Force of Attraction (19 page)

He had taken his mother to the house yesterday morning, after hiring a nurse to sit with his father. He had tried to prepare her, even made her promise to not tell his father the worst of it, no matter how distressed the experience made her. Teary-eyed, she'd promised. Then she had shocked him with her reaction to the cleanup.

“Who did this?” she kept asking as she wandered from room to room, astonished by the progress she had not expected. While not anywhere near restored, the house was no longer a homeowner's worst nightmare.

He told her who was responsible.

“Nicole did this for us? Why?” That question had been on Scott's mind since the moment Cole piled into his truck for the drive to New Jersey.

After she had finished making her preliminary list, his mother had come into the kitchen where he was sitting. “Tell Nicole thank you from the bottom of our hearts.” Her eyes had softened and she'd put a hand on his shoulder and added very quietly, “She still loves you, son.”

That couldn't be right. Little more than two weeks ago, Cole hated his guts. She had ripped him a new one and then kicked him out of her home. His ulterior motives shot to hell, he had given up on her when she suddenly changed her mind and decided to join the task force, despite his participation. She ran hot and cold with no stops in between. Even the sex, he suspected, was a game designed to keep him off balance and at a distance. “Noel” had had sex with “Sam.”

She'd certainly worked to keep him at arm's length at every opportunity. Until his mother's call.

Cole had waded into his family's disaster as if it was her own, helping out without asking. Even when he'd behaved like a douche toward her, she'd kept her temper. Through it all she'd had his back.

He felt a lump of an unwanted gratefulness forming in his throat. He wasn't accustomed to anyone having his back. He worked best alone or with Izzy. He might not have Gabe's finesse for making chicken salad out of chicken shit. But he knew how to survive. Until Cole.

Scott swore under his breath, reluctant to acknowledge the damn ache in his chest every time he thought about her. And he thought about her almost constantly these days.

He moved across the room to pick up one of her socks and toss it into an open drawer. Instead, he found himself gazing at a drawer of pretty but impractical underthings.

He felt like a perv but he couldn't stop himself from snagging a pair of purple lace panties and holding them up for a better look. It didn't take much imagination to picture what she'd look like in them or, better yet, out of them. After the other night, he'd been hard-pressed to think of anything else in the solitude of his bed. He was pretty sure he'd dreamed about her each night. This scrap of purple satin and lace was the last thing anyone would expect the sensible, logical Officer Jamieson to wear.

Yet he knew that she was wholly, sensually female.

A rush of lust pushed hard down through him. He would remember that night in the shower with her for the rest of his life. And always want more.

Scott rubbed an eye, fighting the urge to return to bed. But that wasn't going to stop thoughts of Cole from running through his head. Was he misjudging her? In dealing with everyone else he could think of, Cole was warm and generous, if intense. Even when called on the carpet with Lattimore, she'd rallied and defended her point of view. Only around him was she defensive and hostile.

Maybe that was because she didn't know where she stood with him. How could she? For fear of running her off before he had a chance to get close to her, he hadn't given her anything but attitude. But she scared him this time in a way she hadn't the first time around. She was no longer an impressionable young woman who thought he made the sun rise and rest. She'd seen and known the worst about him, and held it against him. And yet, when he needed her, she'd been there, no, insisted on being there to help take care of the two other most important people in his life. The emotions he'd felt behind that nearly undid him. And so he'd doubled down on locking out his emotions out of fear that, if she saw how really badly he wanted her back in every way, she'd run. No wonder she kept her own emotions on high alert.

And yet, she had blown his mind a few nights ago by simply walking into the shower with him. She had been all satin skin and smooth places and sweet curves and warm, wet dark places he could not get enough of. She'd been that brave. And he'd said nothing. He'd been a goddamn coward, pretending that because they called one another Noel and Sam, he couldn't confess then and there that he wanted her back.

Even as he shifted through these thoughts, Scott knew they were correct. In so many ways, large and small, he hadn't been giving her a chance to want him back. Nor had he been trying to learn the new woman she had become. He'd been so busy trying to go slow and be cool, he hadn't even dared ask for her cell phone number. Something he didn't realize until she was headed back to Harmonie Kennels and he needed to talk with her. In trying not to crowd her, he was pushing her away.

So, again, he was the problem.

The sting of that accusation felt familiar. His father had been his usual self just before Scott had left this morning. Why couldn't Scott take time off to look after his mother until his father was on his feet again? Why wouldn't he simply demand the time off? Didn't he want to help out? And why had Nicole left so quickly? Couldn't his son keep up his end of a relationship long enough to get his wife back for more than a day?

All that disapproval, and his parents had no clue that the trashing of their home was more than likely his fault, too.

Scott dropped the panties back in the drawer and turned toward the door.

He would bet money that X, with or without the Pagans' direct involvement, had frightened his parents to send him a message. The hog's head couldn't be coincidence. X had figured out who he was, knew he'd been an undercover narc, and was going to make life hell for people he cared about until he provoked a confrontation.

The New Brunswick police had promised to keep an eye on his parents, after he explained the “pig” reference. But they didn't have an official obligation to do so. This was simply a courtesy extended to a fellow law enforcement officer. He couldn't tell them more without jeopardizing both his new and old U/C operations.

Scott ran a hand down his face. Even after a few hours' sleep he was still exhausted and hungry, and tired of thinking about things that tied him up in razor wire. He knew—gut level—that everything that was wrong in his life was his own damn fault.

His responsibility. His mess to clean up. He was going to have to do something about X. He just didn't know what yet.

As for Cole, he guessed it was time he fessed up about how he felt about her, and took the consequences. However painful that might be.

“Come, Izzy.” He grabbed a bag of dog food and headed out for Harmonie's cafeteria where there'd be coffee and sweet rolls and, with luck, Cole.

*   *   *

“Handlers are permitted to talk, praise, encourage, clap, pat their legs, and use verbal means of encouragement. Multiple commands and/or hand and arm signals are allowed. Handlers must not touch the dog or make any other physical corrections. If during the performance, loud or harsh commands or intimidating signals are used, the handler will be penalized.”

Cole listened to the rules being read by the judge, along with the dozens of other handlers competing in Agility at the open-air competition. At nine
A.M.
the sun was making itself felt through the canopy of park trees. She'd been given all her team's paperwork and a sheet of the course. Hugo was listed as Open Standard, an intermediate class designation that meant that Hugo had already earned the Novice Agility title, thanks to Lattimore's machinations. At the moment, she was more worried about showing the judges that she and Hugo belonged in competition.

When the announcements were finished, Cole looked around for Yardley. This was her doing, a surprise announcement at six
A.M.
that Yardley had entered them in an Open Agility competition in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. Cole hadn't had time to do more than gulp her coffee, prepare a show bag containing treats, toys, leads, water bowls, water, and pooper scooper, and set off.

She had thought two seconds about waking Scott, but he was stretched on his bed in only a snug pair of knit shorts, dead to the world.

The fact that he looked amazingly vulnerable and cuddly in that prone position did nothing to encourage her to wake him. She was mad at him. Well, hurt was a better word. And annoyed. But she also had world-class reserves of self-preservation stored up. Going anywhere near him was just asking for the kind of trouble she could not afford now that he had redrawn the personal space lines.

Cole adjusted her sunglasses and refocused. Scott was a problem that wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. At the moment, she had bigger issues. This was her first official dog competition in a decade. She was as nervous as the first time, a fourteen-year-old with sweaty palms and a pulse in overdrive.

There was no mention of Shajuanna Collier on the list of competitors, and no reason to think she would be here. Shajuanna lived in Maryland, just outside Baltimore. Yet there were enough things going on to keep Cole off balance. For instance, she was listed on Hugo's paperwork as Noel Jenkins. So, not only was she road-testing her Agility course skills for the first time in years, she was also undercover.

She wished—No, she was glad Scott—no, Sam—wasn't here. His dual-personality presence would have been one thing too many to keep track of today.

When the smaller dog classes ended, Cole rechecked the course map. Because each course was different at every event, handlers were allowed a short walk-through of it before the competition started.

This one seemed much more difficult than the ones she'd been using with Hugo. Her worse nightmare was that she would get lost on the course and Hugo would make mistakes because of her.

“This is just a test run.” The sound of her own voice was small comfort. If they didn't do well, what did it matter? Not a disaster if Hugo popped out of the poles on the Weave obstacle. Except that all the other competitors would wonder how they had achieved Advance status with a team who didn't seem to know the basics.

She smoothed the exhibitor's entry labels stuck on her T-shirt after making certain it matched Hugo's paperwork. Despite the heat of the summer day she felt clammy.

You backed down a Pagan yesterday, Noel Jenkins. Put your big girl panties on and get out there!

“Hi, Noel.”

Cole started at the sound of Scott's voice at her back. Before she could turn around a hand slid around her waist from behind and pulled her up against him as he dropped a kiss on her neck just behind her right ear. Pleasant sensation zinged through her as his warm breath fanned over her skin. So did confusion. Oh, right, they were Noel and Sam in public from now on.

She turned within his one-armed embrace. “What are you doing here? Sam?”

He nodded, offering her a very wide grin beneath the shades that shielded his eyes. “Sorry to be late, babe.” He dropped another kiss, this time on her lips, before he released her waist. “Got held up in traffic. Isn't that right, Izzy?”

Cole looked down at Izzy, who was on the leash, and bent to pet her. “Hi, Izzy.”

Scott pushed back his sunglasses and looked around. “Where's the dog of the hour?”

“This way.” She pointed to the cordoned-off area where participants had set up crates and stations for their dogs.

As they fell into step, he swung an arm behind her and anchored his hand on her opposite shoulder.

Cole looked up to find him smiling at her, a grin that managed to be easy and intimate and slightly intimidating all at once. She smiled back and received a shoulder squeeze. Oh, he was good at this. He was at ease. If she didn't know better she would believe his possessive lustful gaze was genuine. It seemed so natural. It was, for Noel and Sam, she reminded herself. Simple and easy because they were totally into one another and everything between them was new and fresh. No baggage.

No baggage.

She repeated that line in her thoughts as she reached up and hooked her thumb in the back of his jeans. She was only momentarily disconcerted to feel the impression of a pancake holster against her knuckle. He wore his weapon under his shirt in the small of his back. It was a reminder that this wasn't a free and easy day. They were on the job. She had two huge tasks ahead of her. Complete the Agility circuit competently. And make every observer believe she was infatuated with Sam.

“Hey.” Scott paused. When she did, too, he steered her around to face him and tilted her chin up with his curved forefinger. “I missed not waking up to you this morning. Just so you know.” He kissed her again, this time taking time to really leave an impression.

When he lifted his head she stared into green eyes edgy with emotion she didn't dare ponder. Yep, he was good. And that scared her because all she wanted to do now was kiss him again, and go on kissing him until the rest of the world … oh, she was in trouble. She gave him a distracted smile and moved on.

Accustomed to patrolling in crowds, Hugo was standing alert in his crate when they approached, watching his surroundings but not anxious about them.

Cole let him out and snapped on a leash. He walked straight over to Scott.

“Hey there, Hugo. How's it going, big fella?” Scott tapped his hand against his jeans leg. Hugo came over and allowed himself to be petted.

“Advance Agility for Large Dogs is open for walk-through.”

The loudspeaker's announcement startled Cole. Her pulse began to pound. She wasn't ready. She knew it and so, in short order, would everyone watching the competition.

Astonished at her own reaction but unable to control it, Cole took a step backward, bumping into Scott. This was going to be a first-class disaster, in front of Yardley, Scott, and the Agility world. She looked up at Scott. “I can't do this.”