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“Iamsorry,” I said. “I’ve become so conditioned to acting like a tough guy that I didn’t know when to turn it off. And let’s just say that in the years since my divorce, I haven’t exactly specialized in successful relationships.”

I paused and took another sip of wine. “You were just doing your job.”

“Not as artfully as I might’ve wished,” Cantor said.

“I wasn’t sure you’d invite me in.”

“Then you’re never going to make detective, Ms. Wolf, are you?”

We both laughed then. It felt good. But then it had been a good night, ever since Chase Charles shocked the world and probably himself most of all by coming off the bench to complete three straight passes after Billy McGee got hurt, the last one a sweet throw to Calvin Robeson in the back of the end zone that put the Wolves back in the playoffs.

“I’m still sort of on probation with my bosses,” Cantor said. “They don’t like that kind of publicity. Meaning the kind they got because of those pictures of us.”

I grinned. “I’m still on probation with the other owners. Who absolutelyhatethe kind of publicity I’ve been giving them.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“You sure?”

The music had stopped. I noticed that both our glasses were empty. Somehow Cantor had covered the distance between us on the sofa. I might not have been much of a detective in his eyes.

But I had picked up on that.

“You sure about this?” he said now.

“This?”

“Us.”

“We have a saying in the Wolf family that I might not have mentioned to you before.”

“And what might that be?”

“Kiss or be kissed.”

“I’m almost certain it was something else,” Ben Cantor said.

“Whatever.”

One Hundred Five

I WAS DRESSED ONLYin an oversize SFPD sweatshirt that Ben had given me to wear when I stepped outside the next morning to pick up the copy of theSan Francisco Tribunethat had been delivered to his front door.

As I was reaching down to pick it up, I realized I wasn’t alone in front of Ben Cantor’s house.

Standing on his front walk were two photographers, a man and a woman, the man telling me to smile the way Seth Dowd had that day after I knocked my brother Jack into the water.

I should have slammed the door and gone right back inside. But I was through being shamed by people like this for living my life.

“Do I even have to ask who you two are with?”

The man didn’t answer, just gave a jerk to his head. I looked past him and across the street to the spot where Jack Wolf was leaning out the window of his cherished Aston Martin, the one that made him feel like James Bond.

Jack waved at me.

I surprised everybody then, maybe even myself, by brushing past the photographers, making them get out of my way, and walking straight for my brother’s car.

Feeling like a tough guy again. The truth was, sometimes it wasn’t so bad.