reach for his hand—he never reached for hers—and she’d been the one who kissed him; he didn’t kiss her. Well, okay, he did, but only because she basically forced him to.
Those other times she’d kissed him had been for a purpose in this whole crazy plan, but tonight…tonight she wanted to kiss him simply because she wanted to feel his lips on hers, to taste his warmth and lose herself in him, knowing that this one was for them, not anyone else.
She thought he wanted that, too, but judging by the way he was backing up, she was obviously wrong. And now what? It couldn’t get much more awkward than it already was, so gathering herself a little, she took a step back and forced a smile she didn’t feel and he clearly didn’t believe.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said brightly, blinking so many times that everything looked jerky, like one of those old movies. “We’ll, uh, be in touch, yeah?”
She reached for the door handle, but Brett’s fingers wrapped around her wrist and held her frozen in his gentle grip.
Oh no, she was not going to cry. She was a grown woman, for crap’s sake, not some overly dramatic teenager who’d just had her heart stomped on for the first time.
Suck it up, buttercup.
“Tory said they’d bring Kurt in for questioning as soon as they found him, so with any luck, we’ll all be free of this soon.”
The storm brewing in his eyes blustered deeper as he released her wrist and nodded.
“Lock it behind me.”
—
Brett made it about a block and a half away before he jerked the truck to a stop and threw it into park.
“Fuck!”
If he hadn’t let her go when he did, he’d be back there right now kissing her, pulling her soft curves up against him, breathing in her sweet scent, which made him so fuckin’ dizzy all the time. Her fingers would still be dancing across the back of his neck, her breath would still be tickling his ear, and her eyes would have that same dazed look they’d had the first time they kissed, only this time he would’ve made damn good and sure it took her a lot longer to recover.
It didn’t matter if he closed his eyes or kept them open—all he could see right then was the way the blush on her cheeks trailed down the side of her neck, the way her breasts rose and fell with each rapid breath, and the way her tongue slid across her bottom lip, slowly driving him around the freakin’ bend.
Gripping the steering wheel, he slammed his forehead down on his hands.
If he hadn’t let go of her when he did, he would have jeopardized the whole case against Kurt, and they were still struggling to put that together. They couldn’t afford to screw this up; they needed to get the job done, and then maybe they could…
They could what? He wasn’t going to be around much longer, so what the hell was he doing letting this thing—whatever the hell it was—between them develop into anything besides a working relationship? He shouldn’t have told her about Rosie, and he shouldn’t have let her tell him anything personal—nothing more than the facts of the case.
But damn if he didn’t like listening to her talk: the soft lilt of her voice, the way her lips moved, slowly, smiling so easily, and the way her brown eyes softened when she forgot he was a cop.
He liked the way she moved, the way she set her jaw when she knew her honesty was about to get her into trouble, and he really liked the way she looked—and not just when she was wearing her armor. That’s what he’d come to think of it as: armor. Everyone else wore sweats or something like that once in a while, but not Ellie. She was always done up to the nines, and it wasn’t until he’d spent the night at her place that he’d figured it out.
The coffee had just started to brew when he caught sight of her at the top of the stairs, scurrying from her bedroom to the bathroom, head down, glasses on, hair knotted on the top of her head.
Half an hour later, she came downstairs fully dressed, makeup applied perfectly, with her long, thick hair falling straight down her back. The hunched-over woman he’d watch scamper down the hall was not the same one who came down the stairs. She’d put on her armor, and