Flashback

already dispensed with last names in person, but he apparently felt the need for more formality on the phone. Or else he’d just wanted to be sure he had the right number. Or, perhaps, that she remembered him. Rather sweetly modest, she thought.
“Hi, Eric,” she said cheerfully.
He sounded more relaxed after that. “I have that file you wanted. I wondered if you wanted to come by and see it, or if we could meet somewhere. I can bring it, as long as it doesn’t leave my custody.”
“That would be great. I’d like to talk to you about it anyway, get your feelings on some things.” Then, guessing, she asked, “Looking for a reason to get out of the station?”
“Actually, yes,” he answered, sounding a bit sheepish. “I have a new captain, and he’s getting on my nerves.”
“New-broom syndrome?”
He chuckled. “Something like that. He’s got all kinds of new ideas, and he wants them all implemented.”
“Immediately, of course.”
“Of course.”
“How about lunch somewhere?” she suggested.
“That would be great.”
Rapport reestablished, Alex let him pick a place—somewhat removed from the station, she noticed—and they agreed to meet there in an hour. It was fifteen minutes away, so she spent the next forty-five continuing to go over his copious crime-scene and investigative notes from the murder. She wanted some clarification on a couple things.
When the room phone rang, she dropped everything and grabbed. Only G.C., Justin and a couple of the Cassandras knew where she was.
Well, and Lynn the manager, she thought wryly as she answered.
“Are we going to have a jurisdictional dispute over whose job it is to look after whom?”
Alex couldn’t help laughing at her grandfather’s officious tone. “Hi, G.C.”
“Hello, my dear,” he said, dropping back into his normal voice, although it held a note of sternness when he added, “I don’t need you to protect me, you know.”
“I know. Justin made that pretty clear.”
“Good man, that. We had a nice long talk. Settled some things.”
Alex’s warning radar clamored suddenly. “Settled what things?” She couldn’t help suspecting she’d been the topic of some of that settling.
“Some manly things,” he said. “You will allow that there are some things left in the world that are best kept between men?”
“As long as said men understand we leave them to you by choice, not necessity,” Alex retorted. “And because they’re probably too absurd for women to waste their time on.”
G.C. laughed. “That’s my ornery girl. Now, how are things progressing there?”
She hesitated for a moment before accepting the change of subject. The thought of Justin and her grandfather sitting down for a lengthy chat was unsettling to say the least. She couldn’t help thinking she’d been one of the topics, no matter how she tried to tell herself she was being too self-important.
“I’m meeting with the detective who handled the case in about an hour. He’s bringing the original file. Then I’ll hit the court records, pull names of anybody who might have had a grudge against her as a prosecutor.”
“Hmm,” G.C. murmured. “She told me once of a case involving a brutal rape, where the defendant lunged at her in open court. The bailiffs had to restrain him, and he spent the rest of the trial shackled.”
“Convicted?”
“Yes. When the verdict came in, he threatened her rather vociferously. Enough so that she mentioned it, although she refused any protection from the police. But that was her way.”
“I remember,” Alex said. In fact, if she’d had an adult female role model in her life, one to combat the unwelcome teachings of her mother, it was probably Marion Gracelyn. “She was a very courageous woman.”
“And stubborn,” G.C. said, and again there was that undertone of affection in his voice. “The word quit just wasn’t in her lexicon. Something I’m certain you can relate to.”
“I can,” Alex agreed sunnily, refusing to rise to the teasing bait. “And proud of it.”
“As well you should be, my dear.”
She was smiling when they hung up, once again thanking whatever fate had arranged for her to have such a wonderful man in her life.
She glanced at the clock, realized she needed to get moving. She restacked Eric’s papers and fastened them back into the folder he’d neatly clipped them into, using a sticky note to mark her place so she could finish with them when she got back.
She wondered if he was as tidy at home as he was with his work. She’d known people whose organized ways stretched into all areas of their lives—such as her mother—but also just as many where it didn’t. Some were methodical and detailed about their work and lived in disorder at home, and some the opposite, tidy at home but unable to work unless it was amid chaos.
She herself required a certain amount of order both places, but perfection was not on her priority list at home. She saved that for her lab work.
She realized with a little jolt that she didn’t know what category Justin fell into. She knew he was fairly organized about his work, but when they met personally it was usually when he was visiting in D.C., and you couldn’t judge such things from a hotel room. Or guest room, she added silently; they’d progressed to the point where he sometimes stayed at the farm when he was in town. He and G.C. got along famously, a fact strongly in his favor in Alex’s book.
She reminded herself he was due back in Phoenix over the weekend, and felt the usual little thrill of anticipation she always seemed to feel at the thought of seeing him again. She’d never felt like this before, and she suddenly wondered if perhaps she should stop analyzing it all and simply enjoy.
“Enjoy,” she muttered wryly as she gathered up the papers and her satchel. “What a concept.”
Eric was already there when she arrived at the small coffee shop. He was, she noted, sitting in a booth at the back of the dining room, one which, by the nature of its location, was very secluded and would have