True Lies (22 page)

“Of course.”

“Did you like all of that? Are you sorry you gave it up when you moved away?”

“No. Why are you asking me this?”

He propped the sticks against each other in the center of the circle he’d cleared. “I'm curious. Ever since you told me why he broke the engagement, I've been wondering why you would have wanted to marry him.”

“It was all part of the life I’d thought I would have had.”

“And what would that have been? Tennis lessons, bridge clubs, charity work?”

“Probably.”

“Did he like to fly? Did he share your interest in books? Did he like chocolate?”

She pulled her feet toward her and wrapped her arms around her legs. No, Turner hadn’t liked her plane, or her reading habit. She couldn’t remember whether or not he liked chocolate. The subject probably hadn’t come up. He had told her that he loved her, he had been her first lover, yet there had been some things they had never shared. She watched Bruce as he struck a match and coaxed a curl of smoke from the twigs. Her thighs still tingled from the touch of his hands, her pulse still sped from the look in his eyes. The current of awareness that flowed between them was something else that she’d never shared with Turner. And her fiancé had never made her scream.

“No,” she said softly. “He didn’t like to fly.”

Bruce blew on the tiny flame. It crackled and grew, licking along the wood greedily. He fed the fire until it was burning strongly, then tipped back his head to look at the row of pines at the side of the hill. “I like it out here. If we had a tent and maybe a few more supplies, it would be a nice place to camp, don’t you think?”

Instead of looking at their surroundings, she continued to watch Bruce. When he had been Prendergast, she had found him fascinating. He still was. There were so many aspects to his personality, such a keen intelligence behind his unique blue eyes, it was too bad that... No, she wouldn’t let herself think that way. Last night was over. It was over. “Under other circumstances it might be.”

Sparks flew as he jabbed a stick into the fire. “Can’t forget those circumstances, can we?” he muttered.

The tightness in her throat had nothing to do with the puffs of smoke that blew her way. “No.”

He prepared their food in silence.

* * *

The dying fire sent long shadows flickering outward across the bare rock and low bushes. Emma inched closer and tossed another thick branch onto the embers. It seemed colder tonight. It probably wasn’t, but without the adrenaline of the night before, she had no defense against the creeping chill that accompanied the darkness. She hugged her arms around herself for warmth and looked at the place where they would sleep. Shortly before sunset they had trimmed the spruce boughs and had layered them into a springy pad on the other side of the fire. The tarp was spread on top, an extra layer of protection from the cold. Bruce sat cross-legged in the center of it, his elbows on his knees, his chin propped in his hands. He’d been quietly studying the flames for the past hour.

“Do you want to use the sleeping bag tonight?” she asked.

“No, you should have it.”

“I had it last night. It would be only fair if you had a turn.”

“Keep it, Emma. I'll be okay.”

There was another solution, of course. They could share it. Considering his size, it would be a tight fit, but not if they wrapped their arms around each other and pressed themselves together. She hid her eyes against her arm, but the image of their bodies entwined wouldn’t go away.

He cleared his throat. “I’d like to get an early start tomorrow. When I was cleaning up our stew pot I thought I heard a truck in the distance.”

She looked up. “Where?”

“Toward the north. It was several miles away, but it could have been on that logging road we're heading for.” He pulled the sleeping bag from its nylon sack and spread it out on the side of the tarp closest to the fire. “Come on, we’d better get some sleep.”

In the glow of the flames, she saw a patch of charred fabric on the back of his shirt. She’d noticed it earlier, during the afternoon, but she hadn’t mentioned it—she’d been too busy watching him move. “What happened to your back? Your shirt’s burned.”

He twisted his neck to look over his shoulder. “That’s from last night.”

A quiver tickled through her stomach. “You mean I did that?”

He chuckled. “No. I mean the explosion did that. A piece of debris hit me.”

“Oh.” She pushed to her feet and walked around the fire. “Better let me take a look at it.”

“Why?”

“You don’t want it to get infected.”

“It’s okay.”

“You don’t know that.” She picked up the disinfectant that he’d used on her ankle. “Take your shirt off and I'll see how bad it is.”

Reflections from the fire danced in his eyes as he looked up at her. For almost a minute he didn’t move. Then he slowly undid what remained of his buttons. The plaid flannel slid from his shoulders, re vealing firm, rangy muscles. Taut skin gleamed in the flickering orange light, shadows played over the crisp hair that covered his chest. He dropped the shirt beside him and waited.

Emma knew she was staring and tried to stop, but it was no use. The sun was down. The isolation of the firelit clearing, the slow embrace of the deepening darkness only strengthened her already heightened awareness. He didn’t need to put on his Primeau persona to make her pulse trip. His masculine aura wasn’t part of an act. Drawing a slow, steadying breath, she sank down to her knees beside him. “Turn away from the fire. I'll be able to see your back better.”

Still cross-legged, he swiveled around and braced his hands on his thighs. The position tensed his spine, sending a subtle ripple across his shoulders. “We were pretty lucky. Those rocks blocked out most of the big stuff.”

She saw the fresh burn immediately. The skin was red and shiny in a mark about the length of her finger. It hadn’t broken, though. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“I told you it was okay.”

Her gaze moved up gradually. “You've got a nasty bruise on your left shoulder.”

“A crate fell on it when we landed. It doesn’t bother me.”

She continued her scrutiny, even though he clearly didn’t need her help. She simply didn’t want to move away from him so soon. “What happened to your neck? Was that from the debris?”

He reached behind him and touched one of the long, thin scratches that arced over his skin. “You mean here?”

“There’s dried blood on it.” She opened the bottle of disinfectant and dabbed it over the scratches. “Maybe something from that bundle you made out of the tarp was rubbing against it today.”

“I got those last night, too.”

“It all happened so fast, I think I hadn’t realized how bad that explosion was.” She rested her fingertips on the curve of his shoulder blade. “I should thank you for sheltering me the way you did. You got these from trying to protect me.”

“Not exactly.”

“Bruce, I know I said some awful things to you, but I do appreciate the way you used your body to...” She felt a tremor go through the skin beneath her fingers. “What’s so funny?”

“Those scratches weren’t from the explosion, Emma.”

“Then what...” Her question trailed off as sudden heat came to her face. It was so obvious now. She looked at the regular spacing, the curve, the width, then focused on her broken nails. “I did that, didn’t I?”

He turned his head and caught her gaze. A smile crinkled the skin beside his eyes. “I didn’t notice it at the time.”

“I'm sorry, Bruce.”

“There are plenty of things between us that probably could use an apology, but believe me, Emma, that’s not one of them.”

She had drawn blood last night. She had marked him. Another thing she should be ashamed about. But wasn’t. What was happening to her? A log fell over behind her with a soft hiss, sending up a plume of flame. In the sudden flare of light she noticed a patch of pale skin low on his side. She put down the bottle of disinfectant and leaned closer. It was scar tissue, the lumpy, stretched kind of scar from a deep wound. It had healed over, but the pain he must have suffered was obvious. “What happened here?”

“Where?”

Carefully she ran the tip of her finger along the perimeter of the scar. “Down here near your waist.”

His smile disappeared. He reached for his shirt. “A souvenir. From another explosion.”

“When did it happen?”

He moved away from her. “Years ago. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She caught his arm. “Why not? You learned everything there is to know about me before I told you. Why can’t we even things up a bit?”

He shook off her grip and thrust his arms into his sleeves. “Are you sure you want to know, Emma?”

Did she want to know? He had learned about her because of his job, not because he was interested. She had no excuse. She should forget all this, crawl into her sleeping bag alone and close her eyes to these dangerous feelings that stirred inside her. “Yes,” she said softly, placing her hand back on his arm. “I’d like to know about you, Bruce.”

The muscle beneath her fingers hardened with tension. “The scar is where a piece of my car got embedded in my ribs. I never knew which part of the car it was. I never asked. The bomb had been wired to the ignition. I was walking back to my house to get something. I don’t remember what it was. It couldn’t have been important. I was halfway across the lawn when the blast went off.”

She swallowed hard. “You could have been killed.”

“That was the general idea. I was due in court to testify that morning. I was just a beat cop in the suburbs back then, but I had stumbled onto an outfit that was pirating videotapes. Videotapes. They killed an innocent human being over something as trivial as illegal copies of some meaningless movies.”

Killed? The tension in his arm spread. She could see his shoulders stiffen. What he had said clicked in her mind. The bomb had been wired to the ignition, but he had been walking across his lawn. “Who was in the car, Bruce?”

“My wife.”

The pain in those two words slammed through her without warning. She leaned her forehead against his back. His wife. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

He inhaled shakily but he didn’t pull away. “It was five years ago, one of those April days when the leaves are just starting to come out and the smell of warm earth is in the air and the birds are going crazy finding mates and building nests. Lizzie wanted to drop me off at the courthouse on her way to her doctor’s appointment. She was in a hurry. She was always in a hurry. She was the original Type A personality.”

“You must have loved her deeply,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“God, yes, I loved her. She was everything to me. She was one of those people that you’d instinctively gravitate toward if you walked into a roomful of strangers. We thought we’d have the rest of our lives. We’d made so many plans. And when she found out about the baby—” He broke off, his breathing ragged.

The pain just kept getting worse. Emma closed her eyes and moved her head from side to side in a slow negative. “Oh, no.”

“She was three months pregnant when they killed her.”

Without hesitation Emma slid her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his back. The night closed around them, the cocooning quiet broken only by scattered crickets and the muted rustle of the dying fire. “How did you ever survive?”

“When I got out of the hospital, I changed jobs. That was my first undercover assignment. It took only three weeks.”

She didn’t need to ask what it was. “Did you get them?”

“Yes. The one who planted the bomb never made it to trial. I wasn’t proud of that case. It was vengeance, not justice. The next case was easier. That’s when I found out that I could lose myself in my work. With the badge and the rule book, I could forget about the pain.”

Echoes of her angry words of the night before came back to her. She tightened her hold on him. “I'm sorry, Bruce. I'm so sorry. I didn’t know. All I could think about was myself. I wish I could take back those things I said.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“But I hurt you. All those times I taunted you about your devotion to your job, when I think about that now I feel sick. I was so cruel. I should have thought—”

“We've both done our share of hurting. I haven’t forgotten what I did to you, how I betrayed our friendship, and how I wanted to use you. I've had to take a good look at myself lately, and I realize that all I see is my job, my rigid picture of right and wrong. I haven’t cared who I need to hurt or use along the way.”

“But what you've told me explains so much.”

He covered her hands with his, lacing their fingers together. “It’s a hell of a situation. It has been from the start. You see, I understand why you hate cops, because I know all about grudges. I recognize the rage you feel toward the people you hold responsible for destroying your family. I felt the same way, only I was able to do something about it. I got them. Every time I finish a case, I get another one of them.”

She hung on. She didn’t want to move. He knew about grudges because he knew about loss. He had lost his family and all his plans for his life. He had been a victim of circumstances beyond his control. They were alike. They were both survivors. The bond between them, the instinctive connection she had never been able to explain went far, far deeper than she had ever imagined.

This had happened before, this sudden shift in perception. It was like the time she had seen Bruce without the beard and the fake belly and had realized that her view of him had been all wrong. Only this time it was worse. He wasn’t the unfeeling robot she had wanted to believe. No, he felt, and he hurt and he’d lost. It made sense now. She could understand why he buried himself in his work, why he didn’t want to be close, or to care. She rubbed her cheek against his back, her eyes filling with tears. Yes, she understood. The bond between them was deep. And the problems between them even deeper.

Being a cop was more than merely a job to him. It was how he dealt with the pain he had endured. Hating cops was how she dealt with hers. Oh, God. It was hopeless.

“Last night,” she said. “The bomb in my plane, the explosion, everything must have brought it all back for you.”