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“I know.”
She gazed at him with bewilderment. “But why did you do it?”
“To see if you’d be jealous.”
She took swift breath, then, lowering her head, stared at the gritty, oil-stained concrete between their feet. “I can’t be jealous, Drex. I’m married.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s all I think about. You being married. You being married to him.”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “You don’t have cause, or the right, to think about it.”
“But I do.” He extended his arm and braced his hand against the roof of her car. He pressed his forehead against his biceps and expelled a long breath. “I think about it all the goddamn time, and it’s making me crazy.”
For the longest time neither of them moved. They scarcely breathed. Did she share his fear that something as negligible as a blink could cause a cataclysm from which they could never recover or escape? He couldn’t read her thoughts. All he had to go on was her stillness.
Until finally, he heard her hair brush against her shoulder as she turned her head toward him. “I’m sorry, Drex,” she murmured. “I don’t know what to say.”
He lifted his head from his arm and turned it toward her. Their faces inches apart, he focused on her mouth as she added, “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” By the time the last whispered syllable had passed his lips, they were brushing hers.
She yanked her head back. He slid his hand off the roof of the car and raised both in surrender as he stepped away and continued to back up. “Out of line. Way out of line. I’m sorry.”
He turned and took several steps away before he stopped and came back around. He looked at her for a count of five. “Bloody hell,” he growled. “If I’m going to be sorry, I’m damn well going to make it count.”
He
covered the same distance in half the number of strides. When he reached her, he took her face between his hands, tilted it, and kissed her. But good. Without sweetness or timidity. Deeply. Boldly. Sexily. Pouring into the kiss all the frustration, anger, and lust she had aroused in him.
Then he released her abruptly, turned, and walked away.
He made it into the elevator and rode it down to the next level of the garage where he’d parked. But as soon as he alighted, he placed his back to the concrete block wall and knocked his head against it hard enough to hurt.
What the hell was he doing?
When he’d seen Talia backing her car out of her driveway, he’d given no conscious thought to following her. He’d just reacted. Fortunately, he’d planned on going out later, so the items he had begun taking with him whenever he left were already zipped into the duffel bag. He’d had the presence of mind to grab it before he’d bolted from the apartment, nearly breaking his neck getting down that blasted staircase, certainly breaking speed limits to catch up to her and then to keep her car in sight.
He hadn’t planned on her knowing that he was tracking her. Between her getting into the elevator to go up and when she came back down, forty-seven minutes had elapsed. Forty-seven minutes during which he’d examined his motives for acting so rashly.
After a heated debate with himself, he concluded that he wasn’t simply a man obsessed with a woman but that this additional surveillance was justified. She was as much a suspect now as Jasper. He needed to know where she went, whom she saw, and why.
Right?
Right.
So he’d continued to amble back and forth across the lobby, keeping a close watch on everyone the elevators disgorged, and trying not to attract the attention of the rent-a-cops posted at all the building’s entrances.
When Talia reappeared, he’d ignored the bump his heart gave. From across the lobby, he’d monitored her activity in the coffee shop. After several minutes passed, he decided that no one was joining her. She hadn’t consulted her cell phone. She hadn’t glanced around periodically in anticipation of someone’s arrival. Rather she sat alone, looking forlorn and in need of a friend.
He was good at that, too, he’d reminded himself. Role-playing. Wasn’t that one of his best honed skills?
So into the coffee shop he’d gone.
But at that point, he’d known he was kidding himself. Her apparent anguish had taken precedence over her being a suspect in at least one capital crime. The more he saw of her, the looser his grip on objectivity became, until, as of now, it was virtually nonexistent. He’d gone so far as to admit his crazed obsession to her.
Aw, well. It was too late to rethink it. Too late for a do-over. He couldn’t take back any of it. He didn’t want to take back the kiss.
He pushed himself away from the wall and started down the ramp toward his parking spot. As his car came into sight, he drew up short. “Shit!”
