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Until tonight, when it had felt so different, so raw, it had lulled him into a sexually induced state of lethargy. Yet when he’d woken...she was gone.
Now she was talking to his former colleague. A man who knew every sordid detail about Hunter being duped by another woman. The duplicity, the slur on his good name, and the humiliatingly degrading days of being the subject of an inquiry by the department he’d sworn to serve.
Why was she talking to the FBI agent?
Hunter couldn’t see beyond the most obvious answer. His story.
His vision tunneled and the edges grew gray, enveloping him in a black cloak that cut off every thought outside of confronting Carly Wolfe.
* * *
“Here you are,” Hunter said from behind her, his voice encrusted with frost.
If she’d been a cat, his tone would have shaved several lives from Carly. She turned, and the look on Hunter’s face left her frigid, chilling her to the core. Her heart thumped hard, forcing the blood through her frozen veins at an astronomical rate.
Terry Smith responded before her mouth could locate her tongue. “Hunter, come join our party. And just to prove there are no hard feelings—” the agent’s smile was empty “—I’ll buy you a drink.”
Hunter’s gaze remained fixed on Carly. “I’m not interested.”
Carly’s heart pumped harder and the strained atmosphere grew taut, the air dense from the tension. Was the anger on his face directed at his old coworker...or her? She had the horrible sinking feeling she was the cause.
The agent’s grin lacked humor. “After you’ve paid my mixed-up hotel bar bill all these years, I owe you several hundred rounds at least.”
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Hunter said.
His emphatic words about the yearly prank again left Carly with the impression that Hunter had done the hacking and Pete had done the paying.
“Not even one bourbon for old times’ sake?” Terry said.
“I didn’t want to drink with you back then,” Hunter said, his tone lethally even, “and I don’t want to drink with you now.”
The agent refused to shut up. “Come on, Hunter. All Carly’s been doing is asking questions about you.”
Hunter’s face went dark, and Carly’s heart sank like an anchor. She opened her mouth to refute Terry’s exaggerated claim, but the agent went on.
“So it wasn’t like I got to enjoy a nice chat with your girlfriend,” he said, and the up-and-down perusal the man gave Carly came dangerously close to a leer.
Up until now he’d been almost pleasant, and certainly not inappropriate. Carly had the impression Terry’s offensive look was more about making Hunter angry than anything else.
The agent’s words as he went on confirmed her theory. “Tell me—is she worth it?” Terry said. “Maybe if I found the right angle she’d offer to sleep with me for a story too.”
Before Carly could fully register the insult, Hunter’s fist connected with the agent’s chin with a loud snap. One moment Terry Smith was sitting on a barstool, and the next he was sprawled on the floor. The gasps from the guests were loud, and a waitress dropped her tray, shattering glasses on the hardwood floor. Silence followed. The whole room was shocked into momentary stillness.
The two bartenders rounded the bar and Hunter took a step back, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. His gaze pivoted from Terry—still lying on the floor, rubbing his chin—back to Carly. “No need to remove me, gentlemen,” Hunter said to the staff, his slate-blue gaze on hers, so empty the negative pressure threatened to suck the very life from Carly’s soul. “I’m done here.” And, with an air of finality, he swiveled on his heel, heading toward the lobby.
The murmurs of the guests at the bar returned as a bartender helped Terry to his feet. The agent was sullen as he angrily waved the help away. It took Carly all of eight seconds to recover fully from the incident before she took off across the lobby, chasing after Hunter’s retreating form.
“What are you doing?” she said.
He didn’t stop walking. “I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t slow his pace. “Home.”
Her patience was rapidly growing slimmer. “What is your problem?”
“Apparently my ability to choose who I sleep with. Did you find out anything good?”
Frustrated, and more than a little annoyed, Carly struggled to keep up, her legs stretching to match the longer length of his. “I didn’t get a chance to ask him much of anything. You barged in and dropped him with a lethal right hook before I got a chance.”
