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AS HE WATCHED the seemingly endless parade of nearly naked, thoroughly sweaty female torsos gyrating wildly to electronic funk music, it occurred to Sam Maguire that small-town life wasn't exactly what he'd expected it to be. Of course, the reason for this particular parade of naked, sweaty female torsos wasn't to earn its owners a living, however dubious, which would have likely been the case for such a display in the big city. No, the reason for this particular parade of naked, sweaty torsos was more to keep its owners in shape—however dubious.

That was beside the point.

The point was that a naked, sweaty female torso was a naked, sweaty female torso, and it was a sight to be revered, whether under the strobe lights of Buster's Bootie Call in Boston, or under the Art Deco fixtures of Alice's Aerobics Attic in tiny Northaven, two hours away. So Sam would, by God, revere them. Even the ones at Alice's that hadn't quite gotten around to that in-shape thing yet. Hell, it wasn't as if the bodies at Buster's were exactly ready for their close-up. The tattoos on most of them had headed farther south than Tierra del Fuego.

Sam's reason for watching these torsos, however, wasn't much different from what his reason for watching them in the big city had been. A stakeout was a stakeout, too, whether it was in Boston or Northaven, even if the criminal element here consisted less of drug pushers and vicious pimps and more of dognappers and petty thieves. Even at that, Mrs. Pendleton's Yorkie had turned up safe and sound by nightfall just as Sam had assured the elderly woman it would, and she never received one of the animal's red beribboned little ears along with a ransom note, as Mrs. Pendleton had been so certain she would. The local thefts were no more difficult to solve than the isolated dognapping had been, since most of those were perpetrated by fresh-faced teenagers who didn't even know enough to hide their tracks, so unaccustomed were they to a life of crime.

Sam's current case was easily the ugliest he'd investigated since his self-inflicted relocation to Northaven a little over a year ago. Alice the aerobics instructor's estranged husband had been drinking too much white Zinfandel on the weekends and making threatening phone calls to her. But his crime, too, was a far cry from similar ones committed in the big city, since the worst of Don's threats had been to spend with wild abandon, using the joint MasterCard he and Alice still shared. To the tune of five hundred dollars if Alice didn't give him a second chance to make up for his indiscretion with the head cashier at his grocery store.

Nevertheless, Sam had promised Alice he would stop by both her house and the aerobics business on his daily rounds to make sure Don didn't try anything funny.

Well, anything funnier than racking up a three-figure debt on a credit card, anyway. So what if Sam lingered at the latter destination a little longer than he did the former? Alice's business was open to the public, and was therefore more easily accessible than her home. And her customer base constituted a threat to more people than just Alice herself. Any cop, urban or small town, would make sure he lingered longer in the more open—and consequently more ripe for mayhem—environment.

Especially if that was the environment that had the naked, sweaty, gyrating female torsos. Talk about your mayhem...

The women in Alice's current class didn't know Sam was watching them, since Alice had instructed him to enter through the back and observe the studio from behind the wall of two-way glass, just in case he arrived at a time when Don was indeed there trying to wreak havoc. Presumably by doing something crazy like waving around a loaded Juiceman he'd just flagrantly purchased with their credit card—and not on sale, either. But as Sam's gaze roved down the line of women and he recognized one of them as Rosie Bliss, he was in an even smaller hurry to leave.

Northaven's resident florist had her lush fall of dark red hair—hair that normally tumbled to nearly the center of her back—piled loosely atop her head, held in place by some invisible means of support. She was wearing a clingy yellow...whatever the hell you called those things women worked out in that barely covered their breasts...over clingy black...whatever the hell you called those things women worked out in that barely covered their asses. Every other inch of her was creamy, ivory—and sweaty; did he mention sweaty? And gy-rating, too?—flesh. She was even working out barefoot, unlike the other women, who were all wearing sneakers, and something about the way her toenails were painted a dark blood red made Sam want to...

Well. There was no way he could deny it. He wanted to suck on Rosie Bliss's toes until the cows came home. Then he wanted to suck on the rest of her until the cows went out again. And he'd hope like hell they never brought their bovine little selves back again.

Sam had had his first run-in with Rosie the day he'd arrived in sleepy Northaven feeling messed up and beaten down by his final case in Boston—the one that had made him look for a job in a place like sleepy North-aven. Of course, Sam had had a run-in with just about everyone in town that day a year ago this past September, including the mayor and the head of Northaven College, the town's reason for existence. Hell, practically the entire population of Northaven had turned out to greet their new Chief of Police that day—with a picnic in the park, no less.

But it had been Rosie, with that lush fall of dark red hair and those incredible green eyes and that body that leaped right off a trifold with staples, whom Sam had taken home with him that night. She'd been the one who'd joined him in his bed after dark for hours and hours of the downest, most dirtiest sex he'd ever enjoyed.

Not literally, of course, since he'd realized within moments of making Rosie's acquaintance that she was way too nice a woman for something like hours and hours of down and dirty sex, especially with a guy she'd just met. But Sam wasn't too nice for that. As evidenced by the fact that he'd gone home after meeting the nicest woman he'd ever met in his life and fantasized for hours and hours about having down and dirty sex with her.

Hey, it had been a while at that point since he'd had any sex with anyone, all right? Not that he'd had much sex since meeting Rosie, either—or any sex since meeting her...dammit—because Northaven was so overrun with damned nice women. He still had better sex with his fantasy Rosie Bliss than he'd ever had with any flesh-and-blood woman. So he had sex with his fantasy Rosie Bliss a lot.

But it was absolutely essential that he keep his distance from the flesh-and-blood Rosie Bliss. Especially the flesh part of her. The last thing he needed or wanted in his life was a nice woman. Not much in Sam's life had ever been nice. He didn't do nice. He didn't want nice. And he sure as hell didn't deserve nice. Even if there was a part of him that still craved it in the form of Rosie Bliss.

He told himself it was time to leave Alice's Aerobics Attic since, clearly, there was nothing amiss at the studio. But he couldn't quite make himself look away from Rosie. Her gaze was fixed on the part of the mirror that was in front of her, a few feet away from where Sam stood. Almost without realizing he was doing it, he moved down until he was standing right in front of her, so that it felt as if she was looking at him, instead of her reflection.

There. That was better. Maybe it wasn't him making Rosie gyrate and sweat the way she was, but there was nothing wrong with pretending it was him, right? Aside from the fact that it made him seem like a pathetic loser, he meant.

Ah, screw it. As long as nobody else found out that he, whose nickname at Boston Vice had been Ironheart, was lusting after a goody-two-shoes florist in a place so saccharine it would make Norman Rockwell gag, Sam was in the clear. He'd defy any heterosexual male not to succumb to the charms of Rosie Bliss. And even the gay ones would have lusted after her flair for flower arrangement.

The electronic funk music on the other side of the mirror segued into something slower and less frenetic, so the movement of the women became slower and less frenetic, too. Sam continued to watch Rosie as she stretched her arms up high and brought them down again in two graceful arcs, pushing them behind her back and linking them together before thrusting her chest forward. When she did that, the clingy yellow...whatever the hell you called those things women worked out in...stretched taut, defining two ample, exquisite breasts whose nipples pushed through the fabric without an ounce of inhibition. His fingers twitched involuntarily at the sight, as did another part of his anatomy that had no business twitching while he was on the cock...uh, clock. Try as he might, though, he simply could not make himself look away.

Not for the first time, he wondered why she was living in Northaven. He'd learned shortly after meeting her that she'd moved to town less than a year before he had. Even though their paths had crossed scarcely a dozen times since, usually at meetings of the Northaven Business Owners' Guild or some kind of civic function or holiday celebration, he'd spoken with her often enough to form the impression that her origins weren't as small town as her current life was. No one in North-aven seemed to know a lot about her—except that she was extremely nice to everyone and didn't have a mean bone in her incredibly luscious body. And also that she was an absolute whiz with snapdragons.

Maybe she'd been driven to Northaven for reasons similar to his own, Sam thought as he watched her arc one arm over her head and bend her entire body to the side in a position he was sure would make for interesting coupling. Of course, as far as he was concerned, when it came to Rosie, sorting the laundry would make for interesting coupling. As would sweeping out the garage. And grocery shopping. Retrieving the mail. Hosing out the garbage cans...

He was about to indulge in his favorite Rosie fantasy—the one where he hired her to do a little, uh, landscaping on his, um, enormous oak—when the front door to Alice's Aerobics Attic opened and her husband, Don, walked in. Although it was Alice's name he called out, every woman in the room turned to look at him. Sam, too—very reluctantly—tore his gaze from Rosie and turned his attention to the other man.

Don looked even worse now than he'd looked the last time Sam saw him. His green Clover Mart jacket was rumpled, and the brisk early-October wind had blown his salt-and-pepper comb-over completely off the top of his head without his even having noticed it. He seemed a lot older than his fifty-eight years, which Sam supposed could happen to a man when he'd been caught red-handed in the meat section using the big roll of oversize plastic wrap to sheathe a naked cashier. Don had insisted it was groundbreaking performance art. Alice had insisted it was grounds for performing a divorce.

Yeah, small-town life really wasn't what Sam had expected at all.

"Alice!" he heard Don yell again on the other side of the mirror. The man sounded nervous and more than a little agitated. "I've got something for you! You've been asking for it! You deserve it! And now you're gonna get it! But good!"

And with that, Don did indeed begin to wave something around. When Sam saw what it was, a cold, unpleasant sensation slithered into his belly. Because what Don was holding was a helluva lot more menacing than a not-on-sale Juiceman. And it could go off any minute. Worst of all, however, Don was standing right next to Rosie Bliss.