She didn’t back down. She crossed her arms. “I’m not hostile.”
He took a few steps toward her. “You hate my guts. Admit it. Stands to reason Hugo isn’t going to cuddle up to me.”
Cole bit the inside of her lip. He was pushing harder than the moment seemed to call for. “Are you finished?”
“I haven’t begun.”
“Then this isn’t going to work.”
“Oh, it will work.” He paused before her, reaching out to tug the end of the ponytail slung forward over her shoulder. “But you’re going to have to warm up to me. For the sake of the operation.”
Cole jerked her gaze away. Warm up? She was much too hot already with him just standing so close.
The deep dark secret that had kept her awake for hours each night since Scott had reentered her life was that the connection between them hadn’t eroded during the past two years. She might resent him, blame him for ruining everything, have every sane reason to distrust him. Yet their bodies still knew each other. The attraction held. Easy for him to make light of it. Impossible for her.
When she looked up again he had moved away from her. Was, in fact, peering into the grocery bag she’d brought in. “You can stay for dinner.”
He looked up with the delight of Christmas morning. “Great. What are we having?”
She unhooked Hugo’s leash from around her waist. “Whatever you make. There’s an hour of daylight left and I need to give Hugo all the time I can fit in on that Agility course.” She was out the door before he could reply.
Scott unstrapped his watch and washed his hands before unbagging the groceries. There was a whole raw chicken. Sweet potatoes. Kale. “Beets? Seriously?”
He held up the plastic bag to inspect them. Damn. Some of them were orange. He was all for healthy eating. But beets? He set them aside. Nikki never cooked beets when they were together.
Scott turned and glanced at the door Nikki—Cole, the door that Cole had left through. Yardley’s comment about how Cole had changed skimmed his thoughts. Maybe Cole liked beets. So just maybe there was a way to do something with them even he would eat. Laptop in his cruiser. Recipes at his fingertips.
He finished unpacking bread, milk, and coffee. Onions. BBQ sauce. “Okay, now we’re talking.”
*
“We need a cover story.”
They were sitting on the steps of Cole’s barracks watching twilight slide into night in the sky overhead. Hugo lay stretched out beside her while Izzy had deigned to join them, but only at the far opposite end of the porch. At least no one was barking or growling, not even she and Scott.
Cole stretched out her legs, letting her boots make gullies in the gravel walkway. She was full of barbecued chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and, surprisingly, roasted beets. “How elaborate will it have to be?”
“The best lies are those that stay close to the truth.”
Scott pulled free another beer bottle from the six-pack he had fetched from the barracks he shared with five other male handlers and offered it to Cole.
She shook her head. One was enough. “Could we be brother and sister?”
Scott choked on his beer. “The way I look at you could get me arrested for incest in twenty-five states.”
He said it lightly but Cole found it hard to smile.
“How about this? We’re exes who recently got back together after you blew us up by screwing around. I’m giving you another chance but I’m not betting on this being a permanent arrangement because I don’t trust you.”
Scott took a long pull on his beer. “Is that what you think? That I’m just doing this because I don’t like being the bad guy?”
Cole gazed at him for several seconds. “I think you don’t know what you want. I don’t think you ever have.” She waved a hand around. “If this task force assignment is your way of trying to make something up to me then know that it doesn’t make up for a thing.”
He reached out and touched his little finger to hers. “What do you want?”
Cole looked down at their touching fingers, wondering how such a tiny thing could set off such huge seismic quakes in her middle. She shifted her finger away.
“I want to do something important. I want to prove I didn’t make a mistake in choosing a career in law enforcement.” She lifted her gaze to the night sky. “I want to prove I’m good enough.”
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.