“I preferred making it any other way.”
“Why?”
“Because it didn’t have anything to do with getting off.”
“What didn’t?”
“Looking into the woman’s face.” He murmured the statement as though puzzled by it.
Her throat grew tight. She reached up and stroked his cheek. “You wanted to look into mine?”
He continued to stare into her eyes for several moments, then pulled away from her so abruptly that the emotional withdrawal was as definitive as the physical separation.
Reluctant to let that happen, she followed him, turning onto her side toward him. He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, suddenly but completely detached.
She spoke his name.
He turned only his head toward her.
Quietly she said, “When this is over, I’ll never see you again, will I?”
He waited for a beat or two, then gave an abrupt negative shake of his head.
“Right,” she whispered, smiling ruefully. “I didn’t think so.”
He returned to his study of the ceiling, and she thought that would be the end of it. Then he said, “I guess that changes your mind about this.”
“This?”
“Fucking me. But you knew what you were getting,” he said as though she’d disputed him. “Or you should have known. I haven’t made a secret of who I am, what I’m like. And, yeah, I’ve wanted you naked from the minute I saw you, and I made no secret of that either.
“But I’m not a hearts and flowers guy. I’m not even an all-night guy. I don’t hold hands. I don’t cuddle…” He paused, swore. “I don’t do any of that stuff.”
“No, all you’ve done is risk your life t
o save mine. More than once.”
He turned his head and looked at her.
“You repeatedly asked me why I left the garage,” she said. “Now I want to ask you something. Why were you coming back to it?”
“Huh?”
“You had told me that if you didn’t return within a few minutes of ten o’clock, I was to drive away and get as far from Tambour as possible. So, for all you knew, that’s what I had done. After nearly dying in that explosion, with a burn on your shoulder, and your hair singed, you could have run in any given direction in order to get away, but you didn’t. When you found me on the railroad tracks, you were racing back to the garage. To me.”
He didn’t say anything, but his jaw tensed.
She smiled and moved closer to him, aligning her body along his. “You don’t have to give me flowers, Coburn. You don’t even have to hold me.” She laid her head on his chest just below his chin. Her hand curved around his neck. “Let me hold you.”
Chapter 40
Diego held the edge of his razor to Bonnell Wallace’s Adam’s apple.
Wallace was proving to be a stubborn son of a bitch.
Getting into the house had been easier than Diego had anticipated. The alarm hadn’t been set, so he hadn’t had to strike immediately and then run like hell to get away before the cops showed up. Instead, he’d been able to sneak in and get the layout of the house before Wallace knew he was there.
He thought he’d caught every break, until he realized that Wallace was in the study in the front of the house where he’d seen him the night before, in plain view of anyone who happened by on the street.