Oh, God, what had she done? Though he was no longer touching her, his breathing was still clearly irregular. She could see his chest rising and falling as he tried to get it under control. The sensuous, seductive curve that had been his mouth just after he’d stopped kissing her had changed into something grim as reality started to sink in. His eyes bored into hers.
“Did you kiss me just to get your hands on my damned gun?”
He was quick. Well, she saw no point in lying about it. She put up her chin. “Yes.”
He didn’t swear, not out loud, but the look in his eyes did it for him. “They teach you that trick in the police academy?”
She shook her head. “I came up with it all on my own.”
“Somebody ought to add it to the training manual.” His tone had bite. “Making it work requires getting a little more hands-on than some officers might like, but it’s damned effective.”
“Glad you approve.”
His eyes narrowed. “Like I said, we both know you’re not going to shoot me.”
She smiled, just to rub it in. “I’ve totally got the drop on you. I could.”
His hands lowered, and he folded his arms over his chest. “You won’t,” he said firmly, confirming the silent message conveyed by his body language.
“But I could,” she insisted. “You’ve got to admit it. You’re right, to an extent: I wouldn’t shoot to kill, but I could wound you, maybe hit you in the leg, incapacitate you. Then I could grab the cell phone out of your backpack and call for help.”
“You might find yourself shit out of luck. Signal’s iffy out here.” His voice was sardonic.
“I might be willing to take my chances.”
“You don’t even know where we are.”
“Southwest of the abandoned Duck Tours place. About two, two and a half miles in.”
He looked her over for a moment in silence. “The way you were kissing me was damned hot. You weren’t faking it. Just like you weren’t faking it in the car earlier.”
Was denying it even possible? They both knew how intense things had been. The aftermath still hung in the air between them, as combustible as gas fumes, as tangible as the sound of the rain beating down on the roof. “I guess we’ll never know, will we? Anyway, just because you turn me on doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you. Or arrest you.”
Arresting him was, actually, something she had thought about when she’d been plotting to take his gun. But given everything she now knew, which was nowhere near the whole story but, still, enough to fill her with doubts about the integrity of the local justice system, having him hauled off to jail was starting to seem like a really bad idea.
“You couldn’t have waited ten minutes to go for the gun? We both could have gotten off by then.”
She frowned at him. “Now that’s just crude. Also, overly optimistic. It takes me way longer than ten minutes.”
The glittering desire was gone from his eyes. Now they simply looked hard. “Cut the crap, Caroline: what do you want?”
That was the question she had been asking herself for some good little while now. Finally, just before she’d hatched her kiss-and-steal plan, the answer had hit her like a brick to the head: what she wanted was more. More than just this single insane night with him. She wanted a chance to get to know the man she’d been wildly attracted to from the moment she had first laid eyes on him at age seventeen, the man who had been racked with grief at his family’s funeral, the man who was risking his life to save Holly and Ant. The good, solid cop gone ostensibly bad. The hot, sexy guy who once had been a friend. There was something between them; a potent chemistry, the tiny embryonic seeds of an attraction that just might turn out to be something special. Forget a one-and-done, which was clearly what had been running through his mind. She wanted to let those seeds develop. She wanted to explore this thing between them. She wanted to have sex with him—boy, did she want to have sex with him!—but not as a prelude to parting forever. She wanted
them
to have a chance.
Which, since he was going to wind up shot dead, imprisoned for years, or on the run for the rest of his life, wasn’t looking likely.
Unless, somehow, they could come up with a way to neutralize the big bad that had catapulted him into this situation.
“Did it ever occur to you that you don’t actually have to tell me anything for me to be in danger?” she said. “All it takes is for someone to
think
you told me. And if what you know is really that explosive, I’m guessing that whoever it endangers won’t want to take the chance that you kept your mouth shut.” At the arrested expression on his face, Caroline pushed the point home. “I’m not safe no matter what you do. So why don’t you just tell me the whole thing and let us try to figure it out together?”
The look he gave her was stark with sudden realization as the truth of her logic clobbered him over the head. She could almost see him thinking through the possibility.
“Here.” She reversed the gun abruptly, and offered it to him grip first. “Take it.”
His brows snapped together. Still, he wasn’t slow to retrieve his gun. Taking it from her, he checked the safety, which she hadn’t bothered to turn off, although she’d taken care to keep that fact hidden from him until now. Then, weapon still in hand, frowning as though he was in two minds about whether or not he might want to turn it on her, he looked a hard question at her.
“I was making a point,” she explained.
“By taking my gun and holding it on me? Hell of a dangerous way to make a point,” he said, tight-lipped, and finally restored the gun to its holster. Moving back a step, he rested his hips against the wide plank that served as a de facto kitchen counter, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked her up and down. The uncertain glow of the lantern light cast his shadow back against the rough board wall behind him and made him look big and tough and competent, like the seasoned cop he was. “Could have gone real wrong.”
She made an impatient sound. “Don’t you want to know what the point is?”
“Whether I do or not, I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” he responded drily. She was definitely getting some antagonistic vibes from him.
“You can trust me,” she said. “I’m on your side.
That’s
the point.”
“Kissing me and coming on to me like a house on fire before stealing my gun definitely convinced me of that.”
“Oh my God, you’re mad because I kissed you!”
“If I’m mad, it’s because you kissed me
as a way to steal my damned gun
.”
“I gave it back!” Straightening away from the table, she glared at him. “And kissing you was the only way I could think of to get my hands on it. Anyway, you kissed me first. In the car.”
“Not with any ulterior motive.”
“Just because you felt like it, hmm?”
“Because you’re sexy as hell and you turn me on, okay? There, at least I’m honest.”
“Like I’m not?” At the look he gave her, she made an impatient sound and added, “You are deliberately missing the point. I
didn’t
shoot you, or arrest you, when I could have. That’s because
you can trust me
. I believe in you. I want to help you solve this case. The two of us working together to pinpoint what’s going on with dirty cops and suspicious murders and whatever else is involved has got to be a lot more effective than you doing whatever it is you’re doing alone.”
He gave her a derisive look. “I’m sure you think so.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m a detective and you’re not. So stay out of it,
pischouette
.”
She knew enough Creole to translate that roughly as “little girl.”
“Oh, wow. And how have your finely honed skills been working for you, Detective? About got the case all wrapped up?”
“That’s not anything you need to worry about.”
“I guess not. I mean, seeing as how I’m safe at home in my bed and all.”
“You’ll be safe at home in your bed again as soon as I can get you there, believe me. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.”
She bristled. “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you? Despite the fact that I’m in danger whether you do or not.”
“Nope.” He pushed away from the counter and came toward her, not stopping until he was close enough so she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. She suspected that he was doing it deliberately, to remind her of how much physically larger and stronger he was, as a kind of payback for her threatening him with his own gun, which no cop liked, ever, and which Reed in particular, under these circumstances, must have found particularly galling. She stood her ground—well, the table was at her back so she didn’t have a choice—but she met his hard gaze with a level one of her own, while at the same time doing her best to ignore her body’s instinctive response to his renewed proximity. It was as if those kisses had flipped a switch inside her, and now she was physically aware of him in a way that she hadn’t been before.
“I should have forced it out of you at gunpoint,” she said with genuine chagrin, because, duh, she should have.
“Wouldn’t have worked.” The beginnings of a grim smile just touched his mouth. “You know, I’m not feeling the gratitude: I’m doing my best to protect you here.”
“Forget gratitude. I don’t want to be protected.”
He gave a grunt of derision. “You heard how your father responded when I threatened to tell you everything I know, right? That’s because what I know is dangerous. What I know is why Holly and Ant and I are in the spot we’re in. What I know could get you killed. Even if somebody did suspect that I’ve told you everything, the fact remains that I haven’t. You don’t know squat, which means you don’t even know where to start to look, which means that when you get back home you won’t start poking around in things that can get you killed because you’ll have no idea what you’re looking for. I admit, you gave me a turn there for a minute when you suggested that whoever this is might kill you just because they think there’s a possibility that I told you something. But the more I think about it, the more I think we can count on the fact that you being the superintendent’s daughter will keep you safe unless you make some kind of overt move that says you’re a danger to them. The kind of overt move you can’t make if you don’t know anything.”
She scowled at him. “So when you let me go, when you and Holly and Ant are either dead or in jail or on the run, I’m just supposed to go back to work and resume my nonrelationship with my father and get on with my life like none of this ever happened?”
“Yep.”
“No. Not going to happen. I’ll start by looking at the last case you were working on, and take it from there. What do you want to bet I can figure it out?”
“Damn it, Caroline, let it go.”
“Make me. Oh, wait, you can’t.”
That felt like checkmate. He gave her an exasperated look. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re a total pain in the ass?”
“You think you’re not?”
“There’s a difference.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re a beautiful total pain in the ass,” he said.
Because that last comment was so unexpected, she wound up meeting his eyes for a surprised instant, but otherwise didn’t react at all as he stepped closer and slid a hand around the back of her head.
Well, maybe she had a split second there when she realized where he was going with that and she sucked in air and her eyes went wide.
“I’m done arguing about it,” he told her, so close now that his breath feathered her lips.
Before she could coordinate her brain and mouth enough to snap
Well, I’m not,
he kissed her. The touch of his lips on hers gave her the equivalent of an instant contact high. She was still hot from their last kiss, and this one immediately set her on fire. Her lids closed like they had weights attached; her head tilted helplessly back to give him better access to her mouth. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, expertly, with all the heat but none of the hurry of the previous time, with a deepening eroticism that drove every rational thought out of her head, that had her melting inside, while her heart pounded and her blood turned to steam. His lips moved on hers like he meant to make this one kiss last all night. The hot, wet invasion of her mouth thrilled her down to her toes, and she kissed him back with a fierce passion of her own. She was just surging up against him, just starting to slide her arms around his neck, just starting to take things to a whole different level of intense, when he lifted his mouth from hers and let his hand drop from behind her neck and stepped back.
Her eyes flew open. For a moment they simply stared at each other. She felt—dizzy. Disoriented. Shivery with need. He was as turned on as she was, she could tell.
He radiated sexual tension like the sun’s rays in a summer heat wave. And the only thing he was doing about it was watching her with that dark, sexy gleam in his eyes.
To kiss her like that and stop—
“What the hell was that?” she demanded. Okay, so she was breathless and it showed in her voice. Being breathless in no way detracted from her budding wrath. Because she knew,
knew,
that there absolutely had been an ulterior motive behind that kiss.
“I was making a point.” He echoed the words she’d previously said to him as he reached past her toward something on the table. That brought him closer again, and she felt his nearness like a prickle of heat moving across her skin.
She looked at him suspiciously. “And what point is that?”
“You weren’t faking it earlier.” Snagging his backpack, he drew back, slung it onto one broad shoulder, and gave her a mocking smile.
“If it makes you happy to think—” She broke off with a quick frown. “Where are you going?” Her voice went sharp with anxiety. Because he was on the move, heading toward the door, and it was obvious that he was going somewhere. She felt cold suddenly, and folded her arms over her chest as she turned to watch his progress. The idea of being left alone in this small, primitive cabin in the middle of a swamp she couldn’t negotiate while he went off to do God knows what elsewhere was, she discovered, more than a little alarming.
He could park her here and leave.