Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic (16 page)

With his face buried against her neck and hers closeted in the dark sanctuary of his shoulder, she answered him. “Who is Sarah?”

She felt his breath catch. One moment passed, then another. Finally he let it out, a slow release accompanied by the relaxation of muscles that had suddenly gone tight at her request. That should have relieved her, instead it made her want to take the question back. Tell
him she didn’t really want to know. Save him from discussing something that would probably hurt him and very likely herself in the process.

“I loved her.” It was a raw, gritty admission. It shouldn’t have pierced her heart, but it did.

She took a moment to collect herself. He’d said “loved”—past tense. “What happened? Where is she?”

“She’s dead.” He lifted his head and looked at her. The anguish she saw in his eyes tore another jagged wound in her heart. “I killed her.”

NINE

He’d never actually said the words out loud. Until now. Oh, everyone who knew him, knew he felt them, knew he believed them to be true. There wasn’t an officer in the Detroit PD that didn’t understand why he’d turned his badge in. Most disagreed with both the decision and the reasoning behind it, some quite vociferously, but they all understood it.

“I’m so sorry,” Scottie said.

Pulled from his thoughts, he stared at her. Sorry? He’d just confessed to killing someone, and she was sorry for him?

“It’s horrible when anyone dies,” she went on. “No matter who he or she is, whether they’re a victim or a villain. It’s still a human being, lying there dead.”

He just stared at her. She was looking at him, but he understood that slightly unfocused gaze. She was lost in her own thoughts, her own memories.

“But when it’s someone you love …” Her voice
trailed off, then her gaze cleared and shifted to his. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, losing someone is always hard. But she didn’t just die, Scottie. I killed her. I was responsible.” He was harsher than he’d meant to be, wanted to be, but for some reason seeing that look of understanding—true understanding—on her face had scared him. It was too much like being forced to look in a mirror. He didn’t want to look that deeply into his soul. He didn’t want her looking either.

Her eyes widened a bit. If there was a little hurt mixed in he ignored it. “How?”

The demand caught him off guard. “What?”

“How did you do it?” she asked, defiant. “Kill her, I mean?”

No one had ever asked him. Mostly because everyone who knew him knew how Sarah had died. But, he realized now, no one had ever forced him to talk about it either. Sure, there had been those who had tried to console him, tell him he was not to blame, but he’d shut them out, totally and completely. After a time, those who knew him understood he didn’t discuss the topic. Ever.

That she had questioned him now, in such a cold, unflinching way, should have made him mad, should have made him want to lash out, should have made him rage at her for inflicting such pain.

Instead, he heard himself quietly say, “She was under my protection.”

She didn’t back down an inch. “What, you shot her by mistake or something?”

Anger flared, but he looked into those eyes, fearlessly challenging him, and he couldn’t seem to grasp a
steady hold on the emotion. “I didn’t shoot her,” he said evenly.

“Then tell me how you did it.”

“Scottie, don’t push—”

“I don’t buy it.”

“What don’t you buy?” he exploded. “That I killed her? Or that I’m capable of killing?”

She looked him squarely in the eye. “You can kill. You have before.”

“You should know, you’ve seen my service record.”

But that wasn’t it. There was a look of … knowing in her eyes, one that didn’t come from studying his personnel file. This was the kind of look that could only come from experience.

“Who do you work for, Scottie?”

“Oh no, no table-turning.”

“I didn’t start this line of questioning. You expect me to spill my guts, so I’ll ask anything I damn well please.”

She paused for a moment, some of the defiance gone from her expression. “Do you want to stop?”

He opened his mouth to say yes—hell yes!—then closed it again. Did he? While it didn’t feel good to talk about what had happened, much less his role in it, it did somehow feel … necessary.

He thought about the way Scottie had begun to respond to him. He could tell himself that his need for her was as basic as she’d made it seem. One man, one woman, one cabin, a ton of snow. But he’d be lying.

There had been some … thing, some tone, an honest need, lacing her request about Sarah, that he’d responded to on a level he didn’t know he was still capable of connecting to.

“Yes, I want to stop.” The light of battle winked out in her eyes, leaving only disappointment. Recriminations and accusations he could have deflected. But he discovered he was defenseless against disappointment in the eyes of Scottie Giardi. “But I’m not going to.” He blew out a sigh and levered himself off of her. He settled into the other end of the couch, not sure where to look, much less where to begin.

She sat up slowly, tucking her feet under her. She ran a hand through her hair, using long, slender fingers to pull the tangled pieces free and smooth them down.

His attention was caught by the process, and he found himself wanting the responsibility for that task next time. Ridiculous. Where was this leading? He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to find out.

“I’m sorry,” she said, then raised a hand to stop him when he would have interrupted. “You’re right. I really had no business asking about Sarah. It was just that I, that we—” She stopped and glanced down at her hands, now intertwined in her lap.

He didn’t push. For once in his life, he didn’t push.

She finally looked up. “I don’t
do
this,” she said as if that should explain everything.

Somehow, it did. “Scottie—”

“Let me finish.” A brief smile curved her lips. “Just this once.” The smile faded, and she glanced away, staring off across the cabin. “I’m not what you would call a casual person. I tend to take everything very seriously. And for most of my life, everything has been my job.”

“You don’t have to—”

Her gaze flashed to his. “Yes, I do. When I came into this cabin, my mind was on one thing and one thing only, preventing one Logan Blackstone from leaving
the premises for the next few days. I wasn’t expecting what I found.”

He flashed a small smile of his own. “Had I known I was expecting company …” He was rewarded with another small curve of her lips, but that too slipped away.

“I’ve seen naked men. Even been naked myself with a few of ’em.”

Logan was unprepared for the little spurt of emotion her dry statement elicited. It felt uncomfortably like jealousy. Or envy perhaps.

“But you—” She paused, then turned to look at him again. “You were magnificent. I thought you resembled some exquisite piece of art. Watching you move on that bed …” She blew out a soft sigh. “I was mesmerized. All thoughts of my job went poof!”

Her expression wasn’t dreamy and ingenuous. It was as clear and specific as her words. Instead of pumping his ego, her honest description humbled him. He had no idea how to handle that.

“You still managed to get that needle in my backside.”

“Barely. No pun intended,” she added, another smile flirting with her full lips. “That’s another example. Mistakes like that don’t happen to me. You disconcert me. Professionally and personally. I think I’ve gotten a handle on the professional side, or the beginnings of one. There’s a whole lot more to you than a cop-turned-bartender. But the other? How you affect me personally? Not a clue how to deal with that. I thought that letting go with you, giving in to what I wanted, was a professional battle, an ethical war between right and wrong as it applied to my job and getting
that job done correctly. But it isn’t about that at all.”

“What is it about then?”

“It’s just about me. It has nothing to do with my career or completing this assignment. It should be, but it’s not.”

“What about
you
, Scottie? What are you battling against?”

She laughed; it was hollow. “You probably think I’m a mental case at this point. All you want is a good roll on the couch and a way to keep from dealing with the situation for a while, and here I am doing a psychoanalysis—”

“What makes you think you’re just a roll on the couch for me?”

That made her pause. It made him pause too. If she wasn’t just a potentially incredible way to spend an afternoon or two, then what exactly was she? Good question, he thought. He wished he hadn’t asked it. Sort of.

“I met you,”—she looked at her watch—“a little more than a day ago. What in the hell else could I be?”

“You tell me. It’s been a little more than one day for both of us. What in the hell else could it be for you? You’re the one saying you stopped for personal reasons. Is it simply that you’re just not a roll-on-the-couch type?”

“See, that’s just it. I’m not. But I would have been, could have been, with you.”

“Except?”

She stared at him for a moment, then said, “Except when I walked into that bedroom at the crack of dawn yesterday morning, you were writhing on that bed in there, calling another woman’s name. It shouldn’t make
any difference. It’s just a fling we’re talking about, right? I shouldn’t care who she is, or what she meant to you.”

“But you do.” He understood. He thought about how he’d feel to hear her moan another man’s name, and he was very afraid he understood completely. “And you had to know who she was before you could … roll.”

Scottie smiled. This time it stayed. He felt as if he’d been given a gift. “Something like that, yeah.” She unfolded her legs and pressed her palms against her thighs. “Stupid, huh?”

“No. Human.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not accused of being that too often either,” she said wryly.

“Then it’s no wonder this is throwing you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You paint yourself as this workaholic automaton who’s suppressed her own feelings for the good of the company, completing mission after mission. Doesn’t mean you don’t have feelings and needs. You’re just not used to being forced to deal with them.”

She tilted her head. “Think you’re pretty damn smart.”

He grinned. “Know so.”

“So why does someone so damn smart carry such a heavy burden of guilt around for something he had no control over?”

Logan felt as if he’d been sucker punched. “You’re no slouch either. What did you major in, Insidious Interrogation Techniques one-oh-one?” He was grumbling, but he wasn’t really upset. That surprised him enough to break eye contact. He dropped his chin, studied his hands.

“Minored,” she shot back. “I majored in How to Turn the Tables to Keep from Answering Uncomfortable Questions.”

Logan laughed as he looked up. “I bet you aced the course.”

She beamed with mock pride. “Head of my class.”

He shook his head. “We’re a pair, aren’t we?”

Scottie sobered a bit, but was still smiling. “We can successfully complete the most dangerous mission with dozens of lives at stake, but can’t manage an interpersonal relationship past the rudimentary basics.” She managed a dry laugh. “The perfect secret agents.”

He looked at her. “Is that what you are?”

She looked right back at him. “Takes one to know one, doesn’t it?”

Tellingly, he didn’t answer. He leaned back on the couch, relaxing as he laughed. “We’re hopeless. Hopeless.”

Scottie nodded, smiling in agreement. Several moments passed, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable.

She watched Logan from the corner of her eye. He was lost in thought. She wished she knew what was rumbling around inside his head. She still wanted to know about Sarah, about Grant Hudson, about how he’d tracked down his brother when no one should have been able to find him. But even more, she wanted to know about things like his relationship with his father, what had made them open a bar together, what his life had been like growing up, who had he loved … which brought her right back to Sarah.

“You’re right,” he said, suddenly breaking the silence.

She looked at him. His expression had sobered and was once again unreadable. “About what?”

“Sarah.”

“You didn’t kill her.”

He stared at her. “What exactly do you know about that?”

“Nothing. Only what I’ve heard from you. My background information on you is pretty slim, actually. Most of it’s only as it pertains to your brother. We didn’t have time to get much more. I didn’t know about Sarah until I walked into that bedroom yesterday.”

“Then how do you know I didn’t kill her?”

“Instinct. You might blame yourself, but you didn’t do it. Am I right?”

“You don’t understand. She was in my protection.”

“When you were working for the Detroit PD?”

“Yeah. She was a witness in a drug hit. Wrong place, wrong time. She had nothing to do with any of it. She agreed to testify, disagreed with protection of any kind.” His focus turned inward, and for a moment a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. It was bittersweet and tugged at Scottie’s heart. “She was a pretty self-reliant type,” he said. “Didn’t need anyone.”