Saving Amber - Zoe Dawson Page 0,24

this woman—now. Right damn now. He couldn’t let her go, but he put his forehead against hers and soothed his hands up her arms.

“We’ve got to work together on this case…one that’s messing with my head.”

“And you think dancing around this and pretending we don’t want to drag each other’s clothes off is preferable to just giving in to it, enjoying ourselves, then going on with life as it happens? I’m a big girl. I can handle disappointment. If that’s what happens. Who knows, we might go to bed once and find out it’s not all that we thought it was cracked up to be.”

He gave her a fierce look. “That’s a load of bull and you know it. It will be good. Damned good.”

She took a breath and looked at his face, her eyes going over him in a way that felt more intimate than touching him. She settled on his mouth and he groaned. “I want you. I can’t deny that and I don’t know what it is about you that makes me crazy just to look at you, so I concede that, yes, it would probably be out-of-the-world amazing. But us working together is going to be a juggling act anyway. Why can’t we just recognize all the bullcrap and still just do what we both want?”

He took her hands from his waist and held on to them. “It’s not as if I don’t want to.” He cupped her jaw and cradled her delicate face in his hand. “But I won’t do something that may hurt you in the end, not until I’m sure about my own feelings in this. I’m going back into combat and there are other things you don’t know. I can’t muddle myself up more or be dishonest with you.” He stepped back, his body resisting the action with every beat of his heart, but he did it, nonetheless. “With any other woman, maybe, but not with you.”

She lifted her hands in disbelief, then let them drop to her sides. “You’re really something else, Tristan.”

“I’m sorry.” And he was. Sorrier than he’d ever been. But what he felt at the moment was relief, not fear that he’d just made a big mistake. Which told him it was the right thing to do. He stepped farther back before he changed his mind.

"Have you ever thought about getting out?" she asked, as his eyes drifted over her face, her lips.

"Of the service?"

"Yes, doing something else with your life."

He sounded so…spooked. He cleared his throat then continued. "I have thought about it. Even have a partnership offer from my former teammate Rock…Russell Kaczewski. But I'm not sure about leaving the corps. It's all I've known."

"Of course. I get that. “So…now what? We pretend that there’s no screaming sexual tension between us and just go about our business?”

He clenched his teeth and then a smile worked at his mouth. She was direct. He liked that about her. “We try. At least until we find out what happened to James and get his death figured out. Until we know more about what’s really at stake here.”

And he wasn’t talking about the case. The idea that he was worried about getting emotionally involved should have been the douse of cold reality her raging hormones needed.

Not so much, as it turned out.

“I already know all I need to know.” She turned away and went to the bathroom door, then stopped abruptly, her back still to him. Even in the dim lighting, he watched as her shoulders slumped a little, and finally felt the twinge of the regret he’d hoped not to feel.

“I believe there’s a cold shower with your name on it,” she said at length, quietly, but with no overt recrimination in her voice, either. Weary resignation was more like it.

He took a step toward her, couldn’t stop his eyes from sliding over her. “It’s not because I don’t want you. But because we’ll want too much.”

Or I will.

Amber woke to the scrape of a snow shovel and the sound of the rough motor of the snowplow as it trundled past the house. She’d recognize that sound anywhere. Even though she’d grown up in Vermont, she had never wanted to live there. It was too cold, too much snow, too…not cosmopolitan. She’d gotten out as soon as she could. Now she only liked snow to ski on. That was it.

Groggy, she sat up and pushed her hair out of her face. Damn, what time was it? She grabbed her