Tease Me (30 page)

“Oh. Well, I’m sure someone will—”

“I’ll give you a ride. If you can wait a few minutes while I get these cars out of
the parking lot.”

“I should hurry,” she argued, looking around her worriedly as the church cleared out.
“They want to take pictures.”

“They’ll wait five minutes.” He strained his facial muscles into a smile, all the
while wondering why he was making this effort. It wasn’t like he owed her anything.

He fully expected a cool rebuff. Instead, she smiled back, and his heart did a little
somersault. “All right,” she said, her teeth worrying her lower lip in an un-calculated
gesture of nerves. “I’ll wait for you here.”

Sloan paced nervously as he directed traffic, feeling alternately anxious and foolish
for making anything out of Lana’s need for a ride. What was he, a masochist? He’d
sworn he would never let his hormones over-ride his common sense again, and so far
he’d managed to keep that promise. But his hormones were sneaky bastards. He’d forgotten
just how willful they could be.

Lana sat in the front seat this time. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man
sitting next to her. He hadn’t seemed any too friendly on their trip to the church.
Kind of bristly, actually. Then why had he gone out of his way to offer her another
ride? And should she have accepted?

The past year she’d fought hard for her independence. When she’d first announced to
Bart that she was leaving, she’d been seized with second thoughts every hour or so.
She’d never supported herself, much less herself and a little boy. What skills did
she have? Every time an appliance went on the fritz or her car needed work, she’d
longed for a man to help her with all those little things.

But Callie and Millicent assisted her through her crises large and small. Somewhere
along the line she learned that she could do things for herself—argue about car repairs,
juggle the bills, make decisions about her son’s discipline. She got skillful at budgeting,
stretching her paycheck to cover church camp and an occasional new outfit for herself.
And somewhere along the fine she stopped yearning for a man to rely on for support
and companionship. She stopped calling Bart and enduring his belittling comments about
her inadequacies just to find out how to flip a breaker switch or change an A/C filter.

She learned to value her own company above any-one else’s.

The last thing she needed was a new man in her
life. She would do well to remember that, no matter how her body was reacting to the
virile male sitting beside her, his powerful-looking muscles straining the sleeves
of the crisp blue policeman’s uniform, his dark hair curled into unruliness by the
damp weather.

“So, how’d you end up as a cop?” Lana asked, genuinely curious. Sloan Bennett would
have been voted Most Likely to End Up in the Pen by their senior class if there had
been such a category.

Sloan visibly tensed, and she wondered if she’d somehow managed to offend him once
again. But then he seemed to relax, and a brief smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
“I guess I owe it all to Nicole Johnson.”

Lana felt a sudden tension herself. She certainly hadn’t meant to get into a discussion
about
her
. “You mean the police chief’s daughter?” she asked casually.

“That’s the one. We were … close friends for a while. I got to know her father. He … straightened
me out, convinced me to try life on the right side of the law.” The headlights of
oncoming cars revealed a faraway look in Sloan’s eyes, an expression of wry amusement
on his face.

So, the rumors had been true. Sloan and Nicole had been an item, even though she was
ten years his senior. Lana had grabbed on to that bit of gossip as evidence that Sloan
really wasn’t right for her if he could jump right into Nicole’s arms, Nicole’s bed,
after their breakup. Nicole was fast and vastly inappropriate for a boy Sloan’s age.
Why had Lana ever imagined he would wait around until she was ready?

“What did Captain Johnson do?”

“Well, first he threatened to fill my butt full of buckshot when he caught me with
his daughter. But instead of skulking off, I stood up to him. Something snapped in
me, I guess. Nicole and I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I was determined that I
was going to make her father understand.”

“And did he?” Lana asked.

“After I talked until my voice wore out. Nicole put in a few good words for me too.
So instead of riding me out of town on a rail, he gave me a job. I think he was hoping
to prove I was the no-account hood he’d labeled me. But I was determined he wasn’t
going to defeat me.”

“What sort of job was it?”

“Construction. I sweated more that summer than I ever have in my life, helping Johnson
build his lake house. He let me stay in a little trailer on his property too, so I
could get away from home.”

Lana shuddered, remembering the awful place he’d grown up, the parents who cared more
about beer and cigarettes than their own kid.

“By the end of the summer I had some skills and a letter of recommendation. Johnson
told me to shake the dust of Destiny off my boots and find opportunity elsewhere,
and I did.”

“And what about Nicole?” Lana couldn’t help asking.

Sloan smiled slyly. “Johnson kept me so busy and so exhausted, my little fling with
Nicole died a natural
death.” He shrugged. “It was all very amicable. We’re still friends.”

Lana digested this. What was that unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach? Surely
not jealousy. Surely not after all these years.