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She would never forgive them.
Elena averted her gaze first, but Kara felt no pleasure. She was too raw, too sad. They left with a mumbled goodbye. Will noticed the tension, went to his office and closed the door.
Kara was alone with Colton.
Damn, the emotions threatened to tear her apart. Betrayal, guilt, relief, regret, grief, but she settled on the anger because she and anger had always been on good terms.
“Hit me,” he said.
She wanted to. She wanted to pound his chest for making her hurt, for making her grieve.
She didn’t move. He sat at the table looking all cocky and confident, as if all he had to say was I’m sorry and she would forgive him.
“With the hit Chen put out on you, it was safer for you to be three thousand miles away, and we all knew you would have wanted to back me up.”
He was right, in part. She was safer three thousand miles away. But she didn’t have a death wish. She wouldn’t have been happy about it, but she would have stayed away. Maybe she didn’t know it at the time, but now as she thought on it, she realized she was a good cop; she would have protected herself—and the integrity of the case.
And not ended up hating the man she had so many conflicting and complex feelings for.
“I get it,” he said. “I’d be mad if the situation was reversed.”
“You think I’m mad.” Her voice was calm. She didn’t expect the calm, but right now it soothed her.
Now he looked confused. “You should be. It was fucked, but someone really tried to kill me. I was shot in the back—I can show you the scar. It could have happened again. It was safer for me and you if everyone thought I was dead.”
“Huh.” She shook her head. “Whatever.” She tossed him his keys. “Take your bike. Do your job.”
He caught his keys in one hand. “Come over tonight. We’ll talk, work everything out.”
“Talk? Is that what we do?”
Now he smiled, got up and walked over to her. “I’ve missed you, Kara.” He reached out for her, touched her arm, leaned in toward her, his head tilted just a bit, his lips crooked, his dimple barely visible under his three-day growth of beard. He was so sexy and she’d always been hot for him. They’d had something...she thought. Once. It seemed like a million years ago.
She punched him in the gut and turned to leave.
“See, you feel better now, K. Come over tonight. I’ll make it up to you.”
Slowly, she faced him. She was surprised she could speak. “I don’t feel better, Colton.”
“You want to do it again?”
But his tone had shifted a bit. Wary. Worried.
“No.”
“Kara, forgive me. Please. We had something good, let’s find it again.”
“We had something,” she said. “Good? I don’t know. Maybe sometimes it was. It’s lost now, and I don’t want to find it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Then you don’t know me at all.”
She walked out.
34
One thing that Sloane had learned from her parents growing up on a ten-thousand-acre ranch in Montana was to treat everyone with respect. Ranch hand or cattle buyer, farrier or banker, be kind and it would come back to you in spades.
