Dare to Love Again (The Heart of San Francisco Book #2): A Novel by Julie Lessman Read Free Book Online Page A

Italian at the end of a hard day.” Her lips squirmed over the rim of her cup. “Or the beginning . . .”
    “Only because I have your dirty work to do,” he muttered, making his way to the door.
    “Ah-ah-ah . . .” Miss Penny lifted her chin, brows raised in expectation. “It’s not my ‘dirty work,’ Mr. Barone, it’s that of a grouchy detective who can’t hold his temper.” She tapped a finger to her cheek. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
    A smile twitched at the edge of his mouth, but he refused to give sway. Lips clamped in his usual frown, he returned to press a kiss to her head, the scent of lavender from her hair rinse reminding him just how grateful he was for Penelope Peel in his life.
    “Could you bend down, please?” she requested, and he huffed out a loud breath, squatting before the woman who was as much a grandmother as his own. She patted his cheek, a blue-veined hand caressing him with the same affection glowing in her face. “Be nice,” she said softly, “she’s not an ogre like you, you know.”
    “Ha!” He rose and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Not to you, maybe.”
    “Or you either, Nicky, if you utilize some of that boyish charm you exude with me and the girls. You’d do well to keep in mind what our president says. ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ ”
    A big stick. His lips quirked. Yeah, she’d probably whack him with it. “Yes, ma’am,” he said to appease the smiling imp that watched him with a gleam of pride in her eyes. “And speaking of sticks . . .” He reached for the new pointer on the counter, the one he’d purchased at the Emporium over the weekend, almost afraid to give it to Miss McClare for fear of what she might do with it. He aimed it at Miss Penny with the first crook of a smile since she’d walked into the room. “So help me, Mrs. Peel, if that da—”
    A silver brow shot up.
    “— woman . . . wallops me with this one, you are footing the bill when I snap it in two, is that clear?” He snatched his Homburg from one of the coat hooks and angled it on his head.
    “I guarantee you, Nicky, if you smile at her like you smile at me, you won’t have to worry about her breaking anything but your heart.”
    “Humph.” The idea of falling for a spoiled debutante was as appealing as getting bludgeoned with a stick. “No, thank you. I’d rather tangle with the sewer rats on the Barbary Coast than a rich da—”
    The brow was up before he could even finish the word, and his lips ground tight. “Woman,” he bit out, making a break for the door. “Although piranha might be a better word. With any luck, she’ll still be home in her feather bed, dreaming of money.”
    “Hate to break it to you, Detective, but she’s there—saw her classroom light on from my bedroom window. She’s a hard worker, our Miss McClare. Mind you, Nicholas, I expect a good report from the principal,” she called when he flailed a hand in the air on his way out.
    “She’s not ‘our Miss McClare,’ ” he muttered down the weed-littered steps, popping animal crackers to cushion his stomach for another encounter with the lady and her stick. What the devil was a rich dame doing up this early on the Barbary Coast anyway, teacher or no? Or at least on the edge of it, on the southeast corner of Telegraph Hill, where a large contingent of the Irish had settled along with Mrs. Penelope Peel and her family. He noted the two straggly boxwoods along the short three-foot walk to the street and made a mental note to trim and pull weeds in front of Miss Penny’s three-story Victorian.
    His jaw tightened. The same Victorian next to a larger one that now housed the Hand of Hope School. Unlike Miss Penny’s tired-looking Gothic Revival badly in need of a fresh coat of gray paint, the Hand of Hope School had received a complete sprucing up—from the brand-new steeply pitched roof to the freshly painted scrollwork and pointed arched windows with decorative