Will was the first to break the spell, turning, reaching for his jacket off the back of the couch. "I really should go," he told her, standing up to put on his jacket. "I need to find a prostitute."

She was certain she had heard wrong. "I'm sorry?"

He chuckled. "A witness named Lola. She was the one who was taking care of the baby and she tipped us off about Anna's apartment. I've been looking for her all afternoon. I think now that it's nighttime, she's probably emerged from her lair."

Sara stayed on the couch, thinking it was probably best to keep some distance between them so Will didn't get the wrong message. "I'll wrap up some pizza for you."

"That's okay." He went to the other couch and extracted Betty from the dog pile. He tucked her close to his chest. "Thanks for the conversation." He paused. "About what I said . . ." He paused again. "Maybe best just to forget about it, okay?"

Her mind reeled with something to say that wasn't flip or— worse—an invitation. "Of course. No problem."

He smiled at her again, then let himself out of her apartment.

Sara sat back on the couch, hissing out a breath of air, wondering what the hell had just happened. She traced back through their conversation, wondering if she had given Will a sign, an unintentional signal. Or maybe there wasn't anything there. Maybe she was reading too much into the look he gave her as they both sat on the couch. Surely, it didn't help matters that three minutes before Will had arrived, Sara was thinking lewd thoughts about her husband. Still, she went back through it again, trying to figure out what had brought them to that uncomfortable moment, or if, in fact, there had been an uncomfortable moment at all.

It wasn't until she remembered holding his hand over the bowl, cleaning out the wounds on his knuckles, that she realized that Will Trent was no longer wearing his wedding ring.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WILL WONDERED HOW MANY MEN IN THE WORLD WERE trolling for prostitutes in their cars right now. Maybe hundreds of thousands, if not millions. He glanced at Betty, thinking he was probably the only one doing it with a Chihuahua in his passenger seat.

At least he hoped so.

Will looked at his hands on the steering wheel, the Band-Aids that covered the broken skin. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten into a serious fight. It must have been when he was back at the children's home. There was a bully there who had made his life miserable. Will had taken it and taken it, and then he had snapped, and Tony Campano had ended up with his front teeth broken out like a Halloween pumpkin.

Will flexed his fingers again. Sara had tried to do her best with the Band-Aids, but there was no way to keep them from falling off. Will tried to catalogue the many times he had been to a doctor as a child. There was a scar on his body for just about each visit, and he used the marks to jog his memory, naming the foster parent or group home leader who had been courteous enough to break a bone or burn him or rip open his skin.

He lost count, or maybe he just couldn't keep a thought in his head because all he kept coming back to was the way Sara Linton had looked when he first saw her in the doorway to her apartment. He knew she had long hair, but she'd always kept it up. This time, it was down—soft curls cascading past her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt that did a very good job of showing everything she had to great advantage. She was in socks, her shoes kicked off by the door. She smelled nice, too—not like perfume, but just clean and warm and beautiful. While she was fixing his hand, it had taken everything in him not to lean down and smell her hair.

Will was reminded of a Peeping Tom he'd caught in Butts County a few years ago. The man had followed women out to the parking lot of the local shopping mall, then offered them money to smell their hair. Will could still remember the news report, the local sheriff 's deputy visibly nervous in front of the news camera. The only thing the cop could come up with to tell the reporter was, "He's got a problem. A problem with hair."

Will had a problem with Sara Linton.

He scratched Betty's chin as he waited for a red light to change. The Chihuahua had done a good job of ingratiating herself with Sara's dogs, but Will was not foolish enough to think he had a snowball's chance. No one had to tell him he wasn't the sort of man Sara Linton would go for. For one, she lived in a palace. Will had remodeled his house a few years ago, so he knew the cost of all the nice things he could not afford. Just the appliances in her kitchen had run around fifty thousand dollars, twice the amount he had spent on his whole house.

Two, she was smart. She wasn't obvious about it, but she was a doctor. You didn't go to medical school if you were stupid, or Will would've been a doctor, too. It would take Sara no time at all to figure out he was illiterate, which made him glad that he wasn't going to be spending any more time around her.

Anna was getting better. She would be out of the hospital soon. The baby was fine. There was no reason on earth for Will to ever see Sara Linton again unless he happened to be at Grady Hospital when she was on shift.

He supposed he could hope he got shot. He'd thought Amanda was going to do exactly that when she'd taken him into the stairwell this afternoon. Instead, she had merely said, "I've waited a long time for your short hairs to grow in." Not exactly the words you expect from your superior after you've beaten a man nearly senseless. Everyone was making excuses for him, everyone was covering for him, and Will was the only one who seemed to think that what he had done was wrong.

He pulled away from the light, heading into one of the seedier parts of town. He was running out of places to check for Lola, a revelation which troubled him, and not just because Amanda had told him to not bother coming into work tomorrow unless he tracked the whore down. Lola had to have known about the baby. She had certainly known about the drugs and what was going on in Anna Lindsey's penthouse apartment. Maybe she had seen something else—something she wasn't willing to trade because it might put her life in danger. Or maybe she was just one of those cold, unfeeling people who didn't care if a child was slowly dying. Word must have gotten around by now that Will was the kind of cop who beat people. Maybe Lola was afraid of him. Hell, there had been a moment in that hallway when Will was afraid of himself.

He had felt numb when he got to Sara's apartment, like his heart wasn't even beating in his chest. He was thinking of all the men who had raised their fists to him when he was a child. All the violence he had seen. All the pain he had endured. And he was just as bad as the rest of them for beating that doorman into the ground.

Part of him had told Sara Linton about the incident because he had wanted to see the disappointment in her eyes, to know with just one look that she would never approve of him. What he got instead was . . . understanding. She acknowledged that he had made a mistake, but she hadn't assumed that it defined his character. What kind of person did that? Not the kind of person Will had ever met. Not the kind of woman Will could ever understand.

Sara was right about how it was easier to do something bad the second time. Will saw it all the time at work: repeat offenders who had gotten away with it once and decided they might as well roll the dice and try it again. Maybe it was human nature to push those boundaries. A third of all DUI offenders ending up being arrested for drunk driving a second time. Over half of all the violent felons captured were already released convicts. Rapists had one of the highest recidivist rates in the prison system.