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“YOU WERE GREAT.” WILLA HAD just come back from checking on Leigh and had curled up against Joel’s side, pulling the sheet and quilt up under her chin.
After they’d shared what had to rank right up there at the top of his list of life’s memorable moments, Willa had carried through on her promise to help him bathe.
Not that there had been much bathing done. They’d cleaned up the mess they’d made before showering as well as the one they’d made while he’d stood half in, half out of the spray. But bathing? Nope. Not a lot of that had been done.
Man, what a couple of days he’d had. First had been the sprint and endurance events chasing after Leigh. Then had come the marathon with Willa. She was right. He had been great.
He was also exhausted.
“I was good, wasn’t I?” Might as well bask in her glory. “For a few minutes there I wasn’t sure which one of us was howling at the moon.”
“That would be the one of us with wolf in his name.” She nuzzled up to his chin which he’d meant to scrape clean in the shower. “The same one with maybe a bit of wolf in his blood.”
“Only when it’s a full moon. Or when a she-wolf claims him as her mate.”
“I did no such thing.”
Her indignation tickled him and Joel lifted the edge of the sheet. The full moon threw stripes of light through the open mini blinds across his chest. He pointed out the teeth marks.
Willa squirreled down beneath the covers.
“Uh-huh. Don’t pull that shy routine on me. I know you, remember?”
He knew he’d said the wrong thing the minute the words left his mouth. Willa stilled and grew pensive, her eyes searched his and her heart beat hard against his side.
Joel refused to panic, but neither was he going to spend the night sleeping with Willa and her doubts. “Spit it out, Willa. What’s on your mind?”
She lifted away the foot she’d been rubbing across his calf. “I was just thinking that we know each other as neighbors, yes. But we’ve never been close friends.”
He’d been expecting this. But later. After a bit of distance. After she’d had time to think. “We shouldn’t be here, you mean.”
“It’s not so much that.” She turned onto her stomach, raised up on both elbows, looked down at the pillow instead of his way. “When I said you were great, I wasn’t talking about this, with us. I was talking about at the store.”
Oh. That. “Which store? We stopped at several.”
“You know what I’m talking about.” She plucked at a hair on his chest.
He rubbed at the sting. “Yeah, I do. I figured you’d get around to that soon enough.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?” she asked, and this time she looked at him. Intently. Intensely. Intelligently searching beyond his eyes for all the reasons why.
How could she know so much about him in such a short time? Joel was the first to glance away. He stared at the mirror, the reflected candlelight. “What’s to talk about? It happened. It’s over.”
She blew out a disgusted, disbelieving huff of breath. “You can’t seriously be that blasé.”
“I’m not being blasé.” He rolled to his side and propped up on one elbow. The move raised him above Willa’s upturned face. Gazing down at her he felt the return of his sense of control. He went on. “That’s what I do for a living. That’s who I am. A cop. I rough up the bad guys and get paid for it.”
Her smile started slowly, working its way from her all-seeing eyes to the corners of the mouth that challenged him with a return volley of his own words until Joel found himself facing that thing all men fear: a woman too wise.
“You were great, Joel.”
He’d maneuvered his way into the upper hand, or at least the upper position. And with four words spoken, four simple words delivered to the heart of their target, she was right back on top.
He dropped a kiss to the tip of her nose. “That’s Detective Wolfsley to you.”
“Detective Wolfsley.” She nodded in a mocking sort of bow. “You were so in control. So calm. It looked almost... what’s the word? Routine. But I know it can’t be. You wouldn’t be in a cast if your job was routine.”
“Not true,” he said, shaking his head. “A lot of days what I do is about as routine as tossing burgers on a grill. But sure, it’s a routine with more than a few drawbacks. There’s not a job that doesn’t have at least one or two.”
Her brow came up. “Flipping burgers?”
“Sure. Undercooking. Overcooking. All that grease.”
“Those are hardly drawbacks.”
“Depends on whose burger it is you screw up.” She rolled her eyes and Joel laughed. “You gotta weigh the disadvantages against the good stuff, Willa. You’re a hell of a dog lady, but you still run the risk of meeting up with some bad canine teeth. I’m a hell of a cop. But that doesn’t mean I’m never going to run across a junkie desperate enough to use a car as a weapon.”
“Is that what happened?” Her voice was thready and high. “A hit and run?”
He’d boxed himself into this one all right. And he didn’t see but one honest way out. “A little more involved than a hit and run. Attempted murder of a police officer.”
“God, Joel.”
If there’d been a better source of light in the room, Joel knew he would have seen Willa pale. He didn’t need light to feel her limbs grow cold. Or to feel the knife of regret cutting a deep valley in the middle of his gut.
It hadn’t been his intention to frighten her, but her fear made a good argument for the distance he kept, for the reason he remained single. He couldn’t, wouldn’t subject a woman he loved to the sort of pain that came with caring in the face of constant danger.
She was calm but still cold when she asked, “He’s in jail now, right? This guy who tried to ki... this guy who hit you?”
The Dark Knight of the Dark City, a lame-ass moniker the drug lord had given himself, was known to law officers across southeast Texas as the Knight. And, no, he wasn’t in jail, which had been partly responsible for Joel’s reluctance to keep Leigh. He never underestimated a dealer out for revenge. One who valued product over property and valued life not at all.
“Not yet. But cop killers tend to get”—how best to put this to a woman who didn’t live the ins and outs of the force—“special treatment. He won’t be free for long.”
“Will he come after you?”
“I don’t know, Willa. I pretty much kicked his network out from under him. He lost the product he had to sell and lost his buyers for anything else he’s able to put his hands on. It takes time to build the system he had. It’s a sick sort of trust, but then it’s a sick existence.”
“Doesn’t that frighten you?”
“What frightens me is knowing that if he’s not caught soon, he’ll be back in business and people will die. That’s what frightens me most of all.”
She was silent and Joel felt the clawing discomfort of the long moment. Then she whispered, “More than the idea of your own death? At his hand?”
“Like I said, I’m a hell of a good cop.” Time to change the direction of this conversation. He didn’t like the sound of Willa’s voice. Or the faraway look on her face. He wanted her here. He wanted her now.
“I’m trained to handle the unexpected. Just like you know what to do when an owner drops off an uncontrollable shoe-chewing dog.” He skated his fingers down her bare back.
“That’s different,” she said, biting off the words.
Uh-uh. He wasn’t going to let this get out of hand. “Why? I know how to deal with dangerous people. Your experience is with dangerous animals.”
“I’m not buying it, Joel. You can hardly compare the two.”
“I’m not comparing the two.”
“Yes—”
“No.” He cut her off. “I’m comparing competency. Yours and mine. I wouldn’t know the first thing about dealing with a wild dog. And if I’d sent you in to pay for today’s gas, you’d have walked right past the kid outside and into a lot of trouble.”
“You’re right. I would have,” she said after weighing his words. “But I watched you. And I knew something wasn’t right. And even after I put the clues together and figured it out, I wasn’t scared.”
She turned to her side and faced him belly to breast. “That’s what I meant about you doing good, Joel. And about making it look routine. I felt safe with you. I wasn’t scared at all.”
“You were scared, Willa. I saw your hands shaking when you reached for my gun.”
“What I was frightened of was the unknown. But I never feared for my safety. Or for Leigh’s. In fact, the only time I felt uneasy was in the timing of my 911 call.”
“You did fine.”
“But I hesitated. I didn’t want to raise the hood of the truck. I didn’t want to block my line of sight. Because that would’ve kept me from being able to see you.”
She lowered her lashes, lifted them slowly, and Joel swore he saw a glimmer of tears in her eyes.
Damn.
This wasn’t how their relationship was supposed to work. Hadn’t that been in their contract? Wasn’t this about sex and nothing more? She hadn’t cried before, during or after the holdup. So, why was she about to cry now? And why was she about to cry over him?
Damn.
He didn’t want a permanent relationship. She hoped one day her prince would come. They’d talked about physical needs and the complications and consequences of taking a lover.
He and Willa should’ve been perfect for one another.
The problem was... they were.