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Zeke wasn’t a man to lie, about anything.
“I never went looking for them,” he told her. “I didn’t want to see them, Rogue, because they didn’t matter between you and me. ”
THREE
Of course they didn’t. Those pictures, one way or theother, would never change the fact that he might want her, but he had no intention of touching her.
She’d tested that theory over the winter. All the rides she’d requested after the long hours she had put in at the Mackay restaurant. The nights she had invited him up for a drink or tried to linger in his vehicle to talk, to flirt. She’d given up. She’d let it go. She wasn’t begging him.
She unfolded herself from the couch, reached down, and picked up her shoes before staring down at him.
“Do you have any further questions, Zek
e? It’s late, I need a drink, and I was looking forward to a bubble bath. Honestly, I don’t know what else I could tell you about Joe and Jaime that you don’t already know. Or think you know. ”
And she couldn’t handle being in the same room with him tonight. She wasn’t as strong as she had been in the winter. Perhaps those winter months had weakened her. Hoping against hope each night that she had flirted her way into his car that something, anything, would come of it. Only to have her hopes dashed time and again.
“You’re throwing me out?” He tilted his head and looked up at her, his gaze flashing with a heat she was afraid to delve too deeply into. “After weeks of trying to get me up here to your apartment, you’re not even offering me a beer?”
“No. I’m not. Good night, Zeke. Lock the door on your way out. ”
She turned and walked to the open bedroom door. She could feel his gaze on her, felt him watching her, his eyes burning into her. Suddenly, her skirt was too short, the vest flashed too much skin at her midriff and back. She felt exposed, vulnerable. She felt weak.
“Hell of a change, Rogue. You tried to seduce me half the winter. What happened?”
She stopped and turned around slowly to see him standing, cocky, assured, confident.
“I gave up,” she replied shortly. “As you said, Itried to seduce you. You weren’t willing.
I don’t beg. End of story. ”
His expression tightened, a muscle jumping at his jaw as his gaze raked over her then.
“You’re too damned young,” he finally berated her, and perhaps himself as well, she thought. Or he was trying to convince himself.
“I’m too damned tired to play games. ” It was all she could do to keep her shoulders straight and to fight back the tears. “Joe and Jaime were family. This has hit me rather hard, and as you see”—she lifted her arms wide to encompass the empty apartment—
“it’s just me and the bubble bath for comfort. I don’t need to add games to tonight’s stress if you don’t mind. ”
Zeke watched Rogue closely. He saw it then. That shadow in those deep violet eyes that had held his attention. A shadow he had never seen before. Loneliness. Loss. He knew that feeling. And in the past five years whenever it struck, it was Rogue that came to mind. Her smile, the promise of passion in her eyes, the need to touch her, the certainty that she could calm the beast that raged inside him.
Damn her. She’d managed to worm her way into his life, there was no doubt of that.
He’d missed her in the past few weeks since she had started riding her Harley to the restaurant rather than calling him and bumming a ride. Hell, he’d more than missed it.
It was as though something were suddenly missing from his life. There was an emptiness where those hours lay now, a sense of waiting.
“Why don’t you have a lover, Rogue?” He looked around the apartment. To his knowledge, as long as she had lived in Somerset, Rogue had never had a lover.
He didn’t count the pictures that had ended up on the Internet. He’d investigated that himself, and though he could never find proof, there was enough suspicion to prove to him that Rogue had been used somehow. Rumor was Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay had targeted her when she had defended Zeke’s son over a test at school. Nadine had never liked Shane because Zeke had refused to walk the same path his father had walked. Thad Mayes had held the position of sheriff for years, and through that time he had protected Dayle Mackay and the Freedom League’s collective asses. He hadn’t just protected them, he had been part of them. Zeke refused to follow that path, and Nadine had finally found a way to strike back, through Shane.
A month after standing up for his son, Rogue had left the bar with a strange couple. She hadn’t been well known then; no one had thought to question her when she left. And then Rogue had been out of a job in the school system and the pictures had shown up on the Internet.
Oh, Zeke knew how Grace and Mackay had worked, he thought as he found himself moving across the room, his gaze drifting, again, to the scalloped lace that peeked over her leather vest.
Bra or camisole? he wondered. Probably one of those short little camisole things. Scarlet red and flirty. Just like the shoes she carried in her hand.
“You didn’t answer me, Rogue,” he reminded her. “Why don’t you have a lover?”
