Force of Attraction (11 page)

Scott heard an echo of her words in his chest. To do something important. To prove he was good enough. That had been the be-all, end-all of his entire life. And still he'd managed to screw up everything that mattered.

Cole shook her head at some internal thought. “I wasn't the perfect daughter with As because I wanted to be. I just knew it would have killed my parents if I'd become a rebel after they divorced. Becca and I had to show them we were okay, that they didn't ruin us.”

Scott pulled up a knee and rested his elbow on it, letting the beer bottle dangle from the hook of two fingers. Unlike his own, he'd always thought she had the perfect childhood. After all, even though they were divorced, her parents had presented a united front to him. They didn't like him.

“You never told me how the divorce affected you before.”

She glanced at him, for once without her guard up. “We didn't do much real talking the years we were together.”

He couldn't argue with that. Too hot to cool down. Plus, to allow her to open up would have meant she would have expected the same from him. He hadn't wanted her to see him as he really was, not when she gazed at him like he was Superman, the Socrates of law enforcement, and the Sexiest Man Alive all rolled into one. How could he have been so blind?

“So circumstances prevented you from being…?”

She smiled. “Who knows? Goth, maybe, or I might have gotten a nose ring and tattoos—”

“Tattoos? You hate tattoos.”

“Not hate. I just didn't want you to ruin a great body with one of those ugly biker tats you kept threatening to get. And I certainly didn't want some biker-gang scum with an ink gun anywhere near you. Hepatitis? HIV?”

Scott let her explanation sink in. He didn't recall any of their fights on the subject including such a reasonable argument. Or, maybe he had just stopped listening before she could make it.

“Of course, I'm not inflexible.” The corner of her mouth lifted though she didn't glance at him. “I found a licensed artist who is working to pay her way to become a nurse practitioner.”

He sat forward suddenly. “You've got a tattoo?”

She nodded. “Not that it's any of your business.”

Scott's gaze swept over her. She'd showered and changed before they ate. Her hair was swept up in a ponytail he longed to tug at. No designs on her slender neck. The sleeveless vee-neck tee and shorts she wore couldn't be hiding a tattoo on her arms or her legs, which meant no thigh or chest tattoos. It had to be in a secret place. A variety of possibilities invaded his thoughts, each one more intimate than the last. He felt himself begin to sweat. “Can I see it?”

To his astonishment, she gave him a secret naughty-girl smile. “In your dreams, Agent Lucca. In your dreams.”

Well hell. Now he was going to have to see it. Somehow.

Cole reached for the beer she had earlier refused. “We need to get back to business.”

She did, maybe. He wanted to continue to think about her hidden tattoo. He stretched, deliberately allowing his legs to spread until one of his denim-clad thighs leaned against her bare one. When she didn't immediately shift away, he smiled. Now they could talk business.

“Lattimore called this afternoon. He's sending out people in the morning to evaluate our progress. We need to get our story straight and prove to them that we can do this before we take it on the road.”

“How do we do that?”

“Glad you asked.” He clinked his bottle to hers. “We need to move in together.”

Cole bit back her initial reaction. Of course, they had to move in together. They were going to pretend to be a couple. A real couple.

“Is that a problem?” Scott leaned toward her. “You got a boyfriend somewhere who won't like it?”

Cole had been expecting he would ask, sooner or later, if there was a man in her life. She even had a story ready. “He understands.”

“Does he?” The question came out of Scott in a huff of surprise.

Shit. That wasn't the answer he'd wanted to hear. But he tried to play it off casually.

“I most definitely wouldn't understand a woman I cared about moving in with another guy, even if it was strictly for the job. I'd be a wild man.”

“Yes. You would.” Kate Winslow was in the house. “That's why he's nothing like you.”

Scott reared back, bracing his elbows on the porch. Cole tried not to notice how his sprawl showed off his long lean body to good effect. “So, what's he like?”

“He's a podiatrist.” She saw his jaw drop a little before a smirk punched dimples into his cheeks. “I know. Feet. That's what everyone thinks. But he's a surgeon. Sports medicine. Specializing in injuries to the foot, ankle, and lower leg.”

“Sounds like a busy guy.”

“He is. Sports medicine is very lucrative.”

He gazed at her between narrowed lids. “Interesting.”

“What?”

“You haven't mentioned his name.”

“Robert Dawson. Dr. Robert Dawson. Becca introduced us.” She had looked up the name of the doctor her sister had been trying to set her up with, in case Scott decided to check. She just hoped the guy would never know how she was lying about him.

“Doc Rob? Cute.” Scott rocked back into a seated position. “You've known him long?”

Cole crossed her toes inside her boots. “Nearly a year.”

“Sounds serious.” He picked up her left hand and turned it palm down. “But I don't see an engagement ring. I thought you'd be remarried by now.”

“No. You cured me of the habit. You?”

He merely shook his head, sucker punched by her candor. He'd cured her … of what? Wanting to be married? She'd loved being married, said so practically every day they were together. She talked about a house and kids … kids.

He glanced at her sharply. He didn't know how to start that conversation.

“What about you, Scott? Got a girlfriend?”

“I was seeing someone. Sort of.” No point in telling her there hadn't been anyone special in his life since she walked out of it. He had gone back to strictly one-night stands. Even so, it had been months since he'd been with a woman. Next to Doc Rob, it would make him sound like a loser. “Nothing serious.”

“I seem to remember you prefer your women raw and raunchy, like that skank who gave you a blow job in public.”

Shit. Back to the heart of their split. “It was a biker initiation.”

“Oh, and that was supposed to explain everything?”

“I'm not making excuses. I screwed up. Got in a situation where I couldn't back out without causing suspicion. Who the hell knew the bar owner would call the police?”

Cole leaned in, her shadowed expression going from serious to pissed off.

“You were in my precinct, Scott. Even if I hadn't been one of the officers who answered the call, those who did would have seen you and talked. By the time the night was over, everyone we worked with would have known it anyway. This way, at least, I got to walk out first.”

Scott's expression went dark with anger. “You should have waited to talk with me. You owed me that.”

“Did I? If I had waited for you, what would you have said?”

“Shit. I don't know. Something.” Anything to make her stay.

He stood up suddenly and heaved his beer bottle across the yard so that it smashed against the telephone pole a healthy distance away.

After a moment she spoke, her voice quiet. “You had enough of tiptoeing down memory lane?”

He sucked in a breath, trying to regain control of his temper. “Yeah.”

He offered her a third beer.

She shook her head. “I'm in rehab. Have been for a while.”

“Rehab?” His gut tightened. “For what?”

“Stupid heart syndrome.” She rose. “I'm going to bed. You can, whatever.”

She reached the door before she looked back at him. “Just so you know. I forgive you. I just don't want to go back. Hugo. Come on, boy.”

Scott sat in the silent darkness and finished a third and then the fourth beer.

He felt bruised deep down in the most tender parts of himself. And he knew he didn't hurt as much as she had. He wanted her back but he needed to face facts. She didn't love him. She was over him. And he couldn't promise her, even if she'd listen, that he wouldn't make any more mistakes with her.

But the need inside him didn't diminish with these thoughts. That deep-rooted need for her wasn't rational or to be reasoned with. That need made him wonder how much longer he could go on without showing her in a very real and physical way just exactly how he still felt about her.

Whoever said love conquers all didn't know shit.

*   *   *

Cole lay awake wondering why she hadn't just kept her mouth shut and drunk another beer. She had behaved like a bitch. And she really didn't mean any of it. Not anymore. They had hurt one another, badly. She understood that now. She wanted only to comfort him, and herself, and she didn't know how.

She was afraid. It was dangerous, what she was thinking. Dangerous to her pride, and her sanity. She wasn't like some of her friends who could just contact an old boyfriend for a quick booty call. If she got in Scott's pants, she was going to want to stay there, and then return on a regular basis. And if he didn't want that, too, she'd die inside.

She knew what it was like to be made love to by him. Her body was aching even now with the need to be touched by him. And there he was, just on the other side of the door, closer than he'd been since she left him or ever would be again. All she had to do was open that door. He wouldn't make her beg. She'd seen the need in his face. He would welcome her. It was real. He felt it, too.

Ego be damned! She needed him, needed him deep inside her, moving with that body-slamming rhythmic push-pull so uniquely his own that made her cry out in ecstasy.

She sat up and tossed off the sheet.

Once upon a time she knew just what to do to bring him to the brink, so close that he would beg for it in his deep voice made ragged by lust. It had been so long. Too long.

She opened her door.

The sounds of deep sleep rumbled through the dark. She moved to the front screen door and looked out.

He was still stretched out on the porch where she'd left him. He'd removed his shirt and bundled it under his dark head to make a pillow. His lean muscular torso gleamed in the moonlight. He could have been a toppled Greek statue, if statues wore jeans. Those jeans gaped at his waist, leaving enough space between them and his bare skin for a hand to slide in. She knew that because she'd done it often enough in the past.

Cole sucked in a careful breath and wrapped her arms about her middle as goose bumps pebbled her arms. She wasn't cold. She felt her hunger for him rising. This time she let herself feel it and many other things for a change.

His face was turned away so that moonlight played along the lobe of his ear and the slope of his cheek, and brought into relief the corded muscles of his neck. With his hair ruffled and eyes closed she could almost see the little boy he had once been.

She'd been a little shocked the first time she had watched him sleeping. They had been together for weeks but it was their first time to spend the entire night together. It stunned her to realize how innocent and vulnerable he seemed with his eyes closed. The man so vividly alive no person passed him without feeling it had let down his guard with her. He was the protector, a criminal's worst nightmare, the first and last defense. But not then, and not now.

She pushed open the screen and came forward on bare feet to squat down beside him. She wanted to touch him but didn't dare. Fascinated by every breath that caused his chest to rise and fall, she fell in love all over again with every separate bit of him, the hard places and the softer smooth ones. They had been playing games for days. Finally, he was real and mortal to her again. This was the man she once loved.

She also saw the shadow of sadness in the furrow of his brow. He never talked about that. Things she could only guess at, yet had once tried to protect him from.

A pang of regret shot through her. She had failed him. And now it was too late.

Cole returned to her room but didn't go back to bed. The restlessness that had driven her to the brink of temptation could not be put back in the box so easily.

She moved to the window of her room, propped an arm on the jamb, and rested her head against it. She must be nuts. Nothing had changed since Scott came back into her life. Nothing had been said to change one unalterable fact.

Cole lifted her head to stare out across the field to where night escaped into the impregnable black of the forest. He had simply let her go.

Most divorces were messy. She'd seen it up close when her parents uncoupled when she was ten. There were fights and accusations, digressions, petty ugliness, strategies large and small. All done to wound the partner in the break. At the time, she had thought the fighting and screaming and ugliness was the absolute worst way for a marriage to end. Now she knew otherwise. Silence was worse.

Scott hadn't bothered to fight with, or
for
her.

That's what hurt the most, what she hadn't thought she could forgive. She might have been the one who walked out, but he'd let her go. Because it was what he'd wanted.

The reason for walking out had dimmed after two years. But the knowledge that he wanted out had not.

That's why she hadn't tried to go back, couldn't offer a reconciliation. After everything else, she couldn't bear to hear him tell her face-to-face why and when their marriage had disintegrated to the point he no longer wanted her.

That's what made the desire tugging at her now so hard to deal with. They might want each other again, for now, but there would come an after. And if she gave in to the reckless raw need raging through her and then he walked away? It might just stop her heart.