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.