“I like you just fine,” he muttered, and turned for the table, shoulders stiff.
“Be still my heart.” But she grinned as she said it.
Then she took a deep breath. “I found the newspaper clipping. The one about how you were injured.”
That stopped him dead in his tracks, but he didn’t turn. His voice was muffled with distance and something else when he said, “And your answer was spaghetti?”
“My answer was to do something nice for you. I don’t get the impression you’ve had much of that lately.”
Now he turned, expression closed. “I have everything I need and enough money to buy most anything I want.”
The sentiment was her mother’s, but the look in his eye wasn’t as sure as the words. That was enough to send her forward a step. Remembering the stark newsprint that had described a hostage situation, a police shootout and a partner killed in the line of duty, she touched his arm. “Sit and eat. A meal between a man and a woman. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.”
Instead of sitting, he looked from the table to the stove to her. His stillness was almost awful in its intensity. “The last woman who cooked me an intimate meal was one of my contacts, back when I was a cop. We shouldn’t have gotten involved—it was stupid of me. Hormones, maybe, or that sense of invincibility I should’ve outgrown after a few years on the force. That last night, she fed me, took me to bed and told me she loved me. The next day, my partner and I walked into an ambush.”
Meg’s blood chilled in her veins. “She was
killed?” The clipping hadn’t mentioned another casualty, but there was death in his eyes.
“She set me up,” he said flatly, not looking away, but not seeing her, either. “She used me to feed information to the department, information her bastard boyfriend wanted us to have.” He laughed, a harsh sound that held more self-loathing than humor. “The chief didn’t want to trust her, but I pushed. ‘She’ll be useful,’ I said. ‘I can control her.’ Yeah, right. She was the one in control all along, and I was too caught up in the sex to see it.”
Meg didn’t say a thing. She was surprised to learn that sympathy and jealous anger could coexist with such force, as they battled for dominance in her chest. In her soul.
It shouldn’t matter that he’d loved the woman who had betrayed him. The betrayal explained much about him, about the deep, dark suspicion that had clouded too many of their interactions over the past week. He’d been burned, and a friend had died. No wonder he held himself aloof.
Though she hadn’t spoken, he nodded. “Yeah. I was stupid. She fed me a few real tips, enough so we bagged some low-level scumbags—street dealers and yuppie users, mostly. Disposable assets that hinted at the bigger score. That night, between the salad-in-a-bag and the meat loaf, she told me she had something bigger, something she’d only pass along if I promised to protect her, promised to get her out of the life.” He laughed, again without joy or mirth. “I told her she didn’t have to buy me, that I’d get her
out the instant she gave the word, but she insisted on helping me set up the big score. So we could start on even footing, she said.”
He fell silent then. Meg was aware of the fading warmth of the stove at her back. She wanted to touch him, to tell him he didn’t have to keep going. She’d already heard more than enough.
Instead, sensing that he hadn’t talked about it in far too long, she said, “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have known.”
“That’s not good enough,” he said harshly, then took a deep breath. “She said there was going to be a big delivery in broad daylight, near a busy intersection downtown. It was just weird enough to ring true, and of course I believed her. She said she loved me.”
It was on the tip of Meg’s tongue to ask if he’d loved her in return, but she held the words in, not sure she wanted to know either way. If he’d loved the other woman, it meant he was capable of love, or had been at one time. If he hadn’t loved her, then the betrayal had been one of trust, not emotion. But either way, the experience had changed him, and not for the better. It had left him closed off. Inaccessible. It had set him on her mother’s path, one of money over family. It would be foolish for her to go back to a place she’d already been.
Yet she found herself saying, “Tell me.”
He sent her a hooded glance, one that was made dangerous by the hint of stubble at his jawline and the awful tension that vibrated through his frame. He
said, “We put a team on the drop point and manned the surrounding areas, but we didn’t have anyone in the bank on the corner. Stupid oversight. Once the bastards spotted us—exactly where they’d been told to look, though we didn’t know it at the time—they bolted into the bank like they’d planned it. Which they had.”
He blew out a breath and spread his hands away from his sides, one empty palm up, the other holding his cane. “They took hostages and started shooting before we could get SWAT mobilized.”
He fell silent, but Meg could fill in the rest from the article she’d found in his office. A group of cops had feinted toward the front of the building while two others snuck in the back. One wound up dead, the other wounded, but the chaos had been enough for the main team to storm the place and subdue the gunmen.
He nodded as though she’d sketched the events out loud. “Jimmy was a good man. He had a wife and a kid. I hear they’re okay now, or as good as could be expected.”
“And the woman? The one who betrayed you?”
“In jail,” he said flatly. “Doesn’t matter, though. Won’t bring Jim back. Won’t fix my leg.”
Something tweaked at Meg when he said that. The way his eyes slid to hers and away, maybe, or the darkness in his voice when he spoke of his injury. But the small, unformed doubt couldn’t compete with the surge of tenderness that rose when she saw his closed, unhappy expression, the spike of some
thing hotter and almost protective that grew when she tried to imagine what it had been like. How would she feel if she’d trusted a man who not only betrayed her, but hurt—even killed—someone she cared for? Jemma, maybe, or Max, or even her father?
She’d feel guilty. Ashamed. Angry at the guy who’d set her up. At the world that let things like that happen.
Now she did touch Erik, laying her hand on his forearm, where tendons and muscles thrummed tight beneath shirt and skin. She wanted to soothe him, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but they both knew that on some level it was. He’d trusted the wrong person, and he and his partner had paid the price.
So instead, she forced a grin and said, “It’s just spaghetti, but if it’s freaking you out, we could order Chinese or something.”
Finally, the awful tension eased from his shoulders. “Yeah. Guess I really know how to bring down a room, huh?”
She squeezed his arm, too aware of the warm male flesh beneath her fingertips. “S’okay. This hasn’t exactly been a normal week.”
They stood there for a few heartbeats, caught in a moment of easy accord so unlike their usual edgy tension. Then he said, “Thanks, Doc. You’re okay.” Then he bent and kissed her on the lips—
And the easiness vanished.
He might have meant it as a casual peck, an acknowledgment that if they weren’t friends, they
weren’t precisely enemies, either. But the first moment of contact, that first rush of heat, brought her straight back to the conference room and kisses that had been nothing chaste and everything she had wanted.
She parted her lips, partly in shock, partly in invitation. He did the same, but he didn’t advance, didn’t retreat. Instead he stayed still, barely breathing.
Meg opened her eyes—not even sure when they had closed—and found him looking at her from a few inches away. He didn’t say the words, but she could see the question in his eyes. They either stopped now or they didn’t stop at all.
The heat curled around them, binding them together in an unseen net of electric attraction. But his stillness reminded her that it wasn’t an unbreakable net. They could back away, retreat from the desire and the temptation.
Nothing was settled between them, nothing sure. She wouldn’t give up her technology and he wouldn’t give up his bid. She had been raised—for a few years, at least—by a woman like him, one who put wealth before all else. In turn, Erik had been hurt, and bore wounds on the outside and inside.
But it was those wounds that called to her. Maybe it was stupid, but now that she understood more of what had happened, more of what had made him into the man she’d come to know, his moods seemed less important, his gruffness a barrier rather than an assault.
She didn’t know if she could trust him, or trust the feelings that swirled through her, stronger than she’d expected. Stronger than she wanted. But she couldn’t ignore them any more than she could refuse to dive once the plane was in the sky. It wasn’t in her nature.
When in doubt, she jumped.
She slid her hands up from his forearms to his chest, and lingered there a moment to feel the strong, steady beat of his heart, then up to link her fingers behind his neck and pull him all the way down for a kiss. A real one.
She softened her lips and opened her mouth, inviting him in, wordlessly telling him that it was okay, that this was right, that there was more than chemistry and enmity between them, though she couldn’t have said what.
Then it was her turn to pause and wait for him to meet her halfway. She knew he had his own decisions to make—whether he trusted her enough to let down his guard, whether he would make the implicit promise in becoming lovers, that he would be willing to compromise on the NPT technology.
For a moment she worried that the pull between them wouldn’t be enough. Then his lips firmed against hers, and there were no more questions.
His lips said,
Yes, I trust you this far.
His tongue touched hers, saying,
Yes, we can find a way to compromise, a way to make this work for both of us.
His arms, when they came up to band around her waist, pressing their bodies together with intimate contact, said,
Yes, this is right for me. I want this. I need this.
Or maybe the want and need came from her. From both of them. It didn’t seem to matter anymore when their tongues finally touched after what seemed far too long.
Meg slid into the kiss on a flare of heat and relief, and a tiny thread of something that felt like nerves, fear not of Erik but of the emotions that pounded in her chest and pressed at her throat and eyes until she felt wetness gather.
Don’t make this into something it’s not,
she told herself as he held her closer, kissing her and touching her waist and hips through clothing that suddenly seemed like more hindrance than covering.
He pulled away far enough to say, “Bedroom. Upstairs.”
She didn’t tell him she’d already been up there, simply turned, looped an arm around his waist, and started walking.
They’d said everything that needed to be said. Now was the time for action.
Lots of action.
It wasn’t until they were halfway up the wide, rubber-edged stairs that she realized he didn’t have his cane. It must have fallen in the kitchen—she vaguely remembered hearing a clatter over the clamor of blood and heartbeat in her ears. He leaned on her slightly with each step, seeming not to care in his haste to gain the bedroom.
Then he glanced down at her and she realized he cared a great deal when he said, “Second thoughts?”
The shadows in his eyes suggested he might be
having second thoughts of his own, and he leaned more heavily with the next step, as though trying to emphasize the gimp. She thought about stepping away, about showing him he was less crippled than he perceived, and even if he wasn’t, who the hell cared? It was just a leg, not the man.
But she knew damn well that would break the mood and leave things unfinished between them. They had been heading this way from the moment they’d met. So instead of making a point she could make another time, under other circumstances, she cocked her head and smiled. “My only second thought is whether we should wait for the bedroom, but I’m thinking the stairs would be uncomfortable.”
“No argument there.” He bent and kissed her, hard and hot, and quick enough that he was gone by the time she assembled herself to respond. Then he stepped away, took her hand and tugged her up the stairs, limping on his own two feet and not seeming to care that she saw.
They were hurrying by the time they hit the stairs, running by the time they reached the bedroom. He paused at the threshold, and she darted past him, afraid he would offer to carry her, afraid it would mean too much to her in a situation that couldn’t mean everything.
This isn’t a big deal, she told herself. It’s just spaghetti and sex.
Then he was in the bedroom with her and it seemed like so much more than that.
He used the switch just inside the door to click off
the light, leaving only the hallway illumination. She would have protested that she wanted to see him, but knew he was going for more than ambience. He wanted the privacy of darkness.
She stopped beside the bed, and he paused a few feet from the door. The familiar tension crackled in the air between them, but warmer now, less desperate. They were coming together not in a moment of mindless passion—though passion simmered beneath the surface as her heart beat up into her throat—but in accord. She respected him, needed him, wanted him, even l—liked him, and hoped he felt the same for her.
Even knowing she’d skipped a vital word in her own thoughts, she lifted a hand and beckoned him closer. “Come on. We’ve got all night.”
Chapter Twelve
Meg’s words might have been brazen, but by the time Erik crossed the bedroom and stood in front of her, she’d worked up a major case of nerves.
It was a good bet she hadn’t forgotten how to make love—it was like riding a bicycle and all that—but it had been a while for her, and longer since it had meant something. And, like it or not, this meant something.
“I don’t, um, have anything.” She gestured awkwardly. “You know, protection.”
Real smooth, Doc. Way to be a new millennium girl.