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Which amounted to nothing, and Crista knew it. Gritting her teeth against the furious words rising to her lips, she slammed the seat belt latch in, crossed her arms over her breasts, and stared straight ahead.
She admitted to being slightly nervous. Not exactly frightened of Dawg, but warier than she would have been even two days before. There was a glow of lust, of hunger in his gaze that had the feminine core of her shaking in trepidation. And it had her mind spinning.
Dawg had always been so fiercely controlled. He never showed anger, at least that was the rumor.
He was a get-even rather than a get-mad kind of man.
It wasn’t anger she saw in him now but the dark, primal core of a man who was no longer hiding who or what he was. And the savage hunger that glowed in his eyes aroused her more than the false charm ever had.
This was the Dawg she had always sensed lurking beneath the surface. The one who had held her back when she was younger, who frightened the immature sexuality she had possessed then.
It was that inner man he had let loose on her the night she had spent with him. The drunken charm had evaporated once he had her in his bed, and though he hadn’t been rough, he had been determined, hungry.
“What happened that night?”
His voice had her stilling, her heart beating faster in her chest. She didn’t want to talk about that night. She didn’t want to relive it any more than she already had.
“We had sex. Period. ”
“We had sex, so you ran out of town with another man, stayed away seven years, and now you’re fighting something between us that threatens to burn down the county once we get back into bed. Sorry, fancy-face, that one doesn’t go over so well with me. You’re lying. ”
She remembered, this was how he got his name. She’d heard Ray relate the tale, how even as a child he would get something in his mind and wouldn’t let it go. Like a dog with a bone. Dawg. He hadn’t changed much.
“What happened eight years ago doesn’t matter, Dawg. ” She shook her head tiredly. “What’s happening now does. I can’t afford not to work for three months, and I won’t accept money to sleep with you. I have to have a job. ”
“We’re not talking about that right now. ” His voice rumbled with displeasure.
“And we’re not talking about what happened eight years ago, either,” she retorted. “Actually, that night is really pretty fuzzy in my head. I’ve all but forgotten it. ”
And that had to be the biggest lie she had ever told in her life.
Crista glanced over at him, satisfied and yet more nervous than ever once she saw the dark, brooding intensity of his expression.
“It just pisses me off when you lie to me, Crista Ann,” he growled, glancing at her over the top edge of his dark glasses as he came to a stoplight.
The vehicle rolled to a stop as Crista stared out at the town that stretched on each side of the highway running through it. It had grown in the years she had been away from it, but it was still filled with the same qualities she had missed.
There were no high-rises here, no frantic rush of people walking down the sidewalks, fighting to get from office to office and ignoring everyone around them. She could walk into any store and see someone she knew or had known from her childhood.
She had friends here, distant relatives, and history.
She was aware of him glancing back at her as he put the truck into gear and accelerated through the green light, gathering speed and heading to the marina outside town.
“How long have you been working undercover against the drug dealers around here?” she asked him then. “I know Alex said the problem had grown, but I didn’t know it was bad enough to warrant late-night raids. ”
“They’re rare. ” His voice was clipped, the message clear. He didn’t want to talk about it.
“It must be getting pretty bad. The guy who caught me in the warehouse looked like one of the monsters television portrays. If the Latin factions have moved into Somerset, won’t it be hard to weed them out?”
His fingers tapped against the steering wheel as he glanced at her.
“Doubtful. ” He was determined not to discuss it with her, that was more than obvious.
“Do you know who the woman was who was supposed to be there?”
At that question, he froze. “Not yet. ”
Crista bit at her lower lip nervously. “You’ve questioned the other men though, right?”
