Cody Walker's Woman

“No sense wondering,” he told Keira as he kept driving past the driveway. He pulled over on the other side of the road and rolled down his window. After a few seconds the window of the other car also rolled down, and Cody recognized FBI Agent Jeff Holmes in the driver’s seat.

“Good morning,” Cody said with a grin only partially concealed. “You’re up early.”

He could see the tightening jaw on the other man’s face. “So are you,” Holmes replied eventually. “So is Callahan.”

“Yeah. Things to do, you know.” He debated with himself for a minute, then said provocatively, “If you wanted to know what we were up to, you could have asked.” Not that we would have told you, he added silently, but...

“Right, Walker.”

Cody rolled up his window, chuckled to himself, and executed a U-turn.

For the first time Keira spoke. “Whatever happened to interagency cooperation?”

He glanced at her. “Right. And I suppose you’re going to tell him about the agency’s secret data link into the FBI’s computers in Washington?”

She laughed softly at the dryly teasing note in his voice. “Well, no, I wasn’t going to go that far. But I wouldn’t deliberately provoke rivalry, either. We are on the same side, after all. And he has his job to do, just as we have ours.”

“I know.” A tinge of contrition crept into his voice. “But they resent the hell out of us. And they don’t trust us, not where the job is concerned. They never have.” He took a deep breath. “Just like you don’t trust me.”

She cast him a look of shock. “I trust you,” she whispered.

“Not completely,” he told her. “In some ways you do, but...”

She didn’t answer, and Cody knew she was thinking...really thinking about what he’d said, trying to decide if it was true. That was one of the wonderful things about her—she didn’t automatically leap to her own defense. And she could admit her own failings. Not everyone could do that.

Cody pulled the truck up in back of Callahan’s house, turned off the ignition, and waited. And waited. He watched her profile, saw the delicate color come into her cheeks as she realized he was watching her. She glanced away, staring out the window at the back porch, but he knew she wasn’t really seeing it any more than he was.

After a couple of minutes, Keira turned, and her eyes met his. “What do you want from me?” she asked in a low tone.

“Everything.” Her eyes widened, and her face took on a startled expression. He smiled faintly, then reached over and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. “Heart, mind, body and soul. I’m thirty-seven, Keira,” he confessed. “I’ve waited too long to settle for anything less. I can’t...I won’t.”

“Do you know what you’re asking?”

He was gambling everything on one roll of the dice. “I want you—you know that. But I want all of you. I want to go to sleep at night with you in my arms, and I want to wake up the same way. But that’s not enough. Not for me...not for us. I also need to know that you trust me...in every way there is. Not just with your body. Not just with your heart.”

“You’re asking the impossible.”

“I know.” His voice was husky. “But it’s all or nothing.”

“I can’t...it’s not that easy...I...”

Cody unbuckled his seat belt and took the keys out of the ignition. “I’m not asking you to decide right this second,” he said. “But I thought you should know how I feel.” He opened the truck door and changed the subject. “Come on, let’s get that computer inside and hook it up to the internet, see what else we can find out.”

She caught his arm, and he turned back. “Wait, Cody. I...”

His heart melted at the confusion on her face. He knew he’d sprung this on her with little or no warning, and maybe it wasn’t fair. Some people might say they barely knew each other, and maybe Keira was thinking that, too. But he knew everything important there was to know about her. And he hoped...prayed, really, that she would realize she already knew everything important there was to know about him, too.