Finally, she forced herself to turn off the shower and pulled the curtain back. Royce sat on the toilet. Lauren jumped and let out a tiny yelp. He handed her a towel, his eyes lowered. She accepted it and wrapped it around herself.
His gaze lifted to hers, his eyes so blue, so tormented, they stole her breath. “I couldn’t go to bed knowing you weren’t there.”
She squeezed her lashes shut, water dripping down her cheeks, off her hair. “I can’t do this now. Not before I go to work.” She stepped out of the tub and he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close. “I wanted to tell you. I was going to tell you. I wasn’t about to let your father hold this over my head for the rest of our lives. I”
She shoved away from him, suddenly furious. This was about her father. “Right. You wouldn’t want my father to hold this over your head.” She pointed at the door. “I know this is your bathroom but please leave and let me get dressed. Please. I need to be alone.”
“You took that wrong. You didn’t”
“I don’t want to hear this now, Royce. I want to go to work and do what I do far better than relationships. I put criminals behind bars.”
He studied her a long moment and then scrubbed his heavily stubble jaw and stood up, towering over her. His eyes pierced hers, lingering on her face for several tense seconds, before he turned and walked away. She stood there, unable to move, in a puddle of water, and then something snapped inside her. She ran after him, rounding the bathroom door at the same moment he reached for the bedroom door.
“Consider yourself fired.”
He turned to look at her. “You can’t fire me. You didn’t hire me and neither did your father, Lauren. I promised to check out a threat. I fell in love. The end.” He turned and yanked open the door and left, slamming it behind him.
Lauren sank down on the floor and damn it, she was flipping crying again. He didn’t love her. No. And saying he did was manipulative and mean. She was so damn tired of the men in her life using her like some sort of token. She swiped angrily at the stupid tears she should be above and forced herself to stand up. It was time she took a real lesson from Julie, that she separated sex from relationships, accepted that the relationship part was better left for people who liked heartache, because she didn’t.
***
Royce showered in the spare bathroom and changed into jeans and a black t-shirt he’d left in his dryer, and was pulling on a leather jacket, when the bedroom door opened. Lauren emerged, dressed in a cream colored suit that grabbed the highlights in her long, brown hair and turned them to sunshine. Hair he knew smelled like honey and vanilla. God, he had it bad for this woman and she hated him. He was pathetic, the kind of pathetic he would have called foolish in any other man.
“Ready?” he asked.
“You’re taking me?”
“That’s right, sweetheart,” he said, and there was a bite to his voice he couldn’t hide. She had a fist around his heart and just kept squeezing. “You're stuck with me until I catch your would-be killer. Then you can kick me to the curb.”
She stared at him a long moment and then cut her gaze, her shoulders folding in slightly, that sunshine hair hiding her face. Emotion rolled off of her and punched him in the gut, twisting him in guilty knots.
“Lauren,” he said softly.
Her gaze lifted to his. “Yes?”
“Truce, baby. Today is going to be hell. Let’s be on the same team so we can get this SOB and make him pay.”
“Yes,” she said, a slight tremble to her voice. “Yes, okay.” She walked towards him but they didn’t speak.
They walked to the truck in silence, the tension between them so thick it might as well have been concrete. He helped her into the vehicle, their glances catching, the awareness between them crackling in the air. She still cared about him; he saw that in her eyes and determination filled him. He was going to make things right.
Fifteen minutes later, he parked at a meter in front of her office. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Aren’t you just dropping me off?”
“Not today. Whoever this is saw us fight last night, or I’ll gamble that he did, which means we need to send a clear message. I’m still here and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to walk you in and I’m going to kiss you goodbye in public.”
“That’s... that’s not necessary.”
He reached for her and pulled her into his arms. “I love you, Lauren. I have since the moment I met you. I can’t be mad at your father for bringing us together.”
She dropped her head to his chest. “I’m afraid to believe you.”
He tilted her chin up, gently forced her to look at him. “Then I’ll show you and tell you until you do.”
And when he expected her to push him away, she whispered. “Promise?”
Relief washed over him and he kissed her, a deep, passionate kiss and it took everything inside him to end it. “I promise.”
“I’m not going to tell you I love you now,” she said.
“Now?”
“Not now.”
“If there’s a later, I can live with that.” He wiped smudged lipstick from her cheek. “The police aren’t involved. I used my FBI contacts and they claimed jurisdiction and sealed the file. No press, and I have a guy over there working this already. He’s simply no longer doing it off the books. He’s a good man. This will be kept quiet.”