He shook his head and took her hand and leaned over to kiss her forehead. “I’m an ass. An idiot. You deserve better but you’re stuck with me.”
She gazed up at him, seeing weariness and worry in every line of his face. “If I’m so wonderful, why do you look so awful?”
Laughter sputtered out of Scott, the first carefree laughter he could remember for a long time. And then he took her face very carefully in his hands and kissed her even more gently.
She looked at him through wet eyes. “You really don’t mind?” She made a gesture toward her face and torso.
He reached out and ran his hand over the contours of her body until he could cup a breast beneath her hospital gown. “You’ll have proof to go with the story you tell our kids of what a badass their mama is.”
Her eyes got bigger than he’d ever seen them. “Our kids?”
Scott smiled but sat down in the chair he’d not slept in as he sat by her side. He’d said enough. Probably too much. And he had nothing left, for now.
The Nikki he’d met was long gone. Yardley had been right about that. This woman, Cole, was stronger, more assured. And the miracle of it was, she was still with him.
She reached for his hand, confirming that.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“It’s a jurisdiction fight. The feds want X, formerly known as Agent Alphonso Harney of the LAPD, brought up on charges for having divulged information about an ongoing investigation. Your department is protesting that they have first dibs because he assaulted a police officer in their jurisdiction. Then there are the state police in Virginia, New Jersey, and Maryland who want their pound of flesh for violations, too. Meanwhile, X violated his parole in so many ways that he’s back finishing his time while he awaits two or more trials on these new charges.”
Scott looked over at Cole, who sat with her legs tucked up under her on her sofa. Hugo sat on the sofa beside her, providing her with a very unnecessary woolly blanket on this Labor Day weekend. He was reporting information to her on the disposition of X’s case that he’d brought back from D.C. this afternoon.
“He’d been a cop.” She shook her head. “I still don’t get it. How could he switch sides like that?”
Scott was silent for a moment. “He was in Special Operations when he went undercover to infiltrate a gang. The usual scenario is you step over the line so many times you stop seeing it, and start resenting anyone who points that out. In Harney’s case, he killed a man while undercover. Tried to make it look like a clean hit. But there were too many rumors of revenge. The department did what most do. They covered it up. No one talked. He was retired. So he came East, where he wasn’t known, and exchanged the blue code for gang code where he was already accepted.”
Cole sighed, stroking Hugo absently. In their concern for each other, they were hardly ever more than arm’s reach away.
Hugo was fine. Except for the shaved place on his belly where stitches went in, no one would ever have known anything was wrong. Scott had proof of that every day when he took him out for exercise.
Cole was getting better, too. During the past ten days her face had healed nicely. The nose was not broken. And the discoloration had subsided enough for makeup to perform miracles. She was on medical leave, however, for a few more weeks. Her department agreed. She’d been through a lot and needed to recoup and reassess.
But Cole was bored beyond belief by the restrictions placed on her. Scott had been sitting on her like an egg that needed to be hatched. He worked most days by computer from her home. When he did go into D.C., like this morning, he was back like a boomerang before dark.
Worst of all, he’d become a monk.
Cole fidgeted with the remains of a sandwich he’d brought her for dinner. All those weeks they’d lived together undercover, there’d always been this red-hot current running between them, even when, no, especially when they were resisting touching each other. She had only to enter a room to feel his eyes on her with a hunger that kept her humming with awareness.
Now. Since X was taken down. Nothing.
Cole stole a glance at him. He looked at ease, slouched down in that chair with Izzy sleeping with her head propped on one of his shoes. But she knew better. He had that edgy vibe going on. His dimples were nowhere to be seen. He was a cop on guard duty, even though she no longer needed surveillance.
Guilt. He felt guilty. And unworthy. And, so like a man, he was doing the exact opposite of what he wanted to do, to punish himself. Hence Agent Celibate, while he looked after her.
Cole tried not to, but it was getting really hard not to resent the loss of the badass man she’d fallen in love with, twice.
A nursemaid she hadn’t needed after day two. Housemate, she didn’t have any use for, either. Except it was nice he exercised Hugo in ways her stitches hadn’t allowed.
What she needed was a lover, and a friend. And she had just formed an idea of how to get what she wanted.