was up there in the first place still bothers me. You’ll get your house back. You won’t have me messing up your kitchen making my pancakes.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “I love your pancakes.”
Her cell rang and she looked down at the number, but it abruptly cut off. Must have been a wrong number. She tucked it back in her jacket. “I’ll leave you the recipe.”
“It won’t be quite the same,” he murmured.
“No…it won’t,” she replied.
Back at his town house, Amber went upstairs to her room and pulled out her suitcase. She started stuffing everything inside without thinking about it. Everything for her vacation was at the bottom of the bag. She should be happy, grateful, relieved. She was going back to her life. Getting a vacation she richly deserved. But, instead, she felt miserable and a little hollow.
It bugged her that the resolution to Connelly’s death seemed so senseless and it didn’t sit well with her not to have answers as to why Connelly had been up the mountain in the first place. Where had he been for forty-eight hours?
Then there was Tristan. They had gotten close. She wasn’t going to deny that. Both emotionally and physically. At first, he’d been a closed-off grump, one of his mechanisms to keep people at bay. Now he seemed to be pulling back into himself.
She experienced a rush of hurt, and she closed her eyes, making herself take a deep breath. What had she expected him to do? That was who he was, and it was how he lived his life. And she had gone along with it. Mostly because getting involved with him was simply beyond temptation. She had to acknowledge right here and right now that he hadn’t been some kind of rebound guy. Not like she’d thought he was—someone who found her desirable and had soothed the humiliation of getting dumped.
She wasn’t sure what she even expected him to do. He was in the service and he intended to remain in the service. He wasn’t going to give up anything for her and how could she expect him to. They barely knew each other. It was irrational. Her life was in DC and she was going back to it. NCIS was everything she wanted, and she’d come to that decision later in her life. This was the work she wanted to do, even on the days when it was hard to take.
His life was on the battlefield, a man driven to reconcile past actions in a life-and-death situation that had a gruesome outcome. He had fulfilled his duty then and it had cost him dearly. She wouldn’t judge him or his actions.
She knew what she was getting into when she’d slept with Tristan and knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. So, she couldn’t feel any regret about it, and she didn’t. What she regretted was meeting him under these circumstances where the situation felt impossible. It was her own fault for falling for him. She rubbed at her temple. It was okay to admit that because she was aware of how true it was.
Feeling completely drained, she tucked a loose wisp of hair behind her ear, folded the last of her clothes and zipped her case shut.
She checked her phone and saw that her flight was on time. She called the hotel one last time to confirm her reservation and then lay back on her bed.
She heard his bedroom door close. After a few moments, she pulled her report up on her laptop and spent the rest of the evening working on it. She’d email it to Chris in the morning and the case would officially be closed.
Tomorrow she would finally be sitting at that bar in the warm waters of that amazing pool. She was going to bake the chill out of her bones and get some perspective on Tristan Michaels. She would enjoy her vacation as best she could, even though the heartbreak of leaving him forever.
Chapter Twelve
When she got up in the morning, Tristan was gone. She did some yoga and then ate a light breakfast. She checked once more to make sure her flight was still on time. She’d have to leave here at noon to make it. She had about four hours to kill, so she set herself up at Tristan’s kitchen table, made herself a cup of coffee and brought her report up on her laptop to go over it one more time.
She tried not to let Tristan’s absence bother her.