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Pia's head snapped around hard enough to give her whiplash. Fortunately, Rose's giggle camouflaged the groan of dismay she couldn't suppress. Heat rushed to her face. How
had the dratted man opened the door to the Sheriff's inner sanctum without even a squeak of the old hinges?Pia swallowed hard. She refused to act as embarrassed as she
felt. As usual, weirdness accompanied Raichand into a room. That had to be the explanation since all the oxygen seemed to dissipate leaving her breathless. Her pulse beat
harder, faster. Her senses heightened. She caught the scent of coconut that made her think of suntan oil on naked skin, heated by the summer sun.
" rose and I were just, uh, just discussing. . . ." Her voice trailed off into nothingness. When he was near, her brain went into meltdown. It always took a few seconds for her to
muster up an attitude. The kind of attitude designed to keep him at arm's length. Cool as can be, she lied, "Actually, I was just transcribing your notes."
The impediment to her peace of mind leaned against the doorframe. All six feet plus of tanned majesty. He could be the poster boy for tall, dark, and too yummy for her peace of
mind. But she'd step barefoot on a jellyfish before she let anyone, especially him, realize how she felt.
As usual, he wore ragged cut-off jeans, a white tank, and a Hawaiian shirt. Today a red one adorned with palm trees. Running shoes that looked as if they'd seen their fair share
of miles completed his ensemble. He might not know fashion, but he sure knew how to strike a pose.
"Transcribing my notes? Sounds like you were trashing me. I'm wounded." He faked a pout. Then he smiled in a way that made her insides feel as if they were in a blender.
"Wounded? I'd like to wound you." She muttered. Hoping the chill in her voice countered the heat in her face, she asked, "Don't you have somewhere to go?"
"Nope."
"Don't you have something better to do than stare?"
"Nope."
Pia glared at him. "Well, look in another direction."
Raichand met her blistering gaze and wished looking in a different direction was all it took to get the woman out of his head. The truth was that he'd thought of little besides the
prickly deputy since he'd met her. Even though he knew she was off limits, he still spent way too much time thinking about her. About kissing her. Stroking her. Getting her into
his bed. Like that was going to happen.
She wouldn't even acknowledge his existence outside this office. He'd called her at home. She'd hung up as soon as she'd heard his voice. After that, he got the answering
machine until he'd given up. He'd tried to talk with her on the street. With cold amusement gleaming from her Blue eyes, she'd whipped out her ticket book and pen.
She made him feel like a bumbling high school idiot. He'd been a Special Agent with RAW of Investigation for a decade and had handled every kind of crisis, but he couldn't
handle his attraction to Pia Dobrial. Nor could he figure out what to do about the ridiculous situation he found himself in.
Hell. He was an idiot. And it was his own damn fault. He never should have approached her that night when he'd known who she was. But the tears sparkling in her eyes had
made him ignore common sense. As a result, he found himself playacting in a farce that, unlike a movie, had no possibility of a good ending. All because of his family. First Step
mother. Then his uncle.
Damn that photograph. No matter how he'd tried, he couldn't get Chand to give up his grand plan. Chand was his favorite uncle. Most of the time. At the moment, the man was a
major irritant. He'd left Raichand with only one course of action. Make pia detest him so much that she wouldn't agree to play a part in chand's scheme. He just hadn't realized
making himself persona non grata with her would bother him so much.
"Why don't you go get another rolls while I finish your report?" pia asked in a low voice.
"Why?" raichand lowered his voice. "Am I bothering you? Making you think about me instead of the job?"
"Actually, I don't think about you at all." pia's eyes stayed on the keyboard.
"Really?" Unfortunately, he couldn't say the same. Why wouldn't she at least talk to him?
"I have more important things to do." pia started typing again.
raichand knew he should go. But he was tired of getting stonewalled. "Hey." When she looked up, his eyes locked with her cool green gaze. "You're a liar."
His challenging words incensed pia. She didn't care if he was right. Her temper soared. Her fingers stilled. "Don't call me a liar."
The phone rang, shattering the tension. pia jerked her gaze from his blue eyes. She barely heard rose's voice as the dispatcher answered the call. Why wouldn't raichand leave
her alone? She couldn't fall for him. She wouldn't. Or had that train already left the station?
"Don't call you a liar? Liar, liar. Pants on fire. What are you going to do about it?"
Though her poor heart hammered, with anger, she tried to tell herself, she couldn't think of a blessed thing to do about the situation. She told herself that his voice, pitched just
loud enough to make a woman's pulse throb, was too practiced. Maybe it worked on other women, like the rich divorcees , but it had no effect on her.
She'd lost her rose-colored glasses at the age of seven. Everyone in town knew that. He needed to learn it too. She refused to allow his low-voiced purr sweep away her
hard-won disdain. If her pulse did throb, she reassured herself, it was from anger with the man who knew just what to say to rile her.
Raichand settled a hip on the edge of her desk. Softly, he asked, "Do I haunt your thoughts as much as you haunt mine?"
In a voice, carefully dripping with boredom, she drawled, "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but not every woman in the city is obsessed with your rather unexceptional
charm."
"You're a hard woman, Pia." He grinned. "That's okay. We're evenly matched because I'm a hard man."
She snorted. "I wouldn't touch that line with a ten foot–." Her mouth snapped shut. Color blazed in her cheeks. When Raichand leaned toward her, she snapped, "Haven't you
heard of the concept of personal space?"
Lazily, he stood. "It'll be interesting to see who wins this battle of wills."
"There is no battle." Pia scowled. "Was there something else you wanted?"
"Something else I wanted? Hmmm." He swept her with a hot gaze.
When Rose giggled, Pia snapped, "Clerically, that is."
Rose whooped with laughter. Pia's face burned. Her eyes retreated to the monitor.
"Clerically, I wondered if you'd finished my report."
She stared at the words on the screen, refusing to look up. "It'll be ready by the time Mayor Chand arrives if you'll quit bothering me."
As if his gaze had been a physical touch, as tangible a connection as flesh to flesh, she knew the instant his eyes left her. She heard a soft click when the door to her uncle's
office closed behind him.
Relieved that he'd departed without further comment, Pia exhaled loudly. She felt as if she'd run the hundred meter dash in full uniform. Boots, gun, cuffs, and all.
"Whew!" Rose fanned her face with her paperback book.
Why did Raichand always make her want to forget her rules concerning the obstinate sex?
"Glad I wasn't standing between you and Raichand. Talk about hot! A body could get singed by the electricity flowing between you two."
"Don't be ridiculous," Pia protested. "The only thing between that man and me is animosity. Unless you count his enormous ego."
Rose giggled. "Yeah, I think he likes you too."
The corners of Pia's mouth turned down. "And I think you've been reading too many romance novels."
"Yeah, yeah. You're not interested in him or any man. All you want's a career." Rose sighed dramatically. "You and Ruhi are two peas in a pod. A very lonely pod, I'm afraid."
At the mention of Rose's daughter, the desire to confess all to her best friend hit Pia. If anyone knew how to handle Raichand, it was Ruhi. The girl had been born with
man-handling skills encoded in her DNA.
"I just don't understand you girls nowadays. Instead of dating men, you want to be friends with them. Or in your case, enemies. Y'all need to get interested in romance."
"I'd say you're interested enough for both of us."
"Well, someone needs to lend a hand. Otherwise, you'll both end up as old maids still talking about achieving your life goals."
Pia didn't bother asking what was wrong with being an old bachelorette. She knew Rose would tell her. Instead, she asked, "What's wrong with goals?"
"Nothing, but why do you have to plan every step of the way? Whatever happened to just enjoying what life may bring?"
"We discovered it brings nasty surprises." Pia didn't care if she sounded as if she'd sucked on a lemon or two.
"You think by setting goals and writing five-year plans, you'll eliminate life's nasty surprises?" Rose hooted.
"Enough, Rose. I want to be a good cop, and I want to get ahead. What's wrong with that? I'll tell you. Nothing. I will be respected as a member of the law enforcement
community. I worked hard to get my criminal justice degree, and I'm not going to let it go to waste."
"You can be taken seriously without being a stick in the mud. To use your own phrase. Lighten up. Life's too short. Have some fun with Raichand."
Pia ignored her and resumed typing. Fun? Ha. There was little chance of that. That would be like having fun with a stick of dynamite. How dare Raichand turn his well-practiced
charm on her, and in front of Rose too. Men like Raichand dispensed charm as easily as false promises.
Her flying fingers hit a wrong key for every right one. The computer beeped endlessly as it signaled misspellings. Pia grumbled and backspaced to correct the typos. There
was only one answer. She had to make Raichand stay away. She had to quit typing his reports. Since Uncle had volunteered her services, she couldn't tell Raichand to take a
hike. She had to make him want her to quit. Her fingers froze over the keys. The error beeps stopped.
"You know. I think you're right." Slowly she began to type, deliberately making mistakes. The machine started its crazy beeping again. "I think I do need to have some fun with
Mr. A. P. Raichand." Grinning, she inserted a few asterisks in the next word and chuckled. "You know, Rose? I've seen the light. I feel better already. Let's see how Raichand
likes this report."
Pia started to hum the Kelly Clarkson song, "Miss Independent." She smiled smugly. "After today, I bet Raichand won't even ask me to type a grocery list."
Her mood lifted at the prospect. Before the unsettling man had dropped in, everything had been going her way. After last night's storm, the first of August had dawned with
cooler temperatures and lower humidity. low humidity promised a good hair day which was a blessing for her because her naturally curly hair had developed a mind of its own
since she'd chopped off the length when she'd returned from that disastrous trip.
She planned to talk to her uncle again and demand he let her be a real deputy, not a secretary in a shapeless uniform. She wanted her share of patrols. She was tired of being
stuck with all the paperwork. If that didn't work, well then, she'd cry and beg. Sid, her mother's much older brother, was a sucker for tears. Her macho uncle might be
Dehradun's oft-elected sheriff, but he was a total marshmallow when it came to a crying niece.
A woman had to use the weapons at her disposal, she reasoned. That was female empowerment whether people on the outside looking in saw it that way or not.
The phone rang again. Three calls in less than an hour. Pia heard Rose say, "Roni, of course Red has crab beignet on the menu tonight. It's Wednesday, isn't it?"
Pia shook her head in disgust. Life was too predictable when you knew the entree offered each day of the week at Sunset Red's, the only restaurant in Dehradun open after
dark.
Protect and serve? In this county, it seemed the Sheriff's department served up information rather than protection and law enforcement.
The desire to flee her hometown welled inside her. That wasn't going to happen. But she could at least be a real deputy and take pride in her job. Uncle sid just had to let her
start doing something other than be a glorified secretary, or she was going to go completely stark, raving crazy.
"I got one question for you, honey?"
Pia hit the print button. "What's that?"
"You really don't think Raichand's cute?"
Pia checked over her shoulder to make sure the man wasn't again lounging in the doorway. "Maybe he'd be passable if he didn't always look as if he needed a shave."
"Oh, honey." Pia batted her eyes comically. "Couldn't you just imagine his five o'clock shadow abrading the tender parts of your anatomy?"
"Now I know you need a reality check. Getting your tender parts scraped by beard stubble is not appealing." Not that pia knew from experience. Her few romantic adventures
had been, well, less than adventurous. She was tempted to say sex was even more overrated than romance, but she imagined she'd only get another lecture from rose 's
version of a sex therapist. Instead, she asked, "Now what would your husband say if he heard you?"
"Oh, pish. Who cares what he'd say? Just because I've been married since the pioneers came over in covered wagons doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good-looking hunk
like raichand."
"Then you think it's all right for your husband to appreciate a good-looking woman too?" pia teased, thinking of rose's equally round husband, the town's only dentist.
"Honey, as long as that woman is me, it's perfectly all right. And, let me tell you. He does appreciate me. Every pound and every curve."
pia blushed. She'd walked in on rose and her husband one day when she'd returned early from lunch. And she didn't even want to recall where the dentist's hands had been
located. To see her best friend's parents carrying on like that had given her pause.
"Take it from me, honey. You gotta let a man chase you until you decide to catch him. Then you grab him and hold on tight."
"I don't want any man chasing me, and I certainly don't want him getting a choke hold on me. I'm like Mom. I'm perfectly happy going through life alone."
"Puh-lease. You know even less about haseena than about yourself."
What are you saying? Mom doesn't want a man in her life."
When rose made a rude sound in reply, pia protested, "She's content in her own little world. She really is."
"There's a difference in content and happy."
Pia frowned. "I meant happy. She's happy. I'm happy. We're both happy, damn it! Quit trying to confuse the issue. Mom doesn't need male companionship to make her feel
complete or to be happy. And neither do I."
Rose leveled a look that spoke volumes. Pia didn't want to talk about that any more. "So you think it's okay for you to look and appreciate, but not okay for Your husband? Isn't
that a double standard?"
"Okay. I'll let you change the subject. For now. And, yep, I do believe in the double standard when it favors women. We need every advantage we can get in the battle of the
sexes."
"Battle of the sexes? That's kind of archaic, isn't it?"
"Trust me, hon. Ain't no new millennium going to change the battle of the sexes."
Pia collected the pages from the printer. Anticipation filled her as she stuffed them into a manila envelope. "Let me tell you something, Rose." She waved the envelope. "This is
a preemptive strike against the enemy which I predict will bring a swift end to this war between the sexes."
"War? I said battle, not war."
"As far as I'm concerned, this is war. And it's a war I'm going to win."
"There you go. Turning into a stick and throwing yourself in the mud. You're getting more like your cousin with every day that passes."
"I'm not like that professional virgin."
"Professional virgin? That's a terrible thing to say. And don't try to change the subject this time. You don't know anything about men. A battle of the sexes is fun and games, not
war."
"This little muddy stick disagrees with you. This is war. I'm not about to let Raichand get the best of me. Besides, winning is lots of fun. It's one of my favorite things."
She walked to the door separating her uncle's inner sanctum from the rest of the office. Raichand was still closeted with her uncle, but it wasn't as if he actually had business
in there. He showed up at the same time every Wednesday morning since that first Wednesday when he'd happened to be here when Uncle sid had brought in a container of
cinnamon rolls.
Homemade cinnamon rolls, warm from the oven, and dripping with icing. Aunt Panchi baked three dozen of the luscious creations every Wednesday morning for her book
discussion group. She couldn't even blame Raichand. Legend had it that Uncle Sid had proposed within minutes of her serving him one of the sweet rolls, hot from the oven, with
a big pat of butter melting on top.
If Chand Mayor Of dehradun , was on his way over, she knew the men would end up playing three-handed gin the rest of the day and filling up on coffee and cinnamon
rolls. It was amazing that raichand didn't have love handles sprouting beneath that tight tank top.
She rapped on her uncle's office door then entered without waiting. The office smelled like a coffee shop with the aromas of cinnamon and strong, rich coffee perfuming the
air. Raichand stopped talking in mid-sentence. Both men looked at her. "Excuse me, Sheriff." She always made it a point to be proper when someone else was present.
"What is it, Sugar?"Sid Drummond asked.
Raichand snickered. Pia signed in exasperation.
"I meant Deputy Dobrial." An apologetic grin creased a face baked as brown as quarry tile by six decades in the Dehradun sun . "Sorry, you can't teach an old dog new tricks,
and this old dog has known you since you were in diapers. I'll just never get the hang of thinking of you as Deputy Dobrial no matter how much you scold me."
Pia laughed. "Well, at least that's honest." Her uncle would never change. And that was okay. She adored the man just the way he was.
Raichand stretched. "Looks like Peehu finished my report."
Her eyes followed his brawny, tanned arms. His shirt flapped open. He wasn't carrying, she noted. There was no room beneath the tight tank top for a shoulder holster. Her
breath caught as she watched the white ribbed tank expand with the muscles in his chest.
"Finished?" His grin told her he'd caught her looking at his assets.
She ignored any possible double meaning and silently handed him the envelope.
I don't want him. I don't.
Pia kept up the silent chant even as her pulse beat hard and heavy in a place she didn't even want to think about with him just inches away. It was impossible not to glance
again. She'd felt the crinkle of his Musclar chest against her skin when he'd held her. She wet her lips. Her fingers tingled. She wasn't attracted. She was just practicing her
observation skills.
"Thanks, Peehu."
Pia hated the assortment of nicknames he called her, but she beamed at him. "You are more than welcome." Anticipation hummed inside her. She knew she must look like a
cat that had dined on canary. She walked away. Her hand was on the doorknob when Raichand stopped her.
"Just a minute, Peehu."
Peehu again. She scowled and turned. "Yes?"
He shook the pages. "You made quite a few typos in this."
She smiled for real this time and opened her eyes wide in pretended innocence. "Really? Now that you mention it, I'm not really surprised."
"You're not?" raichand sounded puzzled by her frankness.
"No. After all, I majored in Criminal Justice. Not typing. Maybe you should get someone more skilled than I to type your reports next time."
"Ah. I think I get the picture." His grin reappeared.
Irritated that he looked so cheerful, she snapped, "Good. I'm glad you do. Finally."
Again, when she started to open the door, he stopped her. "Just another minute, Peehu."
She gritted her teeth. What kind of creative solution was needed to make him stop calling her that? She crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. "What?"
"I'm puzzled."
"I just bet you are," she muttered.
"This report is full of mistakes. Yet, the first ones you typed were perfect. Not a single error. Tell me, Peehu. How do you explain that?"
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