Swept Away (43 page)

Yet she hadn’t—because she could still feel the way he’d rejected her ten years ago. And she
didn’t want to be that needy girl again, who wanted him so much more than he wanted her.

And now he’d turned into Mr. Order-barking FBI Man—and she was starting to get irritated. “What’s your problem today, anyway?” she asked without warning.

He seemed entirely unfazed. “Problem?”

She let out a sigh, then lifted slightly to peer down at him. “Look, I don’t know what’s going
on with you, why going back into FBI mode is turning you into a bastard—” He raised his eyebrows in surprise, yet she went on. “But I guess I’d like to think we’ve shared some pretty intimate stuff here, and I would really prefer if it didn’t end on a bad note. Like last time.”

“Last time?”

“When you left town so abruptly that you couldn’t even be bothered to relieve me of my
virginity.”

Brock let out a low, tired-sounding sigh, then looked her in the eye for a long, lingering
moment. “Maybe I didn’t want to just fuck and run, ever think of that?”

She released a breath, feeling slightly cowed, but only for a few seconds. “No, I didn’t. And
that might actually have been somewhat noble—but I don’t believe it was the reason.”

“All right, it wasn’t,” he admitted. “But you’d have been pissed if I’d taken your virginity, then
disappeared the next day.”

“True. Yet I was already pissed and you didn’t seem to care.” She almost wished she hadn’t
started this, escalated his bad mood into what seemed like an argument now. But on the other
hand, she felt them moving closer, finally, to an answer she’d wanted for a very long while.

He stared at her long and hard. “Did it ever occur to you, kitten, that maybe, just maybe, there
was other shit going on in my life at the time? That maybe there was a reason for the things I
did and the decisions I made?”

She lowered her gaze, suddenly going sheepish. “I was seventeen. I thought your whole world should revolve around me.”

He let out a short laugh, and as always when there was tension between them, she was glad to have relieved it. “That would have been nice,” he said. “But there was other stuff happening.
Stuff I haven’t told you.”

She couldn’t ignore the weight of his words. “So tell me now.”
He shook his head, utterly serious again that fast.

“Why not?”

“It was a long time ago, Kat—why dredge it up?”

She swallowed hard, then confided in him one more time. She’d told him all her other secrets
—hell, she may as well admit this one, too. “Because you really hurt me, Brock,” she admitted
quietly. “You broke my little teenage heart, if you want the truth. I was... devastated, thought I
must be the most undesirable girl on the planet. In fact...”

His stiff, angry FBI face had transformed into something softer, sadder. “What?”
She sighed. “You really want to know how I lost my virginity?”

He blinked. “Yeah, I do.”

She took a deep breath and met his gaze. It was a horrible thing to have to confess, but it would
be worse if she couldn’t look him in the eye. “After you sped away that night, I grabbed the
nearest available jock and took him into the pool house.”

His face fell. “Tell me you’re lying.”
She pursed her lips. “Pathetic but true.”

“Not pathetic, honey, but...” He looked genuinely upset, ran his hand back through his hair. “Shit. I feel awful. Worse than awful.”

“You should. I mean...” She couldn’t quite believe she was telling him this, but now that she’d
put it out there, she needed to keep going. “It was my stupid fault I did what I did. But I wanted
you so much, Brock. I put myself out there. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done. And when
you turned me down—twice—I just... needed to feel like somebody wanted me.”

Brock lifted a hand to her face and she let the warmth seep into her, so glad he had stopped acting like a jerk again. Slipping his other arm around her neck, he pulled her down into a
sweet, deep kiss that turned her inside out.

“You were so desirable, kitten, so desirable that, to this day, I have no idea how I managed to push you off my lap. And the upshot is, I’ve been having dirty dreams about me, you, and that
car seat ever since.”

She sucked in her breath, stunned. “Really?”
He closed his eyes briefly, looking as if he regretted saying it, but then replied. “Yeah. Though,
more fantasies than dreams. Just wishing I hadn’t shoved you away.”

In one sense, his words were the most wonderful she’d ever heard. They wiped away so much
doubt in herself, so much fear that she wasn’t good enough, pretty enough, sexy enough. But
in another, they left her all the more frustrated.

So she asked him straight out exactly what she’d wanted to know for all these years. “Then, for
God’s sake, why did you? Once and for all, Brock, why did you turn me down that night?
Why did you leave me again at my birthday party? Why?”

The day before Kat’s eighteenth birthday
Ten years ago

“Sit down, Brock.”

Brock didn’t like being summoned to Clark Spencer’s office. Never once had the guy called
him in to say, “Hey, thanks for getting that delivery there in time,” or “Thanks for working late
last night.” Nope, anytime Spencer had called him into his fancy little office behind the gallery
in the past six months, it had been to bitch or complain about something Brock had or hadn’t
done.

Never should have taken this job in the first place, he thought, lowering himself into a chair too
expensive for his dirty blue jeans. But he hadn’t had a choice. The job had been there, listed in
the want ads, and he’d needed it—bad.

He listened to the click of the door as Spencer shut it behind him, then walked around a
mahogany desk too big for the space. He met the man’s gaze and tried to keep his expression
neutral. No need to stir up trouble where there ain’t any, his grandpa always said. But he sat
there waiting for it just the same.

Spencer propped his elbows on the desk and interlaced his fingers, but the look on his face told
Brock he wasn’t getting ready to pray. “What the hell is going on between you and my
daughter, Brock?”

Spencer’s eyes glimmered in threat, and a cold chill crept up Brock’s spine as he wondered
what the man knew. He wasn’t afraid of Spencer—wasn’t afraid of anybody—but he needed
to keep this job as bad as he’d needed to take it six months ago. “Nothing,” he lied. “Why?”

Spencer lowered his chin in doubt, and Brock knew already that his lie hadn’t fixed anything. “I overheard her on the phone with a girlfriend last night.”

Eavesdropped is more like it, Brock thought.

“I heard her say you and she have a date planned, for tomorrow night.”

Brock sat weighing his answer. This had blindsided him, big-time. Stupid to have thought her
old man wouldn’t find out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Should have just kept your distance, no matter how hot she is.

“It’s the first,” he volunteered, thinking that might help. “So nothing has gone on up to now,
and that’s the truth.” If you don’t count her giving me a lap dance in my front yard last week.

Spencer let out a hard breath and said, “I hope to hell that is the truth. But either way, I can’t
control the past—only the future.”

Brock sat waiting for him to go on, the tension building like a brick wall that might come
crashing down on both of them at any second, until finally he said, “Get to the point.”

Spencer nodded. “All right. You’re fired.”

Shit. Brock slumped in his chair and let out a long sigh. This was the last thing he needed right
now, the absolute last fucking thing.

But then he sat up a little straighter. He didn’t like Spencer, but he didn’t hate him, either—and the guy knew about his grandfather, so maybe he could be reasoned with. “Look, Mr. Spencer,
you know I need this job right now, and you know why.”

Again, Spencer gave a light, almost imperceptible nod. “Your grandfather’s still struggling
with cancer.”

Brock hated that word, hated it. He had to deal with it every day, but he didn’t like to say it, or
hear it. This time it was he who nodded. “I need this paycheck to make ends meet. We got a lot
of bills these days. And he well, I’m all he’s got.”

“I understand that, Brock, and I’ve got a proposition that I think will make things better for us
all.”

Something sounded damn fishy, that quick, and set Brock’s nerves more on edge than they
already were. “A proposition, huh?” He wasn’t holding out much hope for anything good.

“Right now I’m having some papers drawn up by my attorney, Walt Zeller, indicating that I’ll
be responsible for your grandfather’s outstanding and future medical bills.”

Brock blinked. “What?”

“I’ll also be arranging and paying for a home health worker to take over his care, immediately.”

Okay, what the hell was going on here? He leaned slightly forward, deciding it was time to cut
through the crap. “What is this, Spencer? What’s the catch?”

“The catch is that you’re leaving,” he replied without missing a beat.
Brock pressed his lips tightly together, trying to process the guy’s words.

“Tomorrow,” Spencer went on. “You’ll get some money for that, too, by the way. You’re going to leave town and never come back.”

Brock slumped back in his chair, his gaze still stuck on Clark Spencer, his brain trying to wrap
itself around the situation. “All this because you don’t want me messing around with Kat?”
“Exactly,” Spencer said, the mention of his daughter putting a sharp edge in his voice.
Part of Brock was almost amused, in an odd way. “You think I’m that bad a guy?”

“You’re a lot older than her. And I don’t plan on taking any chances with her future—or her
present, for that matter.”

A bit dumbfounded, Brock actually let out a laugh. “You’re fucking crazy, man.” He leaned
forward again. “I mean, do you have any idea how big my grandfather’s bills are? Do you
know what it costs to have cancer?”

Spencer responded without emotion. “I have a lot of money, Brock. And I can’t think of a
better way to spend it than protecting my daughter’s interests.”

The two men sat staring at each other for a moment—sizing each other up—until finally
Spencer said, “Take a minute and think it over. Let me know what you decide.”

“You’re serious about this?” Brock asked, to clarify.
“Very.”