"Sure you are. And it's okay that you are. But it doesn't change the fact I have to do my job. Nor does it change that I would like to go with you tomorrow night."

"Good. Seven work for you?"

"Yes."

A small dollop of mustard rested over the V where her thumb met forefinger. He ran a finger over that delicate skin, intending only to remove the small drop before it became a stain. Only when he touched her, Landon realized just how much he'd wanted to touch her again.

Her skin was soft against the pad of his finger, and without even realizing how it happened, the simple gesture was suddenly fraught with meaning and urgency. The mustard was tart against his tongue as he licked it from his finger, but it was her gaze on his that skyrocketed the moment from simple to erotic in less than a heartbeat.

Lunch forgotten, he'd already decided to claim a kiss-only to realize he was too slow when her arm came around his neck, pulling him close. The lips he'd spent a sleepless night fantasizing over pressed to his, the rich memory fading against the heady reality that was Daphne.

Five.

Soft fingers threaded through his hair as even softer lips opened against his. The sudden sensual assault might have momentarily blindsided him, but Landon quickly caught up, taking the kiss from relaxed to urgent in a heartbeat. The carnal stroke of tongue against tongue, the playful nip of teeth, and a fervent need to touch her. He moved through every sensation, fierce need rising up to swamp him.

How was she so very necessary?

And how did every aspect of their kiss seem like another facet of her personality? From serious to soft to delightfully sharp-edged, Daphne Rossi was something else.

She was a good cop. He'd sensed it the morning they met-sensed it even more in the questions she asked and her overarching concern for him. There was a fierce honesty about her that suggested she was a woman who did very little bullshitting.

It was refreshing. Authentic. And added to the wry sense of humor he'd already observed, which he found oddly charming.

Whether it was her innate personality, or being raised with four brothers, or because one simply needs a sense of humor to deal with the worst side of humanity, she had a way about her that made him comfortable. And for all the air of casual ease he sought to project, he was rarely comfortable with anyone outside his family and close friends.

Few people were truly authentic. And he'd learned a long time ago to drown out the emotional noise-and the inevitable disappointment that came from trying to find it.

But honesty. Dependability. Humor. Those attributes struck a chord with him. He and his brothers had always used a solid layer of humor to deal with their pasts and push their way through obstacles, and with Daphne he felt a distinct kinship that was as familiar as it was foreign.

A kinship that morphed to desire the moment he touched her. Hell, the moment he looked at her.

He ran his hand over the silky strands of her hair, tangling his fingers in all that lush weight. Summer warmth enveloped them, but it was no match for the heat that built inside of him.

Had he ever wanted a woman this much?

Before he could dwell too long on that question, her husky voice broke the moment.

"Well this is unexpected." Humor filled her dark eyes before she pressed one last, quick kiss to his lips. "I didn't realize hot dogs were an aphrodisiac. Or that I'd be making out on a park bench over my lunch hour."

His senses still full of her, Landon wrapped a loose curl around his finger. "You're the aphrodisiac."

Something quick-a fast cloud over the moon-shaded her gaze before she picked up the discarded hot dog in her lap, the cloud vanishing. "You're not so bad yourself, Ace. And I'm looking forward to tomorrow night."

Her return to topic-and the reality he'd see her again tomorrow-was like a signal to return to lunch. The silence was comfortable and easy as the air around them filled with the shouts of people enjoying a summer afternoon in the park. Landon reached for his second hot dog. "These really are good."

"The best in Brooklyn. I keep telling Tommy he should open a store, but he says he likes his cart and his park."

"Simple pleasures."

She took a sip of her soda. "I could learn a thing or two."

"Oh, I don't know. Isn't enjoying your job half the battle? You seem to like what you do."

"I do. But I should learn to relax, too. You know, ease up on the dog-with-a-bone routine."

Her quiet admission seemed to loosen something inside of him. The tight rein he normally kept on his emotions was no match for her. And the reality was, she had churned up some emotion and lingering memories with her probing into his past the day before, and he was self-evolved enough to know it had bothered him.

Add that on to his mother's recent news-of the life she'd led before him and his brothers-and it was fair to say he wasn't the most open-minded at the moment.

He might not be the most open-minded, but he wouldn't stand in her way. "What you said. Before. I'm not asking you to not do your job."

"Aren't you?" Her gaze was gentle yet unrelenting as the question hung there between them.

"No." He hesitated, the events around his mother's Memorial Day announcement sticking once more in his gut. No matter how many times he told himself his reaction was unfair-wrong, even-emotion swamped him until those twin fires of anger and disappointment maintained their steady burn. "It's been a strange summer so far. The break-in yesterday was just a bit of icing on that."

Those dark cop eyes sharpened. "Oh?"

"A blast from my mother's past showed up around the start of summer. Mama Lou," he clarified for her. "Louisa Mills, my adoptive mother."

"Was this blast someone dangerous?"

Landon had done his own investigating on that and didn't think Gretchen Reynolds was dangerous. A spiteful old bitch maybe, but not a physical danger. "I don't think so, unless you consider Park Avenue matrons as the top of the criminal food chain."

"You'd be surprised. I'm endlessly fascinated with what people can do. For spite. For fun. Or when they're backed into a corner. A Park Avenue matron could certainly fall into any of those categories."

Landon considered. "This would check the spite box."

"And if it did, it might connect to your incident as well."

That leap stopped him, but he had to admit it was as good an idea as any other. His break-in had an odd, senseless quality to it that could easily fall into the "just for spite" camp.

"Why don't you tell me what a Park Avenue matron has to do with your mother's past?"

He hadn't talked about it since the big reveal. Landon knew his mother wanted to talk to him, but he couldn't bring himself to bring it up, so he'd opted for classic male behavior and avoided her instead. Work had given him a prime excuse, and he'd grabbed at it with both hands. He'd even avoided discussing anything with Nick and Fender. Both thought he was being a drama queen, and he wasn't interested in doing that deep dive into his past to work through it.

Funny that his life seemed determined to make him go deep diving-hell, dumpster diving-anyway.

"My mother had an affair with Park Avenue's husband about twenty-five years ago. Apparently that one still stings, no matter how much time passes."

The words were like spikes on his tongue, the disillusionment that had dogged him for the past month clearly no closer to fading than it had been the afternoon he'd learned the news.

His mother wasn't perfect. Empirically he knew that. But the emotion tied to accepting that news hadn't quite caught up with his more rational side.

She was better than accepting scraps from some man. Better than having a relationship with someone who was married with children. He spent the first ten years of his life with someone who accepted scraps-and a hell of a lot worse-and Louisa was better than that.

"No, I suspect that news didn't go down well at all."

Daphne's gentle observation interrupted the same circular argument he'd been having with himself for weeks now. It was monumentally unfair of him to demand perfection of his mother. It was even worse to equate an adult indiscretion on Louisa's part with his biological mother's drug addiction and resulting behavior.

That was calm, cool, rational logic.

And he was no closer to getting there than he was to getting out of the cycle of playing judge and jury over something that happened before Louisa even came into his life.

"Why do you think this has anything to do with what's happening now?"

"When my mother declared her intention to run for Brooklyn borough president, it must have been high-profile enough to gain the attention of Gretchen Reynolds. Hell, maybe the woman's been keeping tabs on her all along." Landon wadded up his napkin and three-pointed it toward a nearby trash can. "There was a time, especially the year Nick got drafted for the NFL, that our situation was the subject of a lot of feel-good news. The single woman who'd adopted three boys. Look what they've become, that sort of thing."

"It's highly possible," Daphne agreed, wadding up her own napkin. "With the ever-present internet, our lives are a lot more transparent than we think. Especially if someone's motivated enough to go looking."

"Mom hasn't said a lot about the threats, but the woman's been nosing around."

"I can nose back. It may piss her off, but it is a lead. A good one, actually."

While he appreciated the offer, the formality of that kind of outreach stuck weirdly in his gut. Daphne was a cop. She had access to details and information, and she could use it at any moment.

Was he okay with her digging into his past?

And did he have a choice?

Although she'd long ago accepted that her sons were grown men with lives of their own, Louisa Mills only had so much patience for being shut out of their adult lives. Confident she knew how to draw the appropriate line between interest and interference, she drew a personal line at being ignored.

And she and Landon had ignored each other long enough.

Cobblestones were bumpy against her shoes as she navigated the stretch toward his office, two large cups of coffee in her hands. She also had a small box of Stewey's brownies buried at the bottom of her large purse to sweeten the deal.

Stewey had owned the neighborhood diner long before Park Heights had become part of Brooklyn's revitalization. She and the boys had gone there regularly when they were young for Louisa's weekly reprieve from cooking. But those evenings out had given the four of them something else besides a break in routine. They signaled to the neighborhood that they were a family.

She still remembered those first months, scared out of her mind at what she was doing, yet a million percent positive it was the right thing. From the very first day she'd seen her boys-a small trio on the playground who'd run over after she'd dropped an armful of dry cleaning and promptly burst into tears-they'd been meant for each other.

She'd known it on a level she still couldn't fully explain to herself, yet understood without question.

Fender had asked her once, a few years before, why she'd picked them. Not as a wounded child but as an adult who understood the impact of taking on three children. Old eyes, she'd told him. As she'd looked at each of them, she'd seen their pasts in gazes that didn't look as if they belonged to children.

And in the looking she'd found her future.

She'd called the school later that day, asking about all of them and scheduling an appointment with child welfare. In a matter of weeks she'd fostered each of them, and over the ensuing two years had adopted them one by one. In that time and all the years since, her past had slowly faded, paling in comparison to her present. To the life she'd determinedly made for herself and her children. And then, in a matter of a few weeks, that past had returned with a vengeance, not fully done with her.

Nick and Fender had taken the news of her indiscretion with Kincade Reynolds nearly a quarter century before in stride, but Landon hadn't taken it quite so well. And where she'd accepted his initial reaction as the way he was comfortable processing the details, his continued lack of response to her had begun to strain.

No, she amended to herself. It hurt.

Patting her bag, she headed toward the block that contained Landon's office. Stewey's cracktastic brownies were one of Landon's few weaknesses, and she wasn't above exploiting that.

The events of the prior month had lingered long enough. It was time they addressed them, and found a way to move forward.

And they would move past them.

They had to.

Daphne settled behind her desk, a fresh cup of coffee in hand, and contemplated the phone. She had a lead fresher than her coffee, and a hell of a lot hotter.

So why couldn't she quite let go of Landon's birth mother as part of the mix?

Was it simply convenient? The odds of a woman who'd been out of his life for decades suddenly showing back up were slim to none. Or was curiosity a factor? Daphne had run the woman's rap sheet and while nothing had popped for many years, there was a time early on in Amber McGee's life when she'd been picked up a lot. Petty shit that didn't amount to much but hadn't gone unnoticed, either.

Gretchen Reynolds needed investigating, too, even if it was just to gauge the woman's capacity for making trouble and determine her whereabouts early Wednesday morning. Both lines needed tugging, and it was abundantly clear Landon wasn't keen on discussing either of them. And why would he?

For all her mother's haranguing, her father's flat-faced stoicism and her brothers' obsessive protecting, Daphne had a great life. Yes, she had frustrations with the people who loved her-and she knew without question she frustrated them in return-but they were hers. The Rossi family had a place in the community, carved out of years of being a part of the neighborhood, and no one whispered about them or looked for proof of their problems.

What would it be like to have none of that in your most formative years?

By the time she was ten, she knew all her neighbors, knew who she could go to in an emergency and how to wrangle her older brothers into doing pretty much whatever she wanted. She'd owned her childhood in a way she'd never appreciated or understood until this case fell squarely in her lap.

And now that she did understand? It was impossible to walk away or to leave those lines untapped.

Although she'd already searched them one by one, Daphne pulled up the files again-all nine that named minor McGee, Landon-and flipped through images on her computer.

It was like something out of Hollywood's version of drug use and addiction. Nearly every photo was taken in an old apartment on the eastern end of Park Heights. The small rooms were visibly dirty, with drug paraphernalia present in most pictures. She stilled over one where needles and an ashtray littered the end table next to the couch. A TV sat in the corner and she could just make out what looked like a nest of blankets beside the TV, against the corner of the room.

Had he slept there?

Something hard and tight settled in her chest, igniting a spark of fury she was unable to quell, despite the advanced age of the image.

Would someone who lived like that-and who'd given up the child who'd been practically discarded-see him as an opportunity once he'd made good?

On a resigned sigh, she flipped to a new program and began a search for the current whereabouts of Amber McGee.

"L! You've got a visitor!"

The summons flew across the open office, pulling Landon from the brooding feeling he hadn't managed to shake since returning from his lunch with Daphne. He was interested in her and he looked forward to seeing her again. Hell, he wanted to see her again.

But was he willing to discuss his past?

While he would bet his zombie program as a total flop against Amber McGee being the one who broke into the office, he had to see it from Daphne's perspective. She was looking at all angles, trying to identify who would go after him but leave his suitemates alone. And, if he were honest with himself, he had to acknowledge that pokering up about his birthmother was likely a big, fat, red flag to a detective trained to look for answers.

If this attraction goes anywhere, she's going to seek those answers, cop or not.

The raw, unpleasant reality of that thought twisted him up in knots. Had always twisted him up, in every relationship he'd ever had. He'd never gotten serious enough to share the truth of his first ten years, but sooner or later, that was going to change.

Like it could with Daphne Rossi.