She folded her arms in a tight twist across her chest and huffed. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
He turned and glanced at her, his subtle grin popping out that delicious dimple in his cheek. She tried to ignore it. She wasn’t going to stoop to being attracted to a man with such audacity.
“Oh, I’m not disappointed. I’m just a little confused. I mean, if you’re going to let people get to you like that, why didn’t you just move away?”
Through tight lips, she replied, “I’m not going to be run out of my home.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. I mean, what is it? Are you a fighter or a coward?”
Oh, now he was going to resort to mockery. And to think she’d nearly kissed the man on the dance floor. “I usually stick up for myself, thank you, and I manage to do it without making a production out of it.”
His cocky grin faded. “You’re right, I probably took that a little farther than was necessary.”
“A little?”
“Okay, so I took the macho cop thing too far. I’ve just always wanted an excuse to nail Delacorte ever since he lined my jock with Ben Gay back in high school.”
The anger that had been squeezing in her palms suddenly faded to confusion. She’d always thought Travis and Frankie were friends, but the look on Travis’s face told her she was mistaken. “Why did he do that?”
“Some people don’t need a reason.” He reached down and tugged at his jeans, as if the memory of the mentholated ointment was still fresh in his mind. “His father’s in prison, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. What did he do?”
“He had a temper he liked to take out on the wife and kids.”
Frankie Delacorte had a father in prison? She’d never heard a peep about any trouble in his family, and at Jefferson High, everyone knew everyone’s business. How had Frankie escaped the rumor mill?
As if Travis had read her thoughts, he added, “I’m no shrink, but I suspect Frank used to pick on you and Carrie to draw attention away from himself.”
Once again, her shoulders slumped in regret. Why was it Travis always made her seem foolish whenever she tried to feel sorry for herself? “I guess Carrie and I didn’t corner the market on problems, did we?”
He flashed a wink that sputtered light tingles around her chest. “Sweetheart, you look behind closed doors and just about every family has a skeleton or two in the closet.”
He pulled up to the no-parking zone in front of her house and shut off the ignition, quickly exiting the car and rounding the front to open her door. Travis was the only man ever to treat her like a lady, and the thought kept tugging at her resolve. She wanted so desperately to keep him at a distance, to protect her heart from damage, but she couldn’t seem to spend time with him and not feel that sense of elation every time he spoke a kind word, flashed a sexy wink, or caressed her with a heated touch.
She stepped from the car and leaned against the door. “I’m sorry, Travis. I acted like a spoiled brat.”
A smile crossed his face that should have looked arrogant, but it just came across as warm. “I suppose we both did,” he said. “And we seem to spend a lot of time apologizing to each other, don’t we?”
Her eyes shot to the ground. “I’m afraid so.”
He crooked a finger under her chin and raised her gaze to his. “Why is that?”
She shrugged. “I tend to be a little touchy at times.”
A gregarious laugh erupted from his chest. “You think?”
She tried to hold her smile at bay. He was teasing her and she didn’t like it, but she couldn’t help the sincerity behind it all. “I didn’t exactly come from a very stable environment.”
“And how long are you going to ride that wave of an excuse?” His strong hands gently grasped her shoulder then began caressing down her arms. “Come on, Rachel, what do you really want out of life?”
“I want to be left alone,” she said.
“Liar.”
“What?”
“No one wants to be left alone. Well, I take that back. Some people do, but most of them live in some forest in the middle of Montana.” He tapped a finger to her nose. “You, on the other hand, want more than that. I can see it in your eyes.”
She tried to look away, hoping to hide her reaction to the truth in his words, but her eyes wouldn’t stray from his.
“I saw the way you looked at Layla the other day,” he continued. “Her fancy house, white picket fence, cute little kid.” His hands brushed back up from her elbows to her shoulders, leaving sparks of electricity shooting in their wake. “I think underneath everything, you’d love to have a nice home with a happy family.”
It was true. As if everything she truly desired was tattooed on her forehead, Travis read her like a book.
“That’s not in the cards for me,” she said, trying not to sound pitiful, but failing miserably.