brunette with a death grip on his office doorknob. Julee Reynolds was not only back in town, she was standing outside his office, looking up at him with anxious blue eyes that threatened to undermine his resolve never to get emotionally involved with a woman again.
With steely control, he drew some air into his tortured lungs. She’d always been beautiful to him, even when the other guys had called her “Olive Oyl” and “Toothpick,” but years of working in an industry where beauty is carefully cultivated had enhanced her natural assets. He didn’t want to notice, didn’t want to feel a thing in her presence, but he did.
“Hello, Tate.”
She extended a hand—a long, manicured hand with those fancy fake nails women liked. Fool that he was, he wrapped his fingers around hers. The jolt of awareness from her skin to his was as powerful as the stun gun they’d zapped him with in the police academy. She was warm and soft and—criminy, she was Julee, the woman who’d taken his heart to L.A. and never sent it back. That’s why he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t talk. Heck, he couldn’t even think.
Like his father, Julee had been relegated to a mental file marked “unsolvable case” so he could move on with his life. Maybe that’s why seeing her affected him so strongly and brought back an avalanche of unwanted feelings. Time and hard work had distanced him from most of the pain in his past, but nothing had ever filled the void Julianna had left when she’d stepped on that old Greyhound bus and ridden away.
He’d known she had to give the modeling world a shot, had wanted that for her. She and her mom had already lost their house and were barely holding things together. He just hadn’t realized it would hurt so much when she never came back, especially after his career-ending injury. Eventually, pain turned to resentment and resentment to bitterness. She’d proved him right. He wasn’t worth her coming back to. He’d fallen into a black hole after she left and nearly destroyed himself. Since then, he’d kept his heart locked away, taking care not to risk that kind of rejection ever again.
If he had a lick of sense, he’d find out what she wanted and send her back to L.A.—ASAP.
“How are you?” Her voice was that smooth honeyed alto that had once sent his teenage libido into overdrive. Just talking to her on the phone had been a sexual fantasy. Sexiest voice, sexiest legs, sweetest girl on the planet.
He slammed the cover on that file so fast his brain ached.
“Doing good. Yourself?” He willed himself to release her hand, then reached around her and unlocked his office so they could go in. Lord knew he needed to sit down and get a grip.
Standing aside, he let her enter first, catching the subtle drift of some designer perfume. He couldn’t name it. Never was good at that sort of thing, though he could sniff out a meth lab or a drunk driver with his eyes closed.
“It’s been a long time,” she said, her blue gaze drifting around the old, narrow office that he’d worked so hard to gain. His desk, always a cluttered mess, looked even more so today. The air-conditioning wheezed and rattled and little dust wads flapped in the vent. To her big-city eyes, accustomed to the best, he supposed this place looked and smelled like a musty hole in the wall.
“A very long time,” he repeated, glancing at the calendar on his desk. Nine years, seven months and thirteen days, to be exact. The date she’d left him was a permanent scar on his heart, like a bad tattoo that no amount of surgery could remove. “I heard you did all right for yourself.”
“You heard?”
He shrugged, not willing to let her know how he’d scrounged for every drop of information, praying she’d make it big then praying she wouldn’t. He’d even fantasized about her coming back, broke and lonely. In his dreams, he’d been the man she needed, the only one who could help her. He’d been a dumb kid then who’d believed in the impossible.
Tate shifted the weight off his bad knee. Weather must be changing for the old injury to act up this much. Or maybe it was the eighteen-hour day he’d spent on duty, half of it on his feet, searching the lake woods for a lost child. But Tate had no complaints. He’d felt like a million bucks when he’d placed the boy in his tearful parents’ arms.
He knew his stance had given him away when Julee’s gaze came back to him, drifting down his body to rest at his aching knee. Though her attention was purely curious, Tate’s body grew warmer than the April weather dictated.
“I never did get a chance to tell you how sorry I was about your knee injury. Does it still bother you?”
So she had known. And never even called. Apparently, she hadn’t given him another thought once she hit the big city.
“Sometimes,” he admitted gruffly. Nearly ten years had passed. Why was she bringing it up now?
Julee touched his arm lightly, but enough that the electric shock of her touch still made his insides quiver. Not just physical wanting, though she had that power, too, but emotional need so intense he wanted to collapse at her glamorous feet. After all this time, he was still a fool.
“I always hated what happened to you.”
If she’d cared so much, why hadn’t she come home? Why hadn’t she been the one to see him through those black days? Why had she left him alone to drown in alcohol and self-pity and to marry the first woman who would tolerate both?
“That was a long time ago.” He stepped back from the subtle lure of her perfume, placing the desk between the two of them. “It all happened a long time ago.”
They’d been so young, thinking they could have it all. Julee would be a famous model. He’d play pro football. Then they’d find their way back to each other. Trouble was, her dream came true about the same time his died on the ten-yard line with three minutes to go in the first half of the season opener.
He’d fallen into the black abyss of anger and alcohol, too proud to call her, but furious when she didn’t call him. Then Shelly had come along, sweet and sympathetic, willing to tolerate his drunken rages and self-pity. She’d been his anchor during a time when he’d wanted to die. Out of some alcohol-distorted sense of gratitude, and because he needed to believe someone cared, he’d married her after less than a month.
Tate squeezed his eyes shut and blotted out the memories. Too much time had passed to go there now. “So. What brings you back to Blackwood?”
And how soon will you be on the next flight out?
Some emotion stirred behind her beautiful blue eyes. What was it? Nerves? Anxiety?
Squinting in thought, he studied the intense set of her jaw, the shadows above her elegant cheekbones. That’s when he knew. Julianna was afraid.
The loose rollers on his chair clattered against the brown tile as he pulled it away from the desk. One hand on the nubby gray backrest, he waited, cop instinct on alert.
What was she afraid of? And what on God’s green earth could it have to do with the hometown she’d abandoned years ago? Better question, what did it have to do with him?
“Mind if I sit down?” she asked. Tate tried to ignore the tingle in his gut whenever her lips moved. “I have some important business to discuss with you.”
Fighting the need to protect her from whatever demon chased her, and the greater need to protect himself from her, Tate indicated the green vinyl-covered chair
