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with April just as she stepped out into the morning sunshine.
    “April, can I borrow your cell on the way to work? I need to call myself.”

CHAPTER 3

    “W HAT’S SO URGENT you couldn’t wait for me to come into the station?” Seth said into the cell phone after closing the door on his neighbor. He crossed his tiny carpeted living room and headed toward his bedroom.
    “They knocked over another jewelry store last night,” Devon Jones replied in a dry tone.
    Seth propped his cell between his ear and his shoulder and grabbed his note pad and a pen. “Okay, you got my attention. Go.”
    His partner gave him a quick rundown. “Owners just arrived and discovered the store had been broken into. Beat cops are questioning them now. I’m en route to the scene.”
    “Give me the address, kid. I’ll meet you there.”
    Jones remained silent.
    That might have been Seth’s fault. He still hadn’t adjusted to the idea of another partner, his third in the past five years. He was sick of teaching guys the ropes only to have them promoted before him. At least this one didn’t lap at his heels the way the previous two had. Well, until they were promoted, moved to the homicide division, and believed they were too good to associate with him.
    Breaking in a new detective was not something he wanted to do. Lately, it seemed the rookies were getting younger, or maybe just cockier. Usually, he didn’t care if he annoyed Jones by calling him a kid. Today was different; he needed his partner’s cooperation.
    “Detective Jones.” Seth made an effort to sound civil. “May I please have the address?”
    “McGivern’s on the corner of Sixty-eighth and Pacific, in a strip mall with some florist shop.”
    “The jewelry store across from April’s Flowers?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
    Seth didn’t wait for Jones to respond, he simply ended the call. He needed a quick shower. No, what he needed was to get his head on straight. Jules had been right. Mistaking oregano for pot had been a rookie mistake.
    Heading into the bathroom, he turned on the shower and stripped. Steam quickly filled his tiny bathroom, fogging up his mirror.
    He climbed beneath the water and tried to convince himself his error in judgment had been an anomaly. On the force he’d only ever made one other mistake.
    That one error nearly cost him everything. Since then, he’d spent the past five years determined to never miss a single detail on a case, often working twenty-hour shifts. He’d missed blind dates, his own surprise party, and last spring, he almost missed his daughter Theresa’s high school graduation.
    But he owed it to her and to himself to earn back the reputation her mother and her mother’s lover had nearly ruined. So he worked.
    Under the spray, Seth tried to focus on the Diamond Gang case.
    Why did the damn press have to come up with such an idiotic name in the first place?
    Diamond Gang . . . sounds like they should be covered in sparkling jewels.
    Jules.
    Her sexy body flashed in his mind, her wide green eyes and her slender body supple in all the right places. The vibrant red hair she wore down around her shoulders suited her far better than the black wig. And this morning she still smelled like strawberries. It had taken everything in his power not to press his nose against her hair when she’d stood beside his bed. Okay, so he wanted to do a lot more than smell her hair. When she’d been on her knees a myriad of other things he’d like to do with her sparked in his mind.
    Why did she have to be his neighbor?
    There’s no way he could start a casual fling with someone in his own building. Only one way that would end: badly. His daughter had been right when she’d pointed out, after his last relationship crashed and burned, he sucked at commitment. Every single woman he’d liked and had dated, hated him now.
    That decided it. He couldn’t like Jules. He refused to be attracted to her. If he