His Obsession Next Door (In the Line of Duty) (18 page)

She outstretched her arm but he flinched to avoid her touch. Confusion moved over her eyes as she snatched her hand back like it had been burned. Her gaze moved over his face and in a moment of desperation she said, “Cole, wait.”

“No.” He shook his head hard and after a quick consultation with himself he said, “This thing between us…it’s wrong. What we’ve been doing is wrong.” He pressed his palm to his forehead and fisted his hair. “So goddamn wrong.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes I do. I’m sorry I ever touched you.” He backed up a few more inches and hardened himself when confusion turned to anger in her eyes. He was being a prick, of that he was certain, but he needed to get away from her. He needed her to see he wasn’t sweet, and she deserved someone who would honor her brother, not dishonor him and everyone else the way he had.

“How can you say that?”

“I should have walked away from you that first night at the benefit. Just like I did that day you tried to seduce me in the barn.”

“Cole.” Tears pooled in her eyes and she wrapped her arms around herself, his words penetrating deeper than nuclear weaponry.

“Tell your folks I’m sorry, but I need to go.”

Hurt registered in her eyes and he hated himself for putting it there—again—but he needed to get out of there, needed to be as far away from her as possible.

“Good-bye, Gemma.”

Chapter Ten

Cole was in a bad mood. A kick-ass, shitty, stay-out-of-my-way kind of mood by the time he pulled his truck into the base. Dust kicked up under his tires as he came to a fast stop and slammed his vehicle into park. He climbed from the cab and shut his door with much more force than necessary before closing the gate behind him. All eyes turned to him but he ignored his comrades, who were already hard at work training their dogs.

Exhausted from a night of no sleep, he stomped toward the hangar. As if sensing his distress, Ralph came sauntering over to him.

“Hey, boy.” Not wanting to upset the dog more than he already was, he bent, gave Ralph a good scrub behind the ears and said, “Come on. Let’s go have some fun.”

At least working with Ralph gave him something to think about other than how much he hated himself right now, not to mention the hurt he’d put in Gemma’s eyes last night.

He took the dog inside the hangar. The two spent the rest of the morning going over drills, until Ralph headed off to his empty water bowl. Needing to refill it, Cole made his way to his truck to grab a jug. He walked past Jack without speaking, even though his friend was glaring at him with careful regard, like he knew how much of a fuckup Cole really was.

“You want to talk about it?” Jack asked as Cole offered his friend his back.

“No,” he answered without stopping.

Cole grabbed the jug of water from his cooler and made his way back inside. When he reached the hangar, Ralph was nowhere to be found.

He left the hangar and shaded the morning sun from his eyes as he walked around the building and scanned the vast grounds surrounding the abandoned base. He whistled. “Hey, boy, where are you?” That’s when he heard Ralph barking from the other side of the fence. Shit.

Jack came over to him and tossed a tennis ball from one hand to the other. “How did he get out there?”

Cole drove his hands into his pockets, and inspected the chain link fence. “He must have found a hole. He can be pretty damn wily.”

As Ralph continued to bark, Jack scrubbed his chin and said, “Yeah, well right now he’s pretty damn agitated about something.”

“I’ll go get him.”

At the back of the compound, Cole walked along the fence until he found the small opening Ralph had used to escape. Cole pulled back the chain and crawled through, trying not to snag his fatigues in the process. He walked the empty field fringing the base, his boots pounding on the dry soil as he followed the howling sounds echoing in the air. As the barking grew louder, more frenzied, Cole hurried his steps. What was going on?

When Ralph let out a long whine, Cole took off running. He could hear the thundering of Jack’s boots as he followed from behind.

“Hey, boy.” Cole scanned the grounds and looked for possible threats as he closed the distance between them. “What’s got you so riled up?” That’s when he noticed all the debris on the ground. Cole slowed his steps, stepping over old cartridges, casings and scrap metal, some with deadly sharp edges.

As he took in the situation unfolding before him, he couldn’t help but smile. Instead of digging at the scraps, Ralph was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. He’d found ammunition wreckage and was barking to warn his handler of danger.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Way to go, boy.”

As he approached the dog, Ralph turned his way and started running toward him, his big claws digging into the dry ground and creating a cloud of dust around them. Before Cole even realized what was happening, Ralph jumped on him and sent him flying backward.

“Whoa,” Cole yelled out. He grabbed the dog by the scruff and tried to find his balance as he faltered.

Beefy paws took him to the ground and pain sliced along his legs as something sharp tore into his flesh. He hit the ground with a resounding thud, his head coming into contact with a hard, unforgiving object. He cringed, the sky coming in and out of focus, Ralph’s bark a distant buzz. As the world faded away, his life flashed before his eyes and the last thing he remembered before everything went black, was Jack standing over him calling the others for help.

A long time later Cole blinked his eyes open and winced. Pain radiated from the top of his head all the way down to the base of his neck as the world swayed before him. Having no idea why his head was throbbing so damn bad, his hand went to the back of his skull to discover a peach-sized lump that hurt like a son of a bitch.

“Looks like he’s going to live after all.”

“What the hell?” Cole asked, blinking rapidly until the vision of Jack standing over him came into focus. Except Cole was no longer flat out on the ground, he quickly realized. He was in a strange bed, in a room that wasn’t his own. “Where the hell am I?”

“The hospital.”

“What happened?”

“Ralph happened.”

Cole searched his mind. As he sorted through the chaos, the pieces slowly fell into place. “He was trying to protect me.”

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” Jack said. “We just have to teach him another way of going about it. At least he took you down, instead of digging at the debris. You’ve made great progress with him. Gemma will be thrilled.”

At the mention of Gemma, Cole’s gut clenched and he tossed his blanket off. He made a move to get up but the room started spinning once again. His stomach turned upside down, and he stilled himself, gripping the mattress and striving not to vomit. “I need to get out of here.”

“Easy, Cole, you’ve got a concussion.” He gestured toward his leg. “As well as a nice gash on your calf.”

“I hate hospitals.”

“The doc said they could discharge you once you came to, but you can’t stay alone tonight.”

Cole closed his eyes, sleep pulling at him again as he thought about going home to an empty condo. Bile pushed into his throat, and he coughed. “I’ve got Charlie.”

“You’ve got more than Charlie. Come on.”

Jack helped him to his feet and into his clothes before he left to get the nurse. A short while later the doc came back to check on him. He gave instructions on how to care for his leg before signing the discharge papers and insisted, for precautionary measures, Cole needed to be under watch for the next twenty-four hours.

Cole climbed into the passenger seat of his truck and Jack drove him home. He immediately went to his bed and spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of sleep. He dreamed of Gemma. Gemma sitting with him, tucking him in, tending to his leg and dropping soft, loving kisses onto his forehead.

He also dreamed of Brandon. His friend. His fallen comrade. A man he’d failed.

The night seemed to go on forever. At least the pain in his head seemed to be lessening as the hours ticked by. By the time he was finally able to pull his eyes open and keep them open for any length of time, warm morning sunlight was shining in through the crack in his curtain.

A movement at the foot of the bed caught his attention, and he turned, expecting to see Jack watching over him. But what he saw instead had his pulse leaping and his mind racing a million miles an hour.

Gorgeous blue eyes full of tender concern met his. “Hey,” was all Gemma said as she placed a clean bandage over his leg. She taped it down before she covered it back over with his blanket.

He swallowed the dryness in his throat as his pulse pounded at the base of his neck. “Gemma,” he croaked out. His glance moved around the room, which had finally stopped spinning. He frowned, his dreams coming back to him. “I thought I was dreaming, but you’ve been here with me all night, haven’t you?”

She came around his side of the bed, and handed him a glass of water. He only managed to swallow a few sips before his throat closed. She took it back, set it aside and turned her attention to the cloth soaking in a basin on his nightstand. She wrung it out and dabbed his forehead.

“Jack called me,” she explained. Her concerned gaze panned his face and her voice whispered over him like a caress when she asked, “Are you feeling better?”

He briefly closed his eyes, love rushing to his heart as she tended to him. “Why did you come?”

Her hand fell away from his forehead and she looked at him as if he were dense. “Because you needed me.”

With slow, careful movements, Cole propped himself up on his elbows. He shimmied backward until he was braced against his headboard. “Gemma, after I…what I said…I don’t…” His voice trailed off as he looked at the woman he loved. Christ, after everything he did and the cruel things he’d said, he couldn’t believe she was here, sitting by his side and taking care of him all night. She was an amazing woman, the most amazing woman he’d ever met, and he didn’t deserve her compassion. He didn’t deserve her.

A movement at the door had Gemma turning. “Jack,” she said. “I’m glad you’re here. Can you sit with him for a moment? I need to run to the clinic to take care of a couple of things. I also need to cancel my appointments for the day.”

Cole reached out and grabbed her hand. She turned to him to meet his gaze directly, her blue eyes portraying her every emotion. “You don’t have to do that,” he said.

She took her hand from his and placed his arm by his side. When she leaned forward, her rich, sensual scent seeped under his skin and wrapped around his heart. He curled his fingers into fists and fought the urge to haul her into bed with him, to kiss away all the pain he’d inflicted on her, all the cruel words he’d aimed her way.

“You have no idea how much I do have to do that. But you will soon,” she said. She walked away and paused at the door. “I’ll bring back breakfast. Your fridge is empty.”

Having no idea what she meant, he watched her go, then turned his attention to Jack as he lowered himself into the kitchen chair that had been brought into his bedroom.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you talk in your sleep?”

“Yeah, Brandon.”

“Speaking of Brandon, you did a lot of talking to him last night. A lot of apologizing, actually.”

Cole cringed and stared at the ceiling, wondering how much Gemma had heard of his unconscious ramblings.

Jack reached into his back pocket and pulled out Gemma’s panties, the ones he’d stuffed in his glove box after fucking her that first night at the banquet. He twirled them around his finger and said, “I’m assuming all that apologizing has something to do with this.”

Cole snatched the panties from his hand. “Fuck, Jack. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Jack scoffed, “You were bleeding from the head, Cole, and I was looking for a first-aid kit or something to help stop the flow on the drive to the hospital. I found these in your glove box instead.”

“You could have left them.”

He gave an unapologetic shrug. “I could have, but I didn’t.”

Cole tucked the panties under his leg and stiffened as every memory of Gemma came rushing back. Jesus, what the hell had he gone and gotten himself into? He was well past the point of denying that things between them were casual or that he wasn’t in love with her.

Jack gave a shake of his head, his eyes dark, questioning. “Cole, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s none of your fucking business, Jack.”

“You bet your ass it is. She’s Brandon’s sister and we’re a brotherhood, which means it’s all our business. Garrett’s, Josh’s and mine. If any of us are going to fuck around with a sibling of a fallen comrade, we should at least know what we’re doing, don’t you think?”

Everything in the way he’d so poetically phrased Cole’s indiscretions had his stomach turning. Brandon didn’t deserve this from him and Gemma didn’t deserve the way he’d treated her the other night either. She was sweet, kind, loving and loyal, and had willingly opened herself to him. Handing herself over to him and trusting him implicitly while he was dishonoring everyone around him.