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The challenge had vaulted past his lips before he could kill-switch it. But he’d had a good time so far tonight, glaring looks from Garza notwithstanding. Plus, the way Camila was looking at him right now was worth it.
“Wait a sec.” Her black brows went up. “Are you challenging me?”
“Well, if you don’t think you can handle it…” Roman shrugged, and Capelli’s girlfriend, Shae, let out a low whistle.
But Camila didn’t blink. “Oh, it’ssofreaking on right now,” she said, turning toward the game alcove on the other side of the bar.
Roman’s gaze lingered on Camila’s swagger-filled, swivel-hipped walk for just a beat before he impulsively murmured, “Yeah, it is,” and turned to follow her.
Garza, of course, was hot on their heels, with Delia hot on his. But not even the surly detective could wreck Roman’s mood. He and Camila played a game of darts (he won), then another (she took that one by a hair). Somewhere between games one and two and a lot of pointed glances from his sister, Garza had finally drifted away from the game alcove, leaving Roman and Camila to themselves. They shared some easy conversation as they played, which consisted mostly of smack talk and more flirting. Between the high of winning trivia and the electric thrill of flirting with Camila, Roman felt happy and loose for the first time in ages. After she won the second game of darts—and openly celebrated by throwing her hands in the air and crowing “yesssss!” in the cutest way possible—she sat down beside him in one of the partially private semi-circular booths surrounding the game alcove.
“You know,” she said, her face flushed with a pretty glow and her smile bright, “I think we may have been going about this all wrong.”
Roman felt the heat of her body in no less than a dozen places, and wanted it in about a dozen more. “How’s that?”
“We seem pretty good at this truce thing. Maybe we’d make a good team.”
A twinge unspooled in his chest, but he tried to ignore it. “So, does that mean you’re finally conceding?”
Camila surprised him with, “That depends.”
“On?”
Her lashes swept low, shuttering her stare as it dropped to his mouth. “Whether or not we kiss and make up.”
Instinct dared him to close the slight space between them to kiss her, his pulse slamming with every wild, fast beat. The booth was secluded and the crowd had waned enough that he could give her what she was asking for without an audience. But Roman didn’t just want to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her and not stop. He wanted to take her home and strip her bare and make her come a thousand different ways. He wanted to taste and tease and take, then letherdo the taking, giving her everything she could possibly want until they were both completely spent.
Roman didn’t just want Camila for a night. Helikedher.
And that was far more dangerous than anything he’d ever face in the field.
He needed to get out of here.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice loaded with gravel as he pulled back. “I don’t…I can’t—”
“Oh.” Her face flushed, her gaze dipping from his as she shifted away in clear embarrassment. “God. Right. Of course.”
Fuck, he hated the look on her face almost as much as the fact that he’d been the one to put it there. She clearly thought she’d misread the situation. But correcting her meant telling her the truth about why he couldn’t kiss her, and he couldn’t do that.He couldn’t.
So he repeated, “I’m really sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Camila’s whisper nearly crushed his defenses. But one night of flirting with her had given him more feelings than he’d had in the last five years combined. He could not, under any circumstances, get closer to this woman.
Doing so would ruin him. So Roman did the only thing he could.
He slid out of the booth and walked away.
3
October, one year later
Roman’s morningdidn’t suck. This was more than he could say for most mornings—
after all, they weremornings, and had an uphill battle by default. But even though he wasn’t exactly a chipper kind of guy (fine. He was stone cold serious. He always had been. So sue him for being a realist), he had to admit that this particular morning actually had a couple semi-decent things going for it. There hadn’t been a line at the coffee shop on the corner by his apartment. The weather was crisp and cool, with none of that humidity bullshit he suffered through every summer, but not so cold that he’d needed to drag his coat out of the hall closet where he’d jammed it in March. Best of all, last night he’d been able to slam-dunk the massive medical fraud case he'd worked jointly with Remington PD’s Intelligence Unit, turning over the last of the case notes and paperwork that would send yet another criminal to prison. While Roman didn’t believe in anything nearly so cosmically woo-woo as good omens, he had to admit, so far, this morning had been full of promise.
Just like another morning attached to a day that fucking wrecked you, pointed out a voice from the deep hidey-hole of his subconscious, making him stop short on the busy city sidewalk a few blocks from his office. Roman dodged out of foot traffic just in time to avoid being side-swiped by a man with a jogging stroller, placing his back to a bakery storefront and pretending to check his cell phone even though his heart was jammed in his throat. His memories of that day almost always arrived without warning, emphasizing not only everything he’d lost, but how little control he had over when or how hard his brain would kick him with the reminder. The deep breath he took did nothing to get his traitorous subconscious in line, and the memory of that other morning, six years ago now, yanked him back in time as if only six minutes had passed.
