Explosive (30 page)

She felt like an idiot when more fell to take their place—why was her chest so full of emotion?—but he didn’t seem to mind, silently washing the fresh tears away with the washcloth and finally drinking them with his wet, warm lips.

They got back into bed after their shower and held each other while raindrops pattered on the windowpanes. Slowly, cautiously, she let it happen—allowed the spell of her growing love to settle and encompass her just as surely as Thomas’s embrace.

They didn’t sleep, but continued to commune with touches and softly murmured conversations.

After a while, however, her stomach felt hollow with hunger and Thomas began to move restlessly. Sophie sensed that he was too active of a man to spend long awake in a bed . . . if he wasn’t making love, anyway. He seemed increasingly eager to do just that. His lazy kisses on her breasts were becoming hungrier by the second. It amazed her that she found his fascination with her breasts endearing—and arousing—instead of annoying, and she was increasingly focused on the trail of his talented mouth. Before he could reach a peaking nipple though, her stomach growled loudly.

He raised his head, looking adorable and sexy with his hair tousled on his forehead and an incredulous expression on his face.

“I never ate breakfast,” she laughed.

He hugged her tightly, rolling her across his body until she was at the edge of the bed near the door. “Go on,” he growled, swatting her ass playfully, the resulting crack making her jump out of bed. “Better get you fed before I make another meal out of you.”

Thomas said that Daisy had made them a large breakfast in celebration of the six fish Sherm and he had brought back, so Sophie ate her meal of toast and fruit alone. Thomas sat with her at the breakfast bar, turned in the swivel stool so that he could see the steady rain falling onto the gray lake. He sipped his coffee, his mood becoming more and more somber with each passing second.

A sense of helplessness pressed down on her when she once again recognized that he was emotionally withdrawing. She wondered if her earlier bout of crying following their lovemaking had ruined her chances of trying to have an honest conversation with him . . . of trying to reach him. He’d been so intent on trying to soothe her unrest that she hadn’t taken a chance—not just with seducing him, but with encouraging him to talk to her, by telling him the truth—like she’d promised herself she would.

“Thomas,” she began impulsively, “there’s something I wanted to—”

But he had begun talking at the same moment she did.

“You seem like you’re in good shape. Do you want to go running with me?”

Her mouth hung open. She glanced out the picture window.

“It’s raining outside.”

He stood.

“Not hard. And I feel . . . restless.”

Sophie studied his face, seeing the tension that had crept back into his muscles and pinched at his features. How could she deal with his inner demons, invisible as they were to not just her, but him as well?

Well, at least he asked you to go with him this time, instead of taking off all worked up like he did last night,
Sophie thought, trying to staunch her disappointment.

She gave him a small smile and nodded. “Sure. Just let me change.”

They returned forty-five minutes later, both of them soaked through with rain and a healthy salting of sweat. Thomas hadn’t said much during their run, once again seeming preoccupied. When they returned, Sophie said she wanted to open the boathouse door for Guy. She didn’t like to think of the little fox out there in the woods, drenched and injured. She’d told Thomas to go into the house without her, but he’d silently accompanied her to the boathouse and helped her arrange a little den of old blankets for the fox.

They entered on the side porch afterwards so they could remove their wet tennis shoes and socks on the tile floor before entering the house. Sophie’s gaze was snagged by the image of Thomas whipping his T-shirt over his head and the flex and ripple of gleaming, supple muscle. It was on the edge of her tongue to suggest they shower again together—maybe this time she wouldn’t melt into a puddle of tears—but she stopped herself when he turned his back to her and headed toward the house.

“I smell like the inside of a marching boot,” he muttered. “I’ll shower in the extra bedroom.”

And Sophie was left standing alone on the screen porch, holding her soggy tennis shoe and knowing her attempt at cracking the barrier of his defenses had utterly failed.

Seduction hadn’t worked, she thought grimly as she peeled off a wet footie. She might have broken down the walls
she’d
erected against honesty and intimacy, but apparently Thomas’s remained intact.

She was going to have to take a risk. She was going to have to do it—just tell him.

It was time to go, Thomas thought as he stared out the picture window morosely later that afternoon. He needed to get back to his work . . . back to his life. It was
past
time. It’d never been time to
begin
with, he thought with rising exasperation.

He’d tell Sophie as soon as she finished her shower. What he’d said earlier about not being able to walk away from her was true, but he could see her in the city . . . it wasn’t like they lived on opposite sides of the country.

A voice inside him kept shouting out that he should leave her for now, though.

His life was too up in the air at the moment. He was too much of a downer . . . a heavy burden on what should have been a relaxing vacation for her.

She walked into the living room a few minutes later wearing a pair of faded jeans, a long-sleeved, ivory button-down shirt that ghosted her full breasts and not a trace of makeup, her bare feet padding silently on the carpet.

The voice demanding that he flee faded to background noise. Sophie had a way of taking center stage in his awareness.

Even though she looked all soft and touchable after her shower, there was a determined cast to her features.

“Thomas, we have to talk.”

“You want me to go, don’t you?” he asked grimly. He may have just been contemplating leaving, but the idea of Sophie not wanting him there anymore felt like a kick to the gut with a steel-toed boot.

“No. That’s not it. No, of course not.” She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say more, but she stopped herself. She walked toward him, glancing distractedly out at the lake and the heavy downpour. “Jeez, it’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

“What do you want to talk to me about?”

“Sit down,” she said, nodding at the couch in front of the picture window.

She didn’t speak once they’d sat, but just looked down at her hands folded on her thighs. A strange expression overcame her face. She shifted her right hip up and reached between the sofa cushion, extracting his BlackBerry. He barely acknowledged it when she handed it to him.

“Sophie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s not that anything is
wrong
, necessarily—maybe you’ll think differently—but . . . well, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, Thomas. Something about your brother.”

“What about him?”

“You know how I’m friends with Andy Lancaster? Well, sometimes Andy would consult with me about his cases. He wouldn’t give me any names,” she added quickly, her big eyes glued to his face. “But . . . well, I was there in the offices. You remember? . . . We used to see each other . . . on . . . on the nights when ...”

“When my brother Rick was there for his sessions,” Thomas finished woodenly when she faded off.

She nodded.

He studied her narrowly. “Isn’t that sort of unethical for Dr. Lancaster? To blab about his patients to someone else?”

“No . . . it’s really not, Thomas,” she exclaimed in a rush. “I used to work as a clinical social worker years ago. There’s no other psychologists in our practice, so I was the only one with any degree of expertise that Andy could talk to. It’s common for psychologists to consult—to try to get distance on their cases, to gain some objectivity. And like I said, Andy never says names. He maintains confidentiality. I just sort of . . . put two and two together on my own.”

He felt as if ice water rushed down his spine and was slowly seeping to his extremities. “You
know
? You know about what Rick’s source told him? About his investigations into the mob?”

He didn’t even realize he was standing until Sophie stood, too. Gone was the vibrant, apricot tint of her skin. Her face looked washed out of color. Her throat convulsed, as though she were having trouble swallowing. His heartbeat began to pound out a warning in his ears when he read the compassion and anxiety in her dark eyes.

“Rick’s source lied, Sophie. He
lied
.”

“How . . .
how
do you know?” she asked shakily.

“Because it’s
ludicrous
, that’s how I know,” he bellowed. “Do you think I wouldn’t know if the man I’d lived with for eight years of my life, the man who I’ve called
Father
for twenty-six years, was a fucking
sociopath
?” He started to walk away from her, but then jerked around, making her start back. “Is that why you keep asking me about my dad? Because you suspect he’s guilty? What the hell did Rick tell Lancaster? It’s not like
Rick
believed the crap his source was feeding him!” He grabbed her shoulders. “Did he, Sophie? Are you trying to tell me Rick told his psychologist that he actually
believed
that his own father was a criminal?”

“
No
. Andy told me that he was confused and upset by the information his source gave him about your father’s long-term involvement in illegal activities.”

“
Alleged
involvement. Rick was a highly respected investigative reporter for the
Chicago Tribune
, as you probably already know—since you probably know every other damn thing about my life,” Thomas added bitterly. “Rick used a pseudonym for his articles and books. He believed that the two-bit criminal he’d cultivated as a source—a weasel by the name of Bernard Cokey—didn’t know Rick’s real name. But the son of a bitch obviously
did
know he was feeding his lies to the son of Joseph Carlisle. He probably planned on extorting money from Rick for not going to some other journalist or cop with the information. He just never got the chance to do it before Rick was killed.”

He felt like throwing something when he saw the expression in her eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he seethed in a low voice.

“Thomas . . . you’re sure? You’re
sure
that Bernard Cokey is a liar?”

His brows furrowed in puzzlement. “You said that Rick didn’t believe the crap Cokey fed him. Why are you even asking me? I’ve told you my opinion.”

She licked her lower lip nervously. “Well . . . according to Andy, Rick said that he
did
trust Cokey. Everything else he’d told him about Outfit operations checked out. He couldn’t understand why he’d fingered Joseph Carlisle—”

“The rat-bastard did it because he knew Rick’s real name and planned on squeezing him for money,” Thomas boomed. When he saw Sophie flinch, he released her as if her shoulders had burned him.

“I’m going for a drive.”

“Thomas . . . wait . . . The weather is awful. You’re upset.”

But he didn’t pause as he stormed toward the back door. He felt violated . . . like Sophie was some kind of freaking psychic who had pried into his brain against his will. All this time, she’d known about the fiery splinter in his spirit, the volatile lie that Rick had revealed to him less than two weeks before he’d died.

He slammed the door shut behind him, ignoring Sophie’s pleas for him to stop and stepped out into the heavy downpour.

He couldn’t
believe
Sophie had known about Bernard Cokey and his defamations the whole time. The whole fucking time . . . ever since the first moment he’d touched her, she’d known about the shocking, bitter lies that had plagued not just Rick in the last days of his life, but Thomas as well.

A wave of vertigo and nausea struck him a few seconds later as he sat in the driver’s seat and turned on the ignition.

He’d been wondering about Sophie’s motivations for the past few days. It’d been damn strange, the way she’d shown up at the Mannero warehouse just minutes before it exploded. And hadn’t he been suspicious of her as he sat in this very seat and drove behind her on the interstate on the way to the lake house? Hadn’t he become suspicious of why she’d insisted that he—a new lover, but still . . . a near stranger—come with her to the intimate surroundings of her vacation house on Haven Lake? But then he’d spent time with her . . . become overwhelmed by his consuming desire and her soft, soothing touches.

An image sliced through his spinning, chaotic thoughts, jarring him—the memory of Agent Fisk standing in his office and studying Thomas with his penetrating stare.

Our informant isn’t a criminal, Mr. Nicasio. Not in the slightest.

Jesus.

Sophie was an upstanding citizen, and she’d known all the murky, explosive details of Rick’s investigations. What if she’d gone to the authorities after Rick was killed and told them what she knew? He thought of how she’d been there along with the FBI at the warehouse parking lot before it exploded.

What if she was still collaborating with the authorities, even now?

The curtain over the back door fluttered and he saw her pale face glance out at him. His gut lurched.

He didn’t believe Sophie was capable of such cold-heartedness . . . capable of manipulation and betrayal.

He
couldn’t
believe that.

But given all available evidence, how could he
not
?

He saw the back door opening and tossed the BlackBerry he still clutched in his hand into the passenger seat. He shoved the car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. His gaze was on the rearview window as he hurtled down the long, gravel path, but his focus was on the corner of his vision, where he saw Sophie rushing out the back door.

For a split second, his attention broke. He stared at Sophie’s anxious face, the sound of the gravel spitting as he nearly went off the road snapping him out of his trance.