Dark Knight: A Loveswept Romance Classic (11 page)

“
I
didn’t do anything.”

“
I
didn’t make you clasp them so tightly,” she responded evenly. “Let me look at them.”

He started to speak, but bit off whatever he’d been about to say. Probably just as well, she thought. He released a short sigh and in a quieter voice said, “It’s no big deal. If you want to help me, get the keys and take these things off.”

His quiet appeal motivated her more than a dozen demands would have. Without another word, she retrieved the keys along with a small first-aid kit, then crossed back over and squatted down in front of him.

“Ankle chains have to come off first,” she said. She didn’t look at him as she carefully lifted the chain and unlooped it from his handcuffs. When he lifted his wrists for her to unlock the cuffs she saw they were more scraped than cut, nothing serious, but she hated it anyway. Visions of him lying sprawled across the white linen sheets in all his leonine perfection flooded her mind.

Ridiculous as it was, she felt as if she’d desecrated a valuable piece of art, but the real wound was far worse than a superficial scrape. Avoiding his gaze, not daring to risk just what he’d see in her eyes, she very carefully sprung the lock. The metal bracelets loosened immediately. He pulled his hands back and let the handcuffs drop to the floor.

He didn’t move right away or say anything. The silence deepened, becoming awkward. Scottie opened the first-aid kit, then she raised her gaze to his face.

He was angled away from her, massaging his thighs and calves. For all the war games that had gone on between them during his brief captivity, this quiet resolution should have felt somewhat anticlimactic. It didn’t.

Tension simmered and hummed just below the surface. She imagined she could feel it bubbling along inside her veins, stirring things up, pushing her, prodding her, until she—

“Turn around so I can clean those up,” she said, a bit more crisply than intended.

“It’s nothing that won’t clean up in the sink. Trust me, I’ve been much worse off.”

He was right. She knew that, knew he’d been a street cop, knew he’d probably been scarred more than once in his past line of work. “Not by my hand you haven’t.”

He turned then. “You’re in the wrong profession if drawing a little blood bothers you, Detective.”

“Trust me, I’ve done far worse.”

He nodded, conceding the point.

Maybe it was because he’d accepted it as fact too readily, but she felt compelled to clarify, though heaven knew why his opinion was so important to her. After all, she had drugged, shot at, and chained the man within twenty-four hours of meeting him. Why the hell shouldn’t he believe her capable of worse?

“I’m more than willing to do what I have to in order to get the job done,” she said, “but never without due cause or provocation.” Her tone turned dry. “Not that you didn’t do your best to provoke me.” The remembered sight of him hunched over, untangling his chains, blood running down his wrists made her dip her chin. “But then, in your position, who wouldn’t have?”

“Boy, are you always so conflicted over your work?”

She looked up, surprised at the return of the mocking note in his voice. It was the first hint of the “old” Logan Blackstone she’d heard in what felt like hours. It was alarming how deep the rush of relief went. Even more alarming was the unique sense of camaraderie she felt with him. She’d never had more than a surface sense of teamwork with her fellow Dirty Dozen agents. They’d have given up their lives for one another, but only in order to get the job done, not as a personal, buddy-for-a-buddy sacrifice.

She’d certainly never felt this … kinship of spirit. Not with any of her fellow cops when she’d been on the force. Certainly not with her father or her husband.

Confused, she forced her honest smile into a polite one. Business, she told herself, he was business. She’d sort the rest out later.

“I get the job done,” she said with equanimity. “The ends always justify the means, but that doesn’t mean I always have to like it.”

The light sparked again in his eyes. She hadn’t realized just how flat they’d become until now. Until she’d said something to regain his full attention. She turned
her
full attention to the first-aid kit. She’d wanted the kidding, teasing Logan back. Only now did she realize it made no difference which side of Logan Blackstone she was seeing, they all confused her on some level, made her feel things she couldn’t identify, classify, sort, and file away.

“And here I thought you admired my end.”

Her smile played a tug-of-war with her frown, edging out a victory at the last possible second.

“Among other things,” he added.

She rolled her eyes, relying on sarcasm to create at least a thin shield. “Whatever makes you feel better.” She handed him the kit. “Here, clean yourself up at the sink and I’ll get what’s left of the table scraped into a pile.”

Surprising her, he took the kit without comment or complaint. He was at the sink, rinsing his wrists when he spoke again. “Do you always do that?”

“What, clean up my messes?”

“Cut and run when you get the least bit confused by something you don’t immediately understand.”

She stilled for a telling moment, then went back to picking up the splintered shafts of wood. He didn’t miss anything. She remained silent, knowing anything she said would only prove his point.

“That surprises me,” he went on. “You don’t strike me as a coward.”

He’d pushed the wrong button. “A coward?” she said, her tone both incredulous and defensive.

She didn’t strike
any
one as a coward. That was a promise she’d made to herself the day her husband and father had died. Not before or since had one person ever looked beyond her competent, confident, no-bull exterior and questioned what lay beneath it. No one ever questioned what made her who she was. She’d taken the job with Del to insure no one ever would. She’d been very successful. So successful, she’d almost forgotten what lay beneath herself. Until now. Until Logan.

“Prudent, strategic, well thought out,” she countered, working a bit too hard to keep her jaw relaxed. “That’s how my actions are usually described.” She held his steady regard without blinking, purposely meeting the challenge head-on. No one would ever suspect she questioned the outcome. “Along with fearless, commanding, and successful.”

He was drying his hands and wrists carefully, but he held her gaze with total concentration. He stared at her just long enough to make her wonder exactly how far under the surface he could see.

Then he blinked and the intensity vanished. He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “Whatever makes you feel better.” He turned back to the counter and laid the hand towel out to dry.

Scottie remained frozen in place. It was as if he’d flipped a light switch off. One second the entire room crackled with awareness and he looked at her in a way that made it seem as if he could decipher her genetic code if he chose to. An instant later he was casually tossing her words back in her face, then turning away as if he were unaware he’d been plucking out pieces of her soul in the process.

She didn’t buy it. “Now who’s cutting losses and choosing not to understand?”
Let’s see how
you
like being analyzed
. “You don’t strike me as a coward either.”

“We’re all afraid, Scottie. Even you. Some of us just do a better job of confronting and managing the fear.” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms and his ankles.

He’d surprised her yet again. His tone had been neither casual nor patronizing. It had been … inviting.

“So you’re saying I have poor management?”

He pushed away from the counter and walked slowly toward her. “No. I’m saying that it’s not just about getting the job done. It’s not just about bulling forward no matter what. Sure that makes you look bold and daring.” He stopped right in front of her. “But it doesn’t mean you’re not a coward.”

From her position she had to look up in order to maintain eye contact. The supplicant pose was not lost on her.

“You can’t just
manage
what scares you,” he said. “That’s just finding a way to shelve it so you can move around it. That might get the job done, but it doesn’t make you stronger. You have to confront what you fear, make yourself analyze it, break it down, figure out the
why of it. Only then can you figure out how you’re going to deal with it.”

He was impossibly big, impossibly imposing, and completely intimidating. Yet she wanted nothing more than to pull herself upright and tuck her body against his, put her cheek against his chest and seek out things like solace, shelter … peace.

“And what if my way of ‘dealing with it’ is to shelve it?” she asked, proud of her steady voice. Inside she was panicking big time. He was right. In order to be truly strong, she had to face what confused her. She’d always known that. But for ten years, she’d been able to get away with ignoring that fact.

Unfortunately, what confused her most was Logan himself. She was certain she could ignore his challenge and do her job effectively. All her instincts were screaming at her to take the safe path her job always provided. Yet, she had the strong sense of foreboding that if she ducked around it this time, she might regret it for the rest of her life. A hell of a decision.

“Then you’re not really dealing with it all.” He crouched down, putting himself eye level with her. “Are you?”

He took up way too much space. Certainly more than was physically possible. Scottie felt trapped, cornered, overwhelmed. Not by Logan, but by the threat he posed. The challenge he presented. On all levels.

Stay and face it, she told herself. She looked into his eyes and knew. Facing him would entail much more than dealing with what he made her feel, what he made her want, that he had made her want at all. She wouldn’t be able to face the deep-down parts of her he was affecting, without dredging it all up. All of it.

All the confusing questions and concerns that had plagued her two nights before rose again like a haunting specter. That’s what this was about, she decided, grasping desperately at the explanation. It was all that moody, uncharacteristic introspection before Del’s call that was making her react to him this way.

She didn’t have to face it.

It had nothing to do with strength or cowardice, and she didn’t give a damn what he thought.
Liar
, her mind whispered. Scottie ignored it, scrambled backward, and pushed to a stand, brushing off her pants. Logan didn’t move. Logan was now in the supplicant position.

Funny, but she didn’t feel even remotely that she controlled him, much less dominated him. Even chained, he hadn’t let her do that.

He shifted up onto his knees and looked up at her. “Don’t run, Scottie.”

She stood there, frozen in indecision. It was a unique and terrifying sensation she’d like never to repeat. Her instincts told her to run. If she couldn’t trust them, what could she trust?

“Will you answer one question?”

She simply stared at him.

He waited a beat, then said, “I’ll take that as a yes.” His humor didn’t shake her from her almost trancelike state. She felt as if she were at a crossroads of some kind, and it was critical to the rest of her life to choose the right path. Wrong decisions couldn’t be taken back.

“What are you really afraid of, Scottie?”

She looked at him, really looked at him, and spoke the words that had immediately come to mind. Words not born of instinct, but from her heart. “I’m afraid I’ll make the wrong choice.”

The moment she spoke she wished she hadn’t. Hearts couldn’t be trusted. That was the first thing she’d learned in life, the initial lesson taught by her father. Jim had been her graduate course in the subject.

“And what are you afraid is going to happen to you if you do?”

“I’ll lose control.” Again, the words were out before she could stop them, as if a strange compulsion had overtaken her, one she couldn’t deny.

Logan reached out his hands. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt so they wouldn’t rub the abrasions and cuts around his wrists. Scottie fixated on those newly forming scars. Causing them was what had led her to this discussion, brought her to the actual crossroads.
He
was the compulsion. He was the one giving a voice to her heart.

And she knew why. He was the first person to understand she had one. She’d never been more terrified in her entire life.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said.

“Oh, I think you’re dying to do this.” He continued before she could protest. “I think you’ve hit the point where you can’t not do this.”

“What makes you the expert on what I need to do or not do?”

“Experience,” he said simply. But they both knew it was so very complicated. “I’ve been right where you are. Different decisions, different reasons for making them, but the same fear motivating them. Loss of control. In other words, trust.”

She didn’t know how to respond. His assessment wasn’t just uncomfortably close to home, it was a direct hit. It made her want to run fast and hide deep. That
was the easy part. She’d done that many times. There was comfort in that routine. Safety.

At least that was what she’d always thought before.

He also made her want to open up, to spill all the anger and confusion and pain she’d kept locked up inside, release herself from the bonds of anguish she’d thought she’d been successful at dominating, when in fact those bonds had dominated every aspect of her life all along. He’d understand. She could tell him.

There she could find the possibility of real comfort. Of true peace. Safely delivered once and for all from the demons of her past.

“How long have you been in your present job?”

The question took her by surprise, jerking her from her thoughts. She answered without thinking. “Ten years.”

He made a quick visual assessment. “Then you must have gone right from the force, or soon thereafter.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Why did you leave the force, Scottie?”

And like the snap of two fingers, the haze of confusion abruptly cleared. Righteous anger took its place.
So much easier this way
, her mind taunted.
Shut up
.