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  “You have any preferences?” Bryce asked her, breaking the momentarily silence.

  “‘Preferences’?” she repeated quizzically.

  “Restaurant. Food. What would you like to eat? Are you even listening to anything I’m saying?” he asked her as they got into his vehicle.

  Scottie flushed a little. He was right, she wasn’t listening. She was thinking. And worrying. Would she wind up regretting telling Bryce about Ethan? Would Ethan regret it?

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I guess I’m just letting my imagination run away with me.”

  He needed no further explanation. She was worried about her brother. He couldn’t fault her. “Well, don’t. That won’t do you, the investigation or your brother any good,” he emphasized. “I told you, Valri’s the best there is at what she does. She’ll find your brother. There’s got to be a signal, a signature, something she can work with. And if Valri can’t find him, then she’ll find his girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend,” Scottie insisted. After Ethan had gotten out of juvie, she’d deliberately forgotten about Eva. Maybe she shouldn’t have, she upbraided herself. Maybe she should have kept track of the woman—just in case.

  “Right. Ex-girlfriend,” Bryce corrected himself for her benefit. “Somebody will get careless and when they do, Valri will be right there to get them. Until then, all you can do is wait—and not think about it,” he told her firmly.

  Bryce pulled up in front of one of the more high-end fast-food places in Aurora. Going through the drive-through, he asked for two burgers with everything and two orders of fries, in separate bags.

  As he went for his wallet Scottie said, “This one’s on me.”

  He was about to protest, then decided against it. Paying for the meals allowed her to feel as if she had a little bit of control over something. Instead he said, “Thanks,” as she handed the cashier in the window the exact amount asked for.

  When Bryce pulled up in front of her house, she felt as if an eon had gone by since they’d left this morning. She needed to shake the oppressive heaviness that had descended over her. She needed to be herself again.

  About to open the door on her side, she turned to him and asked, “Do you want to come inside?” Before he could answer, Scottie said in a low voice, “I really don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  “Then you won’t be,” Bryce replied.

  Getting out of the car, he carried both his bag and hers to the front door and then waited for her to unlock the door.

  Scottie opened the messenger bag and then wound up searching for her house keys.

  “You’d think in a purse this size, they’d be easy to find,” she murmured.

  Finally extricating her keys, she unlocked the door and walked in first. Scottie turned on lights as she went.

  “I can turn on the TV,” she offered. “And we can eat in the living room.”

  “Dinner and a show,” Bryce commented. “Sounds good to me.”

  She stopped in the kitchen, getting out two beers from the refrigerator. “You’re being very agreeable and nice again,” she told him. “You don’t have to be.”

  “My DNA, remember?” he reminded her.

  “So, what, every Cavanaugh is destined for sainthood?” she asked as she took two plates out of her cabinet to put under the burgers and fries.

  “Hell, no,” he laughed. “You obviously haven’t met my cousin Ronan. Robots are friendlier and talk more than he does. He’s more like a brooding presence than a saint.” Making himself comfortable on the sectional sofa, Bryce aimed the remote control at the 42-inch screen hanging on the opposite wall, turning it on. “What do you want to watch?”

  Bringing the plates over to the sofa, she sat beside him, putting the plates on the square coffee table in front of them.

  “Doesn’t matter. I just want it on for background noise, really.” Taking her bag, she placed the burger and fries on her plate.

  “I thought that was what I was for,” Bryce commented wryly.

  “No,” she corrected, “you are here for exactly what you told me that partners were for. Having my back. In this case, believing me when I tell you that I think Ethan’s innocent of wrongdoing.”

  “That’s not exactly what we agreed was going on,” he reminded her. “He’s not innocent of wrongdoing. What you believe is that he’s doing it against his will. There is a difference,” he said pointedly.

  “I don’t care about any differences,” Scottie insisted, her nerves frayed. “I just want to find him alive,” she told Bryce, feeling a lump growing in her throat.

  “I get that, Scottie,” he told her quietly, slipping a comforting arm around her shoulders and, for the moment, drawing her close to him, mutely conveying things he couldn’t say out loud. “I do.”

  Chapter 16

  Scottie had always prided herself on being strong, on holding it together no matter what. Maybe it was that she was on overload, she didn’t know. But, whatever the reason, something just broke inside her. Broke and spilled out, causing her to became as close to needy as she had ever been in her own eyes.

  The comfort that Bryce was silently offering her, conveyed by the gentle way he’d slipped his arm around her, crumbled the wall she had erected and maintained for as long as she could remember.

  Scottie found herself turning her face up to his and, before she could think it through or get herself to stop, she began kissing him. Kissing Bryce as if nothing else mattered at this moment in time except sealing their two souls together.

  Kissing him as if she needed to get lost in another world, a world she was silently asking him to create for her.

  For them.

  Her kisses were hungry, eager, ravenous. She knew she should get hold of herself, that this wasn’t the person she wanted to project to the world, but there was no room for logic here, not when she desperately needed the comfort she knew in her heart he could give her.

  Just this once, she wanted to be the one on the receiving end of comfort rather than the one who was giving it.

  * * *

  For just a split second Bryce went with the moment. Scottie had touched off a hunger within him that he had been unaware of. A hunger that threatened to become unbridled.

  Still kissing her, he pulled her onto his lap, enfolding her in his arms and giving full vent to what he was feeling. And then an echo of sanity returned, tiptoeing along the perimeter of his consciousness.

  What the hell was he doing? he silently demanded. This wasn’t just some beautiful woman he’d spent the day with and now wanted to make love to. This was his partner, a fellow detective, and he was taking advantage of her exceedingly vulnerable state.

  Just what did that make him?

  With immense effort, Bryce forced himself to pull his head back. He caught hold of her arms and pinned them to Scottie’s sides. He saw the bewildered look in her eyes, the disoriented expression on her face, and tried quickly to reason with her. To talk her out of this. Even though he would rather things had just taken their natural course because he wanted her more than he thought was humanly possible.

  “Hold it, Scottie,” he warned softly. “You don’t want to do this.”

  She didn’t want to think, she just wanted to let herself go and feel. For the space of however long this lasted, she just wanted to soar above all her problems, leaving them behind as if they didn’t exist. As if reality was just a word without meaning.

  It took her a second to find her voice. “Yes, I do,” she told him. She didn’t want him pulling away from her. Not now. Not when she needed him. “Are you going to make me beg?”

  That was the last thing he wanted. Bryce cupped her cheek tenderly. “I just don’t want you to find that you regret this.”

  “I won’t.” Her words came out almost breathlessly. �
�There’re a lot of other things that I do regret doing in my life, but this isn’t, and won’t be, one of them.”

  Bryce knew he was already weakening, had been weakening from the first moment they had sat together on the sectional tonight. Most likely, even before then.

  “All right, as long as you’re sure,” he conceded, his breath touching her lips less than a heartbeat before his mouth.

  From that moment on, Bryce became the aggressor. Not so fiercely that she felt oppressed, but every step of the way, he was nonetheless definitely the aggressor.

  He wanted her and he wanted her to know that.

  Food was completely forgotten as another sort of hunger rose up and took over.

  He kissed her over and over again, his lips touching every inch of her skin, setting her on fire. Arousing her passion while making her feel cherished.

  Deftly, he separated her from her blouse then her jeans. She couldn’t remember if she’d wiggled out of her underwear or if he’d slipped it off her. All she was aware of was that she was nude, her body heating as it pressed urgently against his on the sectional.

  Scottie felt herself growing increasingly hotter, desperately eager for the final union—and yet wanting to keep that culminating moment at bay a little longer because she wanted to savor every delicious, mind-blowing second leading up to it.

  She had never allowed any of the handful of relationships in her life to become serious, to grow to that point where she actually cared about the other person, because she’d had responsibilities that had gotten in the way, responsibilities she hadn’t been able to turn her back on. Ethan had always been her first priority.

  But this was different. For the time being, Ethan had been pushed into the background. Maybe she’d just broken beneath the weight of that responsibility, maybe she’d just escaped from it for a little while. All she knew was that she had this overpowering ache to make love with Bryce.

  She was vaguely aware of clawing away his clothing, questing to feel his body urgently pressed against hers.

  Her mouth sealed to his, she arched against Bryce, her body speaking to his, imploring him to take her.

  Now—before something stopped him.

  * * *

  He was going to hate himself in the morning, Bryce thought. Hell, he was going to hate himself as soon as this was over, but even so, he still couldn’t stop, couldn’t just do the noble thing and walk away. He was convinced she was going to really regret this no matter what she said, but all the logic in the world wouldn’t have been able to make him stop.

  He wanted her.

  Wanted her not just with that man-woman urge he’d experienced so often. This was different. He wanted her so much, he had been willing to walk away from her if she’d given him the slightest sign that she wanted it to stop, that she knew this was a mistake.

  But with her eagerly encouraging him, her body moving beneath his like a seductive siren song, urging him on, there was just no way he could be the better man and stop what was happening.

  Anointing her slowly with kisses all along her body, he made his way up to her mouth, his fingers linking with hers above her head.

  And then he was over her, his eyes on hers, his warm breath making her shiver with anticipation. His body arched just above hers.

  “Damn, but you look beautiful,” he whispered softly more to himself than to her.

  And then, as she arched up against him, waiting, he entered her. Once the union was attained, he began to slowly move.

  The tempo in his head increased, as did the movement of his hips, going progressively faster.

  Her heart hammering wildly in her chest, Scottie matched him movement for movement, picking up speed as he did until suddenly the final moment came, snatching them both up in its arms.

  Fireworks went off, echoing within both their bodies.

  Bryce held her tightly against him as he absorbed the shock wave that had telegraphed through each of them simultaneously.

  Slowly his breathing returned to normal. His heart rate took a little longer to level out. As did hers, he noted. The fact that he could feel her heart against him, echoing his, pleased him.

  Bryce felt her body relax against his. He loathed releasing his grip on the euphoria that had wrapped itself around him. He desperately needed that euphoria.

  But then a strange thing happened.

  As the steely bands loosened, the uneasiness that he was fully expecting didn’t come. Instead he felt oddly safe, oddly secure, and content.

  He shifted, moving his weight off her and lying on his side.

  And he couldn’t stop watching her. “Am I crushing you?” he asked.

  “No, the sofa’s soft,” she assured him.

  Still lying on his side, he continued regarding her, with a myriad of feelings rushing through him, each jockeying for priority and leaving him in a complete quandary. This was something new and he had no idea what to do about it.

  Gently, he swept her hair out of her face. “Are you okay?”

  She thought Bryce was still referring to the limited space available to her on the sectional. “I said you weren’t crushing me.”

  “No, I mean are you okay?” he asked again, enunciating each word. And then he blew out a small breath, trying to own the moment. “I mean, this wasn’t the way I saw the day ending.”

  “Disappointed?” she asked.

  She had no idea what sort of lovers Bryce was accustomed to or how she measured up against them. She was acutely aware of the fact that she wasn’t what anyone would consider experienced, but then, this wasn’t something she did on a regular basis.

  Or hardly at all.

  “‘Disappointed’?” Bryce repeated, looking at her as if she’d taken leave of her senses. “That’s not exactly the first word that comes to mind right now. Or the fiftieth, for that matter.” He raised himself a little on his elbow as he looked down into her face. “Why in the world would you think I was disappointed?”

  “I’m not...that is, I don’t...” Suddenly words weren’t coming. “Are you going to make me say this?” she asked, doubts flooding her.

  He smiled at her, trying to encourage her to talk to him. To confide in him. Not about her brother, but about herself and how she felt. Because somewhere along the line tonight, Scottie and what she was feeling had become very important to him.

  “I am if you want me to understand what you’re talking about,” Bryce told her.

  She took a breath and gave it a try. “I don’t do this very often...or maybe at all... I can’t remember the last time that...well, that...”

  She was obviously really struggling and he decided to put her out of her misery. Because right now she and the moment had become very special to him and really needed no explanation, long or short.

  He moved the same wisp of hair out of her face. “Scottie?”

  “Yes?” she all but snapped in frustration.

  “Shut up.”

  The instruction came just before he kissed her to make sure she wouldn’t continue uttering words that made no sense to him, in or out of context. He got the impression that because she had initially started out as the aggressor, she was embarrassed about the way things had evolved, while he couldn’t have been more pleased or content.

  He’d felt the attraction between them almost from the very first moment he laid eyes on her and he had deliberately placed that on the back burner, to see if it would simmer into something with substance or just boil away to nothingness.

  He was glad it was the former and happier than he would have ever predicted that he was the one she had turned to when she’d needed someone to comfort her and to give her strength.

  Although his love life had never been wanting, Bryce couldn’t remember ever making love more than once in an evening.

 
Once had always been enough.

  But something about this woman, something that went far beyond the realm of ordinary, of usual, “spoke” to an inner being within him. Scottie made him want things, relish things. It made him want to please her more than he usually strived to do in his quest for mutual pleasure.

  So he made love with her again, taking delight in scaling the same heights, attaining the same wild and exhilarating ride to a place that was so familiar and yet so different each and every time they breached the gate together.

  This time when the final climax came and he was able to gather together enough energy to move his body from hers, Bryce whispered against her ear.

  “Next time has to be in your bed, or I’m going to wind up falling on the floor.”

  He didn’t expect Scottie to laugh.

  She didn’t expect to have him make her laugh. She discovered that doing so was almost as great a relief to her as making love with him had been.

  When she finally made herself stop, she sighed, the sound all but encompassing them where they lay.

  “Thank you,” she told him gratefully. “I didn’t think I’d ever be able to laugh again.”

  “You will,” he told her softly, gathering her in his arms again and just holding her against him. “No matter what happens, you will. And I’ll be right there with you, to make you laugh. Or whatever,” he added, a mischievous look in his eyes.

  Scottie struggled into an upright position, her back still against the sectional, the rest of her pressed almost provocatively against his body. She saw the look in his eyes as they drifted over the length of her. Any feeling of self-consciousness that she thought would be there wasn’t, which also surprised her.

  But then, this had been an evening of surprises, beginning with the fact that she had trusted him enough to open up about her brother the way she had. No one in Homicide, her old department, even knew that she had a brother, let alone one with a sealed juvenile record. They didn’t know anything about her background and that was the way she liked it.