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“Beats the hell out of me.”
Clare swallowed, turned her head away as the reality she’d held at bay came crashing down like a boulder. This was Ryan. Ryan. What in the name of hell had she been thinking? Why had she made herself vulnerable to him? Talk about exposing one’s soft underbelly. She’d all but put the pitchfork in his hand.
“We should get up,” she said woodenly.
“Yeah, we should.” Ryan rolled away, rising to collect his hastily discarded clothes and to pull them on. He turned, studying Claire from beneath hooded lids.
Damn the guy. Even sweaty and disheveled, he was sexy as hell, with enough charm to melt an iceberg. Meanwhile, she was lying there naked, with nothing but a sheet to cover her. Between that and his looming over her, she felt even more raw and exposed, at a total disadvantage.
“This was a mistake,” she pronounced. Wow, she’d managed to sound somewhat normal, and to speak in a relatively strong tone.
“I agree. Probably a big one.” Ryan was visibly and totally out of sorts—Claire’s only consolation at the moment. He leaned his head back, and blew out a long, uneven breath. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Let’s not say anything. The less we talk about it, the less significance we’ll be assigning it.” Claire sat up, holding the sheet against her, trying to display the same nonchalance that Ryan’s God-knew-how-many-other bed partners displayed. “We acted on impulse. It was dumb. Now it’s over. Let’s just move on, okay?”
Ryan nodded. “Okay.” He finished getting dressed, ran his hands through his rumpled black hair. “I’ll head back to my place, shower and change. Then I’ll go to the brownstone, where I’ll start checking out the activities of our coworkers, and hope you’re wrong.”
“I hope so, too. But I’m not.”
Ryan nodded again. He crossed over to the door, then paused, glancing back at her. “Listen, Claire…”
“See you at the office,” she interrupted. Whatever he’d been about to say, she didn’t want to hear it.
He took the hint. “Yup. See you.”
He walked out, closing the door behind him.
* * *
The handwriting was on the wall, and what it said was beginning to be unmistakable.
Still, Hutch wasn’t ready to give up.
He’d taken steps in a dozen different directions, tapped into more avenues than he could count. There was a pattern forming, one that was making him distinctly uneasy. Curiosity and determination warred with reason.
He pounded the proverbial pavement a few hours longer, being as thorough and creative as he knew how. Ultimately, he went to the highest ranking contact he had in the Criminal Enterprise division.
The answer was the same. Scripted. Terse. Immovable.
Creating an impenetrable wall.
He’d never expected this outcome. But he had to live with it.
And so would Casey.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ryan set aside his sleuthing into Paul Everett’s and John Morano’s pasts long enough to do what he’d promised Claire. He felt like a shit doing it. There was no “nice” way to justify prying into the lives of his team. He trusted them all with his life.
Still, Claire hadn’t accused them of deception, not of the malicious kind. She was concerned that one of them was employing an iffy tactic while trying to protect the others. Was that possible? Sure.
He did a little poking around in the FI phone records, found nothing, and then gave it up for a while. He was too preoccupied to bury himself in work. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t just forget about what had happened between him and Claire.
Talk about an inferno. They’d practically set the sheets on fire. How the hell was he supposed to forget about that, much less make sense of it?
“Well, I came down here for nothing,” Marc commented, poised in the doorway of Ryan’s lair, studying him intently. “I was going to ask you what Claire wanted to see you about. But judging from the expression on your face, you didn’t do much talking.”
Ryan shot Marc a look. “Casey’s the expert with tells. You’re out of your league.”
