got busy.” She was a lousy liar.
“Right.”
He’d made a huge tactical error in letting Bella talk him into coming early for his niece’s christening. He hadn’t had enough downtime to get his more primitive reactions under control after the last job. Coupled with the fact that he hadn’t had sex in way too long, he’d been an explosion waiting to happen.
His desire for Lise Barton had tipped him over the edge.
“I got too intense, too fast, and it scared you. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t scare me.” She put up her hand when he would have accused her of lying again. “You didn’t. The kiss was incredible. Your passion overwhelmed me, but it didn’t frighten me.” She sighed, looking both emotionally defenseless and a little disgruntled. “My reaction to it did.”
He hadn’t expected that response. At all. He’d spent months feeling guilty because he’d sent her running and she was telling him her own reaction had done that. “Why?”
“A woman could lose herself in feelings as strong as the ones you brought out in me.”
“And you’re afraid of losing yourself?”
“Yes.” Clear hazel eyes hid nothing.
“Is that what happened in your marriage?”
“Not totally, but I lost enough of myself that when our mutual identity disintegrated, figuring out who I was on my own took a lot longer than I wanted it to.”
“You think going to bed with me could do that to you?”
“I think the emotions that would accompany making love to you could destroy me.”
Such honesty from a woman stunned him. However, he didn’t agree. “Sex does not have to be soul-destroying.”
Only the emotion of love could do that, and she didn’t have a thing to worry about on that score. No way was she going to fall in love with a badass mercenary, and she didn’t have to worry about him getting moon-faced. He’d learned a long time ago that he didn’t do that love thing.
She turned back to face the pond as if he’d never spoken. Pulling her light jacket close around her, she stood silent for so long, he thought she wasn’t going to say anything else. Then she started to talk.
“I married my best friend when I was eighteen years old. I would have done anything to get out of my father’s house, and when Mike asked me to marry him the night of our senior prom, I jumped at the chance.”
“What happened?”
“Life.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “We didn’t have a passionate marriage. I guess you could say we just weren’t compatible in bed, but he was still my best friend and I trusted him completely. He encouraged me to pursue my writing, believed in me when I lost faith in myself, but friendship wasn’t enough. Or at least it wasn’t for him.”
“He wanted the passion.” What she was saying shocked him because Lise had been like living fire in his arms the one time they’d kissed.
“Yes, and when he found it with someone else, he asked for a divorce.”
“He had an affair?”
“No. Mike is too honest for that, but he fell in love. We loved each other, but this was different, or so he told me.”
“You still loved him.”
“Yes, and I trusted him. When my marriage ended, I didn’t just lose my husband. I lost my closest friend, the one person in the world I’d let myself totally rely on.”
Did she still love the other man, the man too honest to have an affair but untrustworthy enough to fall in love with another woman? Were leftover feelings from her dead marriage why she was so bothered by her reaction to Joshua?
“You feel passion with me.”
“It’s too intense. I don’t want to feel anything that deeply again.”
He understood. Too well. Emotion could mess up your life, but he thought she was confusing desire with love and they weren’t the same thing. He didn’t know if he could convince her of that fact, but he was pretty sure he was going to have to try.
He wanted Lise Barton and no way could he promise he would never act on that desire, no matter how good his intentions were.
Nemesis paced his one-room efficiency apartment.
Where was she?
Rain beat against the dingy windows, the gray skies making his home dark even though it was still daylight outside.
He didn’t like this wet climate, or the cold that his small baseboard heaters didn’t completely dissipate. His physical discomfort was something else to blame Lise Barton for. She’d ruined his life in every way that mattered.
She’d been gone for three days now, and he’d been unable to find credit card charges for Joshua O. Watt.
The satisfaction Nemesis had felt in discovering that Joshua’s last name was different from his sister’s had faded to nothingness in the face of his quarry’s continued absence.
The man must have used cash to pay for their hotel room, so Nemesis had no way of knowing where it was. He consoled himself with the thought that even if he’d driven her out of state to Oregon or something, they wouldn’t have gone far.
No way would she have run…not without her precious computer and the book she was working on. He’d hacked in to make sure it was still there and he’d found the book she’d been working on for the last month.
In his fury at her deviation from the plan, he had deleted it.
He didn’t regret the rash action. It would show her she could not play with him. He had a project launch schedule he was not about to let her impede.
He had to see his goal realized.
It would vindicate him and all the other men she had wronged with her meddling in affairs that were no concern of hers.
He’d reverse planned everything down to the time of day for his initial contact with her. But his plan had not taken into account this disappearance. She wasn’t supposed to leave her apartment. It did not fit her profile—he had spent a great deal of time compiling the necessary statistics on her.
He had nothing better to do with his time.
Not now.
Up until three days ago, she had behaved exactly as he had anticipated. She had waited to go to the sheriff until he broke into her apartment. It was a sign of how right his ultimate goal was that the sheriff had dismissed her complaints as unimportant.
And as Nemesis had expected, even then she had avoided going to family for help. He had encouraged her separation from her family by subtly implying he had designs on her sister-in-law and niece. Which he didn’t.
If
