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whispered. His breath was coming hard and fast. He twisted his head around to glimpse the damage,cursing under his breath. The light switch was on the other side of the room, right next to the telephone. There was no getting to either one without either crawling across a bed of broken glass or becoming a moving target in front of the window.
    “What was it?” Lynn asked, finally shaking off the astonishment. “A bullet? Is somebody shooting at us?”
    “I don’t know. It happened too fast.” He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at her, concern knitting his brows. “Are you all right?”
    The question struck Lynn as absurd. She was flat on her back on the linoleum with the political hunk of the year sprawled on top of her. Her legs were sandwiched between his, her belly pressed to his belly. There was certainly no question of his gender; the proof was nudging her in a very sensitive spot. Sexual heat mingled with the adrenaline surging through her veins, making her feel vaguely dizzy.
    “I’ll be fine as soon as you get off me,” she said, covering her anxiety with annoyance.
    Erik eased himself off her carefully, turning to crouch beside the cupboard. Lynn pushed herself up into a sitting position with her back against the cabinet door. The only sounds that came in through the broken window were night sounds—the distant bark of a dog, someone’s television mumbling through anopen window, a car driving past in the street—no shots, no voices, no footsteps in retreat. A gray rock the size of a tennis ball lay on the floor by the refrigerator. There was an ugly dent in the refrigerator door at about head height. The impact had taken out a scab of white paint, leaving a gray spot in the center of the indentation.
    Lynn muttered a curse. “That’s just great. Now we’ve got to pay for a new refrigerator door.”
    “You could be paying for neurosurgery,” Erik said. “That had to have damn near hit you in the head.”
    An involuntary shudder skittered down Lynn’s back. “Nice neighborhood. Instead of a welcoming committee they send out stoning brigades. Charming people.”
    “I’m calling the cops,” Erik said decisively, moving in a crouch along the cupboard toward the other side of the room.
    “What for?” Lynn stood up and began dusting herself off, trying to brush away the lingering feel of his body against hers. “They’ll take one look, tell us it’s a rock, and leave.”
    Erik straightened, frowning, irked by her attitude. “We can’t let a crime go unreported.”
    Lynn said nothing. She had an aversion to men in uniforms that dated back to her days as a juvenile offender, when she’d gone through a pattern of destructivebehavior to get her father’s attention—shoplifting, skipping school, drinking … the kind of things guaranteed to raise a Notre Dame professor’s ire, if nothing else. Her experiences with law enforcement had not been happy ones, but she said nothing as Erik lifted the receiver from its cradle and punched 911. She had a feeling he wouldn’t understand, any more than her father had.
    He was a straight arrow, Senator Gunther. Even more so than she had first imagined, if his righteous anger over her insinuation about his motives was anything to go by. Upholder of laws, defender of good. He had to be the last white knight on earth. And she had to be the last woman he would want anything to do with. He just didn’t know it yet.
    “It’s a rock.”
    Erik scowled as he caught the “I told you so” look Lynn rolled his way. “We know it’s a rock, Officer Reuter. What do you intend to do about it?”
    The cop heaved a weary sigh, as if he had been asked to explain the theory of relativity in twenty words or less. He was a short, stocky man in his forties with just a little too much middle for his fitted uniform shirt. He scratched his pocket notebookback through his mop of curly red hair. “We’ll take it with us as evidence. Dust it for