point she heard him say that he couldn’t imagine her making police work a lifetime career.
His reaction was typical of most men when they found out what she did for a living. The women on the force had to get used to those kinds of asides to survive in a male dominated profession. She didn’t really take Rand’s comments seriously. At the time she’d thought he’d been teasing her. That had been her first mistake.
“Do you go off duty at the same time tomorrow night?” Quiet had reigned in the car until he’d pulled up next to her compact car in the station’s parking lot.
Her heart thundered out of control. “Yes.”
“Good. We’ll get a bite to eat and go bowling.”
She’d been so terrified of never seeing him again, it took her a minute to realize he wasn’t prepared to walk away yet, either.
“Have you ever been bowling?” She hated it when her voice shook like that.
“Not in years. But it doesn’t matter. I’d just as soon watch you. In fact, I’d ask you to breakfast, lunch and dinner tomorrow if I thought it were possible. When’s your next day off?”
By now her whole body was shaking, not just her voice. “Monday. But I have things I have to do.”
“So do I. We’ll do them together. I promise not to touch you until you tell me I can. I’m letting you set the pace.”
Annabelle knew exactly what he was talking about. She knew that he knew how much she wanted to touch him, to be touched by him. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. It was a revelation. Unfortunately her desire to be with him above all else had blinded her to certain unassailable truths.
He’d been deadly serious when he’d expressed his opinion about the dangers of her work and the hope that she would eventually give it up. Six weeks later, after they’d spent every conceivable moment together, he’d proposed.
When he’d put the diamond ring on her finger, he’d let her know that he expected her to have resigned from the police force by the time they were married. “I want a full-time wife, sweetheart.”
Aghast that he’d actually made such a stipulation, she spent the next week explaining what her job meant to her, how happy it made her. Why would she give it up? He had his work and loved it. Couldn’t they both do what they wanted and enjoy their marriage, too?
The more she tried to reason with him, the quieter he grew. Their relationship underwent a drastic change. At one point they agreed that dinner was a mistake and he’d driven her home without taking her in his arms.
Devastated by his reaction and desperate to get back what they’d shared, she went over to his condo that night, unannounced, offering a compromise. She would talk to the captain about working part-time.
“No,” was all Rand said, his face hardened by lines. “Don’t you understand? I don’t care if you only worked one hour a week. In that length of time you could be hurt or killed. Police work isn’t like anything else. If you loved me,” his voice grated, “you wouldn’t want to put me through torture every time you left our bed to report to your job.”
“If you loved me you’d accept it... I love what I do, Rand.”
“More than me?” he almost shouted, his eyes dark slits from the strength of turbulent emotions.
“Can’t I love both?”
“Of course. But you don’t offer me the same choice,” he bit out. “When you leave the house in the morning, there’s every chance that by the end of the day, you’ll have been shot by some lunatic. Should that happen, and statistics have proven that it will, who’s going to be in our bed to comfort me at night after a hard day’s work?”
“Don’t you have any faith in me at all?” she cried out. “I’m good at what I do.”
“You think I don’t know that?” His hands had formed fists. “But the percentages work against you no matter how expert you are, no matter how well trained.”
Her chest heaved. “Is that your final word on the subject?”
“It is.”
“Then this is mine!”
Her pain combined with the adrenaline rushing through her body, caused her to tear the ring from her finger and throw it at him.
White-faced he’d said in a forbidding voice, “If you walk out that door on me, Annabelle, I won’t come after you and beg you to come back.”
“Did I ask you to?” she flung at him before she fled his condo in agony.
Within the week she’d thrown out every reminder of Rand. After resigning from her job, she’d made arrangements to move back to Salt Lake.
The only thing she couldn’t bring herself to part with was her mother’s wedding dress, the one Annabelle had planned to wear when she took her vows with Rand. Just a few days earlier Janet had gone to Annabelle’s house in Salt Lake and had sent the dress Express Mail.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she’d packed it in the wardrobe part of her suitcase to take back home with her. It would remain a memento of her mother’s, nothing else.
When Annabelle finally boarded the plane, she felt shattered and broken. Her world had exploded and nothing would ever be the same again.
Rand stayed where he was, preferring to watch the expert way she handled the cycle in spite of her small size. It had been a long time since he’d been able to feast his eyes on her alluring body.
A pocket Venus. That’s what he’d thought of her the first time he’d met her dressed in a police officer’s uniform. Everything was there in exquisite abundance, in all the right places. Just sort of in miniature. Amazing.
In her boots she stood about as high as his heart. Her heavily lashed eyes glowed a greenish-yellow color like those of a calico cat. She possessed a generous mouth and a cap of curly auburn curls he had to resist tousling. Her small hands fascinated him. Hell. Everything about her fascinated him.
She’d been part of the bomb squad which had arrived on the scene after Roman’s private secretary had received a bomb threat. In surprisingly short order Annabelle had determined the scare to be a hoax.
Adorable beyond belief, he discovered her intelligence and humor to be as intriguing as her looks. He’d never met a woman like her. She had a mind of her own and could have cared less about his money. Her advent into his world changed his life.
An elusive creature, he started out right away to pursue her in earnest. During the chase scene at the first movie they’d gone to together, he’d fallen in love with her and had never recovered.
Much as he might want to catch up with her now and give her a run for her money on his newly purchased Kawasaki, he decided that would be pushing it. Better to give her five minutes of lead rope before he slowly tightened the noose.
There was no doubt in his mind that he was definitely going to tighten the noose.
Twelve
