Night Shield by Nora Roberts

this situation, would you tell her it was her doing?” When she didn’t answer, he nodded. “I didn’t think so. You would follow procedure. Follow it now.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Ally …” He’d known her since she was five. He tried to keep the personal separate as religiously as she. But there were times … “Have you told your father about this?”
    “I don’t want to bring him into it. Respectfully, sir, I’d prefer you didn’t discuss it with him.”
    “That’s your choice. The wrong one, but yours. I’ll agree to it if I have your word that if Overton so much as breathes within ten feet of you, you report it to me.” He cocked his head when her lips quivered. “That’s amusing?”
    “No, sir. Yes.” She let go of the cop-to-cop stand. “Jonah made nearly the same statement, Uncle Lou. I guess it’s … sweet. In a manly sort of way, of course.”
    “Always had the smartest mouth. Go on, get out of here. And get me something on these burglaries.”
    *  *  *
    Since most waitresses-in-training didn’t drive classic Corvettes, Ally was in the habit of parking two blocks away and walking the rest of the distance to Blackhawk’s.
    It gave her time to shift gears, to appreciate what spring brought to Denver. She’d always loved the city, the way the buildings, silver towers, rode into the sky. She loved seeing the mountains go from winter-white to those steely jags laced by snow and forest.
    And though she enjoyed the mountains, had spent many wonderful days in her parents’ cabin, she preferred to view them from city streets. Her city.
    Her city had scarred-booted cowboys walking down the same streets with Armani-clad executives. It was about cattle and commerce and nightlife. It was about the wild, coated with a sheen or polish butnot quite tamed.
    The East would never hold the same appeal for her.
    And when spring was in full, balmy life, when the sun beamed on the white-tipped peaks that guarded Denver, when the air was thin and bright, there was no place like it in the world.
    She stepped out of the city, and into Blackhawk’s.
    Jonah was at the bar, the far end, leaning casually, sipping what she knew was his habitual sparkling water and listening to one of his regular customers complain about his day.
    Those light and beautiful green eyes pinned her the minute she walked in, stayed steady, stayed level and gave away nothing.
    He hadn’t touched her since the night behind the club, and had said little. It was best that way, she told herself. Mix duty and lust and you end up compromising one and being burnt by the other.
    But it was frustrating to see him night after night, to remain just close enough to maintain illusions and not be able to take a complete step forward or back.
    And to want him, the way she’d never wanted anyone else.
    She shrugged out of her jacket and got to work.
    *  *  *
    It was killing him, by inches. Jonah knew what it was to want a woman, to have one stir blood and loins and spin images in the mind. It could be a kind of hunger that slowly churned in the belly, gnawing there until it was finally satisfied.
    This was a hunger, his desire for Ally. But there was nothing of the slow churning in it. This was sharp, constant and painful.
    No other woman had ever caused him pain.
    He carried the taste of her inside him. He couldn’t rid himself of it. That alone was infuriating. It gave her an advantage he’d never allowed another to have over him. The fact that she didn’t appear to know it didn’t negate the weakness.
    Where you were weak, you were vulnerable.
    He wanted the investigation over. He wanted her back in her own life, her own world, so he could regain his balance in his.
    Then he remembered the way she’d erupted against him, the way her mouth had scorched over his and her hands had fisted in his hair. And he began to worry he’d never find his feet firmly planted again.
    “Good thing we don’t have a cop around.”
    Jonah’s fingers