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The woman looked back and forth between them, a little concerned, before nodding. “Sure. I’ll be right back.”
“Where I choose to take my vacation is none of your concern, Zane.”
“It is when no one is willing to tell you how risky and stupid it is.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really? How much do you know about my plans, exactly?”
“I know you’re going hiking alone in Big Bend. That’s enough.”
Caroline clenched her fists by her legs and forced herself to breathe in through her mouth and out through her nose. She would not get in a screaming match with Zane Wales in the middle of a bar.
Unable to look at him without giving him the full force of her opinion—loudly—she surveyed the bar. Just about everyone was watching them, waiting for the fireworks. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d provided a colorful show. But it had been a long time.
“You don’t know anything about my plans, Wales. You don’t know anything about my life. Remember?”
“You say that like me getting out of your life wasn’t the best thing for you.”
She just stared at him. “Seriously?”
“And regardless, this plan of yours—” he said the phrase with such derision her eyes narrowed and she felt her temper rising to a boiling point “—is ridiculous. You can’t do it.”
Oh. No. He. Didn’t.
The waitress brought them both their checks and Caroline counted it one of her greatest accomplishments that she didn’t say anything at all. She just got out a twenty-dollar bill, threw it down on the table and stood, not caring that she was tipping the waitress almost as much as the bill itself.
She felt every eye on her as she turned and walked out the door. She didn’t care and definitely wasn’t afraid to go back to her house now. She was too damn pissed.
She made it to her truck before she heard him.
“You can’t seriously be going on this trip.”
She didn’t turn around. “You know what, Zane? You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know it’s dangerous.”
Now that they didn’t have an audience, she didn’t even try to keep her volume in check. “No, you’re making a snap judgment that it’s dangerous because you don’t know all the facts.”
“Then tell me all the facts.”
Now she turned around. “I’m not stupid. And believe me, I have no desire to put myself at risk. I have taken precautions to make myself as safe as possible.”
What was more, she needed this. Had talked extensively to Grace Parker about this time by herself. The psychiatrist had agreed that, with the right precautions for her personal safety, it was a good idea.
She would’ve told Zane all of this already if he’d been around. If he’d been a part of her life. But he hadn’t been. So by damn, he did not get to have a say in her decisions.
“You know what? Just forget it.” She spun back toward her truck.
“Hey, I’m not done talking to you.”
“I don’t give a damn if you’re done with me or not. Have you thought of that? Maybe I’m done with you this time.”
He strode directly to her. “What do you mean, this time?”
His nearness didn’t bother her. Zane’s nearness had never bothered her. This entire shouting match—so much like old times—was so freeing in a lot of ways.
“You bailed on me eighteen months ago, Zane. You don’t get to have a say in anything I do anymore.”
His volume rose with hers. “I didn’t bail on you. I knew me being around you would be a constant reminder of the worst day of your entire life. So I tried to do the noble thing and get out of your way.”
“Noble?” She all but spat the word, poking him in the chest. “You were too much of a coward to fight for us, so you ran.”
“This discussion is not about the last year and a half. This discussion is about your asinine plan to go hiking for a week by yourself.”
“Why do you think you get to have a say in what I do, Zane?”
She got right up in his face and shouted the words.
God, it felt so good to yell. To have someone yell back. To not have someone treat her with kid gloves like she was going to break any minute.
“You don’t, Zane,” she continued, poking him in the chest with her finger again as she said it.
His eyes flared as he wrapped his hand around her finger against his chest.
And then, before either of them realized what was happening, he yanked her to him and kissed her.
Caroline had been kissed since the rape. She’d even had sex with a couple guys since. But they hadn’t been Zane. Hadn’t been who, deep inside, she truly wanted.
And it sure as hell hadn’t been a kiss like this.
Zane’s lips were like coming home. His arms banded around her waist and hers slid up his chest and around his neck.
That hair. Thick and brown. She thought of how many times she’d flicked off his hat and ran her fingers all the way through it as he kissed her. Exactly like she was doing now.
He devoured her mouth and she couldn’t get enough of it, pulling him closer with fists full of his hair, moaning as his fingers bit into her hips in his urgency to get her closer.
He backed her up until she was against her truck, then grabbed her by the hips and hoisted her up to the engine’s hood. Now she could wrap both her arms and her legs around him.
Passion simmered through her blood as his lips nipped down her jaw to her neck. Not gentle, not timid. Just Zane. Fierce and passionate, the way lovemaking had always been for them. She moaned as one of his hands came up and fisted into her hair, holding her so he had better access to what he wanted.
Her.
And she couldn’t get enough of it.
Dimly she was aware that they were still in the parking lot of the Silver Eagle. That any minute her colleagues, law enforcement officers who generally tended to frown on sex in public places, were going to make their way out.
This needed to be taken back to her place. Or his. Or a hotel room.
Stat.
“Zane, we’ve got to stop.”
She sighed at another one of his nipping kisses, at the feel of him pulling her closer. She’d missed this so much.
But damn it, she didn’t want to get arrested.
“Zane, stop.”
She gripped some of his hair and gave it a tug.
She could tell the exact moment he came back to his senses. His hands dropped from her hair and he all but jumped back from her body.
But it wasn’t until she saw his face that she understood. He was ashen. Distraught.
“Zane—” She reached for him, but he moved farther back.
“Oh, my God. Caroline, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me, I—”
She jumped down from the hood of her truck, desperate to wipe the distressed look off his face. Zane hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d done everything right and she wanted more.
But at that moment Wade yelled from the open door of the bar. “Hey, Captain sent me out here to make sure the two of you hadn’t killed each other.”
Caroline rolled her eyes and turned toward Wade, waving her arm at him over the hood of her truck. “We’re fine. Leave us alone and you guys mind your own business.”
Wade’s chuckle rang out in the still night air as he went back inside.
“So I wasn’t saying, ‘No, let’s stop. I don’t want to do this.’ I was saying, ‘Let’s move this party someplace a little more...’” She turned back to Zane, her biggest smile in place.
But Zane was gone. She heard his truck start on the other side of the parking lot before his tires squealed as he sped onto the street.
Chapter Four (#uf1013233-bc21-5782-ba30-641a26ae6dc7)
Zane woke from the nightmare, heart pounding, sweat covering his entire body despite the cool air coming through the screened windows of his bedroom.
He’d dreamed about the night Caroline had been attacked by Paul Trumpold a year and a half ago. It had been a while since he’d dreamed about it. Although it was no surprise that he’d had it again after what had happened in the parking lot of the Silver Eagle two nights ago.
He probably would’ve had the dream last night if he’d slept a wink.
The dream—really more of a memory—always started the same way: Zane sitting at his desk at the CCPD headquarters, even though it was late at night, doing some work, avoiding doing what he really wanted to do, which was accept Caroline’s invitation to go over to her house when he got off work. He hadn’t wanted to give her the upper hand in their relationship. Wanted to keep her a little off balance like she so often kept him. Wanted to let her know, for once, what it felt like to wonder what would happen next. She did it to him without even thinking. He wanted her to know—wanted himself to know—that he could do it to her.
It all seemed so ridiculous now.
The uniformed cop—a young kid, Zane couldn’t even remember his name—who’d wanted to give Zane a heads-up before he got the official call had run up to Zane’s desk, knowing Zane was lead detective in the case. The cop had been out of breath when he told Zane the serial rapist had struck again.
Zane always remembered that moment in his dream and in his life. Because that had been the last time he’d ever been okay. The last time his world had been whole.
He’d been pissed that the rapist had struck again before they could catch him, but his world had still had a foundation.
He could never stop the next moment in his dream any more than he could in real life: when the cop gave him the address of the rapist’s latest victim.
Caroline’s address.
He’d written down the first two numbers as the cop had said it out loud before he’d realized where it was, then had dropped everything and run as fast as he could to his car, driving way past the limitations of safety to get to Caroline’s house.
Praying the entire time that there had been some mistake. That the address was wrong. That the kid cop, in all his excitement to be helpful, had gotten the numbers wrong or something.
The numbers hadn’t been wrong.
The ambulance at Caroline’s house had thrown him. He’d seen an ambulance there before, one Caroline had driven. Hell, she’d even driven an ambulance to his house to meet him for a quickie once.
But she hadn’t driven this one. This time the ambulance had been for her.
The dream sometimes changed from there. He always had to cross her yard to get to the door of her house. Sometimes as he ran across the yard in his dream the ground swallowed him like quicksand, slowing him from reaching the door. Sometimes there were thousands of people all over the yard and he couldn’t get through no matter how hard he tried.
Sometimes he ran as fast as he could, but the door kept getting farther and farther away.
But no matter what happened, the rapist—Dr. Trumpold—always just stood there laughing at Zane. And when Zane would finally fight his way to the door, the man would turn and whisper, “You know why she opened the door for me? Because she thought it was you knocking. Thanks for the help.” Then he would disappear.
And in his place would be Caroline. Lying on the floor of her own foyer, beaten until she was unconscious. Clothes ripped off her small body. Being treated by her own EMT colleagues, handling her with care even though she was long past feeling any pain at that point.
Zane had just stared, watching his entire world lying broken at his feet. He hadn’t been able to move, hadn’t been able to say a thing, even if there had been something that could’ve been said or done.
In real life Zane had ridden in the ambulance with Caroline, had stayed by her side in the hospital until she’d finally woken up forty-eight hours later and helped them catch the rapist.
But in his dream he was always stuck there in the doorway of her house, looking down at Caroline’s broken, battered body. Knowing she would never be okay again, that they would never be okay again.
And in the worst of the nightmares she would open her eyes from where she lay on the floor—although he knew that would’ve been impossible, since the blows from the rapist had caused both her eyes to be swollen completely shut—and echo her rapist’s earlier comment, in an oddly conversational voice.
Where were you, Zane? I thought it was you knocking at the door.
And he would never have an answer.
He got out of bed now, knowing he wouldn’t get any more sleep. Hell, he’d be lucky if he got any sleep any night this week after what had happened in the parking lot of the Silver Eagle.
He’d flown at least one flight each of the last fifteen days straight, so he should be glad he had nothing scheduled for today, but now he wished he could get back up in the air. After the nightmare, today wasn’t a good day to be grounded. Zane wanted to be up in his Cessna.
Flying had been the only thing that had come even a little close to filling the hole in his life since he left the department. Like Captain Harris suggested, flying wasn’t enough to completely eliminate the void, but it at least did something.
Zane wished he had another organ donor trip. That had been exciting. The deadline, the pressure, knowing someone was counting on you to get the job done.
That had been what his life had been like every day when he’d been a detective on the force.
Life when he’d had Caroline in it.
That wasn’t any easier to think about than not being on the force any longer. Especially after what had happened in the Silver Eagle parking lot.
What in heaven’s name had come over him? How could he have possibly treated Caroline like that?
They’d been fighting just like old times. Yelling at each other.
