id you do it on purpose?" McCord asked her when they were in his car on the way to Jason Solomon's apartment on West Broadway in SoHo.

"Roswell and his attorney were entitled to know what information Mrs. Manning gave us in her first statement about the accident. You saw how he was dressed. I'll bet he can't afford to repair his car, and I'm sure it was badly damaged from the accident. Shrader and I saw where the accident happened, and I drove the route myself. It's a blind curve, and she was virtually stopped in the road. The miracle is that he didn't go over the embankment with her. Besides," Sam finished with a shrug, "I'm sure Mrs. Manning's insurance will cover whatever claims Roswell files."

McCord shot her a puzzled glance. "Did you think my question was some sort of criticism?"

That's exactly what Sam had thought. She looked at him in surprise. "No, not at all. Why?"

"I don't know. I just get the feeling you're…" McCord started to say "pissed off at me"; then he quickly squelched the absurd impulse. There was no way he was going to let her think it mattered a damn to him if she was pissed off at him. And the truth was, it didn't matter to him, because he would never allow it to matter.

Littleton's jaunty wit amused him, her mind fascinated him, and her elegant, fine-boned face and soft mouth were pleasing to his eye. Each of those assets interested him on an impersonal, almost intellectual level, but combined, they created a package that, on another level entirely, he found to be disconcertingly desirable. Even so, he was much too wise, too jaded, and too experienced to ever let a woman like that discover that she could get under his skin—most particularly at work.

She'd chosen a career in law enforcement; that meant she had to carry her own weight, deal with her own problems, work her own leads, and open her own doors. He knew how to do his job; she needed to learn how todo hers. She was his partner—temporarily—but she was not his equal.

He knew she'd taken his question about Roswell as a criticism, but that was her problem to deal with, not his. He was also certain she was upset with him about something, but even if he felt some inappropriate impulse to clear the air with her, he also knew it would be a total waste of time. Sam Littleton was a beautiful woman who would try to play women's games. That meant that if he asked her if she was upset with him about something, she would do what women all do at such times: She would deny that anything was wrong, then continue acting as if something was wrong, in hopes that he would do what men always do at such times—beg for an explanation, agonize over the answer, ask for hints, and then agonize a little more. Unfortunately for her, when it came to those kinds of games between the sexes, Sam Littleton wasn't his equal there, either. He'd already played them all, and they weren't a challenge anymore; they were predictable and boring. They were also dangerous and out of place at work.

There was a parking spot very close to Solomon's building, and he pulled into it, his attention on parking the car.

Beside him, Littleton had noticed that he hadn't finished the sentence he'd started and she courteously repeated it for him, making him feel as if she thought he was one hundred years old and forgetful. "You get the feeling I'm what?"

He glanced at her heavily lashed brown eyes and noticed for the first time the flecks of gold in them. "I get the feeling you're pissed off at me about something," he said, and then could not believe he'd said it! Disgusted with himself, he waited for the inevitable denial.

"I am," she said quietly.

"Really?" He was so shocked that she'd admitted it, and without any rancor, that he stared at her in silence.

After a moment, she smiled a little and gave him another helpful conversational nudge. "Would you like me to tell you why?"

A grin tugged at his mouth. "Let's hear it."

"I'm very aware that I'm a neophyte, and that I'm extremely lucky to be working on this case with you. I didn't really expect to be impressed with you that first day, but I was. Besides being highly organized," she said with a quick smile, "you struck me as a leader who actually deserves to be one. Not only that, but I honestly thought you were going to turn out to be one of those rare leaders who is also a team player."

McCord would have been more flattered by her remarks if he hadn't instantly realized that she was deliberately inflating his ego and pumping up his pride because she wanted to be sure he hit the ground really hard when she punctured them. She was really quite skilled at this game, he decided sardonically. "And now, for some reason, you realize I'm a complete jerk?"

"Not at all," she said, her gaze direct and disconcertingly honest. "But you're a guy who plays guy games, just like all the other guys try to play with me. And I'm just a woman who unfairly expected you to be bigger and better than that."

"Just what the hell did I do to drop so far in your estimation?"

"You knew Valente was with Leigh Manning the night we told her we'd found her husband dead, but you didn't tell me. That was an important piece of information, but you withheld it and let me stumble on it by accident the next day."

"I wanted you to discover it yourself."

"Why?" she said. "So you could be right and I could be misguided and naïve about Leigh Manning for an extra twenty-four hours?"

"I wanted you to discover for yourself that you had been misguided and naïve."

"Really?" she said flatly. "Does that strike you as an effective leadership technique on an important homicide investigation? Would you have done that to Shrader? "

"No," he said shortly.

"Would you have done it to Womack?"

He shook his head.

"Then I can only assume you did it to me because I'm a girl and you wanted to 'teach me a lesson' in order to 'keep me in my place.' "

He looked at her so long that Sam began to think he wasn't going to answer. When he did answer, she was speechless. "I did it to you because I've never seen a more promising detective than you are. You have more talent, raw intuition, and"—he hesitated, searching for the right word, and came up with one that seemed unsuited to the discussion—"and more heart than I've ever encountered. I wanted you to learn a hard, but painless lesson, about letting yourself get emotionally entrapped by anyone you're investigating."

He paused and then said, "However, that doesn't change the fact that you are right, and I was wrong, in the way I went about it. I would never have done that to another male detective. I would have told him when we left the building that night that he'd just witnessed a convincing act by a woman whose lover was hiding in the next room."

She looked at him in surprised admiration as if he were some kind of hero for admitting he was wrong, and to McCord's displeasure, he discovered he rather liked having her look at him that way. "I apologize," he said almost curtly. "It won't happen again."

"Thank you," she said simply; then she flashed him a sudden, embarrassed smile. "Actually, I think I may have made too much out of it. I didn't expect you to be so fair and reasonable."

He laughed as he reached for the handle on the car door. "Accept the apology, Sam, and don't backtrack. You won fair and square."

He got out of the car and so did she. He was so pleased with the outcome of the discussion that he didn't realize he'd called her Sam until they were walking down the sidewalk side by side. Even so, that didn't mean anything, he told himself. Everything was fine now; everything was exactly as it had been. Nothing had changed in those few minutes of honest conversation. They were detective partners, nothing more.

When they arrived at Solomon's building, he reached around her from behind and politely pushed the heavy door open for her.