybe even a tornado or two. Julia had gotten caught up in the maelstrom of those eyes a lifetime ago. And like the silly teenager she’d been, she’d felt her heart breaking when he left for Chicago without so much as a good-bye. It had been a hard lesson for a fifteen-year-old caught up in the throes of her first love.
    Picking up a book, she slid it onto the shelf behind her and tried not to be angry with her father for complicating things. Julia was no fool; she knew he was right. What didn’t sit well was the idea of him hiring John Merrick without consulting her first.
    “Last I heard, you’d run off to Chicago and became some hotshot detective,” she said.
    “Yeah, well, you got the Chicago part right.”
    An instant too late she remembered the shooting incident. Her father had told her it ended John’s career, and she felt a quick kick of guilt. “That was a stupid thing to say. I’m sorry—”
    “You don’t have to dance around the subject. It happened.” He sighed, but it was a haggard sound. “It’s over.”
    She might have believed him if she hadn’t caught the quick flash of some dark emotion in his eyes. And she wondered if it truly was over for him. If a person ever got over that kind of tragedy. Even a tough guy like John Merrick.
    She watched him cross to the nearest shelf and slide out a book. “How long have you owned this place?” he asked.
    “Two years now.”
    “You like it?”
    “Do