She ground her teeth. “I am not fooling myself.” Damn him. Damn them all.
“Your sexual problems started long before Tiffany came on the scene.”
“Low blow, darling,” she snapped, “and this isn’t about my sexual problems.”
“It always is, Max. You wanted a man, a live man. Well, you had one right there all to yourself. And he wanted you badly.”
“That’s a rotten thing to say. And you’re just jealous because I wished for a little backup from Witt.” Ahead, red police lights flashed, and she didn’t care. Come and get me, you bastards.
“You don’t even get it. I’m saying you did something good. You got Traynor to back off, you didn’t succumb, and all you can do is castigate me for letting you take care of yourself. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
He was right, in one respect. She didn’t need a man to take care of her. “I told him to go screw himself.”
“Isn’t the victory so much more meaningful when you really have something to fight?”
He had a point in there somewhere. Fighting Tiffany was a no-win situation. Fighting her own needs said a helluva lot more about her fortitude. And horribly, sickeningly, there might have been an infinitesimal part of her that wanted to give in. Like fatal attraction. You know it’s stupid, demeaning, and putrid, but you can’t help yourself. And can’t help hating yourself for the weakness. You’d do anything to hide it from the world, from yourself, such as lying and saying you wouldn’t fuck him because you didn’t trust him. When the truth just might be that you were afraid you’d like it. Oh my God.
That just was not fucking true.
The truth was that she’d just battled in the belly of the beast and she’d won. Things hadn’t gone so badly, not badly at all. Traynor had told her how well he’d known Tiffany. He’d practically confessed.
And she had the DVD. A really big clue.
Her foot let up on the accelerator as her pulse rate began to slow and her anger turned to mild peevishness.
Yeah, Cameron was right. She’d won. She’d won big time. Bud Traynor had wanted her, and she’d told him to go fuck himself.
“I can feel your brain working overtime in there, Max. Admit it. You needed a man, and any man would have done, but you still told the evil bastard to go blow.”
“Tiffany’s the one that needed a man.” She wouldn’t yield on that point. Not now. Not ever. Still, she could admit an ounce of the feelings had been her own. But it wasn’t the man himself she’d wanted, not even a man at all.
“Just the power surge. Isn’t that right, Max?”
Yeah, the power surge. That’s what she’d been craving since the last time she’d been to the Round Up for a one-nighter. Power. Control. This was, after all, a man’s world, and being desired equated to power and control.
“Why not get it from your buddy, Witt?”
She passed the accident, red and blue flashing lights, fire engine, ambulance, and twisted metal. It could have been her car on the side of the highway.
“Witt definitely wants you,” Cameron said after just enough silence to let the scene sink in. “The air sizzles around you whenever Witt’s near.”
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “He’s a cop.”
“He has a big bulge in his pants for you.”
“You’re disgusting. And he wants more than sex. The man stinks of commitment.”
“And you’re terrified you can’t hack it.”
She bit her lip on the inside and tasted blood. “I’m just not ready. I’m still a widow, you know.”
“At this rate, you’ll be a widow for the rest of your life.”
She slashed one hand in the air. “That does it. Just what the hell does Witt have to do with Bud Traynor, Tiffany Lloyd, and that damn DVD you made me take? What the hell is on it anyway?”
“Good, Max. Very good. Nice smooth switch of topic to one that doesn’t scare the crap out of you. I can see your tactics miles away, darling. But I’ll let you get away with it since you’ve had such hard night.”
“All right, fine. I’m busted,” she answered blandly, then turned on her indicator and moved into the right lane. Her exit was ahead. “So what’s on the disk?”
“I don’t know.
“All that, and you don’t know?” She enunciated each word through gritted teeth.
“I just know it’s important.”
“It had better be, Starr, or I’ll set your little angel wings on fire.”
“I never intimated I was an angel.”
“God forbid.”
She turned onto her street. Home at last. At least sort of home, not that she’d ever truly considered her one-room apartment a home. She hadn’t had a home since Cameron had lost corporeal substance.