hirty striped canopies lined a section of Julia Davis Park near the band shell. A knot of impromptu musicians sat cross-legged beneath a towering oak, beating their steady fingers against the tight skin of bongos. They were joined by several pan flutists and a small group of nomadic bus dwellers coaxing haunting strains from handmade instruments. Barefoot dancers swayed, their gauze skirts and long braids swirling to the hypnotic pulse, while white bread America watched from the sidelines looking a bit perplexed.

At the Coeur Festival, you could buy healing crystals and books on the art of seeing. Get your palm read, your life charted, and past lives interpreted. The food booths offered such organic delights as vegetarian tacos, veggie stir-fry, chili con veggie, and bean loaf with peanut sauce.

Gabrielle's booth sat between Mother Soul, the spiritual healer, and Organic Dan, master herbalist. The festival was a blend of New Age spirituality and commerce, and Gabrielle had dressed for the occasion in a white sleeveless peasant blouse, embroidered with gold sunburst and unicorns and tied beneath her breasts. The matching skirt rode low on her hips and buttoned up the front. She'd left it unbuttoned from her knees to her ankles, and she'd slipped her feet into a pair of handmade leather sandals. She'd left her hair down, and the thin gold hoops in her ears matched the ring in her navel. Her outfit reminded her a little of the short time she'd taken up belly dancing.

Her essential oils and aromatherapies were selling even better than she'd hoped. So far, her biggest sellers were her medicinal oils, with her massage oils coming in a close second. Directly across from Gabrielle's booth was a woman who did mendi, and next to her, Doug Tano, the colon hydrotherapist.

Unfortunately for Gabrielle, Doug wasn't in his booth. He was in hers, regaling her with the benefits of colonic hydrotherapy. Gabrielle prided herself on her open mind. She was enlightened. She understood and accepted other people's beliefs in different metaphysical plains. She supported unorthodox healing arts and therapies, but geez, discussing waste material was beyond her range of comfort and bordered the realm of gross.

"You should come in and get cleansed," he told her as she straightened small bottles of beauty and bath oils.

"I just don't see that I would have the time." Nor could she ever see herself making the time. As a job, she'd rank colon cleaning in the same ballpark as being a mortician. One of those jobs she supposed someone had to do but thanked her lucky karma that it wasn't her.

"You can't put off something so important," he said, kind of reminding her of a mortician, too. His voice was a bit too tranquil, his fingernails a little too polished, and his skin a lot too pale. "I'm telling you, you feel so much lighter once all those toxins are expelled."

She was going to take his word for it. "Oh, yeah?" was all she managed, then pretended great interest in her aromatherapies. "I think someone is at your booth," she said, so desperate to get rid of him she lied on purpose.

"No, they're just walking by."

Out of the corner of her eye, a brown paper sack was plopped down next to her crystal vaporizers. "I made lunch," spoke a deep voice she'd never thought she'd actually be glad to hear. "Are you hungry?"

She let her gaze travel up Joe's plain white T-shirt, past the hollow of his tan throat, to the deep furrow of his top lip. The shadow of a red-and-blue baseball cap covered the top half of his face, accentuating the carnal lines of his mouth. After her conversation with Doug, she was surprised she was hungry. "Starved" she answered and turned to the man standing beside her. "Joe, this is Doug Tano. Doug has the booth over there." She pointed across the walkway and couldn't help but notice the obvious difference in the two men. Doug was a calm soul in touch with his spiritual nature. Joe radiated raw, masculine energy and was about as calming as a nuclear blast.

Joe glanced over his shoulder, then turned his attention to Doug. "Colonic hydrotherapy? Is that you?"

"Yes. My practice is off Sixth. I aid in weight loss, detoxification of the body, improving digestion, and increasing energy levels. Hydro-therapy has a very calming effect on the body."

"Uh-huh. Don't you have to get a hose shoved up your butt?"

"Well, ahh… ahh," Doug stammered. "Shoved is an awfully strong word. We do place a very soft, malleable tube—"

"I'm going to have to stop you there, buddy," Joe interrupted and held up one hand. "I'm about to eat lunch, and I really do want to enjoy my ham and salami."

Disapproval pinched Doug's features. "Have you ever seen what processed meat does to your colon?"

"Nope," Joe answered as he dug around in the sack. "I figure the only way I'm ever going to see the inside of my colon is to shove my head up my ass. And you know what, Doug? That's just never going to happen."

Gabrielle felt her jaw drop a little. He was so rude… even for Joe… yet so effective. Doug turned and practically ran from her booth to get away from him. And although she hated to admit it, she was grateful and even a bit envious.

"Jesus, I didn't think he was ever going to leave."

"Thank you, I guess," she uttered. "He wouldn't stop talking about my colon, and I couldn't get rid of him."

"That's because he wants to see your naked tush." Joe grabbed her hand and slapped a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper into her palm. "Can't say that I blame him."

He walked past her to the back of the booth and sat in one of the two director's chairs she'd brought from home. She wasn't sure, but she thought he'd just given her a compliment.

"Is Mara going to help you out today?" he asked.

"She'll be here in just a little bit." Gabrielle looked at the sandwich in her hand. "What's this?"

"Turkey on whole wheat."

She sat in the seat next to him and glanced about. "I guess you didn't know," she said just above a whisper, "but the Coeur Festival is vegetarian."

"I thought you were lapsed."

"I am." She opened the waxed paper and gazed at a huge mound of turkey and sprouts shoved between two pieces of soft bread. Her stomach growled and her mouth watered, and she felt guilty and conspicuous, like a heretic at a born-again revival.

Joe knocked her arm with his elbow. "Go ahead. I won't tell anybody," he said as if he were Satan offering her original sin.

Gabrielle closed her eyes and sank her teeth into the sandwich. Since Joe had been uncharacteristically nice and brought her lunch, it would be impolite not to eat. She'd left her house that morning without eating breakfast, and she really was starving. So far, she just hadn't been able to work up an appetite for chili con veggie. She sighed, and her lips curved into a blissful smile. "Hungry?"

She opened her eyes. "Mmm-hmm." He stared at her from beneath the bill of his cap, watching her as he slowly chewed, then swallowed. "There's some cheesecake if you want it."

"You bought me cheesecake?" She was surprised and more than a little touched by his thoughtfulness.

He shrugged. "Yeah, sure. Why not?" "Because I didn't think you liked me." His gaze lowered to her mouth. "You're okay." He took a big bite of his sandwich, then turned his attention to the crowded park. Gabrielle grabbed two bottles of water from a small cooler next to her chair and handed one to Joe. He took it from her, and they ate in companionable silence. She was surprised she didn't feel a need to fill up the quiet with conversation. She felt comfortable sitting beside Joe, eating her turkey, not talking, and that surprised her even more.

She kicked off her sandals and crossed her legs, settling back to watch the crowd flowing past her booth. It was a real mix of everything from Benetton preppies to Birkenstock New Agers, from polyester-loving retirees, to Woodstock wanna-bes born the same year as disco fever. And for the first time since Joe had tackled her in the park not far from where they sat now, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her. Some of the other vendors were extremely bizarre looking, and she wondered if he saw her that way, too. Like Mother Soul, with her tangle of dreadlocks, nose ring, and bright robes meditating on her prayer rug. And she wondered why she should care what he thought.

Gabrielle was full halfway through the huge sandwich, so she wrapped the other half back up, then set it on top of a block of ice in her cooler. "I didn't think I'd see you today," she said, finally breaking the silence. "I thought you'd be at my store, keeping your eyes on Kevin."

"I'll go there in just a bit." He polished off the last of his sandwich and washed it down with half his water. "Kevin isn't going anywhere, but even if he does, I'll know about it."

The police were following Kevin. She didn't think they'd told her that, but she supposed she wasn't surprised. She picked at the label on her bottle and watched him out of the corner of her eye. "What are you going to do today? Finish the shelves in the storage room?" By closing time the day before, he'd cut the shelves and screwed the brackets to the wall. All he had to do was put the shelves in place. That wouldn't take long.

"I'm going to paint them first, but I should be finished by the end of the day. I need something to do tomorrow."

"What about a countertop in the back room? Kevin mentioned that he wouldn't mind seeing it replaced, and a job like that ought to last through Monday."

"Hopefully, Kevin will make his move this weekend, and I won't be there Monday."

Gabrielle's fingers stilled. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this. You still think Kevin is guilty, and I don't."

"I'd rather not talk about Kevin right now anyway." He raised the water and squirted a stream into his mouth. When he was finished he sucked a bead of water off his lower lip and said, "I have a few important questions I want to ask you."

She should have suspected he'd been nice to her because he wanted something. "What?"

"Where did you get that Barbara Eden, I Dream of Jeannie, outfit?"

She glanced downward at her little blouse and bare middle. "That's one of your important questions?"

"No, I was just curious."

Since his gaze was directed at her stomach, she couldn't tell what he was thinking. "You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that." He looked into her face, his cop's eyes carefully blank, and she still couldn't tell what he thought. "After you left the store yesterday," he continued, "what did you tell your mother and aunt about me?"

"I told them the truth." She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and watched him show his displeasure the usual way. He scowled at her.

"You told them about me being an undercover cop?"

"Yep, but they won't say anything to anyone," she assured him. "They promised, and besides, they believe fate brought us together. They don't mess with fate." She'd tried to tell Claire that Joe wasn't the dark passionate lover of her psychic vision, that he was really just a bad-tempered detective. But the more she'd explained, the more her mother had become convinced that fate had indeed played a role in Gabrielle's love life. After all, Claire had reasoned, getting tailed, tackled, and forced to play girlfriend to a macho undercover police officer like Joe just wasn't a normal event, not even in the universal course of cosmic coincidence. "Anything else you want to know?" she asked.

"Yeah. How did you know I was following you last week? And don't give me a bunch of crap about feeling my vibes."

"I don't feel vibes. What if I told you it was your black aura?" she asked, although truthfully, she hadn't noticed his aura until after he'd arrested her.

From within the shadow of his cap, his eyes narrowed, and Gabrielle decided to let him off the hook. "It was easy. You smoke. I don't know of any joggers who have a nice healthy cigarette before they set off on a run. Wheat grass, yes. A Marlboro, no."

"I'll be damned."

"The first time I noticed you, you were standing under a tree, smoke surrounding your head like a mushroom cloud."

Joe crossed his arms over his chest, and his mouth settled into a grim line. "Do me a favor, will you? If anyone asks how you detected your surveillance, stick to that black aura thing."

"Why? Don't you want the other cops to know a cigarette blew your cover?"

"Not if I can help it."

She tilted her head to one side and gave him a smile she hoped made him nervous. "Okay, I'll help you out, but you owe me."

"What do you want?"

"I don't know yet. I'll think about it and get back to you."

"My other informants always knew what they wanted."

"What did they want?"

"Usually something illegal." His eyes stared into hers as he said, "Like for me to make their criminal record disappear or look the other way while they smoked a doobie."

"You'd do that?"

"No, but you can ask. It would give me a reason to frisk you." Now it was his turn to smile. And he did. A lazy turn of his lips that made her stomach flutter. He lowered his gaze to her mouth, then let it slide right on down the front of her blouse. "Maybe even force me to strip-search you."

The breath caught in her lungs. "You wouldn't do that."

"Of course I would." His gaze slipped down the row of buttons, lingered on her navel, then lowered to her skirt and the split riding up her left thigh. "I took a solemn oath. I've a sworn duty to protect and serve and strip-search. It's my job."

The flutter in her stomach turned hot. She'd never been a good flirt, but she couldn't help asking, "And are you good at your job?"

"Very."

"You sound pretty confident."

"Let's just say I stay at it until business is taken care of."

She could feel herself melt, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside the booth. "What business?"

He leaned toward her and said in a low voice that poured across her skin and raised her tern-perature a few more degrees, "Whatever blows your hair back, honey."

She quickly stood and smoothed the crinkles in her skirt. "I have to…" She pointed to the front of her booth, confused. Her body was at war with her mind and spirit. Her physical desire was fighting for dominance over reason. Anarchy. "I'll just—" She moved to a table of massage oil and straightened a neat little row of blue bottles. She didn't want anarchy. One emotion ruling the others wasn't good. No, it was bad. Real bad. She didn't want to feel her skin tingle, her stomach flutter, and her breath catch. Not now. Not in the middle of the park. Not with him.

Several college-aged girls approached the table and asked Gabrielle questions about her oils. She answered and explained and tried to pretend she didn't feel Joe's presence as strongly as if he were touching her. She sold two bottles of jasmine and felt, rather than saw, him come to stand behind her."Do you want me to leave your cheesecake?"

She shook her head.

"I'll put it in the refrigerator at your shop."

She thought he would leave then, but he didn't. Instead, he slid one hand around her waist to her bare stomach and pulled her back against his chest. Gabrielle froze.

He turned his face into her hair and spoke next to her ear. "See that guy in the red tank top and green shorts?"

She glanced across the walkway to Mother Soul's booth. The man in question looked like a lot of the other men at the festival. Clean. Normal. "Yes."

"That's Ray Klotz. He has a pawn shop off Main. I arrested him last year for receiving and selling stolen VCRs." He spread his fingers wide over her abdomen, and his thumb brushed the knot in her blouse just below her breasts. "Ray and I go back a long way, and it might be better if he doesn't see me with you."

She tried to think past the brush of his fingers on her bare flesh but found it difficult. "Why? Do you think he knows Kevin?"

"Probably."

She turned, and without her shoes, the top of her head fit just beneath the bill of his cap. His arms slid to her back and held her so close that his nose touched hers and her breasts brushed his chest. "Are you sure he'd remember you?"

His free hand slipped up her arm to just past her elbow. "When I worked narcotics, I popped him on a drug charge. I had to shove my fingers down his throat and make him puke up the cocaine-filled condoms he'd swallowed," he said, his fingers brushing up and down her spine.

"Oh," she whispered. "That's disgusting."

"It was evidence," he spoke just above her mouth. "Couldn't let a guy get away with my evidence."

Standing so close to him, smelling his skin, the rich timbre of his voice filling her head, he sounded so reasonable, like making a guy throw up was normal. Like his hot palm on her bare skin had no effect on him. "Is he gone?"

"No."

She stared into his eyes and asked, "What are you going to do?"

Instead of answering, he took a few steps backward into the shadow of the booth, pulling her with him. He raised his gaze to her hair. "What am I going to do about what?"

"About Ray."

"He'll move on." He looked into her eyes, and his fingers stroked the small of her back. "If I kiss you, are you going to take it personal?"

"Yes. Won't you?"

"No." He shook his head, and his lips brushed across hers. "It's part of my job."

She held herself still to keep from melting into the warm, solid wall of his chest. "Kissing me is your job?"

"Yes."

"Like strip searches?"

"Uh-huh."

"Won't that draw Ray's attention to you?"

"Depends," he said against her mouth. "Are you going to moan?"

"No." His heart beat heavy against her breasts, and she placed her hands on his shoulders and felt the hard muscles beneath her palms. Her spiritual balance teetered in favor of falling headfirst into the desire robbing her of self-control and making her weak. "Are you going to moan?"

"I just might." He softly kissed her mouth, then said, "You taste good, Gabrielle Breedlove."

She had to remind herself that the man holding her within his strong embrace was as enlightened as a pet rock. He wasn't her soul's mate. He wasn't even close. But he tasted good.

His mouth opened over hers, and he slipped his tongue inside. She didn't moan, but she wanted to. Her fingers curled into T-shirt and flesh, and she held on to him. He tilted his head to one side and delved deeper into her mouth. His palm slid to her side, and he stroked her bare ribs and sunk his thumb into her navel. And just as she was about to sink into the kiss and stay there awhile, he pulled back and dropped his hands to his sides.

"Ah shit," he whispered next to her left ear.

"Joey, is that you?"

"What are you doing, Joey?" a female voice asked from somewhere behind Gabrielle.

"Looks like he's making out with a girl."

"Who?"

"I didn't know he had a girlfriend. Did you, Ma?"

"No. He never said anything to me."

Joe whispered next to Gabrielle's ear. "Just go along with whatever I say, and maybe we'll survive without them picking out china and making our wedding plans."

Gabrielle turned and looked into five pairs of brown eyes staring back at her with obvious interest. The women were surrounded by a group of smiling, giggling children, and she didn't know whether to laugh or hide.

"Who's your girlfriend, Joey?"

She glanced across her shoulder at the man by her side. Joey? Deep grooves bracketed his mouth, while a sort of weird deja vu feeling raised the hair on the back of her arms. Only this time he wasn't meeting her family. She was meeting his. If Gabrielle believed in fate, she might have thought her mother was right, that this was just too big to be cosmic coincidence. No, she didn't believe in fate, but she couldn't think of any other explanation for the freaky turns in her life since she'd met Joe.

After several prolonged seconds, Joe took a long-suffering breath and made the introductions. "Gabrielle," he began, "this is my mother, Joyce." He pointed to an older woman wearing a T-shirt with Betty Boop's head stuck on Rambo's body. Across Betty's headband were written the words Rambo Boop. "These are my sisters, Penny, Tammy, Tanya, and Debby."

"I'm here too, Uncle Joey."

"Me, too."

"And these are most of my nieces and nephews," he said, checking them off with his index finger. "Eric, Tiffany, Sara, Jeremy, Little Pete, and Christy. There are four more someplace."

"They're either at the mall or playing basketball at the church," one of the sisters explained.

Gabrielle looked at Joe, then back at his family. There were more? The group before her was overwhelming enough. "How many are there of you all?"

"I have five children," Joyce answered. "And ten grandchildren. Of course that will change when Joey marries and gives me a few more." She took a small step back and looked at the table filled with small bottles. "What are these?"

"Gabrielle makes some sort of oils," he answered.

"I make essential oils and aromatherapies," she corrected. "I sell them in my shop."

"Where's your shop?"

"You wouldn't be able to find it," Joe answered before she could open her mouth, as if he feared what she might say.

One of the sisters picked up a bottle of ginger and cedarwood. "Are these aphrodisiacs?"

Gabrielle smiled. It was time she helped Detective Shanahan's karma pay him a visit. "A few of my massage oils have the chemical characteristics of aphrodisiacs. The one you have in your hand drives Joe wild." She wrapped her arm around his waist and snuggled close. She was definitely going to enjoy watching him squirm for a change. "Isn't that right… sweet cheeks?"

His gaze narrowed, and her smile brightened.

The sister set the bottle back down and winked at Joe. "How long have you two known each other?"

"A few days," he said, giving the back of her hair a slight tug, which she supposed was meant to remind her to let him do the talking.

The sisters glanced at each other. "It looked like more than a few days to me. That was a serious kiss. Did it look like a serious kiss to you?"

All the sisters nodded to each other. "It looked like he was trying to eat her whole. I'd say that was a kiss a man gives after three weeks. Definitely more than a few days."

Gabrielle laid her head against Joe's and confided, "Well, we may have known each other in a previous life."

The women in his family just stared.

"She's kidding you," he assured them.

"Oh."

"When you were over at the house the other day," his mother began, "you didn't mention a girlfriend. You never said anything."

"Gabrielle is just a friend," Joe informed his family. He gave her hair another slight tug. "Isn't that right?"

She leaned back, purposely gave him a blank look, then said, "Oh! Oh, yeah. That's right."

His brows lowered, and he warned the women in front of him, "Don't get ideas."

"Ideas about what?" one of the sisters asked, her eyes wide and innocent.

"About me getting married anytime soon."

"You're thirty-five."

"At least he likes girls. We used to worry that he was going to turn out gay."

"He used to put on Mom's red heels and pretend he was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz."

"Remember when he skipped into the wall and had to have stitches in his forehead."

"That was hysterical."

"Jesus, I was five," he gritted through his teeth. "And you girls made me dress up like Dorothy."

"He loved it."

"Girls, you're embarrassing your brother," Joyce admonished.

Gabrielle removed her arm from around Joe's waist and hung her wrist over his shoulder. Beneath his tan skin, his cheeks were suspiciously red, and she tried not to laugh. "And now that you're no longer a cross-dresser in red heels, you're a good catch?"

"And now that he isn't getting shot at anymore," a sister added.

"He's a great guy."

"Loves children."

"And pets."

"He's really good to his bird."

"He's pretty handy with tools."

As if so much praise could not go unpunished, one sister turned to the others and shook her head. "No he's not. Remember when he took apart my Paula Pitter Pat to see what made her walk?"

"That's right. He never could get that one leg back on. She'd just fall on her side and wiggle."

"Yeah, Paula couldn't pitter-pat after that."

"Well," a sister said above the rest, reminding them all they were supposed to be selling Joe's better qualifications, "he does his own wash."

"That's right, and he doesn't turn his socks pink anymore."

"He makes decent money."

"And he—"

"I have all my teeth," Joe interrupted, grinding out the words. "I don't have hair on my back, and I can still get a hard-on."

"Joseph Andrew Shanahan," his mother gasped and covered the ears of the closest child.

"Don't you women have someone else to bother?" he asked.

"We better go. We've made him cranky." As if the sisters didn't want to jinx a good thing, they quickly herded their children and said their good-byes practically on top of each other.

"It was nice to meet all of you," Gabrielle told them just before they moved deeper into the park.

"Have Joe bring you to dinner sometime next week," Joyce got in before she too walked away.

"What was that about?" he asked. "Were you getting even with me for yesterday?"

She dropped her hand from his shoulder and rocked back on her heels. "Oh, just a little bit."

"How does it feel?"

"I hate to admit it, but it feels really good, Joe. In fact, I never thought revenge could actually feel this good."

"Well, enjoy it while it lasts." Now it was his turn to smile. "Paybacks are a bitch."