A Profiler's Case for Seduction - By Carla Cassidy Page 0,75
to the idea.
Because you’re in love with him, a little voice whispered in the back of her head.
She grabbed her computer and purse from the table and headed out the door for her early-morning class.
Her brain rejected the very thought of loving Mark. It would be just another study in heartbreak. It would be a repeat of the heartbreak of Jimmy, and she refused to put herself in a position to care that deeply about a man again.
She was confident in her own strength, in her ability to walk the path of the rest of her life alone. She would never again allow a man to define her.
The morning air was unusually brisk for October in Vengeance. A cold front had moved through that made it perfect football weather. Everywhere she looked were signs of the big game and reminders of the bonfire the next night.
There was a restless energy pulsating, as if even the building and the trees were eagerly anticipating the imminent celebrations of school spirit.
She saw Ben Craig in the distance and waved to him. He waved back as he scurried in the opposite direction of her. Strange, it used to be Dora never saw him without Amanda by his side. The two assistants had been like conjoined twins whenever they were out. But lately Dora rarely saw them together.
As she walked up the stairs into the building where the first class of the day took place, she steadfastly refused to think about what Mark had said about his suspicions of Melinda.
She didn’t know the truth and, thankfully, it wasn’t her job to try to figure it out. She’d leave the investigation to the professionals. There was no way she could guess about Melinda’s innocence or guilt. She could only hope that her sister had nothing to do with her own kidnapping or the murder of the three men. Knowing that there was one sociopath, Samuel, in the family was quite enough.
Throughout her class she stayed focused on the material, refusing to allow her mind to drift in any other direction.
If she continued to pursue her career in criminal justice then maybe sometime years from now she’d find herself working with Mark on a case. By that time she hoped he’d be remarried to a wonderful woman who understood his quirks and foibles, a woman who could chase the darkness away from him when necessary.
He deserved that. He deserved a safe place to fall, next to a warm, loving woman at the end of his long and dark days.
She would never be that woman, but she wanted that for him.
By the time she’d finished her second class of the day, the mood of the campus was already half-mad. Students dressed in Gladiator garb and raced after others who wore jaybird feathers in their hair or pinned to their clothes. Laughter rang out from every corner of the campus and she passed several students who already wore the eau-de-beer scent that would prevail from now until Sunday, when those students awoke with sick stomachs and worse headaches.
She tried not to imagine how different things might have been between her and Mark at the bonfire the next night if the specter of her past wasn’t between them, if he hadn’t learned about her connection to Melinda and if she didn’t know his single goal was to attempt to arrest the sister whom Dora had always looked at as her savior.
It would be so easy if she could see Mark as the enemy, a man attempting to destroy the sister she loved. But Dora had no real depth of feeling toward Melinda other than gratitude. In the very depths of her heart, she couldn’t get past the fact that while Melinda was kidnapped three men had been murdered, and since her miraculous release from her captives, nobody else had died.
* * *
Mark knew that Melinda had an afternoon lecture and that probably her two assistants would be in their usual seats in the front row. That worked fine with him. In fact, he was counting on that very scenario.
He’d lain awake for half the night, most of his thoughts filled with Dora. His heart had ached for the little girl who’d suffered so much and had sought escape first in the arms of a physical abuser and then with a man who’d emotionally stabbed the last of her life out of her.
As a profiler, he understood very well the forces that drove people onto different, varying paths of life. It