Bear Claw Conspiracy by Jessica Andersen

all that long, but I’ve never seen you do the verbal duck-and-weave like this before. That tells me there’s something there…or could be.”
    “No.” Gigi shook her head. “I’m sorry, but no. The timing is…well, it’s wrong. That’s all.”
    “You’re the one who pointed out that moving back to Denver wasn’t the same as taking a trip to Mars.”
    “It’s not the logistics, it’s…” Everything. She made another note, caught herself looking at the shiny name tag again. “You know how I’ve told you about how my family lives life full blast? Well, the same thing goes in the relationship department. It’s all or nothing. Consuming. The emotions…there’s no room left for anything else except the emotions. And when it crashes, the debris field goes on for miles.” She couldn’t risk something like that. Not when she was so close to nailing a slot in the accelerated program.
    Alyssa narrowed her eyes. “Who was he?”
    “What are you, an analyst or something?” But Gigi lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.” She could barely picture him now, in fact. All she knew was that for one glorious, tumultuous summer during college, he had been her whole universe. And when he left, she had crashed hard, nearly washing out of her senior year in the process. She had graduated, but had been the only one of her four sisters to miss getting summa cum laude honors. “What matters is that I let everything else around me take a backseat to a guy, and I can’t afford to do that right now.”
    Maybe not ever. Miserable wasn’t a good color on her.
    “I think first love is supposed to be awful like that,” Alyssa pointed out. “You’re all grown up now. It’ll feel different.”
    “Yeah. It’s worse. After Matt kissed me—” She broke off.
    “Hel-lo. He kissed you?” Alyssa’s feet thumped to the floor. “Was this before or after he carried you out of a burning building?”
    Gigi pressed a gloved hand to her lab-coat-covered stomach in a gesture that did zilch to settle the jitters. “After. I dreamed about him last night.”
    What was it about him? He wasn’t anything like the men she usually gravitated toward. Opposites might attract, her grandmother liked to say, but they don’t stick for the long haul. Was this some sort of belated teenaged rebellion on the part of her subconscious? Had her hormones latched on to him because, like her job choices, he went against the grain? She didn’t have a clue.
    All she knew was that even though he had done his Ranger Surly routine last night, the thought of him still sent hot and cold shivers racing through her body. And that, more than anything, warned her that there wasn’t any sort of compromise to be had. She couldn’t get involved with him partway, couldn’t have the sort of “just having fun” interlude that had once been as natural to her as breathing.
    “I can’t go there,” she said, more to herself than to Alyssa. “I’m on the verge of my big break. I need to concentrate on that. Besides, even if I were inclined to get involved with someone right now—which I’m not—I need someone who respects my career choices. Which he doesn’t. He made that perfectly clear last night.”
    “About that—” Alyssa began, but the ring of the lab’s landline interrupted her. She checked the display, and her expression softened as she answered, “Hello, McDermott, Homicide. What’s the word?” She listened for a second before her expression shifted. “Really? Wow. Okay. Come on down.”
    Gigi went on alert. “What’s going on?”
    “The P.D. is forming a new task force, and I’ve been officially asked to release you to them for the time being. You and your new partner will both be deputized for the duration.”
    The words banged around in Gigi’s head for a moment, refusing to compute. She was thrilled about being tapped for the task force, but… “What do you mean, deputized? And what new partner? I ride